Music and technology have always gone hand in hand—and the explosive flowering of music as an art form in the last century is also the story of the explosive growth of technology. Indeed, people have recognized the potential of computers to revolutionize music since before there even were computers. In 1842, writing about the theoretical …
You don’t have to be Indiana Jones to be an archaeologist, and you don’t have to be Marty McFly to travel back in time. Minnesota is rich with its own treasures from antiquity, with sites across the state that tell the story of American Indian and European settlement in the region. Visiting these historic places …
Originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of Momentum, published by the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. Read the article on the original website here. Since he was a child, Craig Minowa’s two driving passions have been music and environmentalism. As the leader of critically acclaimed indie-rock band Cloud Cult, he’s built a …
On this day 234 years ago, America declared its independence from England. And sure, at the time, we had our reasons. But thankfully the hostilities didn’t last; Britain and its former colonies share too much in common. London was the cultural capital of the English-speaking world for centuries, and remains an unmatchable destination for any …
Why it’s daunting: Everyone knows who Sherlock Holmes is, and it seems like everyone has written about him, too. It’s amazing just how much Holmes material is out there. The London sleuth, invented by Arthur Conan Doyle in the 1887 novel A Study In Scarlet, has come to personify the very idea of the private detective who …
An icon of modern British culture and the longest-running science-fiction TV show in history, Doctor Who has never been more popular than it is today, thanks to producer Russell T. Davies, whose revitalization of the series returns this month under the aegis of new producer Steven Moffatt. Matt Smith, taking over the title role from David Tennant, …
Why it’s daunting: The roots of American crime fiction go all the way back to Edgar Allan Poe, but like science fiction, the genre exploded with the pre-World War II rise of the pulps, magazines like Black Mask and Weird Tales, which were printed on cheap paper, and written and published by people who were often after a quick …
On March 8, moviegoers will jump back in time to an age of mammoths, saber-tooth cats and Stone Age humans fighting for survival in 10,000 BC, the latest movie from director Roland Emmerich. It probably won’t be a paragon of scientific accuracy, judging by Emmerich’s previous track record on Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow …
Originally published on MSNBC.com October 29, 2007. It’s no longer online there, so I’ve reposted it in full here. Just as the vitality and bold style of manga has swept through the formerly American-dominated field of comic books, Asian cinema has left a lasting stamp on the horror-film genre — especially the violent and distinctively …
Peglegs and parrots, cutlasses and corsairs, yarrrrs and yardarms, pieces of eight and bottles of rum: They’re all part of a good solid pirate story, a tradition that’s been around pretty much as long as pirates themselves have. Sea raiders have been causes for fear and sources of storytelling inspiration for thousands of years, of course, …