Feb 9, 2012 | Forbes
Colossus image via Wikipedia During World War II, the Nazis used complex codes to obfuscate commands, and cracking those codes was one of the keys to the Allies’ success. This codebreaking was accomplished in part by Colossus, the world’s first digital, programmable...
Feb 9, 2012 | SyFy
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace supporting character Jar Jar Binks has appeared in toys, comic books, books, episodes of The Clone Wars and posters. But what if he appeared in posters where he didn’t actually belong? That’s a question that’s finally...
Feb 9, 2012 | Forbes
Crickets chirp to attract mates and warn off the competition, and crickets 165 million years ago chirped (technically, “stridulated”) for the same reasons. But Jurassic-age crickets, Archaboilus musicus, were Jurassic shaped, with different forewings—which crickets...
Feb 8, 2012 | SyFy
As every fan and critic knows, with its eons-long podrace and questionable racial caricatures, The Phantom Menace was the weakest of all of George Lucas’ Star Wars movies. But die-hard fans find what joy they can. And one of those fans happens to be an...
Feb 8, 2012 | Forbes
Patrick Stewart, The Graham Norton Show Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson know that they’ll be forever haunted by their former characters, Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, respectively. We...
Feb 7, 2012 | Forbes
Image via Guardian.co.uk Today is the 200th birthday of literary hero, Charles Dickens. We all know that Dickens wrote about poverty, injustice, crime with great humor (and at great length). But there are quite a few things we don’t know about the author of A...
