Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire was an airport pickup. As you might expect, this historical fiction re-telling the tale of the battle of Thermopylae got a boost from the successful movie 300. This book didn’t improve upon the movie, but history needs personality to stay alive, and this “first person” account keeps the basics straight…

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After the original announcement on June 23rd, and some revisions tested starting July 14th, CNET’s redesign is open to all as of yesterday, August 27th. See for yourself at CNET.com, CNET News, and CNET Download.com. Congrats to all who worked on it. I’ve had my say kibitzing from the outside; I also know how much…

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The Dark Knight is still packing the IMAX theater here in San Francisco. We finally made it to the film. Big, long, full, and bold. The “excursion” to Hong Kong was a bit Jason Bourne-ish (which I like, but not in character) but otherwise, quite a headlong story. Whomever has to play the Joker in…

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I have not cancelled my Netflix account, so I was able to watch Pan’s Labyrinth, the DVD I’ve had out for months. (I missed the shipping fun by just a few days.) The mélange of history and fantasy shines. The division between the saturated color of the imagination and the stark faded light of Franco’s…

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Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer is the third and final book in The Neanderthal Parallax, exploring the imagined interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens via parallel universes. Hybrids completes what began in Hominids and continued in Humans. Once again, Sawyer delves into where science and religion mix, this time “finding” the God organ in the…

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Humans by Robert J. Sawyer is the second book in The Neanderthal Parallax, a set of three novels exploring interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens via parallel universes. Humans picks up from its beginnings in Hominids. The story is a bit dialog-heavy. The conversations between the Neanderthal male named Ponter and a human woman named…

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Dan Farber previewed the next phase of CNET’s rolling redesign in today’s blog post. See the full image of CNET News here. My previous comments hold. The body of the home page looks fine, with no complaints. However, I find the reflection in the sub-brands of “News” and “Download.com” quite distracting, and hard to read.…

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Saw Wall•E last night, just a few hours after the rest of the family. With a 94 on Metacritic, Wall•E is in the top 15 of all time so far. Hmmm… maybe I’d heard too many hosannahs before seeing it. Fun film, but not ready to dub it an all-time favorite just yet. After the…

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I’m one of the many whose upgrade to the 2.0 version of the iPhone software is hanging this morning. Ouch. Not supposed to disconnect phone, and can’t use the phone until the upgrade is complete. Follow the mayhem at TechMeme. 2 hours later…I’m back in business.

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Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer opens The Neanderthal Parallax, a set of three novels exploring interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens via parallel universes, where the big lugs didn’t die out…and weren’t such lugs. As always, Sawyer makes science human. Jumping off from a quantum physics experiment gone slightly askew, Sawyer blends in jealous ex-spouses,…

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