A few of my favorites:
The true story behind Boston’s Curse of the Bambino. Also: girly burlesquers!
You half-Japanese girls, you do it to me every time.
In which our hero tries his hand at that most diverting genre of blog posts, impotent griping about lousy customer service.
Does the history of telephony ca. 1900 offer lessons for the telecom world of today?
Grab your turbo-pistols, snap on your big bubble space helmet, and rocket to adventure in the Astounding year of 1963!
Most recent posts:
Peeing dogs, Donkey Kong, lesbians, sitcoms, and gin.
Spybots invade English village.
Beards, bots, and were they hot?
More robots, more infomancy, more “wonderful and pathetic factoids”: the internet is our flying car.
Japanese robots and the gaijin who keep stealing them. Plus blood sacrifice by index card to begin the information age.
In loose Borgesian categories:
Actionable Offenses, a collection of indecent and illegal phonograph recordings from the 1890s, recovered from the Edison Archives and now available on CD. (Edit: I scooped the New York Times!)
Tags: Old Weird America · Asides · Gilded Age · Technology
Interwob links to confound and bemuse:
The Tank
Tom Englehardt posts Chalmers Johnson’s review of Alex Abella’s new history of RAND.
Note To Self: Ia Fhtagn
What appears to be H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book: creepy images, story ideas, and games he’d like to run. (Via Felix Gilman.)
High Tech Noon
Do not laser-shark me, oh my darling: isn’t everything better with rayguns?
Men In Tights
It’s been well linked (Barista assumed it was taking the piss but I think he underestimates Chabon’s geeky earnestness) but it’s worth it: Michael Chabon on the superhero unitard. PS How good is All-Star Superman, am I right?
The Cardboard Internet
Paul Collins on the Mundaneum, a networked encyclopedia on fifteen million index cards (shades of the Memex?). Plus index cards as (literally) the U.S. War Department’s killer app.
Google Maps of Sci-Fi
BLDG BLOG’s Geoff Manaugh on mapping the fictional onto the real.
More Dick
You heard it here first:* Moby Dick is awesome! (*No, you didn’t.)
Au Clair de la Lune
Feast your ears on the oldest known sound recording–from 17 years before Edison’s phonograph. (Via Corn Chips & Pie.)
The Pickle King of Islamistan
Khalid (née Bertram) Sheldrake, the “power hungry, toothbrush mustachioed, British ninny” who somehow failed to convert western China to Islam.
Elektro: The World's Fair Robot That Smoked
Excellent robot content from Dave Lester. Ah, but was it trained to smash your camera?
Invisible elves make our site go:
© 2001–2007 Rob MacDougall
2 responses so far ↓
1 Adam // Jun 26, 2007 at 1:05 pm
This really cracks me up, it feels too good to be true. I’m sure that when Dr. Watson came running to help Mr. A.G. Bell, he got flashed then kicked in the ass for being a pervert. A man will find a way to abuse a new technology, especially at the expense of another man.
2 cafe curtains girl // Apr 4, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Definitely. If 100 men decide not to abuse something that can be abused, there will be that one who will corrupt them all. Human nature…
Leave a Comment