Stephenson Short Story

Up on the screen, a cartoon elf or sprite or something pokes its head out from behind a window, then draws it back. No, Im not a paranoid schizophrenic - this is the much-hyped intelligent agent who comes with the box. I ignore it, make my escape from Gameland and blunder into a lurid district of the Metaverse where thousands of infomercials run day and night, each in its own window. I watch an ad for Chinese folk medicines made from rare-animal parts, genetically engineered and grown in vats. Grizzly-bear gallbladders are shown growing like bunches of grapes in an amber fluid.
The animated sprite comes all the way out, and leans up against the edge of the infomercial window. "Hey!" it says, in a goofy, exuberant voice, "Im Raster! Just speak my name - thats Raster - if you need any help."
I dont like Rasters looks. Its likely he was wandering the streets of Toontown and waving a sign saying WILL ANNOY GROWNUPS FOR FOOD until he was hired by the cable company. He begins flying around the screen, leaving a trail of glowing fairy dust that fades much too slowly for my taste.
"Give me the damn encyclopedia!" I shout. Hearing the dread word, my nephews erupt from the rug and flee.
http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Outlaws/SimoleonCaper.html

Cool: The Integral Fast Reactor

1) is cheaper to build and cheaper to operate than water reactors.
2) is passively safe. It uses a metallic fuel that expands when it overheats, causing the volume to increase which decreases the neutron density to the point where the reaction is shut down by the laws of nature without operator intervention! Loss of coolant poses no threat because the thermal currents of the liquid sodium are sufficient to stabilize the reactor.
3) can be operated in a mode where it uses as its fuel the spent fuel of the water reactors. By far the most lethal nuclear waste on the planet is the spent fuel which is produced in the United States at the rate of 6 tons a day. Currently our government policy is to store this waste for 30,000 years (Yucca Mountain). Electric rate payers are assessed one mill per kilowatt hour of power produced by nuclear reactors to deal with nothing but these spent fuel rods --- to the tune of more than $800 million per year!
http://www.dcia.com/ifr.html

More Ice On Mars

The Martian north pole is honeycombed with frozen water, exceeding the ice deposits detected on Mars southern end and raising hopes of finding traces of past microscopic life, astronomers reported on Thursday. The northern ice lies just below the Red Planets surface, according to Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, part of a team of U.S. and Russian scientists who made the discovery.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20030626/sc_nm/space_mars_dc&e=2&ncid=753

Cool Pic Of Phobos

http://www.rednova.com/news/images/1/2003/06/25/phobos_6big_mgs.jpg

Interview With Designer Tim Brown

The way I think of it, technology travels curves. You can think of the steep part of the curve as the technology push stage, when new technology is changing very fast. And what accelerates that curve are issues of usability and accessibility?that is, having to get people to understand what the technology can do and figure out a way to fit it into their lives. Later on, as the technology change curve starts to flatten out, then users need a different way of differentiating the technologies. A good example is the personal computer: technology does not differentiate PCs these days. The only place you get any differentiation is when somebody recognizes a new need that a PC can address. Thats the role of what we call human factors?the fit of technology to individuals and groups of people.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_brown062503.asp?p=0

Black Holes And Stellar Births

They are the most efficient engines of destruction known to humanity. Their intense gravity is a one-way ticket to oblivion for anything that strays too close; inside them is undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. We see them only because the victims do not go quietly to their doom. Material spiraling into a black hole can heat up to millions of degrees and glow brightly. Some of its kinetic energy and momentum may be transferred to a jet of particles flowing outward at close to the speed of light. Black holes of varying sizes take the rap for fusillades of radiation and plasma that astronomers observe all over the cosmos.
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0004567B-11FB-1EDD-8E1C809EC588EF21

Wired Interviews StrongBad Creators

Every Monday morning, a bare-chested Flash cartoon creature with an indeterminate accent, a potbelly and a Mexican wrestling mask entertains almost 300,000 people with antics like composing an impromptu techno song. Not everyone gets it, but enough people flock to Mike and Matt Chapmans HomestarRunner website that its stars, Strong Bad, Homestar, Marzipan and The Cheat are gaining cult status with pre-teens, the Gen-X crowd and everyone in between. To boot, the Atlanta-based brothers have made a tidy business selling T-shirts featuring their creations. Wired News interviewed the twenty-something Chapman brothers, with contributor Melissa Palmer, who is the voice of Marzipan. Here is an excerpt from the interview.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,59261,00.html