Oh, man, I’d love to write stuff like Wil Wheaton’s gonzo article on E3 in the Onion’s A.V. Club.
Last week, though, it was net neutrality, and my second actual interview for the Tech section. It’s not exactly playing tennis with Shigeru Miyamoto, but I hope I explained the idea clearly enough.
If you’ve ever wondered where the ants go when they scurry down their holes, check out these plaster casts of ant colonies. Incredible stuff, from the flat, round chambers to the vertical helical shafts connecting them.
(Found on Boing Boing)
It’s early yet, and there are only seven reviews listed but The Da Vinci Code has a rating of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ouch.
I was listening to the Radio-Canada Toronto stream at work today to see how far gone my French is, and I wondered if RC does podcasts. And what’s a “podcast” in French anyway?
Here’s the answer: Baladodiffusion.
A wonderful, Quebec government-approved word if I ever heard one. “Diffusion” is the word for broadcasting and “balado-” comes from “balladeur,” litterally, “wanderer,” the OQLF-approved word for Walkman and, now, iPod.
Of course, in reality, most French people call them “podcasting,” “Walkman” and “iPod.”
In Swiss French, by the by, it’s “podiffusion,” which cuts the number of syllables by a third.
Han shoots first, right?
Well, you can play the scene however you like with your very own Mos Eisley Cantina bookends.
— “Ches ko po kuta x’esta klenko ya ooska.”
— “Yeah, I’ll bet you have.” [Piew, piew! ]
(via Boing Boing)
No blogging in the last couple days as most of my surfing time went into researching my CBC column on PS3 and Wii at E3.
I wrote a lot of words there and barely skimmed the surface of the news coming out of that conference. I didn’t even mention the crackdown on scantily clad booth babes.
The best photograph I’ve seen of probably the most photographed building in Canada.
No More Mister Nice Blog has an excellent take on blogs talking about blogs talking about blogs.
Here’s Atrios complaining about Mark Kleiman complaining about Atrios favorably linking to Digby complaining about Wonkette complaining about Peter Daou complaining about the media refusing to proclaim that Stephen Colbert was funny at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Is there an echo in here?
(Found on the Daou Report.)
FedEx radar data + swinging ’60s music = Google Video awesomeness.
Watch for the planes that head right for the storm and then chicken out.
(Found on kottke.)
The Toronto Star has a column on the true Da Vinci mystery — why it’s so popular.
And why CTV is flying to London and Paris to cover a movie opening. And why the History Channel is devoting a week to it.
Vinay Menon calls it “mediocre pulp fiction built atop the quicksand of shoddy scholarship and recycled conspiracies.”
I’ll add “bad cryptography” to that.
As Kevin Sylvester said the other morning: “I’ve read Hardy Boy mysteries with better codes.”
My tumblelog