Axlon was a game developer, amongst other things, that was responsible from some of the last, and best games released for the Atari 2600. The little known company was founded by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, and designed a never-released console to compete head to head with Sega and Nintendo at the dawn of the 16-bit generation. Who was this interesting little company, and what happened to them?

Astronomy Cast (www.astronomycast.com) sends its listeners on a facts-based journey through the universe every week. Sit at your computer as you explore the rings of Saturn. Lay comfortably in bed as your dive feet first into a supermassive black hole, and even learn what one is!

Beginning in September 2006, its first episode dealt with the confusion regarding the IAU’s new definition of what a planet is, leading to Pluto’s demotion. This website’s first science article dealt with the same issue. It’s silly, but I feel a connection there. Since its induction, the show has been produced, without fail, every Monday. At the time of this writing there have been 68 episodes. The topics vary from planets in our solar system to string theory, (my favorite and yours).

The timeline, history and facts of online console gaming goes back farther than most people realize, all of the way to the Atari 2600, over a quarter of a century ago in 1982. When online console gaming is mentioned today, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are conjured up in the mind, but they have their roots in the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Explore the history and the people that made modern online videogame consoles possible.  

The last time a dinosaur fossil was discovered that contained “soft tissue” young Earth creationists jumped up and down with joy, claiming that it was proof that not only is planet Earth and the entire universe only 6000 years old, but that dinosaurs actually co-existed with human beings. The tissue was found inside of leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus rexm in 2005.

If the thought of an 8 ton T-rex playing with the kids in the back yard isn’t enough to produce a good belly laugh, then I don’t know what is!

In 1979, Milton Bradley, maker of popular board games, released a video game console: Microvision.

Microvision was the world's first handheld portable game console - that is, the first to be "reprogrammable." It would take ten years for a successor, the touted Nintendo Game Boy, to arrive on the scene, making Microvision a concept far ahead if its time. The unit was, and in many ways still is, incredibly innovative and unique.

Earth has long been known to be geologically active. On Earth, such forces are responsible for continental drift, earthquakes, the rise of mountain ranges, and of course, also volcanoes.

The existence of volcanism on Earth has been known throughout all of history; even to the most primitive humans and almost certainly to human ancestors. However, it is only within the past few decades that mankind’s understanding of volcanic activity outside of Earth has been discovered.

Outside of Earth, there are four worlds where volcanism has been observed, one where it may have been detected, and more that are strongly suspected.  Beginning with those that are closest to the sun and ending with objects that are far, frigid, frozen and cold, this is a journey to our solar system’s volcanoes. 

The aggressive sport from the Great White North had its earliest faithful digital incarnation from an unlikely source, Fairchild’s Channel F game console.

While it never was able to emulate Atari’s success, sales, developers, or graphics, the Channel F did have the most advanced controller of any console in the world until Nintendo introduced the D-pad.

In the 1970s, a company called Fairchild Semiconductor had been watching an emerging market of electronic entertainment. Video arcades had already become wildly popular, and Pong-style games systems that could only play built-in games were amazing sellers and excellent revenue generators for companies like Magnavox, Atari, and Coleco. Fairchild, a Silicon Valley pioneer, was about to break ground in a new territory, one that no other game company had yet entered.

No stranger to innovation, Fairchild Semiconductor was founded in 1957 as a subsidiary of the Fairchild Camera and Instrumentation Company, and led the way in developing semiconductors from a new space-age material called silicon. In 1964 Fairchild introduced the first linear integrated circuit.

In the mid 70s, the company drew up plans to enter the microprocessor market. Research and design began on the F8 chip, a 1.78 MHz 8-bit microprocessor. The first public outing of this design came as Fairchild was poised to make video game history.

For over a year here, and in several countries, Apple has been running some very witty, clever, and humorous advertisements.

"Hello, I'm a Mac."

"And I'm a PC."

This phrase, now embedded into pop-culture, proceeds some very witty, often times funny, but most of the time not-so-honest advertising.