They found that there were six main ones: Fall-rise-fall, like Oedipus Rex Rise and then a fall, like what happens to most villains Fall and then a rise, like what happens to most superheroes Steady fall, like in Romeo and Juliet Steady rise, like in a rags-to-riches story Rise-fall-rise, like in Cinderella

This compares the incidence of words in Google Books over the years, so you can see that since 1955 people have written more about ‘space’ than ‘earth’. Google Ngram Viewer.

it’s taken 44 years of work, but the Oxford Thesaurus is finally complete

Join a premier national aerobatics team, even if you have no experience flying jets!

This book details the way the CIA built and used technologies to spy on other people and countries. a former head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service (OTS) and an internationally acclaimed espionage historian join forces to tell the story of the covert devices critical to America’s intelligence operations for more than half a Read more about Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda[…]

This is a totally unofficial look at the Star Wars universe, how it was created and what motivated Lucas and the film companies as they built the franchise. The Secret History of Star Wars traces all the way back to 1973 to examine how the first 14-page treatment that began the series came to be Read more about The Secret History of Star Wars[…]

And so this guy, who has written a book “The Dangerous Book for Boys” is written for them, harkening from a time when it wasn’t so bad to get hurt a bit. Instead of treating boys as “girls who wash slightly less” he says treat them as boys!

Interestingly Philip K Dick managed to predict the future fairly well despite being the wacky one. Heinlein didn’t do quite so well…

This review is about what could have been, what should have been but what wasn’t. It also tells us why it wasn’t. Very good piece.

This whole site is a blast, but check out pages like this and this .. http://www.superdickery.com/

Fantastic new sport sweeping the USofA

Anyone with an interest in how our digital freedoms are being whittled away, how the music, movie and television landscapes are about to change forever, or how a new, empowered generation of users (mostly young people) see media differently than the older crowd, would benefit from marking up their copy of Darknet (bring two yellow Read more about Darknet[…]

Thus, (excerpts from) Notes Toward an Infernokrusher Manifesto: Explosion is the new transgression. Demolition is the new deconstruction. [—Benjamin Rosenbaum] More than the death of the Reader, Infernokrusher prizes the sudden, violent dismemberment of the Reader Infernokrusher fiction explodes stagnant genre conventions, e.g., that it’s not okay to have all your characters run over by Read more about New form of cyberpunk offshoot – InfernoKrusher![…]

How sad to say goodbye to that world of wonder magic and colour which exists in our everyday lives, if only you look at it! The everyday things you see and take for granted are miracles of some force we don’t really know of – Darwin, God, they are all only partial explanations for the Read more about Fantasy Living[…]

Was this how it really was?! (Flash)

Tales for the Leet presents Romeo and Juliet! http://uninteresting.myby.co.uk/noeffort/romjul.htm (flash) And catch Star Wars III while you’re at it.. (wmv) http://www.kontrabandcontent.co.uk/1/graphics/movies/starwars3.wmv or http://abum.com/files/Movies/starwars3.wmv or http://chaos.battlecenter.net/starwars3.wmv or http://www.thestorageben.com/videos/starwars3.wmv

The Dutch government is the first in the world to both issue a Root CA (Certification Authority) and present it for inclusion in a major browser. (Firefox, duh!) Users of Firefox 1.0.2 can use View -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Certificates -> Manage certificates -> Authorities and scroll down to Staat der Nederlanden to verify Read more about Dutch government issues Root CA[…]

This is excellent fun stuff: Phase 1: recruiting Phase 2: The questionnaire

Non verbal communication lessons

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/06_04/06-04-black-blue.htm