The Null Device
2001/2/7
Lava lamps revert from Passé Retro Kitsch back to Novel Retro Camp.
"It all depends whether you're talking about straight, unironic, revivalist retro or one of the numerous strains of pre-X and Gen-X irony," said Seth Burks, 29, author of the award-winning Athens, GA-based 'zine Burning Asshole. "I've identified 22 distinct varieties of irony-informed retro and non-retro aesthetics, including camp, kitsch, trash, schmaltz, post-schmaltz, and post-post-schmaltz. It's time we addressed the woeful inadequacies of the government's current retro-classification system."
Did Tom and Nicole split over which evil cult (Scientology or the Catholic Church) to raise their kids in? (via Plastic)
I'm not making this up: Esteemed Hollywood thespian Arnold Schwarzenegger says he may take a break from blowing shit up and run for governor of California.
Ariel Sharon wins Israel by a landslide. We can probably expect the next Six-Day War to commence any minute now.
A post-mortem at defunct Terry Gilliam project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Pity that this film is dead in the water. (via Robot Wisdom)
Those wily, inscrutable Arab terrorists are up to no good again; this time they're hiding terrorist attack plans in Internet porn and chat rooms. Or so say unnamed "U.S. officials and experts". Though for all we know the officials in question may be Bible-bashing anti-porn zealots in Bush's cabinet or some aspiring J. Edgar Hoover seeking to justify sweeping surveillance powers. (via Robot Wisdom)
Use it or lose it: A lot of young people are suffering from memory impairment caused by excessive reliance on computers. Apparently, if you don't exercise it (such as by relying on your PalmPilot or PC), your memory atrophies like any other organ.
Alexander Abian would be proud; astronomers in the U.S. are proposing to alter Earth's orbit (and presumably its tilt as well), by using the gravity of a large asteroid (how large? sufficiently large that they would have to aim it very carefully, as not to wipe out all life on the planet). Mind you, their intent is not so much to do away with natural disasters and diseases as to keep the Earth habitable in a billion or so years' time, when the Sun increases in brightness.
Dreamcast programming info and tools. Given that these game consoles are (a) apparently more readily hackable than PlayStations (for one, you can make a bootable CD for them with a normal drive), (b) run NetBSD and Linux, and (c) are discontinued (and thus likely to be selling cheaply, especially when all the kids want a PS2), they may be worth buying for hack value. Now if someone figured out a way of bolting an IDE hard disk onto one, it would make quite a nifty web server/MP3 jukebox/(insert your own application here).