Sean Stewart’s account of writing for the A.I. tie-in web game, known among the developers as “The Beast”, and done in secret by a team headed by Jordan Weisman at Microsoft’s Game Group.
“Existential crisis of killer geisha robot, side order of Socrates,” I said. “When do you need that?”
“Um… 4 hours?”
“Four hours?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll have a draft in 2.”
Damn, I thought, hanging up, I LOVE this job!
The Goon Show Site – Free MP3 Downloads and look here, a Goon Show site with scripts. And an American site with an introduction to the characters.
Would be funny if it wasn’t sad department: BioMed Central | Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics (via boingboing, via The Register).
Reuters: Don Quixote to Ride Again on Cosmic Rescue Mission:
The European Space Agency has given high priority to a Spanish project which aims to attack an approaching asteroid to see whether spacecraft can deflect a body that may in future be on a collision course with earth.
Two craft will set out — one named after the valiant knight of Cervantes’ classic tale, the other after his long-suffering servant Sancho Panza.
Spacecraft Sancho will circle the chosen asteroid while the other — aping its literary namesake — smashes headlong into the target.
The orbiting Sancho and earth-based telescopes will watch closely to see what, if any, effect the impact has on the speed and direction of the asteroid.
At the same time Sancho, being in orbit around the asteroid, will be able to detect fragments thrown from it by the impact and get a glimpse of its internal structure.
Robin Laws: When the Suits Become the Culture Jammers.