CHINA BELIEVES EVERYTHING IT READS

Jun 8, 2002 | humor, news

In case you missed this in the paper a couple of days ago, here’s a story that’s absolutely priceless. The Beijing Evening News (circulation: 1.25 million) printed a word-for-word translation of an American news item in its June 3 edition. The article concerned the...

STAR WARS REVIEWS

May 10, 2002 | news

Pick your flavor of early reviews of Attack of the Clones. On one side: a very favorable review from BBC News. Sample: “This is quite possibly the best Star Wars of the series. It looks lavish and Lucas pushes all the right buttons. He also lets us see that...

HIGH-TECH HOAX

May 6, 2002 | news

I love stories about gullible people duped by magic tricks. It makes me feel proud to be a skeptic. A Florida newspaper is running a series about Madison Priest, a good ol’ boy who got millions of dollars from people who should have known better. He promised he...

HOW ORACLE SCREWED CALIFORNIA

Apr 29, 2002 | news

It’s either sad or amusing to read how Oracle suckered the state of California into buying millions of dollars of software and licenses that the state didn’t need, covering more people than the state actually employs. The papers have caught the highlights,...

CITIZENS FOR A MURDER-FREE AMERICA

Apr 29, 2002 | news

Any Philip Dick fans out there? Take a look at Precrime, the web headquarters of Citizens for a Murder-Free America. Precrime proposes using a revolutionary new technology called previsualization that allows police detectives to witness, verify, and halt murders...

SEGWAY

Apr 22, 2002 | news

I feel like I missed something obvious. Maybe you already knew this. Remember the Segway scooter created by Dean Kamen and announced in December? Battery-powered, using computers and gyroscopes to make it almost impossible to tip over. Kamen has a wheelchair going...