Thursday, March 31, 2005
Just think...around 70 years ago, people were just being introduced to an amazing new technology: dial phones As opposed to the cans-on-a-stick where you had to yell, "Operator! Operator! Get me PEnnsylvania-6500!" Even those must have seemed like science fiction compared to crank telephones. On the Internet Movie Archive, you can watch a short 1927 movie that explained how to use them, e.g., "Pull the dial around until finger touches stop." And to think that someday, even wardriving will seem as painfully quaint. [via Boing Boing]- Something for us old geeks: Virtual Apple has an entire library of old Apple 2 disks online, accessible through the ActiveGS Apple emulator that uses your browsers' ActiveX functionality. Lode Runner! Zaxxon! The original Castle Wolfenstein!
- Chicago may rank third in population, but it's still the "Second City" when it comes to long commutes. Chicagoans commute an average of 33 minutes each way. [via Chicagoist]
- Food for Thought from feministe, reportedly heard on NPR: "The 44 Democrat senators represent about 3.5 million more people than the 55 Republican senators do." Eh?
- Neil Gaiman has an interesting post on Alan Moore, Margaret Thatcher and UK's Clause 28, a 1988 edict (just recently repealed in 2003) that essentially declared thou shalt not speak of homosexuality in a positive light in any institution of learning...and comic censorship. By the way, I will once again not get a chance to hear Neil Gaiman speak, for the fifth time in a decade. He's coming to the University of Chicago for a brief fellowship stint and will give a talk/book signing on April 19th. Tickets for the event went on sale March 28th - Monday - and by the afternoon, when I finally had a chance to try and get some, they were sold out. I mean, seriously...I work two blocks away from the Reynolds Club ticket office and venue, and I still can't get tickets? Bah!
farkleberries Links du Jour 76
