Mark A. Rayner's Blog: Mark A. Rayner's Goodreads Blog, page 116

Arthur C. Clark, wicked smart prognosticator

I'm still impressed by Arthur C. Clark. Not only did he write 2001: A Space Odyssey (the book and the movie), he contributed to the development of geostationary satellites as a communications technology.

This clip is fascinating. He's right about the communications (though a lot of it is Internet, not satellite), and dead wrong on the cities. Cities are continuing to get bigger, despite advances in communications.

Click here to view the embedded video.

YouTube video here, via

Everyone needs a hobby

Alltop only ruins research with peyote.

Vintage Ads of Fictional Futures, Mark II

It's back!

This contest ran a couple of years ago, and it was a lot of fun, so let's do it again.

Here's the concept: find a vintage ad, and then create a product from a created world — it can be from a book, movie, TV, etc. It doesn't have to be science fiction; you could go with a fantasy world, an alternate reality, whatever. The only proviso is that it has to have been written by someone else, so none of your own bizarre fictional futures. Here's a couple I mocked up, based on the...

Why everyone should read Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut's short history of human stupidity is as relevant in today's world of climate change and genetic engineering as it was in 1963…

Read the rest of the post at The Mark.

Matrix, Dude

Yes, yes, yes! A mashup of The Big Lebowski and The Matrix:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also on YouTube.

Alltop thinks those pills really pull the whole room together. Via The High Definite.

Things to put out of your mind on vacation

This is less of a worry than the giant pile of spam building up in my (uh, embarrassingly) several email accounts. Sorry, I should have said giant STEAMING pile of spam.

Alltop thinks there's something sexy about the word "pile". Go visit Rob's site for more cartoons — you'll be happy you did.

The Tatooine Rhapsody

I'm not sure that cutting it to 6 minutes saves the prequel trilogy to Star Wars, but setting it to Bohemian Rhapsody certainly helps.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also at YouTube.

Alltop is a big JarJar fan.

Why we never see Superman anymore

And if he was flying lower to the ground, at really high speeds, it wouldn't even take two minutes. Hell, just a little cloud of atomized kryptonite would do it.

[Batman would so take him.:]

Alltop is a BIG fan of Aquaman. Awesome cartoon by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Blogger ponders on things instead of musing about them

LONDON, Ontario (The Skwib) — The web is still reeling from the revelation that a blogger has been pondering things instead of musing about them.

"Yeah, I've spent a lot of time musing, in fact, the tagline from my blog used to be 'muted musings from Jeff's tasty trumpet" — clever, eh? But . . . I don't know, it just seemed like it was time to, you know, start pondering instead," Jeffrey Trumpeter told The Skwib in an early morning phone interview.

Trumpeter runs "Assorted Cream Fillings...

Excruciating Album Cover Art – Ignatz Topolino

I include this cover, not because it is awful, but because the story behind this collection of classic jazz nose-harmonica stylings remind me of such an excruciatingly sad story.

In the annals of nose harmonica players, Ignatz Topolino is usually the first entry. He was a genius. Grown men would weep at his rendition of Whatever Lola Wants, and women would toss panties whenever he ripped off his heart-breaking version of Summertime. But like all geniuses, Topolino had his obsessions.

He...