http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&q=sci-fi&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10

Is this old news? While looking for sci-fi news to talk about here, I searched for “sci-fi” at Google and got the above. It’s search results, except there’s a little live Twitter ticker that refreshes all mentions of sci-fi once every couple of seconds. If I remove any of the arguments, it doesn’t appear. I’m not even sure you’ll see it if you hit the link (what happens if you’re using IE and you request “client=firefox-a” ?).

Now imagine Google being able to live-refresh its own search index for all web pages, not just something unified and (relatively) small like Twitter. Are we close to that? Will humans need to know anything for themselves besides how to use these ubiquitous, mind-replacing tools? I don’t worry about knowing the capitol of Paraguay because I know Wikipedia will know it for me if I need it. So I don’t bother looking. I’m made uncurious because in a way, I know it — just in a more roundabout way than holding that datum in my brain.

Star Pirates is launching a Starslip contest! Are you familiar with Star Pirates, friend? It’s an in-browser space MMO you can play anywhere for free. See, you’re a star pirate where you can eke out a living mining the asteroids, raid other players’ ships for cargo, or team up for fleet-on-fleet combat!

The continuity of Starslip has some flexibility, as a daring contingent of StarCon pilots have wound up (presumably via errant starslip) in the Star Pirates universe. The Astry has been in good standing for a long time, and I just read about a meet-up in Baltimore?! How did I miss this?!

Anyhow! They’ve letting players submit missions for other players to embark on, and that’s where the Starslip contest comes in. The prompt?

An enemy fleet has stolen the Spine of the Cosmos! It must be returned to the Fuseli! Katarakis is amassing forces on an asteroid near Mars. It’s up to Cutter to stop him!

If it were up to me I’d say Katarakis was using his newly-charged timesuit to some awful end. Maybe retrieving Republic forces from the past to fill cockpits in this new armada. Of course, the Spine of the Cosmos has been blunted as a weapon, but it’s still worth money… look, I can’t do it for you guys! That’s just the starting point!!

Check out Star Pirates, play for free right now and enter the contest!

Bear with me, guys, I’m still sorting out getting comics into the RSS feed like they used to be. They’re not going away. Thanks!