By Justin Brown
Every Wednesday, I’m going to take you on a whirlwind adventure of 13 links chronicling the news throughout the geek world I inhabit. Movies, music, art, politics, gadgets, science, sports, grammar, and superheroes – nothing’s out of bounds and everything’s interesting.
Let it begin…
- If you're a vegetarian who continues to believe eating fish is acceptable… you might want to look away right about now.
- A really really really cool innovation that combines the efforts of webcams, wireless internet, Android software, Flickr, and Google to monitor and record – in a very elaborate and impressive way – one's personal utility usage. I wish I was smart enough to pull off something like this.
- What does plagiarism look like?
- There's so little interesting mysteries left in our world and that makes this “Siberian Ice Circles” story so awesome. My personal, professional assessment? Aliens planted circular ships here a long time ago and they're starting to surface; that would be the ultimate irony, if we couldn't confirm the arrival/existence of extraterrestrials until some of our astronauts – in space – looked down at Earth and saw them.
- I can't wait for some things to become really common and, subsequently, really cheap. Custom photographic shower curtains are now on that list.
- Based on the fact that the Titanic continues to be a huge cultural touchstone, I am rather surprised that this story did not receive a lot more attention.
- Pixar's UP came out last week and if you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Regardless, if the idea of a house propelled by helium balloons is too much of a logical leap for you, I've got some science I'd like to drop.
- Who knew used car tires could so seamlessly become dragons, sharks, and other terrifying mystical beasts?
- Much has been made of the Burj Tower in Dubai and the new World Trade Center in Manhattan (and they are both on this list) but there are a dozen other really astounding science-fiction-looking pillars of industry sprouting up all over the world, as we speak.
- The ever-awesome Empire Magazine conducted a poll to determine what their readers considered to be the 100 Greatest Video Games. Go and argue with them.
- Need a few astromech droids to help navigate your fleet? Well, it's going to cost you about $10,000 a pop and the wait list is about 3 years long. Oh, and they are basically just really expensive toys – they aren't sentient computers that will help you out of a jam at all (trust me, I inquired).
- I spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to succinctly and effectively explain what Google's “Holodeck” is and what it does. Alas, I cannot. Just go here and check it out.
- Threadless's $5 heatwave shirt sale is on like Donkey Kong. Go grab summer by the balls in glorious cotton attire.
Have a week!
