Today is the 22nd birthday — or maybe the 17th — of a now classic fictional “character.” That’s HAL 9000, the computer that plays a central role in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In both the movie, co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and Clarke’s book, HAL tells astronaut David Bowman that he […]
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It’s been a long time since I posted about the interesting, at times disturbing, insights that appear in Google’s autocomplete suggestions. Autocomplete displays potential searches based on the first couple words entered in the search box. The suggestions are based on the search activity of all web users and the context of the web pages […] Today is the 40th anniversary of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine. So why is this blog post about Lenny Bruce? Because as an Atlantic look at the significance of the routine points out — and as Carlin would freely admit — Lenny Bruce paved the way. Bruce has long […] Monday’s announcement that Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is going to be republished in Germany for the first time since the end of World War II brought a couple thoughts to mind. I find it interesting that the State of Bavaria holds the copyright to the book. According to the news report, Bavaria took over the […] At first, it was simply going to be a Weekend Edition item but then a contrasting item using the same phraseology I intended appeared, causing me to plunge into dangerous waters. First was the news that a publisher is releasing an edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that totally eliminates the word […] |
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