Linguist spends first three years of son's life speaking only Klingon

An expert at linguistics used nothing but the fictional Klingon language from the Star Trek franchise when he spoke to his son for the first three years of the kid's life.Dr. d'Armond Speers wanted to observe whether baby Alec would pick up Klingon as naturally as most babies learn English or any other real language. Speers was especially giddy about the prospect of Alec's...

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Boeing creates laser weapon that shoots down flying aircraft

The photo on the left is an unmanned aerial vehicle (like those drone aircraft that are being used by the military) being tracked and destroyed while in flight by a laser weapon developed by the Integrated Defense Systems unit of the Boeing Company. This isn't the first practical laser-based weapon to be developed, but the technology is certainly getting refined at a brisk...

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It's an odd commentary on our culture...

...when all the literature on the front shelves of the bookstores is about either vampires, zombies, or Sarah Pal...

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Not much going on here today

How's things over at your pla...

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CLIMATE RESEARCH UNIT HACKED! 61 megabytes reveal massaged data on global warming?! Did scientists conspire on climate scare?!

Ho-lee HELL!! This could turn into one of the biggest stories of the decade... scratch that, decades!Could it be that the whole "global warming" thing has been nothing but a colossal scam on damned near every man, woman, child and dumb animal on the planet?!The Intertubes are smoking hot this afternoon from the news about University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Unit getting hacked and a heapin' big pile of material being leaked online....

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WWII IN HD: Best high-def programming I've seen yet!

My DVR just received a massive enema. Gone is stuff that I've recorded like P2 and Krull and Clash of the Titans and Stroker Ace (though how that got scheduled is beyond me, and I'm still trying to figure out how I wound up with Yentl). So now I've got plenty of disk space to record WWII in HD from the History Channel.HOW did I miss hearing about this until now? Well, no...

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LOST Season 6: February 2nd, 2010

ABC's Lost, perhaps the most defining and innovative show of the decade, will begin its sixth and final season on February 2nd, 2010. That's a Tuesday night by the way, which is where Lost will be from here on out (apart from a break for the Winter Olympics). Eighteen hours spread out over sixteen episodes will begin with the two-hour season premiere, "LA X". Can showrunners...

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Food Nazis strike again! Movie theater popcorn = 3 hamburgers?!?

The first time I heard about Center for Science in the Public Interest it was 1994. That was also the first time these ninnies went after movie theater popcorn. They declared it wasn't safe because of the coconut oil that most cinemas pop their corn in. The very next day EVERY movie theater listing in the News & Record posted declarations that their popcorn was free...

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Box art for BIOSHOCK 2

Don't even think of bugging me about anything come February 9th 'cuz I've already cleared my calendar for that date and Lord willing I'll be spending all of it immersed in BioShock 2. And at last 2K Games has revealed the cover art for the hotly anticipated sequel to the 2007 original first-person shooter that blew minds and won awards all over the place.I'm really digging...

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New wallpaper protects against bullets and bombs

Want to seriously protect yourself and your loved ones against flying debris, bullets and bombs? Consider covering your living room in X-Flex wallpaper. Developed by Berry Plastics in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the X-Flex Blast Protection System is touted as wallpaper that will stop a wrecking ball and worse with a single sheet of the stuff. X-Flex...

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Finally watched last night's V and finale of AMC's THE PRISONER

AMC's much-promoted revamp of The Prisoner concluded last night. After watching both hours twice-over now I am going to say that that, acknowledging that while mine is going to be in the minority of opinions, that I very much enjoyed it and thought it was time well spent. And I will likely be getting the DVD of the series when it becomes available. But I will say that AMC way over-hyped The Prisoner. And so much so that I have to wonder how much...

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International Space Station transits the Moon

Bernhard Christ, an amateur astronomer from Germany, put himself in just the right spot on the Earth's surface (a testament to his mad plottin' and plannin' skillz) and using a digital astronomical camera produced this sequence - made in less than 0.4 seconds - of the International Space Station transiting across the Moon...That's five shots of the ISS taken at equal intervals....

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"...Only to God and woman."

Last week President Barack Obama met with Akihito, the titular Emperor of Japan. You might have heard about it: Obama made a ceremonial bow to Akihito and it's purportedly caused a lot of his political enemies to seethe with outrage...Interestingly, many if not most of these same critics defended George W. Bush when in April 2008 (when he was still President) Bush not only...

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Auto-Tune as explained by Rocketboom and "Weird Al" Yankovic

Depending on you who listen to, Auto-Tune has become either a boon or bane to music production. The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies examines the Auto-Tune phenomenon in their latest video, with some rather scholarly assistance from visiting professor "Weird Al" Yankovic!Thanks to Geoff Gentry for the heads-...

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BioShock EVE Hypo Prop Replica (yes, you can BUY this thing...)

Got a small daughter or know where to borrow a little girl (legally 'course)? Wanna have some fun freaking out the neighbors? The officially licensed BioShock EVE Hypo Prop Replica from Play.com is just what you need!According to this "toy"'s description, "EVE is the lifeblood of the underwater city of Rapture, the setting for Bioshock and Bioshock 2. It is the substance...

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Just finished watching the second installment of AMC's THE PRISONER

We had the first run-through (or "stumble-through" as it was officially called :-) of both acts of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever last night, so I was late getting home. But I had the DVR whirring away recording the second two hours of AMC's remake of The Prisoner and I just finished watching 'em.I know that I'm in a solid minority here, but I am absolutely digging the heck out of The Prisoner! To me, it's the same theme going on as the Sixties...

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A tiny lil' musing this afternoon

The smallest sincere kindness mocks every cruelty of the world enti...

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