Despite issues with logging in to the comments, last week’s drabble lab was great. Hopefully, sign-in issues will be resolved this time around; if you couldn’t get your drabble in for last time I’m sorry! I was really impressed this week with the breadth of interpretations of the theme. There were a lot of different interpretations, and they were all quite interesting! Read on fo... »
The long winter is over and we’re celebrating spring in the traditional way: with Irish dancing and higher order mathematics. This time we’re doing it with some friends. For those interested in what we were solving Polly had this: Ryan had this: And both of us had to solve this: »
This round of Drabble Lab made me grin, because there were so many repeating themes. You know you write for a wonderfully skeptical audience when the prompt of ‘truth’ yields stories mostly about the fallibility of human reason and the possible reality of totally implausible situations. In short, in most of these stories, there was no truth. And that was awesome. Once again, I recommend everyone c... »
Many cosplayers struggle with finding the right material to build their beautiful creations. In this series, I’m going to talk about different aspects of materials science from an engineering perspective, as it relates to Cosplay. First topic: Steel. Steel is much more complicated material than our limited linguistic treatment would imply. Colloquially, there are two kinds of steel: normal s... »
Recently, Douglass Rushkoff talked about something called “Present Shock” in Wired. In particular one quote stood out for me, about how storytelling is changing: “Think Game of Thrones. In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn’t really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it’s structured less like a TV sh... »
Drabble lab last week went phenomenally! There were so many great entries that I had a desperately hard time choosing a winner. You should definitely check out the whole thread, with all 14 drabbles (that’s only 1400 words; it won’t take you too long!). But in the meantime, here are runners up, a winner, and a new theme! For those of you who don’t know what is going on: Drabble l... »
Maki Naro has been with The Lab since the very beginning. He’s written great articles. He has a wonderful webcomic. And perhaps most importantly, he is the caretaker of a magnificent beard. But do you know what else he has? You guessed it! A starring role on Penny Arcade’s reality competition, Stripseach! Penny Arcade is a long-running webcomic that focuses on gaming and gaming culture... »
I am lucky. I look like 90% of the women on the big screen, the small screen, on the covers of novels and in the pages of comic books. I am white, skinny and have learned how to use makeup (as well as a few laser surgeries) to cover the birthmark on my face with which genetics graced me. That doesn’t make me a good cosplayer. In fact, it means that I can be a little more lazy with my costumes than... »
