Possibly the saddest email I’ve ever received. 7araaaaaaaaaaaaam Digg. They shot themselves in the head.

An MIT class sent Superman editor Mort Weisinger a letter form Albert Einstein, asserting that not even Superman could move faster than the speed of light. But Weisinger consulted his “good friend” Isaac Asimov, who responded that “Professor Einstein’s statement is based on theory. Superman’s speed is based on fact.”

[io9]

When my Gmail asked me if I wanted to try out the new Hangout widget in place of the regular GChat one, I clicked yes, of course. I always click yes, because I’m a webbie, a technologist, a wannabe futurist.

Fast forward a few hours later, when my Android phone buzzes that a friend is inviting me to a hangout. I click accept, and lo and behold, there is my friend on my phone’s screen. At the same time, since I was sitting on my cameraless desktop, he was also on my desktop computer. He saw me through my phone. I saw him through his desktop’s camera. He was chatting through his phone. I could hear him on my headset.

It was like magic, the seamless connectivity between my phone and my desktop. The seamless conversation. The trippiness of two mediums for one point of contact. It’s insane, actually. I’m a technologist. This is what I do all day. Yet, here I am, sitting on my desktop, amused to death by the magic of it all. Futurism in the age of Google isn’t about the future. It’s about now. Shit, I’m so tripped out.

Shit, does the fact that I recognize the magic mean that I am becoming really old?

One of my favorite Bowie songs. By one of the world’s (Universes’?) coolest people. On the job. IN ACTUAL SPACE.

Ohmygod. My heart can’t take this.

Chris Hadfield, I love you.

Awesome poet unknown

I mean, the last movie I was excited for was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and before that, it was The Lord of the Rings.

Ender’s Game, yay.

You know, I am always amused by the process of having my favorite books turn into movies.

Just think of it this way: until a book is made into a movie, I’m the only person sitting in a virtual room representing the book, full of its characters, ideas, and stories. Sometimes, random people who have also read the book visit my room, and we get excited together for a few minutes. Then these random people drop back out of my life.

I try to get my friends and loved ones to visit my room and enjoy it like I do, but most people hate reading, especially reading science fiction. For years and years and years, the room is mine and only mine, which is annoying, because I want to share my pleasure with others.

“Please come play with me in my room,” I say again and again (such a dork, I know). “Please read this book.” But people are lazy. People don’t read.

Then one day, Hollywood takes these books and makes them into movies and TV shows, AND BAM! Everyone is suddenly sitting in stadium-sized rooms of distorted characters, ideas and stories, surrounded by massive amounts of noise and idiocy. Of course, I have no interest in these stadiums, I am happy in my room, where I have spent years building nurturing, two-way relationships with the characters, ideas, and stories. The Hollywood layer is alien to me, because I usually don’t bother to watch the Hollywood adaptation.

A few examples: I was a child when I read the first Harry Potter book, at a time when no one had any idea who he was. Then I watched the world go crazy over Harry as the movie star was born. I was a child when I read The Lord of the Rings. Most people had no idea what The Lord of the Rings was, beyond being a big fat book. On the bright side, bless Peter Jackson and his brilliance for making the movie adaptations genius too.

The worst of the books-cum-Hollywood adaptations has been “Game of Thrones”. Everyone and their dog has fallen in love with the series, crassly saying things like “Winter is coming”. I want to beat people who stay stuff like that up. Not because it’s a crappy show (though I was unable to watch more than 2 episodes of the first season as the books are so much better), but because I CAN HEAR THE YELLING FROM THE DAMN STADIUM IN MY ROOM ALTHOUGH I HAVE ALL THE WINDOWS SHUT.

Shut up. I don’t want to hear you yelling. You’re giving me a headache.

In November, one of my all-time favorite books, Ender’s Game, is being turned into a movie. I am excited, at this point at least, because I spent so many hours of my life lost in the Ender universe. I’ve written about it on this blog many times, expressing my passionate love for the genius of Orson.

No one cares. No one has even heard of Orson, Ender, or the Formic race. It’s my room, and my room alone (although I did manage to get my brother Omar and my mother to visit me). Come November, I’m going to share this post again. The Ender craze better not be as bad as the one for “The Hunger Games”, or “Game of Thrones”.

I just can’t comprehend the power of movies.

Ok. Rant complete.