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It’s a Major Award.
So I was bipping around through my RSS feed last week and ran across a post by The Crotchety Old Fan, noting that he had been awarded the Prémio Dardos (Dart Prize). It’s an award given “for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These…
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Support Ada Lovelace Day
Ada Lovelace Day–named after the first programmer–is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. The event was originated by Suw Charman-Anderson, who runs a blog devoted to “bringing women in technology to the fore.” To support this event, all you have to do is pledge to publish a blog…
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Night Sky Delight
(Which is not a thing like Afternoon Delight, but now I’ve got that song running through Shadow’s head so my work here is done.) Scienceray has a neat roundup of some very cool interactive animated astronomy Websites, including a solar system visualizer, history of NASA, and a Mars explorer. I especially like the Amazing Space…
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Khaaaaaan!!!
Ricardo Montalban has passed away at the age of 88. Link
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Five Years of Mars Exploration
Spirit landed safely on January 3, 2004, and Opportunity followed on the 24th. None of the NASA researchers who cheered at their landing expected them to still be sending back data five years later. And they’ve still got plans for the rovers’ future. Link
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The Creepiest Idea I’ve Heard in a While
The U.S. Department of Defense has published a research proposal “To develop a highly interactive PC or web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with ‘virtual’ renditions of deployed Service Members.” The purpose is to let small children interact with “Mommy” or “Daddy” over a webcam, even when the real parent is deployed…
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It’s Probably the Old Ones Snoring
Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have discovered a strange “roar” coming from distant space that’s six times more powerful than all other space radio sources combined. They have no idea what it is, and say that “something new and interesting going on in the universe.” This makes me unaccountably nervous. Link (via BoingBoing)
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Snow Crash Imagined as a Video Game
Responding to a roundtable topic at Man Bytes Blog asking for what a favorite book would be like if it had first been a video game, Shamus Young chose Snow Crash. Instead of just describing what the game would be like, he wrote a whole review about it. The first section of the game is…
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In Case You’ve Ever Wondered
This somehow seems a natural followup to yesterday’s post: According to the Big List o’Saints*, the patron saint of the Internet is St. Isidore. Despite having lived around 600 AD, when broadband really wasn’t widely available, he was nominated as the patron of computers, computer techs, and the Internet in 1999. Here’s one of his…
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I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing
During the annual procession of the clergy of the Lutheran Church of Iceland, a guy in a Darth Vader costume quietly tagged on to the back of the line. I like how one or two people near the end look back with a kind of, “Hey….” expression, but nobody says a word. (via BoingBoing)