The Tantalizing Fascism of Legoland

If Ayn Rand liked children’s toys, which she most certainly did not, she would have loved Legos. And if the shovel-faced founder of Objectivism liked amusement parks, which she totally didn’t, she would have adored Legoland. After all, the Atlas Shrugged-y motto of Danish Lego creator Ole Kirk Christiansen was “only the best is good …

Rock Band: Yeah, I’m Playing It Too

There was nothing wrong. I was deeply, deeply immersed in The Orange Box. There’s something about the quality of the light in Half-Life 2 that just sucks me in — that bleak, wintry illumination washing over a defeated, depopulated, picked-over Earth with its tumble-down, head-crab-infested farmhouses. And the audio: sometimes I reload …

Nerd Music: The Portal Credits Song

My brain is experiencing another spike of interest in Jonathan Coulton, the nerd-singer-songwriter responsible for, among other things, “Code Monkey” (about office misery) and “re: Your Brains” (about office workers-turned-zombies). The video embedded below plays as the closing credits of Portal, and even though I’ve never played the …

Tivogate (Like Watergate, But With “Tivo”)

Okay, I think I have a story here. A news story. Real journalism, not just jokes about what religions superheroes are.*

Here’s the scoop: a bunch of my Hollywood jerk friends have gotten calls from DirectTV offering free High Definition upgrades for their satellite TV receivers. But when the DirectTV guy installs the upgraded HD …

I Saw The Golden Compass

There was an advance screening last night. I always forget how awful advance screenings are — a few people who go are fans, but most of the crowd are either college or high school kids who are just after a free movie, and don’t care what they’re seeing, or crazed shut-ins who somehow get on the lists for these events, for whom this is …

Beowulf: The Spoiler Post

In a sacred Campari-induced vision this weekend I glimpsed a glorious future in which movie theaters are so tricked-out with high-tech stuff that we will all have to specify on the rare occasions when we happen to see movies in a non-3D, non-iMax (iMin?) format, instead of the other way round. So let me give you a taste of things to come …

THANKSGIVING RE-RUN: Nerd Archives — September 24, 2005

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Selman is on holiday. Please enjoy one of his classic column… article… things. Seriously, don’t you know blogs don’t have editors? That’s why they’re all so great.

Anyway, by now we all know of the tragedy that has befallen Professor Dumbledore. No, not the gay thing. That he DIED. Harry Potter and the

Jewperman Returns

All right, all right. Enough with the Superman is Jewish already. Time just ran “Superman’s Inner Jew,” in which the debate over whether Superman is Jewish rages on. He does seem at least a little Jewish, right? Think about it: if you pronounce “Superman” and accent the first syllable, “Superman” even sounds like a Jewish last name. …

New Cloverfield Trailer Up

It’s here. I could embed something from YouTube, but you’ll want the hi-def.

So yeah, there’s sort of no word or number or physical gesture that would adequately convey how rabidly I want to see this. This is me falling for clever marketing: I know it’s happening, but I can’t stop it. Even though the Blair Witch thing immediately …

This Just In: Time Writer Says Newsweek Is Wrong!

I’m on record as thinking, and saying, that Steven Levy, Newsweek’s lead tech writer, is really really smart and really really knowledgeable and a really really good writer. He really really is. I have no desire to get into any kind of blogospherical wrangle. That’s not my thing.

But why, why, why would Newsweek put Amazon’s Kindle

  1. 1
  2. ...
  3. 1199
  4. 1200
  5. 1201
  6. ...
  7. 1226