Newsarama.com : The DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, New #1s Across the Line

Newsarama.com : The DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, New #1s Across the Line: The center of intense rumor and speculation for months now, DC confirmed today that the fictional shared universe of Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lanterm and more will undergo a revamp of their oft-rewritten 76 year-plus history of shared continuity.

Jim Lee reportedly "spearheaded" the redesign of more than 50 costumes to make characters "more identifiable and accessible to comic fans new and old."

Three lies about taxes - How the World Works - Salon.com

Three lies about taxes - How the World Works - Salon.com: There you have it, for future handy reference. Poor people do pay taxes, the biggest corporations don't pay enough, and the United States, as a whole, has a low tax burden overall.

Gallery: 10 Scenes From the Most Ridiculous Sports Comic Ever

Gallery: 10 Scenes From the Most Ridiculous Sports Comic Ever: The devil pitching against baseball all-stars? Merlin teaching King Arthur to play football? Here are 10 scenes from the 1970s' Strange Sports Stories, the most ridiculous sports comic series ever put to paper.

Larry Flynt: Freedom fighter, pornographer, monster? - Profiles, People - The Independent

Larry Flynt: Freedom fighter, pornographer, monster? - Profiles, People - The Independent:

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong - War Room - Salon.com

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong - War Room - Salon.com: Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method for Men | Magazine

The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method for Men | Magazine: The procedure is known by the clunky acronym RISUG (for reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance), but it is in fact quite elegant: The substance that Das injected was a nontoxic polymer that forms a coating on the inside of the vas. As sperm flow past, they are chemically incapacitated, rendering them unable to fertilize an egg.

If the research pans out, RISUG would represent the biggest advance in male birth control since a clever Polish entrepreneur dipped a phallic mold into liquid rubber and invented the modern condom. “It holds tremendous promise,” says Ronald Weiss, a leading Canadian vasectomy surgeon and a member of a World Health Organization team that visited India to look into RISUG. “If we can prove that RISUG is safe and effective and reversible, there is no reason why anybody would have a vasectomy.”

But here’s the thing: RISUG is not the product of some global pharmaceutical company or state-of-the-art government-funded research lab. It’s the brainchild of a maverick Indian scientist named Sujoy Guha, who has spent more than 30 years refining the idea while battling bureaucrats in his own country and skeptics worldwide. He has prevailed because, in study after study, RISUG has been proven to work 100 percent of the time. Among the hundreds of men who have been successfully injected with the compound so far in clinical trials, there has not been a single failure or serious adverse reaction. The procedure is now in late Phase III clinical trials in India, which means approval in that country could come in as little as two years.

Apple drops secrecy, confirms iOS 5, iCloud on tap at WWDC 2011

Apple drops secrecy, confirms iOS 5, iCloud on tap at WWDC 2011: Apple announced today that it plans to introduce the next generation of its mobile platform, iOS 5, as well as a new cloud service called iCloud at the Worldwide Developers Conference next week on Monday, June 6. This is a highly unusual move for Apple, which normally tries to keep their center-ring announcements secret until the scheduled event.

ENGLISH REVENGE DRAMA by Linda Woodbridge reviewed by David Hawkes - TLS

ENGLISH REVENGE DRAMA by Linda Woodbridge reviewed by David Hawkes - TLS: For revenge loudly disputes the virtue of “winning”. It is by definition a loser’s weapon. Not even the avenger “wins”. If his revenge is to be pure, he must gain nothing from it but the satisfaction of payback.

Broadcast Television Audiences Are Older Than You Think – Much Older « Spinoff Online – TV, Film and Entertainment News Daily

Broadcast Television Audiences Are Older Than You Think – Much Older « Spinoff Online – TV, Film and Entertainment News Daily: ABC Median Age: 61 years old.
CBS Median Age: 55 years old.
Fox Median Age: 45 years old.
NBC Median Age: 49 years old.
The CW Median Age: 34 years old.

Preview the print queue with Quick Look | Printers | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld

Preview the print queue with Quick Look | Printers | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld: Once you're in the print queue, just double-click on an individual print job to open a Quick Look preview of the document being printed; since it's Quick Look, you could instead tap the spacebar to trigger the same effect.

This reminds me that Quick Look pops up in some unexpected places, and it's often a delightful surprise. For example, I frequently use it in Open and Save dialogs to preview files there. And don't forget that the print queue has some other hidden functionality, too: Remember the one about dragging documents directly into the queue to print them?

Germany decides to abandon nuclear power by 2022

Germany decides to abandon nuclear power by 2022: Germany's coalition government agreed early Monday to shut down all the country's nuclear power plants by 2022, the environment minister said, making it the first major industrialized nation in the last quarter century to announce plans to go nuclear-free.

Get bigger sound out of Apple gadgets with iWow - USATODAY.com

Get bigger sound out of Apple gadgets with iWow - USATODAY.com: The iWow plugs into any Apple gadget that uses Apple's 30-pin connector. That includes iPhones, iPads and most iPods. When you connect headphones, earbuds or a cable to a full sound system, you immediately hear cleaner, richer and more detailed sound. Bass tracks have more definition, vocals are more separated from the music, and high notes don't get clipped.

John Bradshaw On The New Science Of Understanding Dog Behavior : NPR

John Bradshaw On The New Science Of Understanding Dog Behavior : NPR: Bradshaw says humans also expect dogs to be companionable when they're needed and unobtrusive when they're not. City dogs, he says, are expected to be better-behaved than the average human child and as self-reliant as adults. But these expectations, he says, create problems for modern dogs.

Arts & Letters Daily (28 May 2011)

Arts & Letters Daily (28 May 2011): Music hits the brain like sex. So can neuroscience distinguish between hearing an organ played and having one's organs played with?... more

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door | Politics | Vanity Fair

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door | Politics | Vanity Fair: “Pimping,” Natalie says, “is not cool. A pimp is a wife beater, rapist, murderer, child-molester, drug dealer, and slave driver rolled into one.”

At the eG8, 20th century ideas clashed with the 21st century economy

At the eG8, 20th century ideas clashed with the 21st century economy: Benkler highlighted one of the central conflicts of the conference, pitting existing global corporations against the disruptive force of online innovators. The conflict, he said, is between 20th-century content industries that try to capture value by putting it in containers, versus 21st-century companies that focus on capturing the flow.

What's Inside: Inkjet Cartridges

What's Inside: Inkjet Cartridges: We're paying more than $3 per milliliter for ink made mostly of water.

Maria Sharapova finally awakens - French Open - ESPN

Maria Sharapova finally awakens - French Open - ESPN: Sharapova found herself being tested almost beyond her limit by a 17-year-old French wild card named Caroline Garcia. The wind always causes Sharapova fits, and on this day it was brutal. The partisan Parisian crowd at Court Philippe Chatrier was delirious, given that Garcia is ranked No. 188 and was playing in only her second Grand Slam event, and her fourth WTA-level match ever.

For 14 games, the crowd and the girl almost got their miracle. Garcia led 6-3, 4-1 before she actually processed what was happening, before her nerves betrayed her. Sharapova won the last 11 games and escaped with a 3-6, 6-4, 6-0 victory and is into the third round.

The crowd, not surprisingly, lustily booed Sharapova afterward.

"First of all, I think I relaxed and just let things happen," Sharapova said. "I think I was way too concerned with the conditions and wasn't moving my feet and she was aggressive.

"I just finally hit the ball."

Garcia is a 5-foot-10, 134 haricot vert, but nevertheless displayed some crazy power for one so thin. She was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the town that produced former world No. 1 Amelie Mauresmo -- who was in the audience this day.

"I forget the opponent, and I play very well in the beginning," Garcia said. "She was not really in the court. After, it was a little bit difficult. I had many things going on in my head because I was leading. And then she reacted like a champion, because she is a great champion. These stupid mistakes that she made in the [beginning], she no longer made them.

"I started being very nervous and I started playing more from the baseline, and it was difficult for me to come back."

Google Announces Major Push Into NFC Payments With Google Wallet

Google Announces Major Push Into NFC Payments With Google Wallet: Google today unveiled its new Google Wallet initiative, a push into near field communications (NFC) that will allows users to make electronic payments with NFC-compatible hardware through the Google Wallet mobile app for Android.

Hands-On: Bastion Spins an Intriguing Role-Playing Yarn | GameLife | Wired.com

Hands-On: Bastion Spins an Intriguing Role-Playing Yarn | GameLife | Wired.com: But then there’s the other story, the one constructed by the actions you perform during the game. Because the gamer is in control and because videogames often give players a good amount of freedom, these two stories are usually somewhat misaligned — sometimes preposterously so.

The Penny Arcade webcomic made this precise point in its take on Sega’s sprawling drama Shenmue. “I will avenge my father’s death…. Right after I play with this kitten! And drink this soda! And play with these toys!”

I noted another example of this dichotomy in a series of articles called “Confessions of a Grand Theft Auto Virgin.” There’s nothing in the games’ cinematic scenes about the main character being a serial murderer of prostitutes, and yet the do-what-you-like, open-world gameplay led many gamers to spend their time doing only that.

The important thing about Bastion’s narration isn’t that it’s clever and funny, which it is. What’s so interesting about the “constantly talking old man” device is that it attempts to square the circle and unite the two stories, the one that’s written down and the one that’s told in the moment-to-moment actions of the player.

May 26, 1908: Mideast Oil Discovered — There Will Be Blood

May 26, 1908: Mideast Oil Discovered — There Will Be Blood: A British company strikes oil in Persia (now Iran). It's the first big petroleum find in the Middle East, and it sets off a wave of exploration, extraction and exploitation that will change the region's -- and the world's -- history.

Is gluten-free diet the way to go? | Reuters

Is gluten-free diet the way to go? | Reuters: (Reuters) - Novak Djokovic says his unbeaten run is down to his special, gluten-free diet and now Sabine Lisicki hopes she too will benefit in the long run after discovering she is allergic to wheat products.

German Lisicki was on the verge of upsetting third seed Vera Zvonareva in the second round of the French Open on Wednesday but, with the finishing line in sight, she crumbled on court and had to be carried off on a stretcher sobbing.

Advertising's sexual obsession with flight - Advertising - Salon.com

Advertising's sexual obsession with flight - Advertising - Salon.com: The first legend about flying females was that of witches -- women who made pacts with the devil. They turned brooms, a symbol of servitude and submission, into one of power and flight. To fly, all they needed to do was put the long handle of a broom between their legs.

You should check this out for the awesome images.

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says | Danger Room | Wired.com

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says | Danger Room | Wired.com: But that’s not what Udall sees. He warned in a Tuesday statement about the government’s “unfettered” access to bulk citizen data, like “a cellphone company’s phone records.” In a Senate floor speech on Tuesday, Udall urged Congress to restrict the Patriot Act’s business-records seizures to “terrorism investigations” — something the ostensible counterterrorism measure has never required in its nearly 10-year existence.

There's a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

There's a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says: There's a huge "gap between what the public thinks the Patriot Act says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says," according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon). The gap is so big, in fact, that it amounts to entirely different, and secret, law.

Why does everyone want to fix "Glee"?

Why does everyone want to fix "Glee"?: For all it's popularity, "Glee" sometimes has trouble keeping even its most devoted fans happy. As Fox's zeitgeisty dramedy/musical/farce wraps up a hugely successful second season -- the finale aired last night -- it would be impossible to escape the chorus of critics who've taken aim at one or more aspects of the show, and constantly suggest "how to fix"  it. We've put together a compendium of all the gripes, which fall into five clear categories:

Copyfight: EFF Co-Founder Enters e-G8 ‘Lion’s Den,’ Rips Into Lions | Threat Level | Wired.com

Copyfight: EFF Co-Founder Enters e-G8 ‘Lion’s Den,’ Rips Into Lions | Threat Level | Wired.com: When Barlow had a chance to speak, he expressed his own surprise at being on the panel, “because I don’t think I’m from the same planet, actually.” He then proceeded to trash the foundational assumptions of everyone who had just spoken.

I may be one of very few people in this room who actually makes his living personally by creating what these gentlemen are pleased to call “intellectual property.” I don’t regard my expression as a form of property. Property is something that can be taken from me. If I don’t have it, somebody else does.

Expression is not like that. The notion that expression is like that is entirely a consequence of taking a system of expression and transporting it around, which was necessary before there was the internet, which has the capacity to do this infinitely at almost no cost.

Who needs Flash? Apple dominating mobile video | Phones | Macworld

Who needs Flash? Apple dominating mobile video | Phones | Macworld: FreeWheel, which specializes in helping clients make money from their online videos and which records data on more than 10 billion different video views every quarter through its Monetization Rights Management product, says that Apple iOS accounted for 80 percent of its clients’ video views on mobile platforms.

Spies, Meet Shakespeare: Intel Geeks Build Metaphor Mother Lode

Spies, Meet Shakespeare: Intel Geeks Build Metaphor Mother Lode: Iarpa, the mad science unit of the intelligence community, wants to a giant database of metaphors, to help 'em gain insights into other cultures. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, anyone?

May 25, 1945: Sci-Fi Author Predicts Future by Inventing It

May 25, 1945: Sci-Fi Author Predicts Future by Inventing It: Arthur C. Clarke begins privately circulating copies of a paper that proposes using space satellites for global communications.

David Brooks' political dream - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

David Brooks' political dream - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: It has long been the supreme fantasy of establishment guardians in general, and David Brooks in particular, that American politics would be dominated by an incestuous, culturally homogeneous, superior elite "who live in [Washington] and who have often known each other since prep school."  And while these establishment guardians love to endlessly masquerade as spokespeople for the Ordinary American, what they most loathe is the interference by the dirty rabble in what should be their exclusive, harmonious club of political stewardship, where conflicts are amicably resolved by ladies and gentlemen of the highest breeding without any messy public conflict.

But more generally, what Brooks so envies about British political culture -- a small, incestuous, aristocratic, homogenized group of trans-ideological elites harmoniously resolving their differences -- is exactly what already drives American policy and politics. And that is what establishment spokespeople like Brooks always mean when they yearn for "bipartisanship": wise old men getting together in secret and reaching agreements that exclude democratic debate and render irrelevant genuine differences among the citizenry.

Consider last week's non-public deal between Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to extend the most controversial and abused provisions of the Patriot Act by four years without any reforms. Here's how Associated Press described the impetus for that agreement:

The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government.

Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance takes place behind closed doors: dominated by corporatist elites and their lobbyists (whom Brooks charmingly considers noble "experts") and away from the knowledge or involvement of the prying, ignorant masses; that, for instance, was how President Obama's health care legislation was actually shaped, and it's obviously how virtually all foreign policy is shaped and implemented.

Indeed, the Congress -- from top to bottom -- is now structured to avoid any actual democratic debate and instead ensures the resolution of all matters in secret. In response to last night's 74-8 cloture vote on the Patriot Act, the always-superb, hyper-informed commenter pow wow -- in a comment that I highly recommend everyone read -- explained perfectly how this works. Citing the joint efforts of both parties' leadership to block any debate over authorization of the war in Libya, he explained: "the Party (= fundraising) organizations and their leadership [] operate almost entirely off the public record and out of public view. Their objective at all times: avoid unpredictable democratic floor action, and the accountability of public debate."

Lady Gaga Fans Swamp Amazon for a Cut-Rate Copy of a New Album - NYTimes.com

Lady Gaga Fans Swamp Amazon for a Cut-Rate Copy of a New Album - NYTimes.com: “Born This Way” (Interscope), her new album, arrived with a blitz of marketing, and Amazon surprised the singer’s fans by offering a one-day sale of the MP3 version of the album for 99 cents, a full $11 less than its price at iTunes, the Web’s dominant music retailer.

The discount was widely seen as a way for Amazon to promote its new Cloud Drive service, which allows users to store music files on remote servers and stream them over the Internet to their computer or smartphone. But Amazon may have underestimated the zeal (or thrift) of Lady Gaga’s fans. By early afternoon the company’s servers stalled, and many users were unable to download or listen to the album in full. Frustrated customers quickly took to Twitter and to Amazon’s user review page for “Born This Way.”

Full text: Apple Legal's letter to Lodsys

Full text: Apple Legal's letter to Lodsys: Here's the full text of Apple's letter to Lodsys regarding the app patent-infringement case.

Apple Backs Developers Against Lodsys Patent Threats, Says Devs 'Undisputedly Licensed' [Updated x2]

Apple Backs Developers Against Lodsys Patent Threats, Says Devs 'Undisputedly Licensed' [Updated x2]: As reported by The Loop, Apple has finally responded regarding developers being targeted by patent holding firm Lodsys with notices of infringement and demands for licensing. According to the report, Apple's General Counsel Bruce Sewell has sent a letter to Lodsys claiming that developers are "undisputedly licensed" for the patent in question.

'Total devastation' after massive tornado hits Missouri

'Total devastation' after massive tornado hits Missouri: A massive tornado that tore a 6-mile path across Missouri killed at least 89 people as it slammed into the city of Joplin, ripping into a hospital, crushing cars like soda cans and leaving a forest of splintered tree trunks behind.

Ultima III 2.2 - Modern update of a classic fantasy role playing game.. (Shareware)

Ultima III 2.2 - Modern update of a classic fantasy role playing game.. (Shareware): Ultima III is a modern Macintosh update of a classic computer fantasy role playing game which helped define the genre. Create a party of four adventurers, slay wandering evil beasts, and talk to townspeople to find out about the evil that has come over the once-peaceful land of Sosaria. Hear the villagers speak to you with speech synthesis, and a beautiful original soundtrack accompanies you on your journeys.
Ultima III inspired dozens (at least!) of knock-offs that used the same concepts. With each Ultima, the bar was raised for the role-playing standard. No matter how the video game industry tries to compensate for a lack of good gameplay in their titles with 3D graphics, digital video, and full DVD installs, they just can't capture the addictive simplicity of role playing pioneers like Ultima III.

I must agree: this was my first and only videogame. Played on my mom's old Apple II+.

Square Seeks to Revolutionize Retail Sales With 'Square Register' for iPad and 'Card Case'

Square Seeks to Revolutionize Retail Sales With 'Square Register' for iPad and 'Card Case': Square, the company that has brought the ability to accept credit cards for transactions to individuals and small businesses with a card reader dongle for iOS devices, today announced its next venture: "Square Register" for iPad. Seeking to replace traditional cash registers with iPads equipped with the new Square Register application, Square notes that the app will allow businesses to easily customize the register interface with their full list of products.

Cops: Crooks 'hide behind' medical marijuana law | KPIC CBS 4 - News, Weather and Sports - Roseburg, OR - Roseburg, Oregon | Local & Regional News

Cops: Crooks 'hide behind' medical marijuana law | KPIC CBS 4 - News, Weather and Sports - Roseburg, OR - Roseburg, Oregon | Local & Regional News:

Missouri's devastating twister aftermath

Missouri's devastating twister aftermath:

Of Sunday night's twister in Joplin, Missouri, Red Cross spokesman Michael Spencer told the AP: "I've been to about 75 disasters, and I've never seen anything quite like this before." Indeed, the images and raw footage that document the devastating storm speak volumes about the intensity of the destruction it has caused. (As much as 30 percent of the city  has been damaged -- with many areas destroyed outright.) Here are some of the most gripping images from the storm's aftermath (scroll down to see video).

Amazon Hits iTunes Again With $0.99 Lady Gaga Album, Qualifies for Cloud Drive Storage Upgrade

Amazon Hits iTunes Again With $0.99 Lady Gaga Album, Qualifies for Cloud Drive Storage Upgrade: Amazon has made another push today with a "Daily Deal" offering the new Lady Gaga album, "Born This Way", for only $0.99 through the Amazon MP3 Store. The special price is available for today only and compares to the $11.99 price point for the standard album in the iTunes Store, where an expanded edition is also available for $15.99.

G K Chesterton: A Biography by Ian Ker: review - Telegraph

G K Chesterton: A Biography by Ian Ker: review - Telegraph: Though physically awkward, intellectually Chesterton was as nimble as a hummingbird. His writing became famous for its use of paradox: little controlled explosions that ranged from everyday clichés (“travel narrows the mind”) to the perils of the suffragette movement: “Ten thousand women marched through the streets of London saying: ‘We will not be dictated to’, and then went off to become stenographers.”

And whereas Wilde’s slick one-liners were usually polished up in advance, Chesterton’s came as naturally as breathing. Like every true genius, he assumed that everyone thought as he did, and simply needed to be reminded of the fact from time to time.

Cinema chains dimming movies "up to 85%" on digital projectors - Boing Boing

Cinema chains dimming movies "up to 85%" on digital projectors - Boing Boing: The Boston Globe reports that AMC, National Amusements, and Regal cinema chains are leaving 3D projector lenses on for 2D movies. This means that the projected image is polarized and far dimmer than it should be. The chains won't acknowledge that they're doing it, but one quoted insider says its an "unspoken" corporate policy.

Given that your HD TV set shows it just fine, and your living room doesn't smell of weaponized butter, aren't they driving customers to piracy? Try this for irony: one reason operators hate changing lenses is reportedly because of crippling DRM on Sony's digital projectors, which "will shut down on you" if a mistake is made when resetting the system. So, they just don't change them, because serving a ruined product is better than serving no product at all.

BBC News - New method 'confirms dark energy'

BBC News - New method 'confirms dark energy': First results from a major astronomical survey using a cutting-edge technique appear to have confirmed the existence of mysterious dark energy.

Dark energy makes up some 74% of the Universe and its existence would explain why the Universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate.

The finding was based on studies of more than 200,000 galaxies.

While dark energy makes up about 74% of the Universe, dark matter - which does not reflect or emit detectable light - accounts for 22%. Ordinary matter - gas, stars, planets and galaxies - makes up just 4% of the cosmos.

However, despite scientists being able to infer the existence of dark energy and dark matter, these phenomena still elude a full explanation.

The worship of female pleasure - Sex News, Sex Talk - Salon.com

The worship of female pleasure - Sex News, Sex Talk - Salon.com: Nicole Daedone is trying to spread OM "orgasmic meditation" beyond alternative circles. Can America handle it?

How often it strikes me these days that today's futuristic headlines are ripped from the pages of yesteryear's Illuminatus trilogy.

doubleTwist 3.1.1 - Manage/share files on your phone, mp3 player, gaming device & camera.. (Free)

doubleTwist 3.1.1 - Manage/share files on your phone, mp3 player, gaming device & camera.. (Free): doubleTwist allows you to copy and share files on most of your mobile, gaming, photo and audio devices with your Mac.
Browse through your media and play anything. doubleTwist supports all major audio and video formats.
doubleTwist works with your phone, MP3 player, PSP, camera, and much more! Take your music, videos and other media wherever you go.

People use today's end of world to confess on Twitter

People use today's end of world to confess on Twitter: The #endoftheworldconfessions hashtag is trending beyond control, as people use the opportunity to confess their sins and secrets in light of today's Rapturous end of the world.

Book Review: With a Little Help - WSJ.com

Book Review: With a Little Help - WSJ.com: Sixty years ago stories were the heart of sci-fi (and of fantasy, then a junior partner), along with the magazines that promoted them. The daddy of the magazines was Astounding, with its consciously hard-science bent (reinforced by the name-change to Analog in 1960). Its long-term editor, John Campbell, launched Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, A.E. van Vogt and Lester del Rey—and dozens more. The magazine Galaxy took a lighter tone; one called Fantasy and Science Fiction had a broader remit. There were many others: Worlds of If, Amazing, Fantastic, and on and on. Collectors' guides list more than 200 of them pre-1980, though many lasted but an issue or two. Only a few survived the 1980s.

An issue characteristically held three short stories, a longer novella—maybe 20,000 words—and one part of a three-part serial. The magazines lived or died by their serials and novellas, which almost always got the cover art. This situation had several advantages. The demand for shorts gave wanna-be authors a better statistical chance of breaking in. The novellas meant that authors could try out an idea without too much investment in effort. And a struggling author could hope for multiple paydays: Sell the novella, sell two follow-ups, stick them together and sell the result to a paperback house as a 60,000-word novel. Asimov's "Foundation" series started that way. So did Heinlein's "Future History" sequence and Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonriders of Pern."

If the short story was the quintessential sci-fi format in the genre's infancy, it was eventually displaced by its opposite: the multi-part epic. The success of Tolkien, beginning in the 1950s, showed publishers there was a market for a trilogy that was well over a thousand pages total. Frank Herbert's "Dune" (1965) was another hit: It started in Astounding as a three-part serial but was then continued in an unprecedented five parts to make an eight-part total. It went on to generate five sequels by Herbert himself, with a dozen more co-authored by his son.

Book publishers liked these series. They concluded that what sells books is not new ideas but the familiar. It's the world that sells—Herbert's Dune or McCaffrey's Pern or Tolkien's Middle-earth—and the nice thing about that is, it's predictable. From this idea sprang what one might call the modern shapeless epics, especially the fantasy ones, which just go on and on: Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" sequence, Terry Brooks's "Shannara" stories, Stephen Donaldson's "Covenant" trilogies. But as the market for short stories declined, many aspiring sci-fi authors struggled to publish anything original, simply because they lacked the experience to write the 150,000-word book now preferred.

Hitler reacts to Lars von Trier

Hitler reacts to Lars von Trier: Trying to choose the greatest Hitler reacts clip would be like trying to choose the greatest Taiwanese animation video. It'd be like trying to pick the most beautiful star in the night sky. (I will, however, admit, when pressed, a special fondness for Hitler finding out that "Ugly Betty" has been canceled.)

Catholic Humor

Catholic Humor: "When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me instead. "The Crescat, via The Anchoress, via Instapundit.

2011 Upfronts: Winners and Losers - The Hollywood Reporter

2011 Upfronts: Winners and Losers - The Hollywood Reporter: America's Most Wanted
Fox gave the crime-fighting show the ax after 23 years, cutting it from a weekly series to four specials per year. Worse, entertainment president Kevin Reilly told reporters that it hasn't made money in some time. "It wasn't particularly viable," he said of the series. Ouch.

May 20, 1873: The Pants That Changed the World

May 20, 1873: The Pants That Changed the World: A struggling tailor in Reno, Nevada, fastens a few copper rivets to some denim work pants and applies for a patent. Blue jeans are here to stay.

Google Voice and Sprint integration: Hands-on review

Google Voice and Sprint integration: Hands-on review: We spent some quality time with Google Voice on a Sprint phone, and now we're ready to talk about it. Here are the highs and lows of Google's new partnership with Sprint.

Canwell Reveals Toth's "Genius, Isolated"

Canwell Reveals Toth's "Genius, Isolated": "Genius, Isolated" is the first of The Library of American Comics three volume biography of Alex Toth. We spoke with the book's author Bruce Canwell about the treasures readers can expect to find within its covers.

The most influential man in history

The most influential man in history: Shakespeare is the exception. He was the most influential person who ever lived. He shaped our world more than any political or religious leader, more than any explorer or engineer. The gifted playwright who moves audiences to laughter and tears has also moved history. Do any other poets even begin to change our behaviour or our environment? W.H. Auden once wrote that "poetry makes nothing happen. It exists in the valley of its saying where executives would never want to tamper." Shakespeare has wandered away from the valley of his saying and hangs around in the most unlikely places, in 1950's teen rebel movies and in psychoanalysts' offices, in nightclubs and in mall food courts, in voting booths in the American South and in the trash of Central Park. The effects of his words on the world have been out of all proportion, monstrous and sublime, vertiginous in their consequences, far beyond anything he could have predicted.

What ebook designers can learn from Bible-reading software

What ebook designers can learn from Bible-reading software: Plenty of people open the Bible for inspiration. Today, I'm turning to this all-time bestseller for ideas on how to create better ebooks. I've been kicking the tires on two reading systems — Logos Bible Software and Glo Bible — both of which are packed with reader-friendly ebook features.

R.I.P. Fantasy & Comics Artist Jeffrey Catherine Jones

R.I.P. Fantasy & Comics Artist Jeffrey Catherine Jones: The acclaimed fantasy painter, occasional comics artist and former studio mate of Mike Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson and Barry Windsor-Smith has died at age 67.

Amazon will buy your used electronics

Amazon will buy your used electronics: Online retailer will offer Amazon gift cards in exchange for your used tablets, cell phones, MP3 players, cameras, and GPS devices.

Magic Trip - Trailer

Magic Trip - Trailer:

Magic Trip - Trailer In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World's Fair. He was joined by "The Merry Band of Pranksters," a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac's "On the Road," and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With MAGIC TRIP, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and co-director Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history. Directed by: Alison Ellwood, Alex Gibney Starring:

Vintage chat: Moyers and Stewart - Interviews - Salon.com

Vintage chat: Moyers and Stewart - Interviews - Salon.com: Someone asked why I invited Jon Stewart to be the first guest on the Journal's premiere in 2007. "Because Mark Twain isn't available," I answered. I was serious. Like Twain, Stewart has proven that truth is more digestible when it's marinated in humor.

"The Good Wife's" exquisite season finale

"The Good Wife's" exquisite season finale: There are plenty of reasons to watch CBS' "The Good Wife" -- sharp writing; unfussy acting; a savvy sense of what it's like to be a jaded political animal in Chicago -- but for me, it's mainly about the filmmaking. Last night's season finale "Closing Arguments" (spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't watched yet!) reminded me of why I fell in love with this show in the first place, and why I continue to watch it even when its ripped-from-the-headlines plots feel labored and its workplace soap opera tangents become too, well, soapy. Like the series as a whole, this episode -- directed by series co-creator Robert King, and cowritten with his wife and collaborator Michelle King -- is old fashioned in the best sense. Every scene is written, acted and directed with maximum intelligence and minimum fuss.  

How Apple’s iOS 5 is going to utterly destroy local search – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home

How Apple’s iOS 5 is going to utterly destroy local search – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home: Koetsier writes, “Imagine this: pull out your iPhone and say: ‘I need a flight to Toronto on June 9, arriving in early afternoon, a downtown hotel that doesn’t cost more than $200/night, and tickets to a Blue Jays game that weekend. Oh, and by the way, make me dinner reservations at a good French restaurant for Friday night.’ Rocket science? Star Trek? Prerogative of wealthy execs with personal assistants and fat expense accounts? Rich man’s reality, poor man’s dream? Think again. This is what Siri does… and this is the future of iOS.”

Cannes: "Midnight in Paris" a time-traveling delight - Andrew O'Hehir, Movie Critic - Salon.com

Cannes: "Midnight in Paris" a time-traveling delight - Andrew O'Hehir, Movie Critic - Salon.com: It's pure and unadulterated silliness, mixed with Allen's chronic longing for the era shortly before his birth (isn't that often the one we focus on?), but frankly those are his best instruments these days.

Within a few minutes of this miraculous transubstantiation, Gil is standing in a crowded party with his jaw on the floor, being introduced to a Southern belle named Zelda (Alison Pill) and her husband, Scott (the delightful Tom Hiddleston, aka Loki from "Thor"), while Cole Porter bangs out "Let's Do It" on the piano to an increasingly interested crowd of female onlookers.

And the guest stars just keep on coming! Scott soon introduces Gil to his likable but hypermasculine friend Ernie Hemingway (Corey Stoll), who's full of boxing and hunting stories and bons mots about grace and courage, and who pulls Gil along to meet the mentor and advisor every budding novelist deserves. That would be Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), of course, holding court in her enormous apartment and arguing in several languages with a young painter named Pablo (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo).

If "Midnight in Paris" gets almost totally taken over by this string of cameos -- Bates is terrific, but Adrien Brody steals the show as the charming, somewhat idiotic Salvador Dalí, somehow making the rolling roundness of the word "rhinoceros" hilarious.

Netflix Passes Piracy in U.S. Net Traffic

Netflix Passes Piracy in U.S. Net Traffic: Netflix streaming movies now fill more of the U.S.'s internet tubes than any other service, including peer-to-peer file sharing, which long held the top spot — to the consternation of Hollywood. That means for the first time perhaps in the internet's history, the largest percentage of the net's traffic is content that is paid for.

The case for shameful fantasies

The case for shameful fantasies:

It's National Masturbation Month, which feels like it should be worthy of comment -- especially given that I'm on the "sex beat." But writing in defense of masturbation is so incredibly passe; it hardly seems a practice in need of month-long activism. Most of us have left behind the pathologizing Christine O'Donnells of the world and abandoned the mythology of hairy palms and blindness. Pornography, the No. 1 sign of solo loving, is in no short supply -- and for the very low price of free. Even the title, National Masturbation Month, sounds like a relic from a priggish past -- one before the Rabbit became a household name. Cheap vibrators are now stocked at neighborhood drug stores and diamond-encrusted numbers are available in boutique sex shops. Porn and dildos have been democratized -- power to the people!

Can’t Hack Marriage? Try Quantum Entanglement Instead | Underwire | Wired.com

Can’t Hack Marriage? Try Quantum Entanglement Instead | Underwire | Wired.com: “The great physicist Murray Gell-Mann famously said of quantum physics that ‘Everything not forbidden is compulsory,’” said Keats, who pens Wired’s Jargon Watch column and wrote Oxford University Press’ Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology. “In the quantum realm, even the most improbable events are bound to happen eventually. I can only hope that nuptial entanglement can bring this spirit of possibility to everyday life.”

Google unveils first Chromebooks | Signal Strength - CNET News

Google unveils first Chromebooks | Signal Strength - CNET News: SAN FRANCISCO--Google announced its first commercial Chromebook laptops Wednesday at its annual Google I/O conference here.
Samsung and Acer will each be offering Chromebook laptops starting June 15. The Samsung Chromebook will cost $429 for the Wi-Fi only version and $499 for the 3G version. Acer's Wi-Fi only Chromebook will cost $349.

Chromebook features

Sunlight May Turn Jet Exhaust Into Toxic Particles

Sunlight May Turn Jet Exhaust Into Toxic Particles: In the first on-tarmac measurements of their kind, researchers have shown that oil droplets spewed by idling jet engines can turn into particles tiny enough to readily penetrate the lungs and brain.

How I fell for the dark side of Marvel Comics - Saved By Pop Culture - Salon.com

How I fell for the dark side of Marvel Comics - Saved By Pop Culture - Salon.com: And it wasn't all brute force. True, the early Hulk could barely talk -- and that was fine. The Hulk smashed. But if we wanted muscular language, a rhetoric of power to play with, well, Marvel could give us that, too. Consider Odin, having gone insane (Marvel heroes periodically went insane, an occupational hazard), observing to Thor: "Have a care, rash youth, for 'twas I gave you godly power, 'twas I made you what you are, for I am the Word, the Will, and the Way!"

Why Google’s Chrome OS is still a big lie – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home

Why Google’s Chrome OS is still a big lie – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home: Google should never have listened to those people,” Newman writes. “What Chrome OS really needs is a web-based file manager that’s fully integrated with the operating system, so although it looks like you’re storing files locally, what you’re really doing is putting them on Google’s servers.”

Newman writes, “Instead, Chrome OS expects users to store all their data in individual services. Your photos go to Picasa. Your spreadsheets go to Google Docs. Your music goes to Google Music.
I’m not convinced people are comfortable having their files tied up in specific services… Users need a central repository for all their precious data so it can be easily transferred to any number of web services. Chrome OS doesn’t provide this service. Until that changes, you won’t be able to do everything on the web.”

Newspapers for iPad Version: 5.1 Review | iPad News App | Macworld

Newspapers for iPad Version: 5.1 Review | iPad News App | Macworld: One of the pleasures of walking into a library during the 1980s was the sheer abundance of newspapers on display. Even in small towns, one could check out the news from around the state, the nation, and even from obscure corners abroad. Newspapers for iPad, a $2 offering from developer David Earnest, tries to duplicate that experience by serving as a portal to more than 4,000 newspapers in the United States and around the world.

Science Fiction Authors Pick (What They Regard As) The Best SF | The American Culture

Science Fiction Authors Pick (What They Regard As) The Best SF | The American Culture:

Novak Djokovic's Gluten-Free Ascendancy - WSJ.com

Novak Djokovic's Gluten-Free Ascendancy - WSJ.com: How did Novak Djokovic conquer the tennis world?

Maybe the answer is as simple as this: Since last year, he's swearing off pasta, pizza, beer, French bread, Corn Flakes, pretzels, empanadas, Mallomars and Twizzlers—anything with gluten.

It's no secret that Djokovic has had a breakout season, or that he has been, by any reasonable standard, the world's best athlete of 2011. On Sunday, he beat Rafael Nadal in the Rome Masters, his fourth-straight win over the Spaniard. It was his second win over Nadal on clay in two weeks, and again, amazingly, he did it without losing a set. The match ran Djokovic's 2011 record to 37-0 with seven titles.

Djokovic's 2011 on-court stats border on the absurd: He has won 89% of his service games, 43% of his return games and half of his break points.

Djokovic's rise changes Paris dynamic (AP)

Djokovic's rise changes Paris dynamic (AP):

It's tough to decide what's most impressive about Novak Djokovic's 37-0 record in 2011, the best start in men's tennis in more than a quarter-century. Djokovic has won all seven tournaments he's entered, including the Australian Open; he never had collected more than five titles in a full season.

Google News gets revamp to reduce clutter

Google News gets revamp to reduce clutter: The search giant updates its news site to clean up the interface and give users more tools to customize results.

Capsule Review

Capsule Review: I saw Atlas Shrugged today, a belated birthday present from my long-suffering wife. She liked it, I loved it. It was even better than I had hoped. This is my prediction: That Parts 2 and 3 will be made (though not necessarily by Kaslow Aglialoro) and that its audience will, like the audience for Rand's novel, only grow over the years. Shrugged is a cult classic that will outlive its cult. Mark my words, if you will, this movie will never die. The current fantasy is that Part 1, realeased on...

A leaner, meaner "Pirates of the Caribbean" reboot - Andrew O'Hehir, Movie Critic - Salon.com

A leaner, meaner "Pirates of the Caribbean" reboot - Andrew O'Hehir, Movie Critic - Salon.com: "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" injects new vigor into a megabucks franchise and makes for a perfectly acceptable night out. Now, the movie's too long and you can only watch so much swordfighting and the repartee's really not that great and if you see it that's two and a half hours of your life you'll never get back, just because you wanted to see Ian McShane and some cute mermaids.

Why isn't Wall Street in prison?

Why isn't Wall Street in prison?: There's being provocative, and then there's getting down on your knees and absolutely begging for a nasty backlash. Business journalist and author Roger Lowenstein aims for the latter in a long piece for Bloomberg BusinessWeek exploring the degree of criminal culpability, (or lack thereof) that Wall Street financial institution executives deserve for their role in detonating the Great Recession. The headline tells the tale: "Wall Street: Not Guilty: Why have no executives gone to jail for their roles in the financial crisis? Perhaps because risk-taking and stupidity aren't criminal."

Quickdraw practice on 'Godfather' kills TV

Quickdraw practice on 'Godfather' kills TV:

A man practicing his quickdraw with a .357 Magnum on a poster of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" fired the gun through the wall - and into his neighbor's flat screen TV.

Google revives Blogger after outage

Google revives Blogger after outage: Blogger site back online after nearly one-day outage caused by a maintenance-related glitch.

Ashton Kutcher hired for "Two and a Half Men"? - Celebrity - Salon.com

Ashton Kutcher hired for "Two and a Half Men"? - Celebrity - Salon.com: In most cases, Ashton being attached to a project makes me groan. With "Two and a Half Men" though, I'm almost like, "It could be worse?" After all, if he's terrible I could just continue to not watch the program. What would be really great though is if the show pulled an "Other Darrin" switch and had Ashton just take over as Charlie Harper, with none of the cast acknowledging that their costar is no longer being played by a giant pile of cocaine and sadness.

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Information Sage

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Information Sage: And so, that April, in an office building blocks from the White House, Tufte spent a few hours with Devaney looking at sketches of some of the displays the board was preparing. Devaney showed Tufte a prototype of Recovery.gov, the site that catalogs all the projects funded with federal stimulus money around the country. Thinking about it now, Devaney remembers that the proposed pages were full of “classic Web site gobbledygook, with lots of simple pie charts and bar graphs.” Tufte took one look at the Web site mockups that the board’s designer had prepared and pronounced them “intellectually impoverished.”

Blogger goes down, taking 30 hours of posts with it

Blogger goes down, taking 30 hours of posts with it: Service has been offline or unreliable for much of the day, with Blogger-hosted blogs changed to read-only mode, and posts and comments made after 7:37 a.m. PDT on May 11, 2011, removed.

NBC Passes on "Wonder Woman" Pilot

NBC Passes on "Wonder Woman" Pilot: The network has rejected David E. Kelley's "Wonder Woman" revival, which reimagined the DC Comics superheroine as a CEO who fights crime while trying to balance the extraordinary elements of her life. SPINOFF has details.

Police: Clerk cited for selling beer to drunk transient

Police: Clerk cited for selling beer to drunk transient:

Roseburg police say that a man got in a fight, stumbled through traffic, defecated in his pants and then stumbled into a store, bleeding from the head, to buy beer. Officers say the clerk sold it to him.

GE plugs Edge flat-screen LED lighting for office | Green Tech - CNET News

GE plugs Edge flat-screen LED lighting for office | Green Tech - CNET News: The four fixtures are built around coin-size LED light sources and a textured optical screen made by PC memory company Rambus to disperse light. The effect is to spread light across the full surface of a flat screen. Light can also be focused on specific areas, according to GE.

The lights will have a color rending index over 80 and last 35,000 hours (which is eight years at 12 hours of daily use), compared with 20,000 hours for traditional fluorescent fixtures.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20062014-54.html#ixzz1M5o6rx00

Hollywood: A Love Story - Magazine - The Atlantic

Hollywood: A Love Story - Magazine - The Atlantic: FOR THE NTH time, one rains impatient questions on David Thomson’s iconic, sometimes archaic, often well-nigh manic reference book, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Why is there nothing in you about Janice Rule? Admittedly, in The Chase, she was only a supporting actress, but as the leading lady in that wonderful lost Western Invitation to a Gunfighter, she was so graceful she drove Yul Brynner to extremes of behavior that verged at times on acting. Haven’t you seen that movie? If you’ve seen 10 times as many movies as I have, how come you haven’t seen that one? Used to being shouted at, the book disdains to reply.

After five editions in 35 years, Thomson’s famous compendium of biographical sketches about the movie people—hey, it’s read by the movie people, the movie people are fighting to get into it, male stars measure their manhood by the length of their entry—is still a shantytown with the ambitions of a capital city. It gets bigger all the time without ever becoming more coherent. But with more than a thousand pages of print to wander in, only the most churlish visitor would complain about lack of cogency. Better to rejoice at the number of opportunities to scream in protest at what the author has left out, put in, skimmed over, or gone on about with untoward zeal. As a book meant to be argued with, it’s a triumph.

Review: Newspapers for iPad

Review: Newspapers for iPad: This iPad app does a solid job serving as a portal to more than 4,000 newspapers in the United States and around the world.

GRASS GIS 6.4.1-2 - Geospatial data management, visualization and analysis.. (Free)

GRASS GIS 6.4.1-2 - Geospatial data management, visualization and analysis.. (Free):

GRASS GIS, commonly referred to as GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System), is a Geographic Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization. GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies.

• Mac OS X 10.6 or later
• Apple's X11

Download Now

TVShows 2.0b7 - Automatically downloads torrents of your favorite shows (Beta).. (Free)

TVShows 2.0b7 - Automatically downloads torrents of your favorite shows (Beta).. (Free): TVShows is a Mac OS X application that automatically downloads torrents of your favourite shows. You no longer need to manually download torrent files, or find a working RSS feed for each show you wish to subscribe to. TVShows does that for you. Simply select your subscriptions and set your preferences from within the TVShows application and we'll take care of the rest. TVShows uses a lightweight background process which automatically launches at a regular interval (chosen by you) to check for new episodes.

Death to high school English - Education - Salon.com

Death to high school English - Education - Salon.com: I've begun to wonder if this typical high school English class, dividing its curriculum between standardized test preparation and the reading of canonical texts, might occupy a central place in the creation of a generation of college students who, simply put, cannot write.

How the Iraq war saved bin Laden's life - Joan Walsh - Salon.com

How the Iraq war saved bin Laden's life - Joan Walsh - Salon.com: On Monday the Washington Post reported about a number of times U.S. military officials were asked for troops or equipment to go after bin Laden, and didn't provide it, at least partly because they were distracted by Iraq. The best-known example is when bin Laden was located in a cave in Tora Bora in December 2001. Special Forces requested more troops on the ground, and didn't get them. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was asked to move his troops in, and he asked for air cover, and didn't get it. Wendy Chamberlin, then U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, told the Post she later realized Franks was already "planning for Iraq," she said. "Even if he could have helped out, he was already starting to have to reshuffle." Lt. Gen. John Vines told the Washington Post in 2006 that he had troops close to catching up to bin Laden, and asked for drones to cover escape routes. "But only one drone was available -- others had been moved to Iraq," the Post reported. Bin Laden got away.

Ballmer to Skype Fans: You Can Trust Us

Ballmer to Skype Fans: You Can Trust Us: Trust us. We're not going to screw up Skype. That was the message Microsoft delivered Tuesday, hours after formally announcing that it was buying the internet telephony pioneer for a staggering $8.5 billion.

“We’re irrepressible,” said Ballmer. “This Skype acquisition is completely consistent with our ambitious, forward-looking, irrepressible nature."

"Microsoft: We're irrepressible!"

However, that seems like a rich price tag for a company that only generated $860 million in revenue in the most recent year and $264 million in operating profit — yet no net profit at all. Microsoft is paying about $50 for each of Skype’s 170 million users, or about $1,000 for each of its 8 million paying customers.

Google Launches 'Music Beta' Cloud Service

Google Launches 'Music Beta' Cloud Service:

As expected, Google today announced its new Music Beta service, offering users the ability to upload their music libraries to Google's servers for cloud-based hosting that allows users to access content from any device. The offering competes...

Microsoft to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion

Microsoft to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion: The software giant says that Skype's video-chatting platform will bolster its Kinect and Windows Phone platforms. It will also "connect" Skype users with Xbox Live.

Scream at your phone to recharge it?

Scream at your phone to recharge it?: South Korean research looks at recharging phones with the caller's voice and surrounding sounds. Could the science spread and energize the world with our incessant noise?

Who should play Lucifer? - Movie news - Salon.com

Who should play Lucifer? - Movie news - Salon.com: Here is news that's going to make you very happy or very angry: Bradley Cooper is close to being cast as Lucifer in a 3D adaptation of "Paradise Lost." Yes, it's baffling that someone would even consider turning the famous 17th century poem into a multiplex surround sound experience, but hey, I'm not in charge of movies this year. (Michel Bay beat me by one vote.) From Variety:

Alex Proyas’ ("The Crow") adaptation of “Paradise Lost,” long in the works at Legendary, tells the story of the epic war in heaven between archangels Michael and Lucifer, including the latter’s role in Adam and Eve’s fall from grace. Pic will be crafted as an action vehicle that will include aerial warfare, possibly shot in 3D.

Raspberry Pi Foundation

Raspberry Pi Foundation: We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.

Our first product is about the size of a USB key, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a fully-configured system.

Al Gore Invents a Showpiece E-Book

Al Gore Invents a Showpiece E-Book: Al Gore's book "our Choice" has been converted into an e-book app that is a showpiece for the new world of touch-screen gadgets.

In both apps, the real magic is all the visual elements. You can expand every photo and graphic to fill the whole screen; they look spectacular. At this point, you can interact with them. You can tap the corner of any photo, for example, to see where on the planet it was taken. You can press your finger on a bar of a chart to “explode” it into smaller bars, showing the component data underlying the primary bar. (For example, one bar chart shows the six gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Hold your finger on a bar to see it split into smaller bars, showing where those gases come from: transportation, buildings and so on.)

Some of the illustrations become narrated animations. Some turn out to be movies (there’s a total of an hour of video), most narrated by Mr. Gore.

The interactivity, the zooming into graphic elements and the videos aren’t a gimmick. They actually add up to a different experience. The book feels more Web-like; at your leisure, you can jump from the main river of text into one of these deeper dives. Yet there’s no fear of falling off the primary train of thought.

Thanks to all of the smoothly integrated multimedia, the book engages more parts of your brain than just the one that reads prose. As a result, Mr. Gore goes much farther in his mission — persuasion — than he could on the printed page alone.

Best of all, the small company that created the app (called PushPop Press) says that over the last 18 months, it didn’t create just “Our Choice.” It simultaneously created a platform, a technology, that will permit them and others to publish subsequent immersive book-apps much faster and more easily.

But over all, this is one of the most elegant, fluid, immersive apps you’ve ever seen. It’s a showpiece for the new world of touch-screen gadgets.

Apple's OS X server strategy: Data centers for everyone | Operating Systems | Macworld

Apple's OS X server strategy: Data centers for everyone | Operating Systems | Macworld

Lion Server—the basics

According to Apple’s Website, Lion Server will offer the same simplified setup options found in Leopard and Snow Leopard. These features make it easy to create a small-office Mac/Windows network that includes centralized user accounts; file and printer sharing; automatic setup of basic Mac workstation options; an internal calendar and contacts server; automated network backup for Mac workstations; e-mail and instant messaging that can be internal-only or connected to the Internet; Web hosting; an internal or public wiki; and secure VPN access.

The process is almost idiot-proof. If you can select a few checkboxes to enable services, and you have a domain name, you can have them all up and running in a matter of minutes once installation is complete.

That same simplified setup also works well for classrooms or departments that are part of a larger network infrastructure. Apple makes it easy for a server to join an existing Active Directory domain or forest (or some other LDAP-based directory system). In this instance, all services are provided by the Mac server but rely on existing user accounts stored in the organization’s infrastructure.

Building that ease of use into Lion itself is going to be a huge boon to any small office or department that wants to run its own server without making demands on the main IT department. With no extra costs and the ability to set up core services on an existing Mac, small businesses, home offices and individual schools can all get their basic networking needs met virtually for free.

May 5, 1992: 'Wolfenstein 3-D' Shoots First-Person Shooter Into Stardom

May 5, 1992: 'Wolfenstein 3-D' Shoots First-Person Shooter Into Stardom: Id Software releases Wolfenstein 3-D, and it launches a huge computer-game category.

Oregon Unemployment Extended Benefits Running Out | KEZI

Oregon Unemployment Extended Benefits Running Out | KEZI: The Oregon Employment Department is expecting $30 million in extended benefits to end by the week of May 14, 2011.

"Thor": All hail the ripped Aryan goofball!

"Thor": All hail the ripped Aryan goofball!:

Do we actually want Shakespearean drama, or a simulacrum thereof, in comic-book movies? I think the only reasonable answer is "sort of," and that's exactly what Kenneth Branagh delivers in the massive but middling "Thor," an edge-of-summer tentpole production that delivers the goods, albeit in laborious fashion and at enormous expense. A whole lot of "sort of," dressed up in faintly fascistic regalia. I've got no problem with the continuing viability of the classic Marvel and DC Comics heroes, per se, although it's a little surprising. But their hegemonic control over the many-branched Yggdrasil of pop entertainment is starting to bug me.

Can the Earth sustain 10 billion people?

Can the Earth sustain 10 billion people?: Demographers estimate that the human population will eclipse 7 billion by the end of October -- only 12 years since we crossed the  6 billion-person threshold. And while experts long predicted that the global population would level out at 9 billion by mid-century, the United Nations has now adjusted those projections upward. According to a new report, we can expect 10.1 billion people on Earth by 2100.

Robots Evolve Altruism, Just as Biology Predicts

Robots Evolve Altruism, Just as Biology Predicts: Robots in a Swiss laboratory have evolved to help each other, just as predicted by a classic analysis of how self-sacrifice might emerge in the biological world.

Yale in Singapore: Lost in Translation - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Yale in Singapore: Lost in Translation - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education: What is wrong with Singapore? Why should a great American university not engage with a rising Asian state? According to Human Rights Watch in 2010, Singapore "remains the textbook example of a politically repressive state. Individuals who want to criticize or challenge the ruling party's hold on power can expect to face a life of harassment, lawsuits, and even prison." Singapore's penal code sets out more than 20 drug-related offenses for which capital punishment is mandatory.

Economics focus: Botox and beancounting | The Economist

Economics focus: Botox and beancounting | The Economist: Conspiracy theorists might conclude that the American government is trying to nip and tuck its way to attractiveness.

PC rental store sued for alleged Webcam spying | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

PC rental store sued for alleged Webcam spying | Technically Incorrect - CNET News: This Socratic conundrum comes to mind because of a Wyoming Tribune story today that tells of a Casper couple who believe that they were spied on by Aaron's, the Atlanta-based rent-to-buy company from whom they rented their Dell Inspiron laptop.
Crystal and Brian Byrd claim, in a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania, that Aaron's showed them a picture of Brian Byrd that had been taken using spying software from DesignerWare, a company also named in the suit.

Brian Byrd is adamant on that subject. He told the Tribune: "I never thought in a million years anybody would do something like that. I read the contract. I read every word of it and it doesn't say anything in the contract about it either."

The Tribune says that a subsequent police investigation (the Byrds immediately informed the police after the manager's visit) revealed that it was Aaron's standard practice to store Webcam data on a central server in Pennsylvania.

DVD Death Watch: Sales drop 20 percent

DVD Death Watch: Sales drop 20 percent: DVDs are one step closer to extinction if recent numbers from a Hollywood trade group are any measure.

Intel's 'Ivy Bridge' Platform to Utilize 3-D Transistors

Intel's 'Ivy Bridge' Platform to Utilize 3-D Transistors:

Intel today announced that its next-generation "Ivy Bridge" platform will incorporate new technology allowing a 3-D transistor structure known as "Tri-Gate", significantly boosting performance and efficiency. While Intel disclosed its work o...

Intel unveils new 3D transistor structure

Intel unveils new 3D transistor structure: New chips based on the 22-nanometer designs will run at a lower voltage and with lower power leakage, in an effort to improve both performance and energy efficiency.

When George W. Bush killed bin Laden: An alternate history

When George W. Bush killed bin Laden: An alternate history: President Bush announces the news to the nation on May 24, 2006, immediately following the East Coast airing of the finale of "American Idol." He appears in military fatigues and, for some reason, spurs. Behind him, an oversize Osama bin Laden "Wanted" poster, with the word "LIQUIDATED" stamped on the terrorist mastermind's face. The camera pulls back to reveal that the president's East Room audience is in fact made up entirely of firefighters. The Marine band plays "Stars and Stripes Forever" as the president speaks, forcing Bush to address the room, and the nation, through a bullhorn.

AppleInsider | Teardown of Apple's 21.5-inch Thunderbolt iMac finds removable graphics board

AppleInsider | Teardown of Apple's 21.5-inch Thunderbolt iMac finds removable graphics board:

The illogic of the torture debate

The illogic of the torture debate: The killing of Osama bin Laden has, as The New York Times notes, reignited the debate over "brutal interrogations" -- by which it's meant that Republicans are now attempting to exploit the emotions generated by the killing to retroactively justify the torture regime they implemented. The factual assertions on which this attempt is based -- that waterboarding and other "harsh interrogation methods" produced evidence crucial to locating bin Laden -- are dubious in the extreme, for reasons Andrew Sullivan and Marcy Wheeler document. So fictitious are these claims that even Donald Rumsfeld has repudiated them.

Apple Announces New iMac

Apple Announces New iMac: Apple today updated its signature all-in-one iMac with quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology, and a new FaceTime HD camera. Starting at $1199, the new iMac is up to 70 percent faster and offers up to three times faster graphics performance than the previous generation.

'Star Wars' promises big reveal tomorrow

'Star Wars' promises big reveal tomorrow: With the phrase "May the 4th be with you" emblazoned across the top of the page, a "Star Wars" Web site promises: "All will be revealed."

Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris | The Nation

Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris | The Nation: Though they often softened their claims with Christian rhetoric, positivists assumed that science was also the only sure guide to morality, and the only firm basis for civilization. As their critics began to realize, positivists had abandoned the provisionality of science’s experimental outlook by transforming science from a method into a metaphysic, a source of absolute certainty. Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism. These tendencies coalesced in eugenics, the doctrine that human well-being could be improved and eventually perfected through the selective breeding of the “fit” and the sterilization or elimination of the “unfit.”

Every schoolkid knows about what happened next: the catastrophic twentieth century. Two world wars, the systematic slaughter of innocents on an unprecedented scale, the proliferation of unimaginably destructive weapons, brushfire wars on the periphery of empire—all these events involved, in various degrees, the application of scientific research to advanced technology. All showed that science could not be elevated above the agendas of the nation-state: the best scientists were as corruptible by money, power or ideology as anyone else, and their research could as easily be bent toward mass murder as toward the progress of humankind. Science was not merely science. The crowning irony was that eugenics, far from “perfecting the race,” as some American progressives had hoped early in the twentieth century, was used by the Nazis to eliminate those they deemed undesirable. Eugenics had become another tool in the hands of unrestrained state power. As Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued near the end of World War II in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the rise of scientific racism betrayed the demonic undercurrents of the positivist faith in progress. Zygmunt Bauman refined the argument forty-two years later in Modernity and the Holocaust: the detached positivist worldview could be pressed into the service of mass extermination. The dream of reason bred real monsters.

Apple refreshes iMac line with faster CPUs, Thunderbolt ports | Crave - CNET

Apple refreshes iMac line with faster CPUs, Thunderbolt ports | Crave - CNET: Apple announced updated iMac all-in-one desktops this morning, adding Intel's second-generation quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs and Thunderbolt data ports. The new models are available for purchase immediately from Apple's Web site and its retail stores, with prices ranging from $1,199 for the 21.5-inch iMac, and scaling up to $1,999 for the 27-inch model.

Aside from the updated CPUs and the new high-speed data port, the new iMacs sport faster AMD graphics than their predecessors and integrated Facetime HD video cameras. Otherwise, little else about the iMac has changed from the previous models that debuted in June of 2010 (that includes external design--the 2011 and 2010 models look all but identical).

Sticky Film Makes Nonslip Ladders, Wall-Climbing Robots

Sticky Film Makes Nonslip Ladders, Wall-Climbing Robots: Scientists at SRI International have figured out how to make a plastic film that can stick to walls when you apply a small electric current -- then peel off effortlessly when you turn the current off.

Why was bin Laden buried at sea?

Why was bin Laden buried at sea?:

The news that Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea is likely to be a talking point in the coming weeks and months. U.S. officials most likely chose a sea burial in order to prevent followers from creating a shrine at the site of the dead terrorist leader's remains, but a sea burial was probably not the only, or even the first, option explored; CBS is now reporting that Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's birth country, refused to take his body.

App Guide: Hotel reservation apps

App Guide: Hotel reservation apps: No reservations? No problem. These iOS apps can help you find a last-minute hotel room on the fly.

Video: Inside Bin Laden’s Drone-Proof Compound | Danger Room | Wired.com

Video: Inside Bin Laden’s Drone-Proof Compound | Danger Room | Wired.com: That’s ironic. One of the most important security measures the two brothers who hid bin Laden in the compound took was to take it off the grid. A senior intelligence official told reporters that it had “no telephone or internet service,” an anomaly for the area. (Residents even burned their trash instead of leaving it for the garbage man.) That attracted the attention of the satellite imagery sleuths of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the communications interceptions specialists of the National Security Agency and the spy-runners of the CIA — even if the latter couldn’t launch any drone strikes.

Five instances of Osama bin Laden hiding out in pop culture

Five instances of Osama bin Laden hiding out in pop culture: In the past decade, Osama bin Laden invaded our sense of safety, but also our pop culture. Here's a look at the top five most memorable appearances by the slain al-Qaeda terrorist in TV and film, from the irreverent to the bizarre.

Simon Blackburn Reviews Stanley Fish's "How To Write A Sentence" | The New Republic

Simon Blackburn Reviews Stanley Fish's "How To Write A Sentence" | The New Republic: It is wrong to think that the sentence is a mere slave, whose function is to bear content, which, while being the really important thing, is also something that could equally have been borne by another. Change the shape and ring, and you change everything. The balance, the alliterations, the variation, the melody, the lights glimmering in the words, can work together to transform even an ugly thought into something iridescent, as when Eli Wallach in The Magnificent Seven expressed his character’s indifference to the suffering he brings the peasants in one perfect, albeit perfectly brutal, sentence: “If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.” As Fish says in his analysis of this example, here the “air of finality and certainty” is clinched by “the parallelism of clauses that also feature the patterned repetition of consonants and vowels” and then, of course the inevitability of that last dismissive word. If the devil has the best tunes, sometimes the bandits have the best sentences.

Five common HDTV questions answered | HDTV | Playlist | Macworld

Five common HDTV questions answered | HDTV | Playlist | Macworld: Browse to your HDTV’s video settings and choose either ‘movie’ or ‘film’ mode. In most instances that option provides you with the closest-to-optimal setting for your HDTV. If you like the way that setting looks, keep it there and don’t make any tweaks. But if you think it needs a little something, start modifying some of the individual picture settings, such as brightness, sharpness, and contrast.

Brightness is perhaps better described as “black level.” You’ll want to adjust the brightness on your set until something black on your display has a nice, deep, inky look to it.

Sharpness tends to create odd halos around objects that aren’t coming from the video source. Since you want to create an accurate picture as quickly as possible, it’s generally best to turn sharpness down to zero.

Then, go to the contrast settings (sometimes called “picture”) and turn it down so that white objects on the screen look sharp, have detail, and don’t appear odd. At this point you might also have to return to the brightness setting to ensure that blacks aren’t too dark and you haven’t lost some detail along the way.

You may also find a ‘color’ setting on your HDTV. Since you’re not using any calibration aids, it’s best for now to leave that alone, since most HDTVs deliver relatively accurate color out of the box.

Is this what closure feels like? - Joan Walsh - Salon.com

Is this what closure feels like? - Joan Walsh - Salon.com: Eight years to the day after President Bush stood before a banner announcing "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, prematurely declaring the end of combat operations there, President Obama announced Sunday night that an operation he authorized had killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The spoiled son of privilege, who thought it his birthright to dispatch thousands of innocents to their death for the crime of not sharing his twisted vision of Islam, is dead.

The contrast between the general idiocy of 24/7 American politics, and what's really at stake in all of Obama's decisions, had never been so stark.

Twitter delivers news of bin Laden's death first

Twitter delivers news of bin Laden's death first: Sure, there was lots of erroneous speculation on Twitter, but posted to the micro-blogging site was a message from a former assistant to former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld that said: "they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn."

"Dorian Gray" as Wilde actually wrote it - Fiction - Salon.com

"Dorian Gray" as Wilde actually wrote it - Fiction - Salon.com: Nowadays, the knowledge of Wilde's poignant subsequent history casts a shadow over "Dorian Gray." Married since 1884 to a beauty, Constance Lloyd, Wilde had been secretly leading a homosexual life at least since 1886 and probably much longer. ("The one charm of marriage," Lord Henry quips in "Dorian Gray," "is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.") In 1889 Wilde began courting a beautiful young poet named John Gray, the probable model for Dorian. (At least Gray himself believed this to be so, and the name would seem to be a clincher.) After the novel was published, Wilde began his disastrous affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. His feud with his lover's violent father, the marquess of Queensberry, resulted in one of the most famous lawsuits in history, Wilde's eventual arrest on charges of sodomy, and his sentencing to two years' hard labor. The most celebrated playwright and wit in England had become its most despised pariah. He never saw his two sons again; Constance changed their name, and hers, to "Holland," and taught the boys "to forget that we had ever borne the name of Wilde and never to mention it to anyone." After his release from prison, Wilde went into exile in France, where he assumed the name "Sebastian Melmoth" and died, in penury, in 1900. "I will never outlive the century," he had predicted. "The English people would not stand for it."

And now, at last, I finally know why the section of Dave Simm's Cerebus dealing with Oscar Wilde is titled "Melmoth."

How the "Lost Cause" poisoned our history books - War Room - Salon.com

How the "Lost Cause" poisoned our history books - War Room - Salon.com: Indeed, few major figures in American history have been so denigrated and disgraced as Grant. How did this happen? A big part of the answer can be found in the successful campaign by historians sympathetic to the Confederacy’s "Lost Cause." Led by William A. Dunning of Columbia University, they portrayed Grant wrongly as only a drunken butcher general and as an enfeebled president who pandered to Radical Republicans, presiding over, as Dunning contended, "the darkest page in the saga of American history." These distortions still thrive in countless history textbooks and classrooms, in movies and on television shows, as well as on popular websites.

"The Floor of Heaven": True crime in the Klondike - Laura Miller - Salon.com

"The Floor of Heaven": True crime in the Klondike - Laura Miller - Salon.com: Howard Blum's highly enjoyable "The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the American West and the Yukon Gold Rush" is a narrative history set before, during and just after the rush. Blum traces the lives of three storied men -- a prospector, a cowboy turned Pinkerton detective and a notorious conman -- whose fates intersected in an armed confrontation over a stash of gold in 1898. That incident comes fairly late in the book and could even be viewed as somewhat anticlimactic, but getting there is so much fun that it hardly matters. The face-off between Blum's three principals in the harbor of Skagway, Alaska, is really just a pretext for spinning yarns about three remarkable American characters.