My body has been invaded by strep-bearing nanites that are sapping my ability to type coherently and without hallucinating. So I will transmit this post in compressed bullet-point form (I wanted to use the phrase “stuttered tight-point” right there, but I don’t think that actually means anything outside
Years of being sent free books by publishers have made me something of a jaded bastard. But I uttered an involuntary ‘sweet’ today when I opened a package containing an early copy of Spook Country, William Gibson’s new novel, which is due out August 7.
Dedicated Gibson-watchers know that he tends to stick with a mood and a setting …
Kotaku has a report from the opening of a gallery show devoted to I Am 8-Bit, a collection (and book) of art inspired by classic video games. Apparently Joust is extra-inspirational, since it’s heavily represented.
On the whole the art isn’t amazingly great, but it’s kind of heartwarming to see video games get connected up with …
My colleague Jeff Kluger notes that a team of European planet-hunters have found a promisingly Earth-like specimen, which they’ve named Gliese 581c. The money shot is as follows:
Like Earth, it orbits a comfortable distance from its sun; like Earth, it maintains a surface temperature somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Most
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Next week I’m running a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival. The topic — I’m told, I didn’t write it — is as follows:
Here I come to save the… oh, just forget it. For a genre of entertainment originally devised with children in mind, superhero movies have found real success among bigger babies—adults, to be specific. We unleash
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I guess I always did kind of wonder why Picard had a French name but an English accent. Now it can be told: they were supposed to cast a French guy, but couldn’t find one with the proper chops. Roddenberry was dead set against casting Patrick Stewart at all — thus TNG producer Robert Justman:
“We met at Gene Roddenberry’s house,
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Far less coy than the first one. I’m not sure why this is YouTube-only and not on the official site, but it gives you a lot more of what you want: angry Harry — usin’ those Equus acting chops — the Weasley twins on rampage, a killer giggle from Dolores Umbridge, thestrals, centaurs, Voldemort, the Ministry of Magic courtroom, the …
A quick note to plug nerdcore icon MC Frontalot’s new album Secrets from the Future. If you require background on the whole nerdcore phenomenon, I’ve blogged about it here and here. Frontalot was the first artist who got me into nerdcore hip-hop, and he’s fast becoming it’s most visible spokesperson – cf. the upcoming documentary …
I was tired. It was a long flight. The woman next to me was watching a romantic comedy starring Minnie Driver and David Duchovny. Plus I’d already ready the Tolkien book, and it was all I had left in my bag. This is how I came to read All Those Moments, the memoir of Rutger Hauer.
I don’t recommend that you read this book. There are a …
As a very peripheral side-note to the still-unfolding story of the Virginia Tech tragedy, I can’t help keeping a weather eye out for the return of the killer nerd meme that got loose in the wake of the Columbine killings: the anti-social, trench-coated video game freak who finally snaps. So far sightings of the meme have been relatively …
Posting will be sparse for a couple of days while I deal with my responsibilities as a tech conference-goer.
In the meantime snack on my review of the “new” book by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin, stitched together by his son Christopher out of various manuscripts he left behind. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to love it — I’m …
In this week’s Time Joel Stein profiles Adam Brody, the actor who made nerds hip on a TV show — The O.C. — that no actual nerd ever actually watched. We learn, among other things, that Brody isn’t really all that nerdy in real life:
“I’m a fake intellectual,” he says while wearing giant sunglasses and eating his first meal of the
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