Archive: 2007

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Gimpy Spirit Strikes Gold

The ailing Spirit Rover - already a four-year veteran of Mars exploration - is now limping backwards over the red planet. One of Rover’s front wheels is gone gammy, hopelessly stuck. But, lo and b

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Cabinet of Skeletons

Let’s ponder this odd cover by Russ Heath, which somehow perfectly describes the mood of the current administration’s Cabinet meetings. Just when it seems that everyone who knows too much has been stu

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Panopticon Gazes Down on the Pill-Popping Zombies

Haven’t you sometimes said to yourself, I’ll bet other people can see me! And you’re puzzled as to what to do about this serious, baffling problem of being conspicuous… At once overly self-conscious, and at the same time paranoid and internalized, it is no wonder that the previous statement was written by our favorite paranoid schizo SF writer, Philip K. Dick. However, it is worth taking a closer look at the tendency for humans to worry about their own self-consciousness and appearance, since it is obvious that our right to privacy is under serious attack. Although the government is wrestling with the issue, it is by no means certain that the harsh surveillance tactics brought to us in recent years are coming to an end. Indeed, the inquisitorial big-brother milieu extends beyond the concept of mere observation…as Dick implies, there is an active attempt to instigate our own self-doubts and keep us trapped in a spiral of confusion. Everywhere we go, we are bombarded now by advertisements for drugs. These often take the form of overt manipulation. For those who are having a bad day, or have low self-esteem, these could trigger a whole chain of thoughts, a sort of self-reinforcing trap for which, SURPRISE! Drug companies have an ANSWER! And with the relaxation of restrictions on Direct to Consumer Drug advertising, this predatory form of brainwashing is reaching epidemic proportions.

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What it is

Dude, this is all over the web, but nonetheless… imagine if the Unified Field Theory was encapsulated in a geometric diagram - an image - which is actually a graphic depiction of a 57 dimensional obj

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The Music Business is Rough

The following panel explains the story in a nutshell: “He hired gangsters to get these bonds after his disguise as a musician failed to work. His violin bow fired the arrows.” Brilliant plan - and in

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Postsingular Now!

Hey, folks, you should all know that Rudy Rucker’s next far out adventure is in print! You have wonderful options to read it: a) buy a <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765317419?ie=UTF8&a

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Seeking Comics in Austria & Germany

It’s nice to know that comics are not excluded from the Museumsquarter in Vienna. Not a stone’s throw from the Leopold Gallery, where Gustav Klimt’s “Death and Life“ hangs beside the works of Kolo Mo

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Welt Raum Fahrt - Space 1960

On a trip to Vienna last week, I was happy as a clam to find a copy of “Das Bildbuch der Welt Raum Fahrt,” [Picture Book of Space Travel] which documents the latest advances in Space Trav

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Race to the Moon

For some reason September 2007 is Moon month, or is that an oxymoron? At MIT, the film In the Shadow of the Moon was launched with a free reception and discussion. Ten years in the making, this film p

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Rocks below, Stars above

Little did I know when writing the previous post that Google was cooking up SKY for their latest version (4.2) of GoogleEarth! Now, the greenest tyro can download GoogleEarth, click on Sky, and begin