Topics on my particular interests.
Okay, I admit it. I broke down and went to see it this afternoon. I knew it would be mobbed this evening and all weekend, and I just didn’t want to wait. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say that the changes (that I could detect, anyway) are few and fairly tolerable, …
Like many geeks, I’ve been watching the progress of what BoingBoing is calling “the AACS Debacle” with interest over the last couple days. For those of you not familiar with it, here’s the executive summary: some guy, apparently irritated that he wasn’t allowed to play the next-generation Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs on his Linux machine, dug …
Once you understand the basic urges that motivate people, the ones that are the same worldwide regardless of racial group or culture, it doesn’t take much additional effort to understand and even appreciate the tenets of practically every religion. No matter how different a religion may be from what you believe, they’re all good at …
As a long-time fan of Spider-Man stories, I was somewhat disturbed at the changes that were made to the canonical Spider-Man for the recent movies. The radioactive spider was out, replaced by a genetically-spliced one — more hip and new-millennium, you know. He now generated webbing from within his arms, instead of using a fast-setting …
Continue reading ‘“How Spider-Man Compares To Real Spiders”’ »
There was a rather nationalist (if not racist) joke making the rounds a while back, about an Arab who visits the US and sees an episode of the original Star Trek series. He notes to his American hosts that many different races and nationalities are represented: Russian, Japanese, African, Scottish, even races completely alien to …
All sorts of interesting news today… this article talks about biofeedback technology being used in games. It’s a nice idea, but I don’t think this one’s going to happen real soon either: “Mom, I need a biofeedback controller for my Nintendo.” “A what?” “It’s this really neat thing that reads your mind and lets you …
This is one of those little SF technologies, like the flying car, that has long been dreamed of but has never happened. It’s easy to understand why the flying car hasn’t — safety concerns, security concerns, and price. But the only reason I can come up with against short-range wireless power is the chicken-and-egg problem: …
Continue reading ‘“Plastic Sheet Delivers Wireless Power”’ »
I’ve heard all about blog-comment spam, and I’ve even stumbled over a little of it here and there around the ‘net. I’d wondered how long it would be before the Geek Drivel blog attracted it’s first one. No need to wonder any further: it showed up a few minutes ago, a credit-card spam, and was …
“The devil made me do it” may be out of fashion as a legal defense, but it seems ol’ red-and-pointy-tailed is still busy in some areas of the country. He’s now being accused of masterminding a “stealth invasion” by illegal immigrants by a Utah Country Republican. Good luck, delegate Larsen.
The first line of this article goes “A group of American aerospace engineers have written a book on how to defend the earth against alien invasion.” I have to ask… why would an alien race bother?