Old is the New New

The SITI Program
The Search for Intelligence on the Internet: My man Mark Rayner plugs the numbers into the Drake equation, predicts that there should be 2.7 intelligent blogs in cyberspace. Keep watching the skies!

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.