"I've been asked to analyze an exotic chemical sample from a supervillain attack. It's highly caustic and behaves so strangely when it should be inert that it looks alive."
Even under the circumstances I had to flash a grin. "Sounds like magic."

Pavlov's dogs could not have been more faithful. "Because people ( Read more... )

Some intriguing local stories about revenants ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Book Passage, 2005 ( Read more... )

We are, technically speaking, a nation of constant infringers.

A. Infringement Nation
To illustrate the unwitting infringement that has become quotidian for the average American, take an ordinary day in the life of a hypothetical law professor named John. ...

In the morning, John checks his email, and, in so doing, begins to tally up the liability ( Read more... )

Or is this perhaps a product of the over-excited brain of a middle-aged and somewhat disparaged poet, when he finds that his ignored, his arcane, his deviously perspicuous meanings, which he thought not meanings, since no one appeared able to understand them, had after all one clear-eyed and amused reader and judge?

* ( deviously perspicuous? )

"I don't stay after I set out dinner," Mrs. Dudley went on. "Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes."

"I know," Eleanor said.

"We live over in the town, six miles away."

"Yes," Eleanor said, remembering Hillsdale.

"So there won't be anyone around if you need help."

"I understand."

"We couldn't even hear you, in the night."

"I ( Read more... )

The people who control AACS, the copy protection technology used on HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, are apparently trying to shut down websites that publish a certain 128-bit integer. The number is apparently a “processing key” used in AACS. Together with a suitable computer program, the key allows the decryption of video content on most existing HD-DVD ( Read more... )

The singer has just toured the US on a biodiesel-powered bus to raise awareness about climate change, and made the paper use suggestion on her daily blog.

“I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we ( Read more... )

...the cutting-edge sciences no longer easily lend themselves to adventure stories. A rocket ship crash-landing in the steaming jungles of Venus can easily have a half-clad but comely cavegirl appear, pursued by savage space Neanderthals, whereupon our red-blooded Robinson Crusoe of space, with his torn shirt, can leap into the fray with his space- ( Read more... )