The pretrial hearing began yesterday for James Holmes, the perpetrator of the movie theater mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado this past year. Buzzfeed has a look at the dark world of so-called “Holmies,” tweens who have celebrity crushes on Holmes centered around his Manic Panic hair, supposed love of Slurpees, and disaffection from society. Presenting the evolution of sociopath and serial killer obsession in the age of Tumblr:
Columbia Pictures
Henry Hanks reports on an apparent disconnect between sci-fi geeks and belief in UFOs and other unexplained phenomena, at CNN’s GeekOut blog:
I was surprised, leading up to this weekend’s top grossing movie, “Men in Black 3,” that paranormal phenomena such as UFOs, the Roswell Incident and, yes, the mysterious Men in Black themselves were conspicuously missing from the zeitgeist.
When the popular sci-fi franchise launched 15 years ago, it was all anyone could talk about. The first “MIB,” along with “Independence Day,” “The X Files” and “Roswell,” brought aliens and government cover-ups their biggest pop culture moment in a generation…
The divide between some science fiction fans and paranormal believers is very real and hard to bridge, according to Timothy Green Beckley, author of “Mystery of the Men in Black: The UFO Silencers.”
“Science fiction and UFO people as a rule do not mix,” he said.
From the ever funny ’cause it’s true Married to the Sea.
Reminds me of the Ellen Page/Rainn Wilson geek comedy Super. Kirk Johnson reports for the New York Times:
Salt Lake City: Red Voltage and two of his masked crime-fighting colleagues were approaching an intersection here in Utah’s capital on a recent evening, walking night patrol on foot, when a car suddenly slowed next to them. The night was bitterly cold, laced with a wispy stew of fog that might or might not conceal a thousand dangers. The car’s window rolled down.
“Hi, superheroes!” a woman shouted from within. “I’m in love with you guys!”
Eat your heart out, Batman. In a niche of urban life that has evolved in recent years somewhere between comic-book fantasy and the Boy Scout oath, a cadre of self-cast crusaders — some with capes, some without, all with something to prove — are on the march…
A political writer for a second rate, online news magazine, Michael Cobb is assigned by his editor to cover a sci-fi and fantasy convention in a bid to humiliate him.
My heart sank, killing the warmth of the drugs. The urge for locomotion finally returned to my legs and I continued my sojourn to the elevator.
That feeling of flying high without a safety net returned as the elevator doors I’d finally reached opened with a sharp DING.
And there before me was a Darth Vader…
Some of CNN‘s iReporters are saying that Comic-Con just isn’t for the geeks anymore:
What is seen by some as the holy four-day weekend for geek culture at San Diego Comic-Con has gone mainstream in a big way for the past few years.
Starting today, there will be panels called “I Can’t Write, I Can’t Draw, But I Love Comics!” and “Indie Comics Marketing 101″ taking place alongside “USA Network’s ‘Psych’ ” and “Aloha, Earth!” a panel about CBS’ upcoming remake of “Hawaii Five-0.”
But this recent spate of panels about movie and TV properties with no sci-fi or comic book elements has some fans fuming.
“The mainstream TV and film representation at Comic-Con has outstripped the original essence of the convention,” said iReporter Brad Powers who attended Comic-Con the past two years, mainly for the panels on “Lost.” He believed that this “mainstreaming” of the convention has played a hand in it being filled to capacity.
From Roorback:
Remember the Star Wars Kid and his .002 seconds of Internet fame? He’s gone from harassed geek to community leader and young lawyer. That faint glow is coming from the cockles of my blackened heart.
The mean kids at the Internet table wreaked hell on the poor guy. Yes, the self-styled demi-gods of Gawker hate us all equally, but you can’t help but feel for the kid when you hear about the severe depressions, the lawsuits, and the hospitalizations.
But look at him now: president of a conservation society! Co-star of a documentary! Budding lawyer! Living meme! Sir, tonight I quietly drink to you. Without telling anyone I am doing so. Because that would be embarrassing for everyone.
Let’s all have a moment, shall we?
Could you live your life like this? Do you know anyone who does? A report on what it’s like to live your life based on what your life’s data you’ve recorded on your computer say you should do, in the New York Times:
Humans make errors. We make errors of fact and errors of judgment. We have blind spots in our field of vision and gaps in our stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t even answer the simplest questions. Where was I last week at this time? How long have I had this pain in my knee? How much money do I typically spend in a day? These weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We make decisions with partial information. We are forced to steer by guesswork. We go with our gut.
That is, some of us do. Others use data. A timer running on Robin Barooah’s computer tells him that he has been living in the United States for 8 years, 2 months and 10 days.
According to the movers & shakers of the internets, this is the new trend sweeping the web …
You are forewarned, I am not responsible for blindness resulting from viewing of these (many NSFW) pics. LazerTits says:
For centuries the female bosom has been wrongfully held in the prison of maternal duty and manboy motor-boating … It’s time to get ZAPPED!!!!
What will YOU say when your kids ask where you were during the revolution? Don’t burn your bra, BLAST IT!!!
Sunday March 14th is Pi Day, as well as Albert Einstein’s birthday.
Animation of the act of unrolling a circle's circumference, illustrating the ratio π. Author: John Reid (GNU)
Self-confessed geek Elizabeth Landau reports for CNN on how nerds everywhere plan to celebrate:
The sound of meditation for some people is full of deep breaths or gentle humming. For Marc Umile, it’s “3.14159265358979…”
Whether in the shower, driving to work, or walking down the street, he’ll mentally rattle off digits of pi to pass the time. Holding 10th place in the world for pi memorization — he typed out 15,314 digits from memory in 2007 — Umile meditates through one of the most beloved and mysterious numbers in all of mathematics.
Pi, the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle, has captivated imaginations for thousands of years — perhaps even since the first person tried to draw a perfect circle on the ground or wondered how to construct something round like a wheel.
