geekosystem

BoingBoing has unearthed a 1982 video featuring raw footage of Bill Murray, complaining (comedically) about dumb technological advancements of the early 1980s like digital watches ("People have hands, I think watches should have hands"), talking dashboards in cars ("I would put my foot right through that dashboard"), and robots ("R2-D2...he was funny, he was cute, he's a fine, fine actor").

Sure, I'd love some lunch. Oh, a hot dog? Oh. On second thought, you know, I should really leave some room for candy. Muppet Studios have so far not released a Halloween vid this year. However, they did start filming their next feature film on Friday, so we forgive them. (via BoingBoing.)

Lion-O Is Ceiling Cat For Some Reason (FashionablyGeek) Square Enix Is Making A Christmas Album (GameInformer) StarCraft II's New Minigames (Kotaku) Marvel Shelves Runaways Movie (Bleeding Cool) ABC, CBS, and NBC Are All Blocked on Google TV (The Wall Street Journal) CALM DOWN: Rumors of Star Wars Sequel Trilogy are Unfounded (Wired) BlizzCon Costumes, Day 1 (WoW Insider) (pic via Guyism.)

Allow us to explain:

• In 2005, Frank Warren began PostSecret, an art project of sorts where he encourages people to anonymously send him postcards with their own true secrets on them, so he can show them to the world. It has been going strong ever since, with a weekly updated blog and five published books.

• In 2006, Luke Pebler put some pictures up on his Flickr, including this one.

• Last week, a new secret went up with the weekly batch on Postsecret.com, seen above (don't bother looking for it on the website after October 16th, PostSecret has no archive).

Result?

Prepare for a roller coaster of emotion. Sad: A nine-year-old boy from Kingston, Ontario, Blake McGinness, planned to hold a yard sale to sell off his toys to raise funds in order to buy his dead father buried in an unmarked grave a headstone that his family couldn't afford. Relieving: Local Kingston residents and the internet stepped in and took care of the issue. Heartwarming: Blake McGinness went through with the yard sale anyway and plans to donate the revenue to charity.

While digging out a new water tank in the San Diego Zoo, construction workers found an animal that was certainly not a part of any exhibit there: a nearly intact whale skeleton that has proven to be 3 million years old. That predates the Ice Age, for those of you playing along at home. The creature was an adolescent baleen whale, not yet grown to its full sized, despite being twenty-four feet long.  Whale skeletons are not uncommon finds in southern California, although we imagine that this is the first one the San Diego Zoo has ever dug up.

It's one thing to watch this video and see the rare sight of Jim Henson interacting with his creations instead of performing as them. It's another to hear his undisguised voice, which still has so much of Kermit in it. But it's nothing short of stunning to watch a few very talented people take some scraps of cloth, styrofoam, and double-sided tape, and make living characters out of them in a matter of seconds. To look at something that isn't real, and think "Oh my god, that's a person." That, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic at the heart of good storytelling.

D&D Themed Sports Team Shirts (Geeks are Sexy)

Biggest Diablo News Ever At BlizzCon (That Videogame Blog)

Soon Neptune Will Complete Its First Orbit Since Discovered (Discovery News)

The ABCS of Lame Marvel Villains (Comics Alliance)

A Deleted Scene From Neil Gaiman's Dr. Who Episode (Neil Gaiman)

Korean StarCraft Addicts Treated With Drugs (Kotaku)

Space Food Over the Years (BoingBoing)

(picture via Game Informer: Portland Bike Lanes Power-Up With Mario Symbols.)

What If Mark Millar Wrote DC Comics? (Bleeding Cool)

Terrifying Crossover: Cookie Monster + Symbiote (4th Letter)

Captain America and Deadpool Teach Etiquette (Reddit)

Horrible Development in Video Game Ads (Kotaku)

How to Play Monkey Pirate Robot Ninja Zombie (The Skwib)

Timelapse Sand Painting Video (Neatorama)

Disney Adventurer's Club in the Half-Life Engine (BoingBoing)

(image via Cinematical.)

Amazon has dropped the price of a Kindle 2 by almost 30%, from $259 to $189.  This announcement comes so hot on the heels Barnes & Noble's more affordable Nook announcements that it may have left scorch marks.

Today, at Wired's Disruptive by Design conference, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced that, beginning July 1st, Starbucks will offer free WiFi internet access in every one of its American stores.  No time limit, no registration required.

Right now, patrons are only allowed to surf for two hours at a time, and have to have a Starbucks card in order to get access.  By this fall, Starbucks will also be rolling out The Starbucks Digital Network, offering free access to a number of for-pay-only sites to its customers.

Ok, so they travel by bike and by foot, not by umbrella, and they don't exactly babysit; but the InfoLadies of northern Bangladesh answer questions about agriculture, disease, contraception, hygine, and even domestic violence on their weekly visits to rural communities. All with the help of the Internet. From The Guardian:

"An InfoLady's netbook is loaded with content especially compiled and translated in local Bangla language," says Mohammed Forhad Uddin of D.Net, a not-for-profit research organisation that is pioneering access to livelihood information. "It provides answers and solutions to some of the most common problems faced by people in villages."

YouTube user 43287633 has put up a video of his latest invention: a cannon smaller than your thumb. And yes. It works. It's kind of worrying actually. It may only be a matter of time before these become a lawsuit-ready line of desk toys. Video after the jump.