Interesting Drug

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Following his article on Atari’s genesis, game historian Fulton returns with an amazingly detailed piece on Atari’s ‘golden years’, from the rise of the Atari 2600 through Asteroids and Battlezone.
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The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the water converting it all to gas and letting the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim.

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In between watching the glory that has been the Olympics (can’t say I expected so much Sepia-related content, but hey, awesome) and signing up to be one of the very few (10,000+ish) people to receive my very own VP text from Barack Obama, I came across this great piece in the NYT Magazine about Hanif Kureishi, his career, and his latest novel, Something to Tell You. The novel is, in brief, about a member of the rebellious British South Asian generation, Jamal, that came of the age during the 80’s, and how he and his now successful peers have to …

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“This is an actual ad I saved from Shaadi.com, a popular Indian matrimonial website. It’s been on the site for over three days, so I assume it’s not a joke/hoax/hack.”

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Pandora, the internet radio station built around your tastes, will probably be going out of business soon. After getting slapped by the CRB with exorbitantly high royalty rates to continue playing music, founder Tim Westergren says the company is facing a “pull-the-plug” situation. There’s one congressman trying to help Pandora and it’s million plus users, but the service is bleeding money in the meantime and its future looks grim. I’ll be very sad to see it go, since being reintroduced to it recently through their excellent iPhone app. What great idea do you have for us next, CRB?
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Mini Telescope mounts to your iPhone camera and provides 6x Optical Zoom

Pop on this 6X zoom iPhone Telescope and help your phone snap some beautiful close-up photos. The included clear hard shell case fits around your iPhone to protect it. Dock the lens into the mount on the back and start shooting.

Price: $17.99

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Desktop clock accessory, 80’s style!

Bring the iconic 80’s cubic puzzle to your desktop with this colorful cube clock. Twist the top row to switch between the clock, alarm, calendar and temperature! Simple style with 80’s flair.

Price: $19.99

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Patrick Biz of Geeks are Sexy blog has a neat post about the 10 must-read books about technology for geeks. Included are fares like iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith; The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed; Does IT Matter? by Nicholas G. Carr and so on.

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At many 99-cent stores, the signs still advertise rock-bottom prices, but much of the merchandise costs more.

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A celebratory look at Madonna’s career to date

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From fresh eggs to marijuana, it seems there’s nothing you can’t get from an automatic vending machine somewhere in the world. Wired.com’s Gadget Lab brings you five of the oddest.

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The $188 XO laptop created by One Laptop Per Child was devised to stir a revolution in third-world education, but be honest, you don’t care. At least, you don’t come to Gizmodo to debate the state of child welfare in Uruguay or whatever. For you, and for us, OLPC’s story is about hardware.

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Whedon said that if there were ever by some fortuitous miracle, a Serenity sequel, there would never be enough room to explain Book’s back history. So Whedon derived the only way possible to expound on his own universe. The place where he has the control he needs to pour forth his inner imaginations.Comics.

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Humoric has this great collection of thoroughly strange headstones. My favorites are the Scrabble board and the “expired” parking meters (I’m guessing heaven validates), but there are tons of unusual ones here from giant teddy bears to carvings of Yoda to 30% off inscriptions. Be sure to check it out. Link via the consistently great Presurfer.

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The Watts Towers were built by one man, without help and without proper construction tools or blueprints. Continue reading for the story of how Simon Rodia single-handedly built the 17-structure project that still stands today in Los Angeles. He spent 34 years building his masterpiece, and then walked away from it.

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George Orwell began keeping a series of diaries on 9^th August 1938 (love that British date formatting!). These diaries were never published. Seventy years later, the diaries are being released day by day in an annotated blog format. According to The Orwell Prize (who are putting up the entries), Orwell’s diaries reveal several dimensions of the man:

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While plebian crap like Dum Dum Suckers and Candy Corn continue to fill up many a sad Trick-or-Treater pumpkin-shaped pail, so many innovative and satisfying candies have died premature deaths, from Abba Zabbas and Fresh Mint Skittles, to hap pappy Uncle Buck. Here are ten of the most delicious extinct candies from the ’80s.

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Tommy Gorman, an ex-Scientologist, devotes his efforts to bringing the “church” down by kicking ass and taking names.

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The Digg charts have been going haywire over this map of countries that don’t use the Metric System. While grams and kilometers aren’t exactly embraced here, the US has definitely been flirting with the measurement scheme for a very long time (Jefferson was an advocate!). Here’s a look at 6 quirky things I just learned about the Metric System.

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For some reason every swim event in this Olympics is a record smasher. And it isn’t just Michael Phelps who’s seconds ahead of that daunting green world record line. Curious what’s making this year’s athletes so much faster? Here are 6 possible answers.

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Planescape: Torment is inarguably one of the greatest RPGs ever created, and even though nearly ten years have passed since its release, people are still talking about it - including lead designer Chris Avellone, who recently spoke about the game with BellaOnline.

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OK, so you probably would have been a little upset to find that the “Wii hard drive” you bought after reading about it on gaming and anime site NeoCrisis was, in fact, a picture of an air conditioner (sadly, the story has now been removed). But think about the plus side! Think of how your rage would just melt away when you were hit with the tear-freezing power of 3000 BTUs streaming out of the Yamazen portable air conditioner!

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Ever since the iPhone App Store launch last month, we’ve been on the hunt for apps we can load on our fancy phones and not forget about immediately. Occasionally something pops up but, sure enough, we manage to forget about it in a matter of days. But here … this is different. Frotz we’ll keep around for a long time.

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Since bringing baseball home to the everyman in last year’s The Bigs, Vancouver’s Blue Castle Games has been eerily quiet regarding its future plans, be they grounded in sports or, as music site Loudside writes it, waking the dead. According to the website, the developer plans to release a title called Zombie Ritual sometime later this year, and that the as-yet-unannounced game will include music from the appropriately named hometown rockers, Cradle To Grave.

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