Our first discussion: sci-fi novels. Yeah, I say sigh-fie. I don't care who says skiffy.
The Incomparable Participants: Glenn Fleishman, Scott McNulty, Dan Moren, and Jason Snell. The Incomparable Theme Song composed by Christopher Breen.
"For the Win"...
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The Economist doesn't publish bylines in its regular weekly edition, but its blog does post initials. You'll a "G.F." for this entry.
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One of my favorite television shows is Futurama, an animated sci-fi farce full of subtle and gross (really gross) references to the entire history of the short-story, novel, comic-book, animated, and film genre.
In a neat coincidence, the show was co-created and is co-produced by David X Cohen, the brother of my dear friend Sarah. The show has gone through ups and downs, having seen four seasons on Fox TV, where the network jerked around the schedule so much that even fans had trouble finding it.
Re-runs found their way to cable (Adult Swim on Cartoon Network), where they were incredibly popular, and...
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I became interested several months ago in the idea of what struck me as "software jiu-jitsu": using programs that prevented you from using other programs or accessing the Internet. I pitched this to my regular editor at The Economist, and, lo, it appeared in the 10 June 2010 issue as "Stay on Target" in the Technology Quarterly section. (I love the illustration, as I love all the TQ illustrations, I believe always by the same person, Belle Mellor.)
My editor tells me that it was a popularly read article this last week, which isn't too surprising. What's the best way to pass time that you should spend doing something productive? Reading about ways to make yourself more productive.
...
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I was reminded of the casual kindness of living in Seattle when I got on the 48 bus this morning with Rex. Now, Rex is beautiful and hilarious and cute as all get out, and I was dressed in brightly colored bike gear. But lots of unprovoked niceness. The bus was packed, and everyone was offering us a seat; I demurred (since Rex liked the unusual opportunity to stand), but was very thankful.
Rex's nose was gushing, and I had failed to bring any tissues with me--I'm normally packing kleenex everywhere. As soon as I got on, a young woman pulled out a pile of tissues and handed them over.
I was slightly overwhelmed in a...
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The hardest thing I do each week is not some kind of writing or professional work. I love what I do, even when it's sometimes overwhelming, sometimes frustrating, sometimes boring. Mostly, I like telling stories about how things work, and how they affect people who use them.
The hardest thing I do each week doesn't involve my children, Rex and Ben, who are wonderful and exasperating and magnificent.
The hardest thing I do each week is not get up in the morning (any morning).
The hardest thing I do each week is have a swim lesson.
I do not know how to swim, though that is changing. I don't fault my parents, who tried to...
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An American (horrors) tripped at MoMA and tore a hole in Picasso's The Actor, possibly because of a raised floor barrier.
This reminded me of a couple museum stories of my own.
Back at Yale (pause for Gaudeamus Igitur to play), I took the introduction to art history course taught by the marvelous and rightly legendary teacher and art thinker Vincent Scully. He has taught several decades of Elis how to understand art from a classical perspective that informs even the most post-modern of post-modern works. (Everything is a reaction to everything else.)
I recall him telling a story once about a painting that was so compelling that he said you were compelled...
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Yes, spoilers. Super super geeky content follows.
I'm still thinking about the end of David Tennant's tenancy as Doctor Who in the two-part End of Time episodes.
We don't know much about the Doctor's past, although the Master talks about he and the Doctor playing in the fields of the Master's family estates. So perhaps there were parents (although other parts of the canon make this more complicated).
It appears from clues in the episodes that a time lord who appears on cue to Wilfred multiple times, and as one of two dissenters in the vote on destroying the universe at the end, is the doctor's mother. (It's totally unclear how she shows up so many times...
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Public radio has this thing they call a driveway moment. (Oh, Mary, mother of God, it's not just something they call a driveway moment, it's something they have obtained a service mark for--so it's a Driveway Moment[sm].)
Anyway, the idea is that you are listening to a story so compelling that when you arrive at your destination, like your home driveway, instead of turning off the radio (how quaint, listening to a live broadcast but that's the demographic), you sit in your car and listen to the rest of the piece.
There are a lot of implications in that which have to do with the driveway. You drive a car. You have a driveway. You have the...
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Where Is Waldo, Anyway?
Originally uploaded by GlennFleishman
It was quiet in the other room. Too quiet. What are the kids doing? READING! Woo hoo! Well, sort of. Eye strain for Where's Waldo.
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Where Is Waldo, Anyway?
Originally uploaded by GlennFleishman
It was quiet in the other room. Too quiet. What are the kids doing? READING! Woo hoo! Well, sort of. Eye strain for Where's Waldo.
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When Twitter is down, how can you tell anyone!
We need Twitter2, a backup Twitter that only activates when Twitter fails.
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Lynn: It's squash for breakfast! [joking]
Me: Everyone's going to eat squash.
Rex: I don't like squash.
Me: Pumpkin is a squash.
Rex: I don't like squash.
Ben: Pumpkin is a squash. You like pumpkin. So you do like squash.
Rex: I don't like pumpkin.
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The first time I read Neal Stephenson's Anathem, a form of sci-fi, I felt like it was tearing my brain apart slightly. Anathem takes place on a world called Arbre, and Stephenson invented words for many things to denote the difference from our own history that were close enough to be familiar and prick at my neurons, but not identical. Fraa instead of Frere (for a brother in a monastery); concent (maybe for concentration) instead of convent; Saunt (short for savant) instead of Saint; and so on.
I could feel my brain being rewired to learn some of the concepts in the book and recognize the language he was teaching me. Randall Munroe's xkcd parodied Anathem, and perhaps...
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My buddy Rich Siegel's firm Bare Bones gets namechecked with a mention of its flagship BBEdit text-editing and programming tool in an NPR Planet Money podcast, my favorite produced podcast.
I tweeted that detail, and a colleague pointed out that nice words were said about my Wi-Fi Networking News site by Pete Rojas, the founder of Gizmodo, Engadget, and gdgt, in this interview with Jason Calacanis about 3 minutes in. (I once wrote a blog for Jason about digital radio, and I've always been a fan of Pete's.)
Now I feel like an old man of the Internet. Which I guess I am. I started Point of Presence Company back in June 1994 with Todd...
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