While George Lucas may or may not be preparing to unleash another Star Wars trilogy on us, this time in stereoscopic 3D, some of his most re-creative fans had their work included in a fun Star Wars Uncut trailer out this week. Launched in July, the project aims to complete a full user-generated version of the original, dubbed Star Wars: A New Hope. This “biggest fan recreation in the universe”...

Guest post by Frankie Sturm Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a free-lance journalist. I work with veterans on a daily basis. Lately, I’ve been burning the midnight oil as part of Operation FREE, a coalition of veterans groups and national security organizations that are looking to raise awareness about the links between climate change and national security. We’re...

The newest critique against the Federal Government limiting executive salaries in companies that it has essentially saved from liquidation or in which it holds a major ownership interest, is that it will cause a brain drain of the best people to other companies. I have one response to such a meritless argument: Bullshit. Some of our private sector oligarchs are so narcissistic, greedy and arrogant that they...

On the same day. And just hours ago: Back-to-back deals on Wednesday to make the company’s steady stream of posts available to Microsoft and Google’s search engines may point to a potential new source of cash. How large, however, is not known. The terms of the deals were not disclosed and Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, said in an interview that revenue was “not the focus of the deals.” Microsoft...

Consolation prize?: Vice President Joe Biden and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw, Oct. 21. Has America agreed to station U.S. forces in Poland to ease the pain of canceling the construction of elements of an anti-missile shield in that country? In addition to discussing the new version of the U.S. anti-missile shield with its East European allies, according to this article by Andrzej Talaga of...

The silly fabricated spat between the Obama Administration and FOX News is just that. For many years, most Americans have understood that Fox was the Republican mouthpiece. The Democrats need to wrestle complete control over NBC, CBS or ABC news and move on with their own dedicated mouthpiece. Some may argue that either MSNBC or PBS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DNC, but with each having about 1 or...

Impressive: According to the Wall Street Journal, the company’s fourth-quarter profit jumped 47 percent “as consumers continued to snap up its iPhones and Macintosh computers.” Surprisingly resilient demand for its laptops and smart phones have carried Apple though the recession. This past quarter, Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones and 3.1 million Macintosh computers. Apple’s CFO called sales of Macintoshes...

I ran across an interesting article about AT&T and Google Voice. I received an invitation to use Google Voice, and I find it very useful. It rings several phones when my Google Voice phone number is called, allowing me to give that number to a select few whom I want to be able to contact me anywhere. The article covers a dispute between AT&T and Google, and in involves the FCC. Regulation of the phone...

In addition to being cool, this technology will help save lives in a difficult situation: U.S. Special Operations testing plasma knife in the field By Andrew Nusca | Oct 16, 2009 | The U.S. Special Operations Command is field-testing a plasma knife to help medics in the field save more soldiers’ lives. The plasma knife is intended to be used as a surgical tool that’s safer but as effective as a traditional...

When I posted kiss the iPhone goodbye I assumed that the rumors of a Verizon iPhone were just that. Rumors. And false. It looks like I may have been mistaken in my assumptions. FoneFrenzy: My sources have confirmed that Apple and Verizon have been testing a CDMA iPhone on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Yes, you read that correctly, Verizon and Apple have been testing the first 4G phone on Verizon’s 4G network....

I don’t know bupkis about physics but they say that if you create a wheel that contains another rapidly spinning wheel, the gyro effect will keep the wheel upright. That’s the idea behind Gyrobike. Ars Technica spoke with CEO Daniella Reichstetter: “Our challenge was not only to develop a front bike wheel with a disk that could do this, but also to find a way to get the disk to spin fast enough...

Fred Wilson calls it “a real competitor to the iPhone” and says he loves the ad (above). The new site DroidDoes.com is a direct attack against the iPhone: Verizon isn’t pulling any punches: it calls out basically every major weakness on the iPhone, from its inability to run background applications to the App Store’s walled garden. The site kicks off with a stream of things that the iPhone can’t...

Business Week says Germany’s building the power grid of the future. One of humanity’s boldest visions: The electricity age is imminent in six German regions: The technology of the future for smart energy management is going to be developed and tested, under the label E-Energy, in several cities. A number of projects will kick into high gear this month. Tens of thousands of homes and hundreds of...

Google stock achieved some jaw-dropping numbers yesterday, up to $552 a share with profits 27 percent above this period last year. CEO Eric Schmidt crowed, “we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future.” Today Chris Thompson brings us down to earth: [F]or all its staggering growth, Google isn’t as big as it seems. On the Fortune...

You know me by now. I find that Letters to the Editor generally depict the unvarnished views of “regular” Americans, and I often use them support a particular point of view. Of course, these same letters can also express points of view that I do not agree with. I am sure that those who oppose my views can and will use those in order to support their views. Anyway, in the debate to eliminate discrimination...

In many parts of India you can see people enjoying bhang/hashish (or cannabis/marijuana) by the roadside without attracting a look of surprise or disapproval. It is only when the Western world began to raise hue and cry that people in the urban areas began to smoke/drink it discreetly at the occasional activation of the dormant laws. In nearly 80 per cent of India it is still openly consumed (generally in...

I would like to invite all writers, editors, commentators and readers to make some major predictions for the future that they believe will transpire by or around certain future dates. I ran this idea by Joe Gandelman last week who told me to run with it. These “revelations” can concern science, technology, environment, wars and militaries, climate change, healthcare, religion, politics, economics, business,...

Even though I live in Texas, the first I heard or read about a case that is now getting nation-wide attention was at The Moderate Voice (TMV). Two weeks ago, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, TMV’s Deputy Managing Editor, published a guest voice by Elijah Sweet bringing to our attention the disturbing news that Texas Governor Rick Perry had, on Wednesday, September 30, “without prior notice” replaced...

Zachary M. Seward explains Gawkers unruly new twist on traditional reader forums: Readers are now greeted with a text box as large as the blog’s logo, inviting them to share news, videos, links, and trivialities. Tagging a message with #tips on Gawker, for instance, automatically sends it to the “tips” tag page, where anyone can follow the stream of submissions and Gawker writers will keep...

Afghanistan produces over 90% of the world’s opium, the main ingredient in heroin. Many Afghans, among its predominantly rural population of around 28 million, simply grow and cultivate opium poppies across some of its vast territory that is equal in size to the state of Texas. Most of Afghanistan is very arid and mountainous, not fit for any agriculture or productive human activities. The export value...

As a journalism teacher I am often asked: Should media cater to what interests the public or PUBLIC INTEREST? In recent times the media, with honorable exceptions, has brazenly catered to the lowest common denominator (generally pandering to the basest instincts) under the cloak of infotainment. Arianna Huffington, the moving spirit behind Huffington Post, has started HuffPost Impact to talk about issues that...

How much danger terrorists pose in Britain? “The campaign I am talking about is not being planned by Jihadis or fringe Irish nationalists but by white ‘neo-Nazis’ who want to murder Asians, black people, Jews and gays in the bizarre belief it will trigger a ‘race war’, says Johann Hari in The Independent. “The police are warning ever-more urgently that similar attacks seem...

Yesterday I wrote a post questioning the need for so many countries in the 21st Century, particular vulgar, repressive military dictatorships, to have nuclear weapons. My premise was not the relative civility of non-nuclear nations vis-à-vis those that possessed nuclear weapons but the proper use of U.S. military power. However, many nice places can be found that have no nuclear arms, nor are they signatories...

Michael Steele’s latest attempt to lead Republicans kicking and screaming into the 21st century is seriously underwhelming. Seriously, folks: There’s no there there. Oh, there are words on the pages. But they don’t say anything. They’re the linguistic equivalent of rice krispies. Go ahead, click on the tabs, click on the links — they just take you from one nothing to another nothing.

I’ve had some…spirited…discussions with people claiming that the last ten years has seen a flattening of temperature as alluded to by David earlier. He covered some basic points, while leaving out that smoothing of the data across the El Niño-La Niña cycle has shown no decline thus far. In the discussions, I’ve pointed out that the last few years has seen La Niña (cooling of the Pacific)...