www.adjet.info: 07/13/14

In honor of their maybe-possible return, 10 essential Strong Bad e-mails

Surprise! Strong Bad, it's me! Homestar Runner! From school!

Homestar Runner co-creator Matt Chapman made a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings happy when he said earlier this week that the cartoon could be making a comeback later this year following a successful experiment on April Fools' Day. If you watched the cartoons during their heyday, the news probably sent you down a nostalgic rabbit hole where you spent two hours re-watching all of your favorite episodes.

If you happened to miss out on Homestar during its peak, here's what you need to know: creators Matt and Mike Chapman made a lot of different Flash cartoons for the site, but the most popular were Strong Bad E-mails, also called "sbemails." Every week, Strong Bad (the luchador-looking guy in the picture above) picked a different fan-submitted e-mail to answer, and hilarity ensued. The site was updated regularly throughout the early 2000s before becoming more irregular later in the decade, and updates mostly ceased in 2009 as the Chapman brothers moved on to other projects.

We've combed through the archive and assembled 10 Strong Bad e-mails that do a pretty good job of showing what this odd Internet cartoon could be at its best. It's impossible to call out all of the good ones, but if these hook you the complete collection is still available here.

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Public to get to vote on names for exoplanets

NASA

Astronomers may be the world champions at giving fantastically dull names to spectacular objects. Over the years, catchy monickers like GRB 130606A and SDSS J150243.09+111557.3 have graced our pages. That trend has carried over into the naming of exoplanets, which picked up names like KOI 784.02 (where KOI is just short for "Kepler object of interest"). That's led at least one company to try to fill the void by letting people pay for the right to (completely unofficially) name a planet.

At the time the naming program first hit the news, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) made a statement that reminded everyone that the names would have no official weight. However, the IAU also recognized that the public was excited about the prospect and suggested it might do something about the situation. Unfortunately, the IAU's definition of "do something" involved kicking the problem to a committee, which is often where large organizations send ideas to die.

Yet the Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites Working Group has come through. About a year ago, it determined that exoplanet names should follow the rules that govern the naming of minor planets in the Solar System. And it suggested that any group that wanted to run a non-commercial naming campaign (meaning, you can't charge to name a planet) should get in touch. A year later, the IAU is announcing its first naming campaign, run in collaboration with the citizen science site Zooniverse.

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Grandma repeatedly protested drones at base, now faces a year in jail

Mary Anne Grady-Flores, a 58-year-old Ithaca, NY grandmother of three, faces a one-year county jail sentence after being charged with second-degree criminal contempt. The punishment comes after her repeated participation in peaceful anti-drone protests at the Hancock Air Base in DeWitt, NY.

In October 2012, Grady-Flores was taken into custody after a drone protest. According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, 16 people from the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars (UCGDEW) blocked three gates at the New York National Guard Hancock Field during the demonstration. They were charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct, and a protection order was eventually issued to prevent Grady-Flores from going near Col. Earl Evans, the mission support group commander at the 174th Attack Wing of the New York Air National Guard. Boing Boing notes that protection orders are at times given to non-violent stalkers, and this one was valid for one year, according to the paper.

Timing was not on Grady-Flores' side. In February 2013, Grady-Flores and 11 other UCGDEW members were being sentenced (this time to 15 days at a local penitentiary following new disorderly conduct charges; trespassing charged were dismissed). According an account Ellen Grady (Grady-Flores' sister) gave the Post-Standard, Grady-Flores was in attendance at the base to photograph the events this time rather than protest herself. But in the initial sentencing hearing, DeWitt Town Justice David Gideon said her intent was "completely irrelevant" to her additional criminal contempt charge since Grady-Flores admitted to being on base property. Grady told the Post-Standard that Grady-Flores was "was not a threat to Evans and... unaware that her actions in February violated the protection order." Grady-Flores eventually went to trial for criminal contempt in May and was found guilty. Her sentencing took place this week.

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Human memory-saving devices get $37.5m research boost from DARPA

Flickr user: Dierk Schaefer

Two teams creating devices that stimulate the brain to restore memory function have been granted $37.5 million by DARPA to develop the technology.

Both will initially work with people with epilepsy who have been given implants to locate where their seizures originate. The researchers will reuse the data gathered during this process to monitor other brain activity, such as the patterns that occur when the brain stores and retrieves memories.

One team will then attempt to map these patterns by recording the brain activity of epilepsy sufferers with mild memory problems while they play a computer game about remembering things. The pattern differences between the best and worst scores among these patents will be used to develop an algorithm for a personalized stimulation pattern to keep the brain performing at an optimal level.

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