Geek culture

Woodworker Barry Shields' impressive Star Trek coffee table creation proves yet again that Trekkies are nothing if not, uh... Enterprising. Sorry.

Terrible puns aside, there's no need to apologize for this one-of-a-kind living room conversation piece. It took two attempts for Shields to get it just the way he wanted, with the glass cut in such a way to make the ship appear to be in motion.

You'll find it for sale on Etsy for $3,100--a real deal when you consider how many galaxies this genuine starship has visited and how deliciously geeky it would be to … Read more

Some readers may remember the flickering, old-timey, surprisingly three-dimensional GIFs that made a splash on the Internet back in 2008. Writer and artist Joshua Heineman created them from images of 19th and early 20th century stereoscope cards he culled from a collection placed online by the New York Public Library.

Heineman took the two slightly offset images on a given card, separated them, dropped them into Photoshop, and created animated GIFs that quickly "flipped" from one image to the other, over and over (a technique known as "wiggle stereoscopy").

Then, as part of a personal project called "Reaching for the Out of Reach," he posted the GIFs on his Tumblr blog, where they were discovered by the blogosphere and spread far and wide.

Now--thanks to that online fame, and to the New York Public Library's push to reinvent itself in the Internet Age--you too can breathe new three-dimensional life into these stereoscopic artifacts.… Read more

As the case for Web censorship moves forward, Twitter announced today that it'll soon block tweets on a countrywide basis when they violate local restrictions, so we can look forward to our government making it illegal for Nickelback to fight back against their Twitter haters.

We're surprised that some Google users are upset about the company's new "streamlined" privacy policies--don't they know that Google knows more about you than your own mother?… Read more

Why build a Gingrichian lunar colony, which would cost billions, when you can send a man nearly into space for only $400?

That's what Canadians Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad did with an albeit plastic man from Lego and a modified weather balloon.

The 17-year-olds from Toronto bought an $85 weather balloon online and rigged it to a Styrofoam box equipped with three point-and-shoot cameras and a wide-angle video camera.

They threw in $160 worth of helium from a party supply store, a dash of superglue, and voila, a Legonaut was born.

The toy ascended 80,000 feet over Ontario, recording the awesome footage in the video below, before floating back to Earth some 97 minutes later on a homemade nylon parachute. … Read more

Your time is up. It's Timeline or bust for Facebook users now. The social network is automatically switching users over to the new profile look over the next few weeks.

Timeline dredges up your entire history from the day you first joined the network, and even back as far as your birth. That includes your awkward "Twilight" phase and that time you posted a heartfelt poem over a breakup three years ago.

Facebookers now face a huge banner image on top of each profile and a constantly updated stream of information about what your friends are doing, posting, listening to, or watching.

This is a big change and not everyone is thrilled about it. It's kind of like having an interactive autobiography online, except you also get to know that your best bud just watched the crazy honey badger video for the tenth time.… Read more

McDonald's posted impressive quarterly earnings two days ago, but a scoop from the UK Sun newspaper today exposes the astonishing truth behind McDonald's Chicken McNuggets: you shouldn't eat them everyday for 15 years straight.

The show title today is ripped from a quote from the mother of 17-year-old UK factory worker Stacey Irvine, who's eaten nothing but McDonald's Chicken McNuggets since she was 2 years old. Shockingly, doctors maintain that her diet may have been a factor in her sudden anemia and swollen tongue veins that caused her to collapse yesterday.

Speaking of things getting ripped off, we'll also talk about the Australian Transport Minister that just got caught copying Michael Douglas' speech from the movie "The American President," and the NFL installing computers on the sidelines of the Pro Bowl for players to tweet fans during the game!… Read more

The Interactive Periodic Table of Swearing speaks both to the giggling inner 12-year-old and stressed-out adult in all of us. It's a big, electronic table with push buttons that prompt a rainbow of cuss words and phrases.

The table is rife with variations on F-bomb expletives. You can guess what phrase pushing the "Mf" button triggers. There are also some milder insults like "silly bastard" and "stinks like piss." The table is a British creation, so some of the curse words feature charming Briticisms like "arsehole" and "bollocks."

Heavier swears are to the left while lighter and more infantile interjections are to the right. This would certainly spice up your next chemistry lab.… Read more

Agree or disagree with the shutdown of MegaUpload, it certainly sends an intimidating message about just how dangerous Internet censorship can be. While we are in no way condoning piracy, we also feel bad for the MegaUpload users who were using the service for legitimate purposes. … Read more

The recent Muppets movie no doubt brought Jim Henson back into the minds of many, and a just-unearthed commercial film he did for The Bell System nearly 50 years ago gives a hilarious glimpse of his earlier days--and of the youthful years of computing.

Discovered in AT&T's archives and posted this week to the company's ATTTechChannel section on YouTube, the 1963 short, "Robot," addresses the anxiety felt by humans in regard to machines and computers.… Read more