Longer and brighter days that come with Spring and Summer months have always driven an increase in my reading time. Something about reading in natural light makes the experience imminently more enjoyable for me, while the inverse, reading via artificial light, often sees me drift off to sleep. This year is no different, and accordingly I’ve had a chance to consume several fine texts over the last few weeks.

Tipping Point
Tipping point authored by Malcolm Gladwell, discusses the seemingly biological nature of modern society’s trends, which is a great dose of non-fiction that’s extremely relevant to modern life. The concepts and hypothesis laid down in Tipping Point are very well suited to the trends we see on the internet, where a web 2.0 service like YouTube can be an interesting gimmick one day, and a foundation of digital zeitgeist the next.

The Culture Novels
My counter balance to the deep, yet somewhat dry discussion of Tipping Point has been a pair of novels by Iain M. Banks, which concerns his fictional space fairing society known as “The Culture”. So far the biggest draw for me has been Banks’ postulations on the integration of Artificial Intelligence into not only our everyday lives, but also our society. In essence, once a device built by “The Culture” exceeds a certain amount of complexity or capacity, it is granted sentience, and therefore is allowed all the liberties and rights of a biologically sentient being. Essentially Banks envisions AI that could inhabit something as vast as a planetary network, or something as narrow as an environment suit that allows a human to expose themselves to the crushing pressures of a gas giant like Jupiter. In a culture novel though, each of those AIs would have every right to quit their job or position, and set off on their own to, I don’t know, open a coffee shop or something. It’s a fascinating idea of the roll that AIs will play, and even draws parallels to the civil rights movement here in the US.

I highly recommend Tipping Point, and thus far, any of the Iain M. Banks culture novels. What else are crashnauts around the web reading?

I’m sure most Crashpod readers by now have seen the multitude of “Coke and Mentos” videos that have been making their way around the various video websites and blogs of the interwebs. For those that haven’t, the performances involve dropping a string of Mentos into a 2-liter of Diet Coke. This causes a powerful reaction in the bottle that can shoot streams of soda dozens of feet into the air or act like a rocket booster. The craze has even caught the attention of major news organizations and it’s easy to see why. A quick search on You Tube returned 365 examples of the phenomenon. The videos have gotten more and more sophisticated in their execution and it would seem that they have all been leading to what these two young scientists have pulled off. Using 101 two-liters of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos they create a stunning fountain show that in its execution comes across as quite beautiful.

In case anyone missed it, Google Calendar now has Safari support. No more switching back and forth to Firefox as you manage your calendars, hooray! Now if WordPress would just get their act together.

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