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Vernor Vinge: Mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction visionary worthy of Arthur C Clarke's mantle, Vinge is most famous for popularising the idea of the
singularity, where technology advances so quickly that humans cannot participate, but he's also credited with writing one of the first stories about cyberspace,
True Names, back in 1981. More recently, he's been exploring how
augmented reality and belief circles will change the way we live in his latest novel
Rainbows End - which he put online,
completely for free.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 8:01 AM on August 24, 2007
(43 comments)
Many news sites already show a list of the most popular stories, but the BBC has gone one further with its
BBC News Live Stats. Not only can you see the most popular stories updating in real time and also based on region, but you can also view
the flow of the news over a day; this will be very interesting to watch when breaking news occurs.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 5:49 AM on June 13, 2006
(12 comments)
The London Underground is home to some of the most interesting,
weird and fun adverts, which have been tailored to the fact that they have huge posters that passengers are often looking at for minutes at a time while waiting. In Copywriting goes Underground, they challenged ad agencies to write an ad which had at least 50 words in it. Some are crap, but some are pretty innovative -
check them out.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 5:17 AM on June 21, 2005
(15 comments)
Rather unusually, the Sci-Fi channel have made the entire first episode of their new
Battlestar Galactica show
available online, uncut and without commercials, for free (Real format, not bad video quality). While the series is still being aired in the US and Australia, the first episode has now been shown in all markets and the Sci-Fi channel may be trying to figure out if making the ep available online could improve ratings.
Their decision may have been aided by the fact that the show was aired in the UK two months before the US, resulting in
an awful lot of US fans downloading the show; normally it's the other way around.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 2:39 AM on February 24, 2005
(43 comments)
Fellowship 9/11 is Michael Moore's latest damning documentary looking at how the Aragorn administration has twisted the hearts and minds of Middle Earth, ranging from interviews with Rep. Grima Wormtongue (D) to the folks at Minas Flint, a obscure, small town in Mordor used for recruiting.
Online at iFilm.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 2:23 AM on October 22, 2004
(10 comments)
It was bound to happen eventually - Richard Branson
announced the launch of
Virgin Galactic, a joint venture between Virgin and Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company responsible for
SpaceShipOne. They expect to send up to 3000 people into suborbital space over five years for £115k each (around $200k)and the first ship will be named the
Virgin SpaceShip VSS Enterprise (well, I guess he can name it what he wants...). It's all immensely exciting, but personally I think Virgin Spacelines sounds classier.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 2:55 AM on September 27, 2004
(14 comments)
When paleoclimatologist William Hyde was asked whether he'd be watching the well-known educational film
The Day After Tomorrow, he replied that he wouldn't endure it
unless he was given $100. This challenge set in motion
a series of wholly predictable events which saw the denizens of rec.arts.sf.written heroically raising the required sum against Hyde's protestations and duly sent him packing to cinema.
What did Hyde think?
"The best summary of the movie comes from The Simpsons: 'It's cold and there are wolves.' - Abe."
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 10:31 AM on July 29, 2004
(27 comments)
Following the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent description of Philip Pullman's
His Dark Materials trilogy as
'a near-miraculous triumph', it's hardly surprising that a conversation between the two at the National Theatre was more of a love-in rather than a debate.
The transcript is still a great read though, and contains gems like:
PP: Which leads us to Mel Gibson. Have you seen that film?
RW: I haven't seen it.
PP: Nor have I, so we can talk about it! That's all right.
RW: We're allowed opinions without the constraints of reality!
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 4:00 AM on March 20, 2004
(26 comments)
Domo-kun!
Domokun is "a small brown open-mouthed monster hatched from an egg who lives with a wise old rabbit underground." In Japan, he's the mascot of the NHK BS2 channel and is the star of
a series of stop-motion shorts (100MB .mov), the fun and warmth of which aren't lost in
translation. In the western world, Domokun is better known as the monster chasing
that cute little kitty.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 2:25 AM on October 11, 2003
(13 comments)
Steam Trek
- an enterprising individual has masterfully melded two classic SF genres,
Star Trek and
Steampunk. The result is a wonderful universe with a
rich history where Her Majesty's Aether Ships explore the solar system and protect the United Kingdom of Planets. Long live Queen Victoria, and may her glorious reign continue as it has
for the past 165 years! (preserved by Lunar Selenite technology captured from the evil Moon-dwellers).
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 2:28 PM on September 6, 2003
(12 comments)
Creation Science Fair
- the first place for elementary level was won by Cassidy Turnbull, who demonstrated the differences between her uncle and a monkey. Much more impressive was the winner of the high school level who used prayer to make microbes evolve antibiotic resistance. I, for one, am glad that children across the world are learning the power of Creation Science! (via New Scientist)
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 7:21 AM on August 28, 2003
(32 comments)
The steam-powered drum machine
- an astonishing extract from the journal of Charles Franklin, the founder of the London Museum of Techno. Written in 1894, Franklin describes a steam-powered drum machine and what may have been the world's first rave. "
Driven by the thunderous rhythms of Hoovenaars tremendous "drum machine" the crowd - academics and dockers, architects and cobblers - were whipped into a frenzy, dancing and screaming like savages until sunrise, when the Machine finally ground to a halt with a suffering hiss."
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 6:34 AM on May 20, 2003
(33 comments)
Halo
is probably the most well known and successful of games for the Xbox, but less well known are the
scores of Halo movies that take advantage of its excellent graphics and physics engines. From the classic
Warthog Jump to the cover of
Asshole and the
Red vs Blue series, the movies are sometimes breaktaking and almost always hilarious. Videogame geeks with a sense of humour? Say it ain't so!
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 2:27 PM on May 1, 2003
(10 comments)
They might actually be, you know, be useful.
This year, a student in Nebraska won $1000 for finding the worst example of overuse of the phrase 'you know,' by an athlete who said it 30 times in a 135 second interview. But are they really that terrible? Known as discourse markers, phrases such as 'you know' and 'I mean' are
thought to be essential in conveying information in conversation and helping us understand each other. Discourse markers also exist in
many other languages and possibly even ancient languages.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 7:48 AM on May 15, 2002
(25 comments)
Aerogel
- it holds six world records for physical properties and is nicknamed 'blue smoke' for its appearance; unsurprising since it is 99.8% air. Despite being used in the NASA
Stardust and
Mars Pathfinder missions, aerogels are not a recent invention and they were
first prepared in 1931. It's also a great insulator - here are some
wonderful photos of it in action.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 12:38 PM on April 25, 2002
(19 comments)
Lance Bass of
N'Sync is to be
the youngest person ever to fly in space. The flight is expected to cost $20 million and will involve a flight on a Soyuz taxi mission to the ISS in November 2002. And no, it is not the first of April.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 5:15 AM on February 20, 2002
(42 comments)
Sophie's World
(a novel about the history of philosophy) is an international bestseller by
Jostein Gaarder. Praised by critics for successfully condensing over 3000 years of thought into 400 pages without dumbing the concepts down, itfeatures an enigmatic philosopher teaching a 14 year old Norwegian girl called Sophie. So far, there's been a
board game, a
movie, a
weblog, a
musical and a CD-ROM (
full text online). It's an absolutely wonderful read and a great introduction to philosophy.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 12:53 PM on January 27, 2002
(22 comments)
"The Web, left to its own devices, would be the exact opposite of that: It's like a giant city with no neighborhoods; it needs these kind of
meta-filters, these second-level kind of things, whether it is Yahoo or Google or Slashdot, to rein in that chaos and turn it to something more organized." From the
second page of
an interview with the author of
Emergence, Steven Johnson (also co-founder of
Feed).
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon
at 8:36 AM on November 28, 2001
(10 comments)
