Jeff's Items of Interest

Bookmans is an independent bookstore in Arizona that has been fighting the good fight for nearly 30 years. The buy and sell books, of course, but also run film screenings, support the local community, and promote a yearly Fight Censorship campaign and host an ongoing Banned Books Club.

They believe words have the power to change lives, and back that with their actions.

When they released a new Sugar Skull t-shirt design some of their employees liked it. Really liked it. Watch the video to see just how much.

How much do you commit to what you love?

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

Apple became what they are by showing customers what they needed before the customers even knew it themselves. They have a feel for the market and industry that, backed by their vision, makes them a fan favorite.

Netflix, by contrast, seems completely out of control. They raised their rates unexpectedly, infuriated their customers, then apologized. Then they announced a split of their streaming and DVD branches, which they've now also dropped and apologized. They are "listening to their customers", they said.

No, they are reacting to repeated backlash because they really don't understand their customers at all. They're just reactive, and it's sad seeing them eat up good will so fast. I was an early Netflix adopter and fan, and now they look like a bunch of clueless clowns.

During WWII many superheroes played a big role in motivating troops and getting out pro-America news and ideas. Superman especially had a big American propaganda role in the war.

It's also an interesting, nerdy, what-if discussion to wonder what the wars would have been like if superheroes really existed. What if the cold war had not just been an escalation of nuclear weapons, but super powered humans as well. Several comics, including the very interesting Superman: Red Son explore aspects of this.

These pictures, however, are a lot lighter than those topics. Simple photoshops of heroes and villains into old war pictures. Captain America, Superman, Batman, and even the Joker and Darth Vader make appearances. Fun stuff, and I'd probably watch a movie that included any one of these scenes.

You and I are not merely separated from the galaxies by unimaginable immensities of space; we are also connected to them by unimaginable immensities of time. We are literally made from stars. We are their descendants. The only difference between us and stars is time.

You were made inside a star. Everything was. In the beginning, the universe was filled only with Hydrogen and Helium, the simplest of elements. Those gasses collapsed and ignited into stars, and it was inside the nuclear fury of those cosmic forges that simple matter was recombined and turned into new elements.

During a star's life, or at its explosive death, is where all lead came from, all gold, all oxygen, all carbon. Those new atoms of matter exploded forth, drifting for billions of years, before forming and connecting into their new shapes. That includes the computer in front of you, the chair beneath you, the air in your lungs, and the blood in your veins. It is all made from those drifting bits of matter that once came from stars.

It's a staggering fact, but I'm amazed at how many people either don't know it or thought it was just a lyric from a Moby song. The less poetic name for it is stellar nucleosynthesis.

The next time you're out at night, look up at the vast field of twinkling lights and remember that you exist because they exist. You are made of stars.

Many people live in fear of being "spoiled" for a story by finding out the ending. But a new study by psychologists shows that people wound up liking stories better if they'd been told spoilers in advance.

HA! It's always baffled me why some people hate spoilers. I know people who refuse to see a movie if it has been "spoiled", yet after seeing it once will watch it repeatedly.

If you watch a good movie a dozen times, viewings 2 through 12 are all "spoiled", and your enjoyment clearly isn't diminished or you wouldn't keep watching it.

The study presents some ideas why spoilers prove popular, but I think it's simple: the story is what people love. A good story doesn't rely on the unknown to keep it afloat. It's about the journey, not the destination, and a spoiler only lets you know where you're headed.

PS - Bruce Willis was dead the entire movie.

After seeing the popularity of YouTube Justin began making instructional guitar videos in December 2006, initially filmed and edited by his friend Jedi. As of June 2011 his YouTube instructional videos have been watched over 93,000,000 (yep that's 93 million) times and the web site receives well over 20,000 unique visitors a day!

After winning a sweet Taylor solid-body electric guitar earlier this year at SXSW thanks to social media stud-muffin Jay Baer, I decided I had to learn to play.

One of the few things I've never tackled is learning how to play a musical instrument, and it annoys me. As with most thing that annoy me, that's incentive for me to go roll up my sleeves and try to fix it.

I've picked up Garage Band on the iPad, and borrowed an old amp, and with the help of this site and other online videos I'm going to give playing a shot. You may want to either stock up on ear plugs, or just start running.

There are no angels here, but there are majestic plumes of fire larger than our entire planet. There are vistas of rock and ice stunning in their chaotic serenity. Lights from our greatest cities twinkle light dots from overhead.

We have only the tiniest of glimpses into the wonder of our minuscule corner of the cosmos, and yet it takes my breath away.

I love communities. They represent the quirks, associations, and passions that not only bind people together, but allow them greater freedom of expression when they know they are with others who feel like they do. Shared communities allow people to drop their guard.

I love geek communities especially. Technology and science-fiction may be the initial elements you see, but it is really a sense of wonder and of exploration that the members share.

Here, you combine one of the most beloved science fiction shows of all time, Doctor Who, with the host of the incredibly popular MythBusters show about having fun with science, and then, you know, THROW LIGHTNING BOLTS AROUND.

Yeah, this is off the Nerd Charts. And it's beautiful.

To the goofy question "What super power would you have?" the answer for me is only and immediately: Flight. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, and I still stare out the windows of jets when I travel, thinking what it would be like to glide quietly through the sky.

I've gone skydiving several times, doing it without someone else strapped to my back as most places push it. Those moments of floating above the earth with no other soul around were just... staggering. The world is different up there, and this video captures it well.