The Space Telescope Science Institute – that's the people who brought us the Hubble telescope – have produced a very nice educational web site about black holes.
The Journey to a Black Hole section is especially neat.
[Via Seed]
You tell me: is this photo the cutest thing ever, or just wrong, wrong, wrong!?
[Via Chocolate and Vodka]
The term "round-up" hardly seems adequate to describe Gary Farber's extensive survey of the early reviews of Superman Returns.
It's a couple of weeks until the film opens here, but I'm finding it difficult to get very excited: the main effect of the avalanche of publicity so far has been that it's reminded me of how much I love John Williams' theme from the Christopher Reeve film. The trailers for the new film are nice enough – a certain scene involving a single bullet is the highlight, for my money – but when the most thrilling element in a trailer is the 25 year-old theme music there's clearly a problem. I don't doubt that I'll go to see the film, but as of now I'm much more excited about the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel that opens here the week before Superman Returns.
(For what it's worth, if you're looking for a highly accessible current take on Superman in his original medium you could do a lot worse than pick up Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman comic.)
Eight Ways to Kill Someone by Using an iPod Nano, According to Ex-Marine Brad Collum.:
6. Carefully unstaple a tea bag and pour the contents on a plate. Break into the lithium-ion battery pack and saturate the tea with the battery's poison, then dry the tea in the sun (or with a hair dryer if you are in a hurry). Put tea back in tea bag and bend the staple back to its original position. Put the tea bag back where you got it.
[Via Lots of Co.]
Clive Thompson is taken with the idea that we're about to witness the dawn of "episodic gaming":
A good TV series is a well-honed machine. This is particularly true of a mystery or action series like 24 or Lost: Each week you get fiendish plot twists, Elizabethan character conspiracies, hinted-at clues — then an agonizing cliffhanger. No wonder we wind up planning our schedules around these shows, plunking down on the couch to get our weekly fix.
What if video games worked that way too?
[...] developers are crafting titles that function more like a TV series. Valve recently released the first "episode" of a Half-Life trilogy that will span the next year. Another game company, Ritual Entertainment, is crafting a series from its SiN franchise. Like TV shows, each installment will be a bite-sized chunk — a mere four or five hours of play — that collectively builds into a big story arc. If they're successful, the future of gaming will look less like Casablanca and more like The X-Files. [...]
It's an interesting concept, to be sure. I do see one difference between a serial computer game and a written serial. (I know the excerpt quoted above draws a comparison with serials on TV, but further on in the article Thompson waxes lyrical about the opportunities for developing in-depth characterisation the serial format offered the likes of Dickens; many of the techniques used in great serial TV shows were borrowed from novelists, after all.) It's easy to see how someone who jumps on board a serial game with the first episode could get hooked and find themselves buying the next half dozen stories as the characters face new challenges and the world in which they operate expands. However, presumably if a serial game is released across a number of years the software's authors will ideally want to update their game's engine to take advantage of improvements in technology and perhaps to revamp the controls in the light of experience. That makes for a problem that doesn't apply to written serials.
With a series of novels that were conceived as such from the outset it's comparatively straightforward (in theory) for the publishers to welcome readers who jump on board with the fourth episode by keeping the earlier instalments in print – there are no differences in the technology involved as far as the end user is concerned, so notwithstanding changes in the author's style the whole story will flow across several episodes whether you dive in with the first episode or the last. With a serial computer game that is sufficiently popular to justify several releases over a period of two or three years or so, won't a compilation of all the episodes look and feel a bit strange what with the earlier instalments looking and possibly playing significantly differently to the latest ones? Will players be bothered when they pick up an earlier instalment only to find that it looks rather old-fashioned and doesn't play as well as the latest?
How could the publishers solve this? Freezing the game engine and controls at episode one could leave the third or fourth or fifth episode of the game looking a bit primitive compared to contemporary releases, but then it may not be worthwhile going back and retrofitting improvements to earlier instalments for the sake of keeping up with the latest trends and technology. One answer would be a twofold strategy: keep the entire span of a story to, say, eighteen months or so, and release instalments much more frequently. The question is whether such a short lifespan for a serial will hinder the aim of getting players hooked on the game's characters. Time will tell, no doubt.
If nothing else, it's interesting to see someone trying something a bit different in the gaming market.
All of our Huggable Urns™ have a zippered compartment and comes with a tightly sealed pouch that holds your loved one's ashes or a special keepsake. Huggable Urns™ are made of extremely plush material and the pouches are made out of velvet with plastic lining to keep the ashes contained.
Tasteful.
[Via Found]
Tom Coates posted his thoughts on the exhibits at the Royal College of Art Summer Show 2006:
Singing Sock Puppets by Matthew Brown: Absolutely my favourite of the whole event – tiny glove puppets that look a bit gormless that sing in isotonic scales to jazz records, with the user choosing the pitch by how open the mouth is. It sounds dumb, but it's the most fun I've had with a sock and some electronics in years. [...]
Wikipedia: List of problems solved by MacGyver:
Twice Stung (2×03)
With his friend dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, MacGyver breaks through his friend's apartment door by tying a fire hose to the door handle and an elevator handrail, then sending the elevator up. He cuts the fire hose with his swiss army knife, ties the nozzle end to the door, the other end to the hand rail, and lays the hose very flat against the ground so the elevator's doors won't close on it. When the elevator goes down, it pulls enough of the door with it that MacGyver can reach in and unlock the deadbolt and chain door lock. Unverified (can that knife cut that hose?) Approximate time: 5:30. Opinion of a former building engineer. Yes a common pocket knife could cut a fire hose. Today they are made of nylon wraped around a rubber hose because of the water pressure. Knowing how many of these rest forever, rotting in the wall cabinets, one could cut it with a spoon too. No way will any elevator in proper working order move with any door not in closed position. (However, anyone who has pressed the light switch in their refrigerator to verify that the lights do, in fact, go out when the door is closed will know how to defeat such measures, especially on a 1986-era elevator.)[...]
Phoenix Under Siege (2×11)
MacGyver moves a New York lock from the opposite side of a door with an electromagnet. To build the magnet, he uses two 12-volt batteries as his power source, a sink faucet as the metal rod, and some copper cabling to wind around the faucet. He connects everything, and slides the lock out of place. Approximate time: 33:30. Unverified
I do believe this settles the old Wikipedia versus Britannica debate once and for all…
[Via Fimoculous]
Charlie Stross has been thinking about the pace of change as he tries to write a novel set in 2016:
5. The near future is frustratingly like the present, only different. I'm surrounded by electronics and media today that would have been bizarre and exotic back in 1986, never mind 1976 — but I'm still basically sitting in an office chair at a desk, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, typing away with some rock'n'roll on the stereo. Difference from 1996: there's a download going, the progress bar is ticking away tens of megabytes instead of tens of kilobytes, and the music's playing via streaming MP3s rather than CDs. Difference from 1996: back then, the word processor had a green screen and a 10Mb hard disk, and the music was playing on cassette tape. But the organizing parameters were the same — this is a writer in his study writing. How do you signal that the story is set ten years in the future, without succumbing to spurious futurism?
As one commenter noted, the easiest way is to point out what that writer would be doing to distract himself from getting down to writing: reading weblogs, cleaning out spam from his mailbox, using a tiny little mobile phone. I'd add that some of the things the writer will be doing with that computer and internet connection will be very different, even if the fundamental technologies underlying the process are similar: a faster internet connection renders all sorts of 'downloads' not merely possible but practical. Then there's all the applications of all this internet technology that were possible a decade ago but required a critical mass of non-techies using the internet to blossom: Wikipedia is probably the obvious example, but you could also point to large-scale file sharing networks and eBay.
(So all Charlie has to do now in order to write his novel is figure out what analogous developments will be in place a decade from now. But that should surely be a Simple Matter of Prediction.)
Joss Whedon on answering That Question:
Interviewer (#48 that day): So why do you write these strong female characters?
Joss: Because you're still asking that question…
The full speech is well worth a listen.
[Via PopPolitics]
A quick memo to anybody writing sci-fi or fantasy fiction (or, in fact, any kind of fiction) about something to avoid in your Big Important Finale:
If your Big Important Finale relies on the fact that your heroes understand "the power of Love" for its resolution, it will be shit.
It is very important that you understand this.
Yes, we realise that you want your Big Threat's major flaw to be something meaningful, rather than a space station that blows up too easily, or an unexpected allergy to an everyday household product. And yes, there are valid reasons for wanting your heroes to save the day via some quality of their inner being, rather than their abiltity to jump over big gaps or their proficiency at electrical engineering.
But please don't make it the power of Love thing. Please. Consider the following: [...]
The reasons are well worth a read. Trust me on this.
Nancy Friedman has a problem with passion:
Is it just me, or is it hot in here?
Microsoft murmurs in our ear: "Your Potential. Our Passion."
Ketchum, the public-relations agency, tries to have it both ways: "Passion and Precision in Communication."
Worthwhile Magazine exhorts readers to "Work with Purpose, Passion & Profit."
[...]
And everyone–absolutely everyone–is seeking "people with a passion for [fill in the blank]" to occupy the cubicle down the hall.
How did we get so darned amorous about what used to be called the rat race?
Blame Tom Peters. In 1985 he published A Passion for Excellence, and since then he's tirelessly trod the globe, trying to keep the office fires burning. If he had a slogan, it would doubtless be "My Passion Is Passion."
Personally, although some people I know derive occasional satisfaction from their work, I know no one who approaches the daily grind with passion, unless it's in the original Latin sense of "suffering." (Whence "The Passion of the Christ.") [...]
[Via Jon Carroll]
Alex Halavais offers some advice to college students as to how to cheat good:
[...] I would prefer that students don't cheat. Yes, they really are mostly cheating themselves, so fine. But it also reflects poorly on the community. Rationally or not, what particularly irks me is that it is disrespectful: of me, of their fellow students, of the university, of the institution of learning, and of themselves. And – did I mention – of me? It is particularly irksome when their cheating implies (reminds?) that I am a fool.
So, to help students across the country cheat better, saving themselves both from easy detection and from incurring the wrath of insulted faculty, and leading to a much more harmonious school environment, I offer the following tips, based on recent experience:
[...]
7. Borrow from someone who writes as badly as you do.
Don't do what one of my graduate students did, and steal a text on Korean feminism from someone who wrote slightly better English than he did. I'll notice the slightly better writing, even before I notice that you have expressed no interest in or knowledge of feminist perspectives in the past. (Once kicked out of our program, he applied to the English department. No kidding.)
[...]
[Via but she's a girl...]
I spotted the miniseries-cum-pilot for the new series of Battlestar Galactica going dirt cheap (£6.99) so I picked up a copy to watch in preparation for tomorrow night's debut on a free-to-air channel of the first season proper.
Now I must point out that I was never a fan of the original show. It looked like a cheap, cheesy attempt to cash in on the post-Star Wars craze and none of the characters grabbed me, so I made no effort to keep up with it. I can safely say that I will definitely be moving heaven and earth to keep up with the new show: the pilot was much, much better than I'd expected: effects-wise, acting-wise, story-wise … in every way imaginable. (Oh yes, and that was a nasty little kick they threw in at the very end of the pilot. I most definitely want to see how that pays off down the line.) I'd go so far as to suggest that if the show continues as strongly as it started it might just give Firefly and Farscape a run for their money in the 'Best Post-Babylon 5 TV space opera' stakes.
I meant to watch just the first hour of the show tonight but found myself too gripped to turn off the DVD at the 60 minute mark. (Hence my lack of actual links to post today.) I do believe I'm hooked.
I mentioned the other week that Sky Three has popped up in my list of Freeview channels, affording me an opportunity to find out for myself just how good Deadwood is. I've just noticed that Sky Three have started to repeat Ronald D Moore's reworking of Battlestar Galactica from the start of season 1.
The first two parts were on tonight – before I spotted them in the schedule, unfortunately – but the good news is that they're being repeated on Saturday nights at 8pm. Which, conveniently enough, means that it starts right after the BBC shows the new Doctor Who episode. Considering the rapturous reception the new Battlestar Galactica has been getting I'm clearly going to have to take the opportunity to see for myself.
A quick question for those of you who've seen the show: how necessary is it for me to have seen the pilot movie which set up the show's premise in order to get the most out of the series proper?
John Boileau has extensive experience managing football teams, some of it with his local under-11 side but mostly with an array of sides he's taken to the very top … in Football Manager 2005.
When a vacancy arose at Middlesbrough after their manager was appointed to the England job, Boileau decided the time had come to apply for the post.
Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson's reply proves that the man is a real class act.
[Via GromBlog]
There have been a couple of interesting films opening lately to give those of us who aren't glued to the World Cup coverage something to do of an evening.
Earlier this week I saw Thank You For Smoking. I haven't read Christopher Buckley's novel which provided the source material for Jason Reitman's film, but I might just have to seek it out because if the film is anything to go by it's just the sort of black-hearted comedy I'm always up for. The film benefits from a terrific leading performance from Aaron Eckhart, who is as good as ever here at playing a shifty, breathtakingly cynical bastard. This time round, he's a spokesman for Big Tobacco whose mission is to muddy the waters every time anyone suggests that smoking might, just possibly be bad for you.
The supporting cast are terrific, with one glaring exception: Katie Holmes is utterly unconvincing as a cynical reporter who decides to write a profile of Eckhart's character. I don't think it's a question of Holmes' acting ability: it's just that on the big screen she still seems more like a 16 year-old than a hard-bitten professional woman forging a career in the big city. Happily, she doesn't drag the film down too far: her storyline isn't the spine of the film, and there's plenty of room for reliable hands like the always-awesome J K Simmons, William H Macy, Robert Duvall, Sam Elliott and Maria Bello to make their mark as they deal with Eckhart's character. (Even Rob Lowe – yes, Rob Lowe – gets a fine cameo as a Hollywood über-producer looking to put together a film that'll make smoking sexy again.)
Yesterday (i.e. Wednesday night – by the time I post this it'll be Thursday) I saw my second Ellen Page film in the last month, Hard Candy: a definite change of pace after her all-too-brief turn in X-Men: The Last Stand. I don't want to say a word about the plot of Hard Candy; anyone who sees this film deserves the chance to discover it for themselves without any preconceptions. I will say that the TV ads and trailers do the film a disservice; if you're thinking of seeing the film, turn over or look away the second one appears. (This uncharacteristic restraint on my part is intensely frustrating, because I really want to discuss just why Hard Candy is such an effective thriller and to compare and contrast it with a certain Japanese thriller from a few years ago, but even naming the latter film would give away too much about Hard Candy.)
What I can say is that Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson both give fine performances, with Page in particular acting up a storm. The woman clearly has talent to burn. Right now I suppose she's about where Reese Witherspoon was when she made Freeway: here's hoping Page finds herself a Pleasantville, an Election and a Walk the Line over the next few years. Assuming, that is, that she's interested in going in a mainstream direction. For all I know Page might be just as happy to stick to indie films while taking the occasional Hollywood supporting role to pay the bills. (Which would make her Parker Posey, I suppose.) Come to that, Page might prefer to find a good recurring role in a quality TV show – think Molly Parker in Deadwood and Six Feet Under – rather than scratch around looking for good film parts. Whatever works for her: the point is that she makes a real impression in Hard Candy and managed to make even her brief appearance in X-Men: The Last Stand memorable in the face of the talent-suppressing vortex that claimed Halle Berry. She's clearly one to watch.
Scaryduck makes what he clearly thinks is a pretty safe bet:
I'm a pretty confident chap. So confident, in fact, that I am willing to lay a wager. And it is this:
"I bet you ANY MONEY* that at some stage before the next UK General Election, Ben Elton will stand up and declare his allegiance to David Cameron and the Conservative party."
I don't particularly care which political party the man ends up supporting: I'd just like him to write a funny sitcom again some day.
[Via LinkMachineGo]
Some of these Children's Recreational Parks look to me as if they'd give kids nightmares.
Truth to tell, I think I might have some trouble sleeping tonight…
[Via Needcoffee.com]
