Thursday, September 25, 2003

Dig deep enough from this site and there are loads of great classic space illustration. Dreams of Space is an enthusiastic and wonderful gallery of vintage space-related illustration from the 1890s to the 1970s, divided by era. Link (Thanks, Charles) [Boing Boing Blog] 4:01:40 PM    comment []

This isn't out in ebook format yet. I wish they'd hurry UP! Inpsired by Quicksilver, his giant doorstop of a new novel, Neal Stephenson has put up a wiki where his readers can collaboratively annotate the ideas in the book: My own view of the Metaweb is pretty straightforward: I don't think that the Internet, as it currently exists, does a very good job of explaining things to people. It is great for selling stuff, distributing news and dirty pictures, and a few other things. But when you need to get a good explanation of something, whether it is a scientific principle, a bit of gardening advice, or how to change a tire, you have to sift through a vast number of pages to find the one that gives you the explanation that is right for you. Generally this is not a problem with the explanations themselves. On the contrary, it seems as though a lot of people like to explain things on the Internet, and some of them are quite good at it. The problem lies in how these explanations are organized. We have been looking for a way to get an explanation system seeded for a long time, and it occurred to us that a set of annotations to my book might be one way to get it started. At first, the explanations here will be strongly tied to characters and situations in QUICKSILVER and so may be of only limited interest to those who have not read the book. However, with a few clicks we might move on to more general explanations. For example, Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle appear as characters in QUICKSILVER, and so early on we might see annotations concerning specific things that they are shown doing in the book. But later these might link to explanations of Boyle's Law. Such an explanation need not refer to QUICKSILVER in any way, and so it could be useful to, say, a high school student who has never heard of me or my book but who needs to understand Boyle's Law and why it is important. Link (Thanks, Jeremy!) [Boing Boing Blog] 4:01:04 PM    comment []

From BoingBoing, things I like to hear from Michael Moore. Michael Moore has written a thorough response to the critics of his disheaterning, enraging film about American life, Bowling for Columbine, called "How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about 'Bowling for Columbine.'" He promises to keep this page updated with responses to all his attackers, so, "if you hear something about me that doesn't sound quite right, check in here." When you see me going in to the bank and walking out with my new gun in "Bowling for Columbine" – that is exactly as it happened. Nothing was done out of the ordinary other than to phone ahead and ask permission to let me bring a camera in to film me opening up my account. I walked into that bank in northern Michigan for the first time ever on that day in June 2001, and, with cameras rolling, gave the bank teller $1,000 – and opened up a 20-year CD account. After you see me filling out the required federal forms ("How do you spell Caucasian?") – which I am filling out here for the first time – the bank manager faxed it to the bank's main office for them to do the background check. The bank is a licensed federal arms dealer and thus can have guns on the premises and do the instant background checks (the ATF's Federal Firearms database—which includes all federally approved gun dealers—lists North Country Bank with Federal Firearms License #4-38-153-01-5C-39922). Within 10 minutes, the "OK" came through from the firearms background check agency and, 5 minutes later, just as you see it in the film, they handed me a Weatherby Mark V Magnum rifle (If you'd like to see the outtakes, click here). And it is that very gun that I still own to this day. I have decided the best thing to do with this gun is to melt it down into a bust of John Ashcroft and auction it off on E-Bay (more details on that later). All the proceeds will go to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence to fight all these lying gun nuts who have attacked my film and make it possible on a daily basis for America's gun epidemic to rage on. Link (via K5) [Boing Boing Blog] 4:00:30 PM    comment []

Also from BoingBoing. This looks like a good comic. Stefan sez, "Oh, wow: 'Her!' is a delightfully nasty, minimalist web comic about a little girl, a pig, and various walk-ons." Link (Thanks, Stefan!) [Boing Boing Blog] 3:59:54 PM    comment []

OK, I'm just going to be putting up a bunch of interesting links. This one's from Boing Boing. Hasbro has released high-rez, printable PDFs of Monopoly money. Great stuff, especially if you're playing a Cheapass Game that needs currency-tokens. Link (Thanks, Zed!) [Boing Boing Blog] 3:59:19 PM    comment []