Learning Through Level Design with Mario: “The first thing that happens when you play Super Mario Bros. is: You die.”
Star Trek Original Series Episode Art Prints: “We’ve taken the voyages of the starship Enterprise one adventure further with a series of original movie-style art print sets commemorating every episode of Star Trek, the iconic American television series that aired from 1966 to 1969.”
Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb: “Watching this film, there are many things to wonder (and worry) about, but one of the stranger moments is how the bomb bursts in complete silence. We see a sudden white flash. It makes the soldiers flinch. Then there’s a pause, a pregnant quiet that lasts for a beat, then another and then — there’s a roar.”
Batman: Plutocrat: “Superman (for example) fights intergalactic dictators, evil monopolists, angry generals, and dark gods, i.e. symbols of abusive authority. Batman fights psychotics, anarchists, mob bosses, the mentally ill, and environmentalists, i.e. those who would overthrow the status quo. Superman fights those who would impose their version of order on the world. Batman fights those who would unbalance the order Batman himself imposes on Gotham.”
Dinosaur Comics Presents McDonald’s Presents the Olympic Games: “Perhaps you’ve forgotten Coca-Cola, THE OFFICIAL SUGARED AND COLOURED BEVERAGE OF MCDONALD’S PRESENTS THE OLYMPIC GAMES?? You want a sculpted gold-medal body? Have you tried exercising? Sure, maybe. But have you tried CHUGGING A COKE?”
Drunk History Volume Six: Tesla versus Edison, as explained by a drunk historian.
Pipe Dreams: Coolest instrument ever.
Happy Birthday Harrison Ford: Can you guess how old he is?
R is for Ray Bradbury: Another nice little story about the late author.
Life in the Gray: “There will be many, many times when you shouldn’t put your students first. Go home. Go to sleep. Get a massage. Take a day off. Spend time with your family. Play a video. Ask that teacher next door for a worksheet. Often, what’s good for you is good for them. You should do what’s good for you. Sometimes what’s good for you isn’t good for them. Sometimes you should still do it.”
Neal Gaiman remembers Ray Bradbury: “. . .Bradbury. The man who took an idea of the American Midwest and made it magical and tangible, who took his own childhood and all the people and things in it and used it to shape the world. The man who gave us a future to fear, one without stories, without books. The man who invented Hallowe’en, in its modern incarnation.”
Genre in the Mainstream: The New Yorker’s Science Fiction Issue: “In the end, when Eustace Tilley holds up his monocle to a rocketship, the analysis is awesome, readable, and makes you feel smarter. But Eustace Tilley can sadly, not build a convincing rocketship.”
A tale of openness and secrecy: The Philadelphia Story: “Attempting to control the spread of nuclear weapons by controlling scientific information would be fruitless. . . . Because they had not been part of the Manhattan Project in any way, they were under no legal obligation to maintain secrecy; they were simply informed private citizens. In the fall of 1945, they tried to figure out the technical details behind the bomb.”
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived: An Oatmeal comic.
Nikola Tesla Wasn’t God and Thomas Edison Wasn’t the Devil: The Forbes response.
I wrote a response to the Forbes article about my Tesla comic: The response to the response.
Could a Rendezvous with Rama Movie Capture the Wonder of the Book?: A comic critique.
The Revolution SF Watercooler: HP Lovecraft and Racism: “The real issue is whether a reader finds his work worthy despite the worst parts of his personality.”
The Avengers Inside Hopper’s Iconic Nighthawks Painting: Yep.
Going to a rock concert is different when you’re 60: This guy writing for the Globe and Mail? I know this guy. Awesome guy.
Every Major’s Terrible: Sung to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major General”: “Why anyone who wants a job would study lit’s a mystery/unless their only other choice were something like art history. . . .”
Who’s In the Epic Fantasy Avengers?: “King Arthur would be perfect in assuming the leadership role that Captain America provides. He knows how to run the show, how to fight, and how to give people ideals to fight for. Instead of a shield, he’s got one badass sword — Excalibur is sort of like having a super power all to itself.”
The Only Thing That Can Stop This Asteroid is Your Liberal Arts Degree: “I don’t need some pencilneck with four Ph.D’s, one-thousand hours of simulator time, and the ability to operate a robot crane in low-Earth orbit. I need someone with four years of broad-but-humanities-focused studies, three subsequent years in temp jobs, and the ability to reason across multiple areas of study.”
The Most Astounding Fact: By Neil Degrasse Tyson, poet of the stars, with illustrations.
The Most Dangerous Gamer: But is it art? The perennial gaming debate.