The sleeve comes in a bunch of different colors, including an undyed, unbleached white canvas that is meant to be decorated with markers, fabric pens, and anything else you've got hanging around (alas, the surface wouldn't take the stickers I tried on it).

Skooba is the new brand-name for the accessory company Roadwired, whose products I've long admired and used (especially their ingenious RAPS electronics sleeves). Along with the Skooba Skin, Skooba have also launched a shoulder strap called the Superbungee that includes a shock-absorbing ring of bungee cord in the shoulder-pad. I've long used elasticated shoulder straps (mostly the ones from Victorinox, which only last about six months before the metal on the attachment clips gives way catastrophically). They make an enormous difference, converting your computer and books from dead weight into something that moves with you, supporting itself in time with your stride. The Superbungee is going on my bag today, and I'll be taking it on the road with me next week. Link to Skooba Skin, Link to Superbungee Strap

See also:
Joys of RoadWired and Zip-Linq
RoadWired's Skooba Satchel
RoadWired bags kick azz

Rufus Hirohito is the playboy scientist in charge of the current-generation GRW program, and his life is inverted by the news that Paraqan, an oil-rich middle-eastern dictatorship, has attained its own GRW and plans to destroy its neighbors. The US has no choice but to intervene -- even if it means sending an untested GRW behemoth into the field.

There's obviously a lot of manga influence here, but the story is pure American, a masterful take on the funnybook hero stories about America's destiny to police and govern the world. The writer, Stuart Moore, describes the book as having been written during the brief flare of post-9/11 optimism that ended when the US squandered its international goodwill on pointless oil wars and security theater.

Five years later, circumstances are still similar enough that Giant Robot Warriors still has political weight (unfortunately). Link

The substance of the exchange was this: Angus and Robertson has decided to demand that publishers pay them thousands of dollars for the privilege of having their books sold in their stores. The chain has been churning through management shakeups, unsuccessful SAP implementations, and other foul-ups, and now they want publishers to pay them for the money they're losing by not ordering the publishers' books in a profitable way.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who has worked in New York publishing for decades, has done a masterful job in annotating both letters, giving needed context for people unfamiliar with publishing. I worked as a bookseller for years and I have a lot of patience and respect for anyone willing to take books to the public, but some booksellers are so dumb, so evil, so ridiculous -- they deserve to crash and burn.

I am writing to inform you of some changes in the way we manage our business.

We have recently completed a piece of work to rank our suppliers in terms of the net profit they generate for our business.

Malarkey. If you’re a bookstore chain, doing business with a publisher doesn’t mean that you automatically carry a standard number of all the titles they publish. You order the books you want, in the quantities you judge appropriate. Whatever doesn’t sell gets returned to the publishers at their own expense. If A&R hasn’t been making a suitable profit off these publishers, it’s not the publishers’ fault. Booksellers make money by recognizing the books their customers will want to buy, ordering them in appropriate quantities, and selling them well.

Update: Pschemp prepared this translation for us!

The Stirling Engine
Runs on a cup of coffee or an ice pack

The revolutionary concept for this hot-air engine was discovered in 1816 by the Scottish minister Robert Stirling and has been updated for today. The principle is as ingenious as it is simple: In a sealed cylinder, heated from the underside, a piston pushes the enclosed air back and forth between the hot and the cold side. The air therefore expands out and compress together every cycle and that movement is converted via a moving piston and crankshaft into rotary motion.

As an energy source, any type of warmth or cooling that produces a temperature differential can be used, from an open fire to solar energy or any other unused source of heat or cold.

Set this fully functional Stirling engine on a cup with boiling hot coffee (Tea or water also works of course) - give the flywheel a small push to the left - and the apparatus begins simply to pump up and down - for up to an hour!

This isn't everything it can do: Set it on an ice pack or ice cubes from the freezer and turn the flywheel to the right and it will also pump up and down for an even longer time.

(Caption:It is really a marvel)

Kit made from sturdy punched cardboard with gold stamping, complete with all accessories including laser cut aluminium plates, low-friction plastic axle bearings and spring steel bent wire.

Height 16.5 cm, width and depth 12.6 cm.

Hello,

As a valued Google user, we're contacting you with some important information about the videos you've purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007.

To fully account for the video purchases you made before July 18, 2007, we are providing you with a Google Checkout bonus for $5.00. Your bonus expires in 60 days, and you can use it at the stores listed here: http://www.google.com/checkout/signupwelcome.html. The minimum purchase amount must be equal to or greater than your bonus amount, before shipping and tax.

After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

If you have further questions or requests, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

The Google Video Team

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

This is a giant, flaming middle finger, sent by Google and the studios to the customers who were dumb trusting enough to buy DRM videos. How many of these people will trust the next DRM play from Google (no doubt coming soon from YouTube) or the studios?

The terms that Google sold its video on were similar to those laid down by other downloadable video "stores," like Amazon Unbox. These stores claim to "sell" you things, but you can never truly 0wn the things they sell -- they are your theoretical property only, liable to confiscation at any time. That's the lesson for DRM: only the big motion picture companies, search giants and other corporate overlords get to own property. We vassals are mere tenant-farmers, with a precarious claim on our little patch of dirt.

Hey, class-action lawyers! This seems like a golden opportunity.

See also: Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than customers?

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the circuit's 34-year-old precedent that over time was evolving toward limiting when passengers could refuse a search and leave the airport after they had checked their bags or placed items on the security screening X-ray machine. Citing threats of terrorism, the court ruled passengers give up all rights to be free of warrantless searches once a "passenger places hand luggage on a conveyor belt for inspection" or "passes though a magnetometer."

Snip from Reuters item:

"Galactic Suite," the first hotel planned in space, expects to open for business in 2012 and would allow guests to travel around the world in 80 minutes. Its Barcelona-based architects say the space hotel will be the most expensive in the galaxy, costing $4 million for a three-day stay.

During that time guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and use Velcro suits to crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.

Reader comment: Thierry was one of many folks who wrote in to say the whole thing sounds like a possible hoax, or at least an implausible vapor-venture (I concur):

I am reporter, specialised in science (astronautics/astronomy/computing/photo) Permit me to tell you that you have no much criticism sense to assert that Galactic suite will build a space resort without even warn the readers that this project could be an utopia.

Have you even imagine to build a spaceship and a hotel in space in about 4 years ? Even Virgin Galactic and Astrium EADS are only able to build a ship in 4 years, and for a one-hour trip in space, without even think to build a hotel ! So don't imagine that it should be possible for a private company to build a resort in space in the same time. I suggest you to add some technical comments on the article and highlight the fact that it looks like a huge hoax, a great mediatic fear for this architecture office searching architects and high level designers, but probably not able to build a space station ! Of course, if their idea can incitate private companies to invest in the space tourism, go with it. I have written to the promoters to get more information and validate my ideas, they have nevrr answered...

Link to explanatory blog post, here's the photo set. (thanks, Ryan Russell)