Designer and illustrator Olly Moss has produced some custom bad-guy targets for geeky shooters.
He has also submitted the design to Threadless, where he goes by the name of Woss. 
There he has a few fun submissions. For instance, he fit everyone’s favorite kaij? (monster) into Hokusai‘s Great Wave off Kanagawa.
(Hat tip to GeekDad.)
As GeekDad Ken Denmead points out, soon you’ll be able to raise your own padawan with the Force Trainer from Uncle Milton Industries:
The Force Trainer (expected to be priced at $90 to $100) comes with a headset that uses brain waves to allow players to manipulate a sphere within a clear 10-inch-tall training tower, analogous to Yoda and Luke Skywalker’s abilities in the Star Wars films.
[...]
In the Force Trainer, a wireless headset reads your brain activity, in a simplified version of EEG medical tests, and the circuitry translates it to physical action. If you focus well enough, the training sphere, which looks like a ping-pong ball, will rise in the tower.
[...]
Star Wars sound effects and audio clips emitted from the base unit “cue you in to progress to the next level (from Padawan to Jedi) or when to move the sphere up or down to keep challenging yourself,” Adler says.
I was just watching the first episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Jet Fuel Formula And Bullwinkle's Ride Or Goodbye, Dollink, which I found… uneven — but I loved Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman:
Colbert, SpongeBob may go dark on Time Warner:
Media giant Viacom Inc. said its Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and 16 other channels will go dark on Time Warner Cable Inc. at 12:01 a.m. Thursday if a new carriage fee deal is not agreed upon by then.The impasse over carriage fee hikes would mean “SpongeBob” and other shows like “The Daily Show” will be cut off to 13 million subscribers, said spokesman Alex Dudley, a vice president at Time Warner Cable. The nation’s second-largest cable operator primarily serves customers in New York state, the Carolinas, Ohio, Southern California and Texas.
Viacom has asked for fee increases of between 22 percent and 36 percent per channel, an amount that could increase customers’ cable bills, Dudley said. Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said the requested increase was in the very low double-digit percentage range.
“The issue is that they have asked for an exorbitant increase in their carriage fees and their network ratings are sagging,” he said. “Basically we’re trying to hold the line for our customer.”
Viacom said the increases would cost an extra 23 cents a month per subscriber — which works out to $35.9 million more in total. It said that Americans spend a fifth of their TV time watching Viacom shows but its fees make up less than 2.5 percent of the Time Warner cable bill.
In The Rabbi and the Norse King, David Friedman shares an amusing story from Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish:
An official brought the chief rabbi of a town before the Court of the Inquisition and told him, “We will leave the fate of your people to God. I am putting two slips of paper in this box. On one is written ‘Guilty.’ On the other is written ‘Innocent.’ Draw.”Now this inquisitor was known to seek the slaughter of all the Jews, and he had written “Guilty” on both pieces of paper.
The rabbi put his hand inside the box, withdrew a slip of paper—and swallowed it.
“What are you doing?” cried the Inquisitor. “How will the court know—”
“That’s simple,” said the rabbi. “Examine the slip that’s in the box. If it reads ‘Innocent,’ then the paper I swallowed obviously must have read ‘Guilty.’ But if the paper in the box reads ‘Guilty,’ then the one I swallowed must have read ‘Innocent.’”
As he says, it’s a clever trick, but one he’d heard before — in King Harald’s Saga:
It was determined, with the consent of all parties, that lots should be thrown into a box, and the Greeks and Varings should draw which was first to ride, or to row, or to take place in a harbour, or to choose tent ground; and each side should be satisfied with what the drawing of the lots gave them.Accordingly the lots were made and marked. Harald said to Gyrger, “Let me see what mark thou hast put upon thy lot, that we may not both mark our lots in the same way.” He did so. Then Harald marked his lot, and put it into the box along with the other. The man who was to draw out the lots then took up one of the lots between his fingers, held it up in the air, and said, “This lot shall be the first to ride, and to row, and to take place in harbour and on the tent field.” Harald seized his hand, snatched the die, and threw it into the sea, and called out, “That was our lot!” Gyrger said, “Why did you not let other people see it?” Harald replies, “Look at the one remaining in the box, — there you see your own mark upon it.”
A commenter spotted an important difference in the two stories:
In the saga, Harald is the cheat. In the Jewish version, the rabbi is merely defending himself against a potential cheat; if his adversary was honest then there should be no problem.
I prefer the story in the original Klingon.
Ken Denmead of GeekDad happily points new geek dads to the Stork Tools Daddy Diaper Bag from Dr. Moz, which is “gender-neutral in color scheme” and “designed with modern, geekier dads and moms in mind” — with the following geeky features:
The real key to its geeky allure though is the logo. Look closely. Anything seem familiar?
I think we can agree to their awesomeness; the only question is to the elemental nature of their awesomeness. Behold, the Periodic Table of Awesoments:
(Hat tip to Yana.)
I didn’t think about it much when I heard that Google Books would be including magazines — until Chris Radcliff of GeekDad pointed out that this included decades of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics:
Let the nerdgasmic loss of productivity commence!
A Jewish mother had “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” pulled from the kindergarten pageant, because it mentions Christmas. Jeffrey Goldberg responds:
Of course, the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was written by a Jewish-American songwriter, Johnny Marks. He also wrote “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Also written by Jews: “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” and of course, the mother of all Jewish-written Christmas songs, “White Christmas,” by Irving Berlin. Why, you could almost say there’s a conspiracy by Jews to dominate the Christmas-jingle-writing industry!
Their music for video games depends on play:
In a few short years, as the visual effects and realism of video games have evolved, so too have their soundtracks — from comical bleeps and annoying loops of ear candy to lush, epic soundtracks that instantly adapt to fit whatever a player decides to do. With an expected $50 billion in global sales this year, video games have turned into such a big business that established composers from film and television are signing on to create the sweeping scores and intricate sounds that help guide players through their missions.Harry Gregson-Williams, who scored Shrek, created the music for the action game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Steve Jablonsky, the composer for Transformers, wrote music for the Sims and Gears of War 2. Danny Elfman, whose theme music for the 1989 Batman movie won him a Grammy Award, scored the role-playing adventure game series Fable.
The gigs pay well: Composers can receive as much as $2,000 for each minute of music they write, with a typical game requiring 60 to 90 minutes of music. Including the allowance for hiring musicians, renting recording studios and post-production work, the music budgets for top-notch games can reach as high as half a million dollars.
Bear Grylls, of Man vs. Wild fame, has been cruising across Antarctica to promote Ethanol Ventures, but things have not gone well:
Sorry for the radio silence over the last 24 hours — but I have had a bit of an accident. We were all flying across the ice using the kite skis, which is when you use the big flexi-foil kites on long lines attached to your harness that propels you across the snow and ice. I was doing speeds of over 50 kilometres an hour when I hit a patch of blue ice, lost a ski and got catapulted into the air, crashing down very hard. There is no doubt my helmet saved my life, but I smashed my shoulder and hands and was badly winded. I knew at once I had done something bad to my shoulder and was in absolute agony, my shoulder was drooped down and a bone was sticking out at a weird angle. I am safe at our expedition basecamp now and the shoulder is all strapped up tight, but is very painful. The bottom line is I am lucky.We spoke on the satellite phone to a surgeon in the UK, who tried to diagnose the injury. But there is no doubt that I have snapped the main ligament and will require an operation on it. Weirdly Gilo had a similar accident some years ago and snapped the same ligament and looking at his 8″ massive scar across his shoulder isn’t very inspiring. We’ve called for medical repatriation but all of that is easier said than done. The weather is an ever present issue and not many planes or pilots can fly this far and land on the ice. But the priority needs to be to get back to get some proper medical attention and surgery.
I don’t recommend getting your political analysis from musicals, and I certainly wouldn’t say that Prop 8: The Musical presents a cogent argument for or against gay marriage, but it is an amusing “Obamanation”:
(Hat tip to Yana.)
The recent terrorist attack in Mumbai — in which pairs of “buddies” with AK-47 assault rifles methodically mowed down bystanders — brings to mind the 1997 North Hollywood Shootout:
The bank robbers actually had multiple assault rifles in different calibers and body armor — although they had no grenades or other explosives.
The whole thing was quite reminiscent of Heat:
Go ahead and read Jeremiah Tucker’s version of Atlas Shrugged updated for the current financial crisis. A taste:
“I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun,” she said. “Don’t let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we’ll revitalize our country’s failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits.”“Oh, no, I got out of that suckers’ game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management.”
“What?”
He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn’t betray his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the edge of her desk. “Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right this second, I’m earning millions in interest off money I don’t even have.”
He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive ability and goodness.
“There’s a whole world out there of byzantine financial products just waiting to be invented, Dagny. Let the leeches run my factories into the ground! I hope they do! I’ve taken out more insurance on a single Rearden Steel bond than the entire company is even worth! When my old company finally tanks, I’ll make a cool $877 million.”
A Kuwaiti entrepreneur hopes to create the next Pokémon — or Justice League:
Two years ago, Naif Al Mutawa started up his own comic-book series, spurred by the dearth of Arabic-language children’s books in the Middle East.Now, the 37-year-old Kuwaiti entrepreneur and his small company, backed by Islamic-compliant private investors, are lining up deals that could help him build a children’s-entertainment powerhouse in the Arab world.
[...]
Ynon Kreiz, CEO of Endemol and the former head of Fox Kids Europe, who has ushered in hit franchises like Power Rangers, thinks that Mr. Mutawa has found the right formula to make it big globally. “The subject matter and angle here give us a chance to really stand out,” Mr. Kreiz says of “The 99.”Teshkeel and Edemol plan to write and produce a season of 30-minute cartoons based on the comic books. Animation for the show is expected to be done at digital studios in India. Endemol, the producer of the original “Big Brother,” plans to market “The 99″ through its television distribution network, which covers Asia, Europe and North America, as well as the Middle East.
“The 99″ refers to the number of attributes the Quran says are possessed by Allah. The superhero protagonists of the action-packed series strive to bring the light of knowledge to a violent world. To depict their adventures, Mr. Mutawa works with illustrators tapped from DC Comics, a division of Time Warner Inc., and Marvel Characters, a division of Marvel Entertainment Inc.
The story line is based on an historical event: the sacking of 13th-century Baghdad and the burning of that Islamic empire’s library. At the time, it was the largest repository of knowledge in the world. In the comic books, Muslim teenagers from such diverse places such as Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Hungary, work to bring wisdom and reason back to the world.
Jabbar, a Hulk-like figure from Saudi Arabia, has enormous strength, Noora, a young woman from the United Arab Emirates, has power over light. Darr, a blond American boy in a wheelchair, can relieve and inflict pain. Standing in their way is an evil multinational corporation and its leader, who wants to keep the world ignorant and violent.
“The 99″ accounts for a tiny portion of the global comics market. Teshkeel distributes one million copies a year, with just over half going to Asian markets and the rest to the Middle East. By contrast, Diamond Comics Distributors Inc., the main North American distributor, sold 67.9 million comic books in the first 10 months of 2008, according to industry tracker Comics Chronicles.
Licensing rights to the series has been sold for seven languages, including Hindi, Malaysian and French. But Mr. Mutawa says the real money in the comic books will come from marketing agreements, such as the Nestlé deal, and his budding theme-park operations.
Mr. Mutawa says his themes are about ethics, not religious dogma. No one in the comic books prays. There is no mention of scripture or the Prophet Mohammed. One heroine wears a burka, the head-to-toe covering worn by some Muslim women. Others wear sarongs, or ride skateboards. Comics are published in Arabic, English and Bahasa Indonesian.
A devout Muslim with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and an M.B.A. from Columbia University, Mr. Mutawa is versed in Islamic philosophy and American youth literature. He’s a big fan of “The Hardy Boys,” the children’s classic he discovered on his annual trips to summer camp in New Hampshire in the 1980s.
Censors in Saudi Arabia, the largest market in the Middle East, banned “The 99″ its first year off the presses for what they called “un-Islamic” content. Some Arabic-language newspapers have refused to run serialized versions of the books.
But Mr. Mutawa pressed on, tapping like-minded Muslims to finance the project. Partners from Bahrain-based Unicorn Investment Bank, an Islamic-compliant investor, put $15.9 million of their personal funds into Teshkeel last year. They took two of the company’s five board seats.
Because Unicorn’s own board of Shariah scholars, who rule on whether an investment complies with Islam, implicitly blessed the cartoon, the Saudi censorship board changed its view on the comic, according to Mr. Mutawa.