The cool gadgetry on the classic TV series has made dreamers drool since the first time Captain Kirk barked the words “Beam me up, Scotty!” into his little black box and snapped it shut. —Holly J. Wagner —Star Trek Phone Set to Thrill (Wired) Cute, but Kirk never actually said that line, just as Sherlock…
So it was, late on Saturday evening in a valley five miles outside the soulless resort town of Aspen, that Thompson’s final request was granted. On a calm, still night lit by an almost full moon, a combination of fireworks and the writer’s ashes were blasted into the sky from the top of a 153ft…
The nerve of Harjo! What started as a woman’s disdain for the yummy delicacy suddenly became the great fry bread debate. Ask any Indian about it and you’ll either be greeted with rolled eyes – or sparkling, hungry eyes. After all, fry bread is synonymous with Indian culture. —Angie Walker —Indian Fry Bread Sparks Health…
If the number of blogs is growing, the medium must be real. Right ? Right in concept. Unfortunately its impossible to count the number of blogs in the blogosphere due to the number of spamblogs, splogs, zombies, whatever you want to call them. While the number of blogs has been placed by those who like…
Four schools in the UK will be testing a new program idea to use video games for educational use. An IT researcher, along with Electronic Arts (the software game giant) are funding the proposition. ‘We’re looking at developing some of the softer skills that are needed for the 21st century, such as problem-solving, resilience, persistence…
I tried an experiment, changing the ad copy in two publications in very subtle ways, just changing the superlatives I used to describe the product. In one publication I said it was flexible, in the other I said programmable, for example. Sure enough, when the editorial came out in each pub, they used the adjectives…
In the scenario, there are two versions of the gene for magical ability — the M version, which creates muggles, and the W version, which is needed for wizardry. But everyone gets two copies of the gene — one from each parent — and even a single M scuttles any hope for a magical career.…
It‘sprobably true that the easiest eye-catching technology to apply to comics, that some artists are doing, is to use techniques like Flash, and yes, that risks changing the form so much that they?re not comics anymore. —Andrew Stern —Keeping Digital Comics Comics (Grand Text Auto) A good overview of the tension between online comics and other…
Today the theory era is effectively ending and the public intellectual tradition is reasserting itself, along with a renewed attention in the aesthetic that many theorists dismissed as no more than an ideological formation. But thanks to tenure and the intellectual investments we make as graduate students, theory will have a long afterlife. It will…
Disregarding third-party candidates, Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan found that towns that offered Fox by 2000 increased their vote share for the Republican presidential candidate by 6 percentage points (to 54 percent, from 48 percent) from 1996 to 2000, while those that did not offer Fox increased theirs by an even larger 7 percentage points (to…
The PoMos are right: Narratives don’t get built out of facts. Narratives tell us which facts matter. Within a narrative, it’s important that journalistic reports be accurate. But accuracy is not enough to bring about intelligibility or to tear down an existing intelligibility. —David Weinberger —Jay Rosen’s New Lessons (Joho the Blog) A great take on…
Existing legislation already prevents non-official sponsors from using distinctive “Olympic marks” like the Olympic rings. But the new bill will make it illegal to combine words like “games”, “medals”, “gold”, “2012”, “sponsor” or “summer” in any form of advertising. —Olympics bill comes under attack (BBC) Note that the Olympics Bill seems to apply only to advertising…
The skinny bar is made up of old and red stars and is about 27,000 light years in length, about 7,000 light years longer than previously believed. The bar is at a 45 degree angle to the line between our Sun and the center of the galaxy and may put the Milky Way in a…
Oh give me some foam, whose pieces won’t roam, from the tank, on which its attached, with seldom the sight, of pieces in flight, the shuttle, it hardly gets scratched. Foam! Foam on the tank! Stay stuck, to the place you’re attached! With seldom the sight, of your pieces in flight, The shuttle, it hardly…
A magical Walt Disney World family vacation was ruined last weekend by the stringent policies and protocol of the Walt Disney Company. […] The Mahaffeys’ dissatisfaction began soon after their arrival. Despite being in a huge, open park with dozens of attractions, the family was unable to roam freely, confronted at every turn by signs…
Jesus suffered (i.e. “permitted”) the little children to come unto him. Some were probably squalling. Emily Kasky blogs about an inconsiderate mother who didn’t take her disruptive child out of Mass. I wouldn’t be so hasty to equate non-spanking with lack of discipline, or to equate spanking with the teaching of empathy. I don’t mean…
If daily life is not concerned with familiar economic activities and the whole of life is not informed with religious purposes, then what is life all about in Star Trek? Well, the story is about a military establishment, Star Fleet, and one ship in particular in the fleet, the Enterprise. One might not expect this…
In 2003, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey reported that his group had found “the biggest dinosaur that we know of in Virginia.” Earlier this year an Indian newspaper reported on a dinosaur discovery that they termed the “oldest fossil record from Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh.” Not long after, papers in Rio were…
Bangerter and Heath studied 500 US media reports between 1993 and 2002 to see how classical music became a must for children, and considered in which states the articles were published. They found a correlation between unsatisfactory education systems and the number of reports published about the effect. Some states even heavily promoted the use…
Insane, right? I mean, let’s say our friend John has his Bonebiter (one of countless powerful weapons in WoW) and a man steals it somehow. Should the thief be convicted of a crime and punished in the real world? Did you snort with laughter at that question? Why? The victim worked many hours to “earn”…