Geek Media Round-Up: August 23, 2011

Art

• If logos were honest
• This campaign of gym ads almost make me wish I exercised… almost.
• Wash clean with your very own Companion Cube Soap
• Witchblade cosplay gallery

Comics

• A massive argument about comic books that don’t exist. The condensed version.

Film

• Interview: Collider has interviews various cast members of The Avengers.
• Interview: Robert Downey Jr. Speculates Very, Very Vaguely About Iron Man 3
• News: Tim Burton Developing Frankenweenie Feature Film
• Are dark fairy tales more authentic? Disney and others are chasing dollars, not keeping it real, one expert argues.
• The convenience trap: What the changes at Netflix reveal about an insidious trend
• Harrison Ford won’t be involved in the Blade Runner reboot.
• Introduce Your Kids To Sci-Fi With These 15 Must See Genre Movies
• Netflix Subscribers: In case you forgot, you have until Sept. 1 2011 to change/cancel your subscription before the new rate hike takes effect. Here’s a chart depicting the increases:
• The Movie Moron picks the Top 10 Movies About Death
• Top Ten Reasons We Can’t Get Enough Jurassic Park
• Star Wars: The Greatest Fantasy Story Ever Told.

Internet

• Group Listening Rooms Turn Up the Volume on Web Music: Services like Turntable.fm combine elements of social media and streaming music – and they’re built around “music discovery,” so that means they’re a very fertile place for indie musicians to get exposure.

Literature

• Interview: Cory Doctorow on Gold-Farmers, 3-D Printers, and Bad Actors.
• Interview: Guardian readers question Pretty Monsters author Kelly Link.
• Interview: Paolo Bacigalupi on The Windup Girl
• News: Say goodbye to Google Books Settlement for good
• Bookstores may not carry Amazon-published print books: Booksellers are wary as Amazon tries to have it all
• How Pulp Science Fiction Cover Art Got Its Sense of Wonder
• Infographic: All You Need to Know About Electronic Book Readers
• The Magic of Pottermore: A beta tester’s early review of Pottermore
• Mark Newton on Science Fiction, Fantasy & Minorities
• Stanislaw Lem on Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans.

Science

• Behind The Scenes At World’s First Spaceport In New Mexico Desert
• Is The Era of Neuroprosthetic Augmentation Really Just 20 Years Away?
• Dutch Artist Bio-Engineers Spider Silk into Skin, Making It “Bulletproof”. Following on the work of Randy Lewis, a scientist studying how ultra-resilient artificial spider-silk can be used for body armor and other military products, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi has integrated this engineered silk into a patch of human skin. Experiments with a rifle necessarily followed.
• What if E.T. thinks we’re evil?
• “Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis” A scholarly paper (33-page pdf) summarized by the Guarniad with its most attention-getting scenario semi-explained by DiscoveryNews: “[the aliens may] want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way.” (for the record, it was NOT written for NASA though one of the authors is a “NASA dude”)

Technology

• 6 Shockingly Affordable Sci-Fi Inventions
• Intel recruits sci-fi writers to dream up future tech
• Why Amazon Can’t Make A Kindle In the USA. Does It Really Matter That Amazon Can’t Manufacture A Kindle In the USA? Amazon & Kindle Part 3: It’s Not Just Manufacturing! A cogent look at why today’s prevailing approach to cost and manufacturing is wrongheaded.

Television

• 64 slices of American Cheese and other foods from the Simpsons in real life
• A New Type of TV that can Watch You. Or, “In America, TV watches you.”
• Why Who? Why Now? Thoughts on the brilliance of Doctor Who.

Writing

• Do Writers Read Differently Than Non-Writers?
• Lev Grossman Shares Writing Music on Spotify
• Writing Dystopian Noir Fiction

Related posts:

1. Geek Media Round-Up: August 9, 2011
2. Geek Media Round-Up: August 16, 2011
3. Geek Media Round-Up: August 8, 2011
4. Geek Media Round-Up: August 18, 2011
5. Geek Media Round-Up: August 29, 2011