Brian Cox's LHC lecture is pretty good:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/253

He goes over some high-level physics in an easy-to-understand way in like 15 minutes.
He makes everything seem happy and shinny!

(as opposed to black hole-inducing...)

At least there's some humanity on that space station. And we have various trinkets on the moon, mars, and Carl Sagan-approved bits floating out into space... and Shinji, right?

The panty vending machine exists! It's not in Tokyo though, it's in Kyoto. It was on a backstreet of the area called Gion where all the Maiko/Geisha still work. The machine is no where close to a love hotel though...

Bad pic:

http://www.kuci.org/ryan/miyagawa/panties.jpg

The biggest problem is that LA was designed for cars and so really, nothing outside of the end of all car-food is going to reconfigure the sprawling wasteland that 'needs' commuting.

I'm biased, I ride everywhere, I don't even own a car anymore and I match if not beat all my coworkers to work. Sure I only live 3 miles away, but you know what, I chose that with biking in mind. I also choose my route to be the one with the densest car traffic to let them watch me pass them again and again in the stop-n-start traffic.

Crimanimals: Mad Props.

Great Post! For a second I had almost forgot that Cory's book was relative to everything else. Phew!

I hear there's an island off the coast that has dinosaurs. Sounds kinda cool. I'd go there if I could.

I've always liked the concept of steampunk, but have always been hesitant to like the pieces seen (like the monitor/laptop) because the concept is invoked merely for the appearance.*

Eventually we'll get some hardcore folk who will actually make a monitor that will run on steam, and then I'll be actually sold.^

At the very least, said monitor would be worthy of the term "punk."

* this is fine, but it lacks substance!

^ this is substance!