Scholars & Rogues wants to know: what do you think is the greatest technology in human history? Before you answer, what do we mean by “technology”? I think we all have sort of an operational idea in our heads of what we mean by the term, but if you’re like most people, odds are pretty good that you’ve never sat
Read moreMy colleague, Dr. Sidicious Bonesparkle, had a bit of sport last week with a Global Language Monitor analysis showing that Sarah Palin spoke at a higher grade level in the VP “debate” than did Joe Biden. As it turns out, the GLM isn’t alone in examining the language used by the presidential and vice presidential candidates.
Read moreAny S&R readers interested in participating in some interesting voting behavior research? A research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. This stage of
Read moreDid you catch this item in the morning news? Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr. Edgar Mitchell – a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission – has stunningly claimed aliens exist. And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions – but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.
Read morePerhaps you’ve been following the story about the malfunctioning space toilet. Our buddy Mike Pecaut – Dr. Mike Pecaut, an actual rocket scientist who’s had numerous experiments up on the space shuttle – has launched a new blog, as it were. In it, he takes a detailed look at why this kind of problem has potentially catastrophic implications for our
Read moreNational Geographic interviews Nigel Tufnel on his theory of the construction of Stonehenge. Part 1:
Read moreI’ve been a very big Don Dixon fan since the late ’70s, so when his new CD, The Nu-Look, dropped I was bouncing around the living room like Snoopy doing a happy dance. Sadly, a lot of people don’t know Don’s music – although many know his work as the producer of Murmur and Reckoning by REM and multiple records
Read moreMediaPost reports this morning on an interesting new survey from TNS, which says that “sixty percent of shoppers across the globe believe that they will be able to pay for purchases using just their fingerprint by 2015, rated top by 25% of shoppers.” Never mind the chill that should send down the spine of anyone who values their privacy –
Read moreWelcome back my friends to the show that never ends… You know, as any musician can tell you, instruments are expensive. So what to do if you love music but are running low on cash? Silly artiste – you make yourself an instrument. Like this guy – got some empty soda bottles laying around the house? Cool – git yer
Read moreIn case you missed it, Trent Reznor yesterday released the new Nine Inch Nails CD, The Slip, as a free download. I’ve only had time to listen to it once, and that was while I was working. So I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve been able to give it a few minutes of real attention. In any
Read moreOne of my favorite musical sub-genres is sort of an off-shoot of trip-hop, a sultry urban electropop district where the downbeat influence of Portishead meets up with all kinds of interesting characters dressed like David Bowie in the ’70s. California pure pop a la Burt Bacharach, for instance, which we find in the likes of Saint Etienne (and the solo
Read moreGive me one last dance We’ll slide down the surface of things You’re the real thing Yeah the real thing You’re the real thing Even better than the real thing I figured out a long time ago, even before I began encountering grad-level feminist critiques, that our media’s stylized construction and portrayal of female beauty was problematic. It’s bad enough
Read moreFinal part in a series. How appropriate that a publication whose launch was dominated by photography of the technological wonder of the day should end its run with an equally impressive tribute to mankind’s latest technological accomplishment. As noted earlier, LIFE’s final issue was released a scant three weeks after Apollo 17, NASA’s last trip to the moon, and in
Read moreI used to work with a HAL 9000. Back when I was at US West in the late ’90s we had a voice system into which we would record the day’s company news so that employees without Internet access could dial in and keep up with the latest events. As with any such system there was a dial-in sequence, buttons
Read morePart four in a series. The terrible specter of nuclear annihilation was now clear in the American mind, a condition that LIFE acknowledged and addressed. But in the months that followed V-J Day an odd thing happened, as military testing of the new weaponry provided an opportunity for bomb-watchers to indulge their awe without having to confront the frightful context
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