BBC News:

A story which suggested that users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who chose other browsers appears to have been an elaborate hoax.

A number of media organisations, including the BBC, reported on the research, put out by Canadian firm ApTiquant.

It later emerged that the company's website was only recently set up and staff images were copied from a legitimate business in Paris.

I’m no fan of Internet Explorer but I found it troubling how people used this “report” as an excuse to indulge in snobbery and elitism.

Wired Magazine’s Chris Colin:

Our ever more sophisticated arsenal of stars and thumbs will eventually serve to curtail serendipity, adventure, and idiotic floundering. But more immediate is the simple problem of contamination. When the voices of hundreds of strangers, or even just three shrill ones, enter our heads, a tiny but vital part of ourselves is diminished. Suddenly we’re breached, denied the pleasure of articulating our own judgment on this professor, or that meal, or this city. It’s a fundamental bit of humanness to discover, say, the Velvet Underground for the first time—to rifle through that box of records at 13 and to reach an unbiased and wholly personal verdict on those strange sounds. Is it pretty? Ugly? Why are they out of tune?

There’s an essential freedom in being alone with one’s thoughts, oblivious to and unpolluted by anyone else’s. Diminish that aloneness and we start to doubt our own perspective. Do I really think Blue Bottle coffee is that great? Or Blazing Saddles that funny? Do I really not like that pizza place because it isn’t authentic New York-style? Sure, it’s entirely possible to arrive at one’s own opinion amidst a cacophony of others. But it’s also possible to bend, unknowingly and imperceptibly, toward a position not naturally our own.

In recent months, the amount of ways to see how others have liked, +1'd, rated, recommended, and commented on anything and everything has become rather tedious and exhausting. That’s one of the reasons why I block website comments (thank you, CommentBlocker). I want to experience articles, videos, etc. for myself and make up my own mind before I'm inundated with everyone else’s opinions.

Update: My Filmwell colleage M. Leary has posted some good follow-up thoughts that points out the difference between true criticism from “fellow wayfarers” and the “tyranny of petty coercion”.

My own personal fave, BBEdit, equates to the Shire: “A quiet, long-overlooked land populated by simple folk who keep mostly to themselves. They are somewhat set in their ways, awkward in their manners, and superficially incapable of apparently simple tasks. Yet they hide deep roots and unexpected strengths.”

Christ and Pop Culture contributors were recently asked “How has having children changed the way you interact with and think about popular culture?” Here are the responses. (Also, bonus points to Seth T. Hahne, Christ and Pop Culture’s resident illustrator, for the lonely Totoro in his illustration.)

CNN’s John Blake:

Many Americans are bilingual. They speak a secular language of sports talk, celebrity gossip and current events. But mention religion and some become armchair preachers who pepper their conversations with popular Christian words and trendy theological phrases.

If this is you, some Christian pastors and scholars have some bad news: You may not know what you’re talking about. They say that many contemporary Christians have become pious parrots. They constantly repeat Christian phrases that they don’t understand or distort.

Gang Gang Dance melts your brain while M83 gets epic with the saxophone. My latest “Grace Notes” column for Christ and Pop Culture.

Now that the Space Shuttle has been grounded, and private investors and companies looking to send people into space, Virginia Brown asks, “As the next generation of spaceships is being conceived, should shuttle designers take their inspiration from sci-fi illustrators?” The answer, of course, is “Yes”.

More and more, the aim of companies, such as Boeing, will be to entice consumers to pay for space travel. Just as airlines have done, they will have to appeal to potential passengers - and investors - in order to establish their brands against the competition.

"An enterprising company seeking to attract government and private passengers might achieve success by offering them spaceships that resembled the unique visions of Chris Foss," says science fiction academic Dr Gary Westfahl.

How boss would it be to go soaring into space in something that might appear in the pages of Concept Ships?