Interesting article about the pop culture that U.S. troops bring to Iraq from home. With portable CD, mp3, and DVD players and laptops, soldiers are more connected than they\’ve ever been, which creates a unique situation.
[ From Boing Boing ]

Luminous Landscape has a 3 part review of the Leica Digilux 2, the \”digital analog\” camera. The controls for the important settings like aperture, shutter speed and focus are actual analog dials, so it makes changing the settings very fast and intuitive. Compare it to other digital cameras, where you need to dig through menus and submenus. It comes with a non-interchangeable 28-90mm zoom lens.

The Digilux 2 is a collaboration between Leica and Panasonic, where Leica designed the optics for Panasonic. So Luminous Landscape also has a review of the LC1, Panasonic\’s version of the Digilux 2. It\’s $500 cheaper and has the same lens.

This is so weird. There\’s a little town in Sicily where electrical appliances have been spontaneously catching fire. Electricity to the town was cut off but things are still burning.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a buildup of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare “natural phenomenon” in which surges of electricity rise from the earth’s core.

This sounds like it would make a good movie.
[ From Slashdot ]

This guy polished his Shuttle computer to a chrome finish. Lot of work but the end result looks really badass.

The reviews of the Nikon D70 are coming in and it sounds like a winner. It has excellent image quality that rivals the more expensive D100. It\’s also as fast as a regular film SLR, which fixes my biggest complaint about digital cameras. It\’s a little more expensive than the Canon Digital Rebel but the better build quality is well worth it.

Wow, 2 thumbs up for Kill Bill 2. I can\’t wait till next Friday. But damn, the movie\’s almost 3 hours long. Vol. 1 was 2 hours, so was Tarantino originally planning a 5 hour movie?

A Japanese company built a fully-functional model of the Akira bike. More pics here. It looks really big and heavy though, I don\’t know how much fun it\’d be to ride.
[ From Slashdot ]