My husband David and I were watching a cable rerun of one of the original-cast Star Trek movies last night, because we are nerds and thus we have no life. The official title of this movie is something long and involved: Star Trek (Insert Roman Numeral Here): The Search For Spock. At least in our house, the official name of this movie is actually “Star Trek: You Klingon Bastard, You Killed My Son. You Klingon Bastard, You Killed My Son. YOU KLINGON BASTARD, YOU KILLED MY SON.” It takes place on the Genesis planet, immediately after the events in the…
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This year’s science fiction books are going to rock. John Scalzi returns to the Old Man’s War universe, there’s a brand new Neil Gaiman novel, and Stephen King’s long-awaited sequel to The Shining. Plus brand new books from Austin Grossman, Nalo Hopkinson, Christopher Priest, Diana Gabaldon, Robert J. Sawyer, Joe Hill… and J.R.R. Tolkien? via All the Essential Science Fiction and Fantasy Books That Are Coming in 2013 So here’s a list of things for me to think about reading this year instead!
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How many of these books have you read? How many would you like to read? I’ve read a small fraction of the books on this list, but a whole lot more authors and books are missing in action. Admittedly, this list is pretty heavy on British authors. Selected by the Guardian’s Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and…
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According to online clothes retailer Marisota, fifteen percent have cried over being too fat, and ten from being too skinny. A large percentage of women often dwell on their own sizes while shopping and get upset when their “funny shape†direct quote prevents them from looking like Christina Hendricks in a pencil skirt. via Shopping Makes Me Want to Die Inside | xoJane I have a hate/hate/HATE relationship with shopping, clothes, and “fashion.” I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve gone shopping with girlfriends; first of all, I don’t really have any local,…
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Tune in your favorite trippy space music or techno-trance Internet radio station Go to this link. WHAT time is it? I was in a hell of a mood before I found Zen in Cat Bounce. Be sure to make it rain now and then for extra-soothing cat bounciness. Cat Bounce is a website where you can make cats bounce. It’s totally mesmerizing and I’m pretty sure it’s an advanced hypnosis technology that was put in place by the cat army to finally have complete control. via Cat Bounce Has Been Sent From the Future to Ensure Total Cat Domination
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It’s not easy getting Last.fm to work on an iPad… there’s only partial functionality (I suspect that due to Apple’s well known aversion to all things Flash, and also to their reluctance to grant control of the iTunes player to third parties). Now that I’m working from home, music is becoming more and more a necessity. I couldn’t listen before in the office environment, which could have helped me tune out distractions. Now I can listen, and it helps me stay focused while working on records in “waiting for calls” mode. I have a normal clock radio in my home…
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I’m watching an H2 program called Civilization Lost, covering little-known sites that hint at entire civilizations that have been lost to history, the segment on the Turkish site Gobekli Tepe was striking to me. The History 2 channel seems to be slightly more “woo-woo ancient aliens!1!” than the regular History channel. Also covered: Varna, Tel Hamoukar, the Minoan culture, and others. Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had…
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On a whim, I looked once again to see if there’s a way to set WinAmp up to “scrobble” streaming radio, and it appears not… but one word at the Last.fm support site said simply “clementine” and that seems to do the job nicely. Built in support for Last.fm, Grooveshark, Spotify, and a few other services. There’s a ton of Internet radio stations to explore, and it’s relatively simple to set up playlists with my favorite Radio Riel streams, plus stations I’ve encountered on trips and local stations too. The Last.fm feed is put into my sidebar using a plugin…
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On a whim, I looked once again to see if there’s a way to set WinAmp up to “scrobble” streaming radio, and it appears not… but one word at the Last.fm support site said simply “clementine” and that seems to do the job nicely. Built in support for Last.fm, Grooveshark, Spotify, and a few other services. There’s a ton of Internet radio stations to explore, and it’s relatively simple to set up playlists with my favorite Radio Riel streams, plus stations I’ve encountered on trips and local stations too. The Last.fm feed is put into my sidebar using a plugin…
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After seeing a lot of tweets yesterday about Up with Chris Hayes and the Melissa Perry-Harris Show, I finally watched both shows (or most of Up and all of MPH) via TiVo. I’ve never watched political wonk shows before (comedy shows like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher shouldn’t count, but they do), and it was fun! They’re shown Saturday and Sunday mornings and seem to have an enthusiastic fan base that hang out on Twitter under hashtags #uppers and #nerdland respectively. A lot of dumb sex-link spambots and anti-factists hang out too, so I quickly learned who was reality-based and…