Berin expounds on his theory of gaming systems as food, and the GM as the sheft, in this lengthy post inspired by comments during the lengthy -- and interesting -- thread for "Jumping the Dire Shark". In related news, the blog for Silver Agents, the play-by-post game Berin's using to demonstrate his theories, has been launched.

I made some minor repairs and upgrades to The Atomic Age the other night -- I cleaned up the blog roll, killing out a few of the bad links, adding in some fresh ones, and I finally got my Technorati profile working on both this blog and Nuketown, which allowed me to add a link to my profile.

The good news is the new Intel-powered MacBooks (the successor to the PowerBook) is fast, sleak, and trip-resistant. The bad news it is runs hot and produces a strange whining sound (which some have suggested is due to the second processor not having enough to do ... strange but true). I'm a little surprised about the heat -- wasn't the whole point of going to Intel to avoid the G5 meltdown? Read the full story.

The March issue of the collaborative zine features the story "The Margre Arisen" by Liam Donahue.

An interview with Colin Nederkoorn, organizer of the XP-on-Mac Prize which was won by a team out of California. He provides an overview of how they did it. Read the full story.

Star Trek really did help make the world a better place by inspiring a whole host of cool technologies. Read the full story.

"The King's Copy" by Andrew J Leadbeatter, "It Ain't Easy Being Green" by Catriona Hoy, "Bloodletting" by Paul Sheringham and seven other short stories are available in the latest edition. Read the full story.

The Europeans are looking to upgrade their ExoMars lander to include an orbiter that would be used to communicate back to Earth. Not including the orbiter would force the lander to rely on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will already be used to ferry messages from America's own Mars Science Laboratory. Read the full story.

Communicating with interplanetary space craft is difficult thanks to the distances involved and the resulting delays in transmitting data. Researchers hope to improve the ease and reliability of communication through a deep space internet based on delay-tolerant networking. Read the full story.

Radio Active goes temporarily political with a review of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta graphic novel. But before I launch off on that tangent, I've got news about the flu that ravaged Nuketown, updates on some of my freelance projects, and a bunch of new sites of note, including the Battlestar Galatica wiki, the Liberty & Culture blog, an excellent conversation about "Common Sense" gaming via UncleBear.com and a cool write-up on virtual desktops for GMs from TreasureTables.org.