It’s (relatively) common knowledge that black holes consume pretty much anything and everything … and apparently that includes each other, as astronomers speculate that the black hole at the center of our own galaxy may have gobbled up a smaller sibling over 100 million years ago.
While we’re on the subject of astronomy, and just in case you get asked by a curious child and don’t want to get caught on the hop, you may wish to learn why space is dark. [Image by D P Hershman]
Social science once again uncovers what would have been obvious after a ten minute think and a cup of coffee: recent research indicates that, despite enabling you to connect with literally thousands of people, social networking sites rarely foster genuine friendships without the two parties actually meeting in meatspace too. To which, I imagine, the response of 90% of teenage MySpace and Facebook users would be “well, duh!” (or possibly O RLY?)
While this may initially seem like a shocking conclusion, what it actually highlights is the rapid shift of the use and meaning of the word “friend”. Perhaps the post-structuralists were right – will we evolve new words and meanings to cope with the greater number of relationship strata that an increasingly wired world will feature? [Image by Brain Solis]
Via a number of places (though I saw it at Posthuman Blues first) comes a post at Mondolithic Studios which asks (rhetorically) whether science fiction is still a distinct genre. To quote:
I think what confuses some people is the fact that Science Fiction isn’t really a distinct genre unto itself anymore. It’s mutated into dozens of sub-genres and movements, liberally exchanged genetic material with Fantasy and social satirism and burrowed into the internet in the form of hundreds of thousands of scifi and fantasy-oriented blogs, galleries, fanzines, vlogs, podcasts and short story webzines.
Given that you read Futurismic (which is a paying market for fiction, and will continue to be one just as soon as we can get the site aesthetics fixed up so as to present the stories the way they deserve), it’s an easy to assume that you’re in alignment with that opinion. But maybe not – what do you think? Is there still a definable body to science fiction, or is it more of a conceptual bundle that various forms of entertainment partake of in varying degrees? [Image by Hiro Sheridan]
It’s amazing what you can find on the internet – should you have a use for it, a ‘classic’ handbook manual of psychological torture techniques, written by leading shrinks and psychologists in the early sixties, is just waiting for you to download it. I have yet to check through and see whether soap operas and bureaucracy made the cut … but given the age of the document, I think we can assume that YouTube lip-sync videos aren’t mentioned. [Image by lunchtimemama]
While there is still no official word from the Big G itself, word on the street seems to suggest that Google will begin charging for full access to texts through its BookSearch service. Given the amount of hassle they’ve been getting from publishers and copyright owners about the Universal Library project, we probably shouldn’t be surprised … but I also expect there’ll be more to the idea than has been initially reported once an official announcement arrives. [Image by Laineys Repertoire]