The scenario: I'm leaving for a month-long stint in Africa, where I'll be filing daily stories via email. The problem: I have enough trouble connecting from Burbank, California, let alone Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and a series of calls to embassies to explore the situation is getting me nowhere and nervous.The answer: the Executive TeleKit from TeleAdapt. For US$105, I get the ultimate gear for the laptopper on the go: alligator clips that connect to a phone jack, line tester, tone dialler, miniphone, extension cords, miniature tool set, flashlight and clear guides. Most valuable is the TeleTester, which lights up if you've got an analogue connection, removing the "Gee, I wonder if I'll find a line?" guesswork. But TeleSpool and Pocket Phone win awards as the coolest accessories. The former spools out 2.5 metres of phone cord from a compact case; no more typing from a squatting position on a hotel floor. The latter, a push-button phone, makes both voicemail and calling-card transactions a piece of cake no matter where you are.
I never go to the extreme of using alligator clips. But TeleSpool, Pocket Phone, TeleTester and three different jacks prove indispensable in one gruelling modem session from Eastern Zimbabwe. The guides provide invaluable tips, from how to tell your modem to ignore a foreign dial tone, to which countries consider laptops a threat to national security. The real kicker, however, has to be the suave compact carrying case that makes you feel like James Bond.
- Todd Krieger
Executive TeleKit: £79.99. TeleAdapt Ltd: (0181) 233 3000, fax (0181) 233 3132, email teleadapt@delphi.com, on the Web at www.teleadapt.com/.
There is a certain kind of person who scans all the books in the library for key words like "thrust" and "ecstasy", then marks up the mucky bits for the benefit of other borrowers. Craig Hosada is one of these people. Craig has made it his life's work to watch as many videos as possible, logging every flickering glimpse of breast, bum and brief frontal nudity. And thank Blockbuster he has. For now I know that the hottest shot of Harry Dean Stanton available on video appears in his 1971 movie, Cisco Pike, in which the viewer is treated to a brief upper-half-of-buns shot as he rises from the bath to greet Kris Kristofferson. The lucky bastard.Those of us who hunger for thespian flesh will find Hosada's The Bare Facts Video Guide invaluable. It is, however, a work of total seriousness and gravity. Craig is a respected software engineer and ex-Industrial Light and Magic programmer. While working on Howard the Duck, Craig discovered his friend Marty had no knowledge of Lea Thompson's nude scene in All the Right Moves. Doh!, Maaarty. So Craig thought, "there should be a book that lists this type of important information in one place ... " and so a philanthropic hobby resulted in him leaving a prestigious job in movie production to become a full-time dirty Halliwell.
Kinky yet poignant, Craig's cataloguing work often captures the sad attempts of actors struggling at the beginning of their careers. All too often, the space between the beginning and the end of these careers is marked only by "brief buns, while getting into the hot tub with Betsy" (Troy Fish). One can only imagine the Hosada household as Craig slogs through tape after tape, no longer "Dad" to his children but "that smelly man with the remote". Despite frequent but brief right-breast flashes from his wife, Craig maintains his lonely vigil at the TV, searching, noting and searching again for "important information". Meanwhile, we can save time and money using his guide.
- Jamie Cason
The Bare Facts Video Guide, by Craig Hosada: £14.99. Titan Books: (01536) 763 631, on the Web at www.barefacts.com/~chosoda/.
Did you catch Leftfield on tour? If you did, then halfway through the show you will have witnessed one of the guest vocalists waving his arms around a box-and-aerial arrangement in order to make daft, badly-tuned radio noises. He was playing a crude version of the theremin, the otherworldly voice of a hundred 1950s sci-fi soundtracks and currently one of the hottest pieces of retro musical gear around. The Orb have got one, Terrorvision have used one, Portishead bought one and now, with the arrival of the Pocket Theremin, you can have one too.Leon Theremin's original design, invented way back in the 1920s when he worked as a radio operator in Russia, was as big as a desk and featured two antennae. Longwave Instruments' £99 box, by comparison, has one antenna to control pitch, a small built-in speaker, an on-off switch, a volume control, a single audio output, a pitch trim control for setting the output range, and little else. There is no volume antenna - you'll have to make do with a volume pedal instead - but at least you can carry it in your coat.
It is almost impossible to play anything other than an unpredictable eerie wail with the Pocket Theremin. But add a studio effects box such as a reverb or a delay line, and convincing B-movie atmospherics can be created. The PT begs to be sampled and used for techno tracks, too. There are plenty of other toys to spend a hundred quid on. But imagine this: a busy Halloween party, a Pocket Theremin (or two) half-concealed somewhere in the room, and the look on your guests' faces as a spooky whine of unknown origin continually moans as they mingle. That's got to be priceless.
- Daniel Diver
Longwave Instruments Pocket Theremin: £99. Longwave: (01425) 610 849, email 101364.522@compuserve.com.
MicNotePad is a Mac dictation program which appears on your screen as a little tape-recorder panel with buttons for Record, Stop, Play and Skipback. It makes sound files, and the user can make comments at random access points of the "tape". You can also operate the recorder in the background while in your favourite word processor. It lets you transcribe lectures and discussions very conveniently, combining transcription, editing and writing without thinking about the machinery.A while ago I was at a conference without a tape recorder - but MicNotePad worked perfectly using my Duo's built-in microphone. It recorded four hours of clear audio on about 40 Mbytes of hard disk. The lecture recorded by my internal microphone was amplified by a PA system. To record normal, unamplified speech you'd need to be within a few feet - or use an external microphone.
MicNotePad was developed by Leo Baschy, who I met a year or so ago and found to be a most ingenious, engaging and visionary futurist.
- Marvin Minsky
MicNotePad: US$89, or $79 on the Web + $12 for international postage. Nirvana Research: +1 (408) 459 9663, email nirvana@got.net, on the Web at moof.com/nirvana/.
Ever noticed how new roads lead to more traffic jams ? How new pesticides promote new pests? And how new drugs produce new bugs? Ever since Frankenstein, innovation has engendered unintended consequences. If you have ever wondered why this is so, then Edward Tenner's book, Why Things Bite Back, is for you.Drawing his examples from sport, medicine, the office and the environment, among others, Tenner tries to explain this apparent paradox. He says that what he calls "revenge effects" arise because technological developments intervene in complex systems that are generally not well understood. These interventions treat specific problems; they also produce unforeseen consequences in other parts of the system.
Take computers, for example. Computers should improve productivity. But staff require training to use them properly, and retraining when they are replaced. And just when staff have finally mastered computers, the system "goes down". Add to this the back pain, eye strain and RSI that office workers suffer, and it's little wonder that service-sector productivity has been pretty flat over the last decade.
Tenner is no Luddite, nor is he an optimist. His only solution to technological problems is vigilance, flexibility and permanent intellec-tual modesty about the future. But enjoyable though Tenner's tour of the unintended is, it can seem academic and weighed down by exam-ples. A shorter, crisper version might have had more impact. Nevertheless, both inventors and users of tomorrow's Frankensteins would do well to read it.
- Rhys Grossman
Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge Effect, by Edward Tenner: £18.99. Fourth Estate: (0171) 727 8993.
The only thing queer about Simon Levay's Queer Science is the title. Did the author have a say in it? Because he doesn't use the term "queer" in his book, preferring to use "gay" (mostly) or "lesbian" or "bisexual". This can't be coincidence. While queer activists make a V-sign at straight culture and queer theorists tell us that we're all drag queens and kings, LeVay tries to convince us that our bodies are real. Now there's a radical thought to while away the time when you next find yourself inhabiting a Pamela Anderson avatar in virtual reality.Not only are our bodies real but, according to LeVay, they're so cleverly and integrally put together that an examination of the relative size of the hypothalamus (in the base of the brain) can indicate whether a man is heterosexual or homosexual. Sorry, you macho gay guys - hets have bigger ones! LeVay published his small-scale research on the gay brain in 1991, and kicked off a huge controversy. This book is his considered defence of his theories. LeVay is no geek scientist; he's a gay man with a vested interest in his work and a congenial line in social responsibility. He spends much of the book building up his argument for scientific research into the causes of sexual orientation. The sexologists, the psychoanalysts, the behaviourists and the endocrinologists are all here: the book at least provides thoughtful overview of sexuality research.
Yet LeVay's conclusions jar. His arguments for the importance of causal research are firstly that many gays would welcome biological evidence of their sexual orientation; secondly that heterosexuals are nicer to homosexuals if they think their sexuality is genetic, rather than chosen; and thirdly that heterosexuals are mostly reasonable, and will not misuse such research to abort their potentially homosexual child, or legislate (or worse) against "genetically deviant" individuals. LeVay comes across as a rational man who expects rational arguments of individual rights to win through in the end. I'm not convinced. Can we risk pursuing such knowledge? And why bother anyway?
- Ann Kaloski
Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality, by Simon LeVay: £16.95. The MIT Press: (0171) 306 0603, email 100315.1423@compuserve.com.
I read Plastic on a flight to Ohio, the home state of Devo, the late '70s band that wore spiffy plastic flowerpots as a seminal fashion statement. (Flowerpots are, of course, a member of the butadiene plastic family.) Driving to the hotel, I passed the Wonder Bread factory. (This fluffy loaf is, of course, wrapped in a white, yellow, blue and red polypropylene isomer.)This is all to say that what is ostensibly the driest of reads turns out to be jolly good fun. Plastic's factual standpoint makes an unexpected yet clear case that a sizeable chunk of 20th century history revolves not around personalities or inner cultural drives, but new plastics or lack thereof.
From the rubber fields of Japanese-occupied Malaysia to the Tupperware-loaded fridges of suburban Florida, Stephen Fenichell makes an accidental lab spill feel like a car chase in a breezy action movie. Should I ever meet Fenichell, I will remove the flowerpot from my head in deference to his wonderful book.
- Douglas Coupland
Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century, by Stephen Fenichell: £16. HarperBusiness, on the Web at www.harpercollins.com:harperbiz/business/.
Good news: Grand Prix 2 is finally on the streets. Bad news: it's not called Quake, so no one really cares. Which is a shame. The original was a racing extravaganza that leapt right to the top of my twichometer. With time I could win on the hardest level, leading to the illusion that I could, just maybe, coupe le moutard at the real thing. GP2 shattered my dreams.I selected the hardest level straight away. Mistake. GP2 is hard. I accelerated out of a corner too fast and spun into oblivion; I stabbed slightly too hard on the brakes and ate run-off gravel. GP2 is heartbreakingly unforgiving. The extra sensitivity is infuriating at first, but there is a mouth-watering challenge awaiting those who can live with the early carnage (life expectancy of a novice: under a minute).
Once you've realised that GP2 is going to take an age to master, and that it will undoubtedly ruin your love life, then this game's sheer intricacy will leave you agog. It acknowledges all of the 1994 Formula 1 rule changes, and you can even play around with the car-to-pit telemetry settings. The all-new 3D graphics engine, in particular, is a triumph. And when you find yourself leaning off your chair as you enter a tight corner, then tensing up as you slam into a wall, you know the game's designers are on top of things. The only drawback is that GP2 is going to take months, if not years, to master. I'm sorry, Michelle. You understand, don't you?
- Rob Dodson
Microprose Grand Prix 2: £39.99. Microprose: (01454) 893 893, on the Web at www.microprose.com/.
OK, I know you've been wondering. I'll come clean. I am in fact a heterosexual black female in my late forties. Not the white, public schoolgirl that you thought I was. Or am I? Aha, only teasing. I've been inspired to mess around with my sexuality, racial origin and any other aspect of identity you would care to test me on (favourite Wilbur Smith novel, milk-fat content preference) by Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein's book Nearly RoadKill. Subtitled "an erotic infobahn adventure", it is an idealistic epistolary novel involving gender, race and spoon-bending. Alright, not spoons; those are among the few things they don't bend.The novel traces the highly charged relationship of online identity japesters, Scratch and Winc. Their appetite for bulletin-board sex and government registration evasion elicits the unwelcome attention of the Federal Bureau of Census and Statistics. Although this sounds about as scary as being targeted by operatives from the Milk Marketing Board, things soon get out of hand. The FBCS is a branch of government peopled by dull number-crunching public servants. Unfortunately, under the direction of a paranoid authoritarian regime they become a kind of state Gestapo. Imagine what milk marketing was like in Soviet Russia. And so Scratch and Winc are hunted by the Feds; they're vilified in the press as child pornographers and end up like two modern-day Robin Hoods in an adventure that makes the Dukes of Hazzard look like the shit-shovelling provincials we always knew they were.
Unfortunately, the authors' bombastic cybergrrl rhetoric continually intrudes into the narrative. The true nature of the protagonists' identities is intriguing for a while until you realise that you don't care whether they're femme, butch, human or field mouse. All you want is for them to be a normal suburban couple not having erotic infobahn adventures but worrying about the mortgage, cleaning the car and conducting mildly successful careers in insurance. Occasionally lying about their milk-fat content preference in emails to the Milk Marketing Board would be a bonus as it would, when all is said and done, be more interesting than this rather disappointing book.
- Jamie Cason
Nearly RoadKill, by Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein: £8.99. Serpent's Tail: (0171) 354 1949, on the Web at www.serpentstail.com.
I've been playing too much Quake recently. When I go to sleep at night I find myself running down dark passageways, knee-deep in gobbets of flesh. It's the sort of stuff to make responsible parents tremble in their shoes - thank God my mum thinks I'm safe upstairs playing Nights Into Dreams, the latest game from the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog.Nights is, in its own way, just as insane as id's gorefest. Remember Sonic's brightly-coloured pastoral world of rings and palm trees and Dr Robotnik? Now imagine that world on strong party drugs. You play Elliot or Claris, dreamers who have fallen into the 3D world of Nightopia, blended with a jester-like figure called Nights and fly around collecting coloured baubles. You are chased by a giant alarm clock, get buffeted by rock thingies, and undergo numerous other cutesy-surreal experiences. The boss levels are just absurd. Words fail me, but I think to understand it you probably have to be Japanese. Sayonara.
- Hari Kunzru
Nights Into Dreams for Sega Saturn: £59.99 including analogue control pad. Sega: (0181) 995 3399.
I know blasphemy is bad. That's exactly what's so fun about it. There is, however, one circumstance in which blasphemy is cool with God: if it's so funny that the Almighty gets a kick out of it, you're off the hook.On that score, I doubt Robert Carr is too worried about Hell. His deliciously hateful attitude isn't directed at the Big G himself; instead, Carr's games target God's various fan clubs. And boy are those fan clubs gonna be pissed off. Under the umbrella of Lamprey Systems (motto: "Bad Software For Bad People"), paranoid antisocial programmer Carr produces bizarre, unrepentantly sick pieces of code, which he distributes for free.
MacJesus ProGold allows you to log on to an etheric hotline for a conversation with the man Himself. You might as well be IRCing a real person. Pretty Good Porno 3, in Carr's own words, "produces Penthouse Forum-type letters ranging in content from the merely obscene to the patently absurd." Pick one of nine story lines, then add your own names, sex acts and other incriminating information to produce professional-quality erotica.
Now for the bad news: Lamprey games are Mac-only. But the website is a real treat, with extravagant content warnings and information about the karmic repercussions of viewing Carr's work. There are also links to other bad taste sites. Sick sick sick.
- Rev. Ivan Stang
Lamprey Systems: email smurfboy@aol.com or lamprey@micron.net, on the Web at users.aol.com/lampreysys/index.html.
I have this T-shirt. On the front it says, "Girls kicking ass". It makes me feel sexy (it's very tight) and strong (men are too scared to say anything). It's the combat gear of the '90s, and I always wear it on my visits to geekgirl.geekgirl is the Australian girls' answer to nerd mags like Wired. It covers the arty farty as well as the sexually explicit - like Australian collective VNS Matrix, whose motto is: "the clitoris is the direct line to the matrix ... the future is unmanned". It provides practical information on how to get connected and is the most complete guide to cyberspace for cyberfeminists. Some boys I know like it, too. geekgirls get everywhere, interviewing Mr Sausage (what does this remind me of?), giving Hakim Bey a hard time and working on new money-making schemes.
When girls get into art, it's not about landscape painting; it's about PoPSciFi, punk videos, ambitious bitches and techno music; geekgirl doesn't waste its time with political correctness and victimisation. Girls of the 1990s spend their time on the Net, having cybersex. What makes geekgirl so useful for the cybergirl/boy is that it draws together all the threads. Neither lesbian only, nor solely dedicated to art, exploring both science and fiction, it does what most academic feminisms never manage: it provides and links up transdisciplinary information.
Sure geekgirl has its flaws. It could be more open to Europeans; its layout could be better and its content more diverse, but it is still the best we have. So raise your modem and shout!
- Marie Ringler
geekgirl: A$40 for print subscription, or free on the Web at www.geekgirl.com.au/. geekgirl: tel/fax +61 (2) 95 50 67 77, email gg@geekgirl.com.au.
Using the latest Web browser and a full complement of plug-ins is all very well, but what happens when you decide your eyes have had enough and you'd like some good old-fashioned hard copy? If you habitually turn to your browser's built-in print facilities, think again. Do you really want to deal with the melange of fonts, graphics and assorted control characters your marvellous software has seen fit to foist on your printer? No! What you want is Web Printer.Spotting a no-doubt-transient gap in the market, Forefront have come up with this imaginatively named program, which will print any Web page as a neatly numbered, double-sided booklet. It will also shrink text and graphics to fit on whatever size paper you are using, and lead you by the hand through every step of the process. The oh-so-easy-to-use interface has the look and feel of a Microsoft Word print preview, with all the buttons and fonts clearly labelled. Most of the functions are more or less intuitive, but the double-sided printing, while cute, is not. Still; worthwhile.
- Gabriel Ratcliffe
Web Printer: £29.95. Forefront Europe Ltd: (0181) 387 4011.
Who hasn't seen the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho and winced as Janet Leigh is butchered by Anthony Perkins? Psycho is one of those iconic films it's almost impossible to watch without seeing the cultural history that surrounds it; like Casablanca or Gone With the Wind, it's a film that you watch yourself watching. Which is why Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho (1992) is a stroke of genius. Stretching the film out for an entire day makes it a completely different kind of object. The shower scene crawls along: painful, voyeuristic, obscene. It's not like watching a naturalistic movie any more; it's something else entirely. 24 Hour Psycho is just one of the treasures discussed in Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film Since 1945, the catalogue to an LA exhibition which unfortunately won't make it to the UK. Even so, the book is worth owning for the essays and the fetishistic joy of the illustrations. For a century, art and film have watched one another. Early directors made references to 19th century art to validate their fledgling medium. Since then, the tables have often been turned, with artists drawing on the cinematic image to question and parody the 20th century's defining cultural form.So Cindy Sherman poses in still photos that the reader immediately knows are "out of a film", although probably not which one. She's not copying anything in particular, just abstracting film's vocabulary. So Jean-Luc Godard jumps and shuffles images, dislocating them from the comfortable linearity to which Hollywood has accustomed us. Godard's films scream "art", because his artifice is not the same as we're used to in "normal" films. Who said close-ups and tracking shots were "natural", anyway?
Earlier this century, film was embraced by artists because of its aura of modernity. It was futuristic, iconoclastic. Now, artists are more likely to subvert it. So where is modernity now? Multimedia? On the Web? Get Hall of Mirrors to find out where we've been.It might tell you where we're headed.
- Hari Kunzru
Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film Since 1945, edited by Kerry Brougher: £40. Museum of Contemporary Art, LA/Monacelli Press; distributed in the UK by Penguin: (0171) 416 3000.
The other Sunday I found myself jumping up and down in the midst of a heaving crowd at London's Blue Note cafe. The occasion was Goldie's Metalheadz club, and, as they say in junglist circles, the beats were running.Goldie made a spectacular entrance in his customised Merc, accompanied by an improbable number of men in Tommy Hilfiger jackets. While he dispensed bonhomie and handshakes near the bar, GrooveRider took control of the decks. Over the beats floated the voice of one Cleveland Watkiss, improvising skats, raps, exhortations and conscious soul lyrics over the rhythms.
Watkiss is one of Britain's most versatile MCs and vocalists, having worked with everyone from Stevie Wonder to The Who. Now he's discovered the joys of jungle and joined Marque Gilmour and DJ Le Rouge to form Project 23, one of the most innovative drum-and-bass acts in a fast-moving field. Watkiss is not the only star. Gilmour's live drumming has earned him accolades worldwide. Le Rouge is perhaps the least well-known of the three, but has played every genre of dance music from soul to trance. The combination of voice, live drums and deejaying on 23, the trio's somewhat unpromisingly-titled album, produces a sound quite unlike most of Project 23's genre-bound competitors. The sheer variety of styles on the album will astound you. In six months time the number 23 may have taken on truly mystical significance.
- Ann Sexton
23, by Project 23. Available on Dorado: (0171) 287 1689, on the Web at www.dorado.co.uk.
It's midsummer in Arizona, and I'm headed south on Interstate 19 towards Mexico. It's 110 degrees in the shade, but I'm going somewhere cool. In fact, I'm headed to a missile silo to see the last remaining Titan.From 1963 until the last missile was dismantled in 1987, the Titan II was the big stick of the Cold War, standing on 24-hour alert. It was gradually replaced with a new generation of ICBMs which had multiple warheads. The megatonnage of the Titan II remains classified, but as our tour guide tells us, it exceeded all bombs dropped during World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The missile rests behind 8-foot-thick walls of hardened concrete. The topside motion sensors, which were once tripped by birds, are disabled. The 740-tonne silo door is permanently left halfway open. A glass window covers the missile. This, we are told, is so Russian satellites can peer in and see that the old Titan II is not armed or operational. We climb down steel steps and walk along a hall towards a set of three-ton steel blast doors, leading to the control room. Its walls are painted institutional cream; its chairs and controls are vintage 1960s; the launch control electronics function today as they did then. The room is suspended from its hardened shell by massive shock absorbers designed to allow occupants to survive "all but a direct hit".
We run through the countdown procedures. Two officers must agree to launch, simultaneously turning keys out of arm's reach of one another. "Once the missile's off," says the guide, a retired US Air Force man, "you're alone with your god. We're not told where it's going - we wouldn't want to know." Ten years ago his words would have added to my nuclear nightmares. Today they seem part of distant history. "I bet you couldn't build something like this today with all the environmental impact reports and such," one visitor remarks. Let's all hope this weekend warrior is right.
- Michael Learmonth
Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley, Arizona: admission US$6 Contact: +1 (602) 791 2929.
The taste wars continue in Wired UK's secret underground bunker. Caught between Sean's one-man Hawkwind revival featuring Space Ritual (One Way) and Hari's dogged attempt to get into Tricky's Pre-Millennium Tension (Island), the most depressing album since, er, the last Tricky album, Tom has been keeping his headphones clamped firmly to his ears. Prising them off, Wirelings find that he is dividing his listening time between doses of high-octane house cheese - The Essential Mix Volume 3 (ffrr), and Zion Train's Grow Together (China). Apparently, he finds the techno mix of Babylon's Burning strangely soothing.
Elsewhere in Wired's antarctic retreat, Fossil Fuel (Virgin), XTC's singles collection, is proving to Liz that the band's brilliance has mellowed but never dimmed. Finally free of Virgin contract, maybe they'll give her a new album soon. From the brutal "This Is Pop?" through the heart-wrenching "The Meeting Place" to the twangy "Mayor of Simpleton", she is swooning at the sheer sublimity of it all. Somebody loosen her corset, quickly.
Accolades have been received for Millennium Grooves, a collection of deep beaty things from Dust2Dust records. Well, put it this way; in a month where the music system has been fought over with a tenacity unknown since last winter, no one has wrestled it off the tape deck. As Christmas approaches and Wirelings find their favourite CDs in their 28.8kbps stockings, you can be sure that the conflict is only beginning. No pasaran!
Jamie Cason is a sometime comedian and writer. His influences include Oliver Reed, Henry VIII and Buddha.Douglas Coupland is the author of several books, including Generation X and Microserfs.
Daniel Diver is a freelance journalist living in Germany and has heard a rumour that Kraftwerk might be reforming. He is very excited about that.
Rob Dodson recently tunnelled his way out of civil engineering and into the digital daylight.
Rhys Grossman is a consultant at Coopers and Lybrand, specialising in new media.
Ann Kaloski is a middle-aged academic who lives in Yorkshire and watches Coronation Street. She (and Mrs Merton) will make it big next year.
Todd Krieger would like to reach the letter r, though he's quite sure he'll never get past q.
Michael Learmonth, a recent graduate of University of California, Berkeley, Journalism school, lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Marvin Minksy is a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, where he teaches. He has written several books, including The Society of Mind.
Gabriel Ratcliffe is an unemployed lawyer and one-time Wired-editorial-intern-cum-Quake-fiend.
Marie Ringler likes to wear tight t-shirts, eat Viennese pastry and generally work too much at www.t0.or.at.
Ann Sexton has more soul in her little finger than any of you candy-assed mothers have in your whole bodies, OK?
Rev. Ivan Stang co-founded The Church of the SubGenius, and preaches professionally in nightclubs and on his national radio show, The Hour of Slack.