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Cue the “Aporkalypse” Jokes
Google Maps meets Captain Trips: (Takes a few seconds to fully load) (via Cognitive Dissident) Swine Flu PSAs from 1976: (The second ad is fairly good illustration of how infection spreads…assuming everybody is pawing each other all the time. Also the guy with the moustache scares me.) (via BoingBoing) Outbreak Movie Trailer: (io9 has this…
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…what?
Every so often you run into something that exists in its own little pocket of weirdness, so far from every other weird thing that you can’t imagine what train of thought would have led to it. Shatnerquake is such a thing. It’s the first ShatnerCon with William Shatner as the guest of honor! But after…
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This Sounds About Right
(via GraphJam)
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“Future Proof” Jobs
Popular Mechanics has a list of ten “geeky, adventurous” jobs which they think will have long-term employment opportunities. Job titles include things like “Zero-Energy Home Architect” and “Digital Detective.” A few of them (like Video-Game Designer) probably have some staying power, but I suspect that some of the others might wind up in the same…
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Locus Award Finalists Announced
The finalists for the Locus Awards (the best science fiction books and stories of the year, chosen by the general public) have been announced over at their site. Best science fiction novel entries are: Matter, Iain M. Banks City at the End of Time, Greg Bear Marsbound, Joe Haldeman Anathem, Neal Stephenson Saturn’s Children, Charles…
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It’s Not a Milky Way, it’s a Truffle
Researchers examining the giant dust cloud at the center of our galaxy have concluded that it tastes like raspberries and smells like rum. They were looking for life-building amino acids, but found a substance called ethyl formate. It’s the compound that gives raspberries their flavor, and also happens to smell like rum. “It does happen…
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Suuure They’re for Research
Members of the team that created Snuppy, the first cloned dog, have now added an anemone gene to cloned dogs to create four transgenic glow-in-the-dark beagles. They claim that this is the first step in creating “disease model” dogs to use for research into human diseases, but other scientists are less certain that dogs will…
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Nebula Awards
The Nebula Awards 2009 were presented Saturday night in Los Angeles. Novel – Powers – Ursula K. Le Guin Novella – “The Spacetime Pool” – Catherine Asaro Novelette – “Pride and Prometheus” – John Kessel Short Story – “Trophy Wives” – Nina Kiriki Hoffman Script – “WALL-E” Andre Norton Award – Flora’s Dare: How a…
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Artifacts from the Future
Wired Magazine’s long-running feature FOUND–images of futuristic everyday objects, presented without comment–was discontinued a few months ago. MetaFilter has collected a list of the archived images from 2004 onward. These are wonderful, at once whimsical and strangely plausible. I especially like the space elevator and diaper. Link (via Dark Roasted Blend)
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Alien Alphabets
io9 has collected a list of alien alphabets, including Marain from Banks’ The Culture books, Ancient from Stargate, and (of course) Klingon. They’ve also got links to fonts based on all of them, so now you can write your own secret messages in Kryptonese. There are lots of other alphabets and fonts they don’t mention…