It’s a slow summer Friday, and we’re moving offices, and the moving guy is trying to take my trackball away. So you know what that means. It’s another Nerd News Top Five.
1. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the Harry Potter musical is … kind of awesome. From a legal point of view it’s got to be essentially levitating with no visible means of support. But Warner Bros has laid off so far, and Rowling is really leading the way as far as healthy attitudes toward Fair Use go. Props to her. (Via io9)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmwM_AKeMCk&hl=en&fs=1&]
Cho Chaaaaang … from Bangkok to ding-dang … I don’t even know what that means …
2. Astounding if true: a cure for radiation sickness. This stuff is probably, like, Kryptonite for Dr. Manhattan. Or something. (Via Slashdot.)
3. I saw Ponyo yesterday. Can’t talk about it much yet, but very very beautiful. Very much in the Totoro vein — which is my favorite of Miyazaki’s many veins — but underwater. More next week, when I’ll be blogging from Comic-con. Meanwhile in other animation news, Futurama is supposedly being recast. Boo.
4. Da Blob. I originally saw this when @GreatDismal, a.k.a. William Gibson, tweeted about it: a massive slick of some biological ooze is floating off the coast of Alaska, and nobody knows what it is.
5. Can I just add, generally, that it’s sort of astounding that Gibson is on Twitter? And he tweets, like, a lot? He doesn’t follow me, but he follows my friend Catherine Mayer. And this one time? He retweeted me? And I was all like squee.