Slashback: Carpal, Displays, Asylum

Slashback tonight with another word on eInk's color displays for portable computing, a temporarily happy ending for Keith Henson; a cool online-movie update, and a slight return to the subject of carpal tunnel syndrome.

But strenuous exercise might not be the answer ... Amigan writes: " Foxnews.com is reporting another story, based on a study done by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN that significantly cuts in to the number of people claiming to be Carpal Tunnel suffers."

Of course, neither this nor the Canadian study mentioned shortly ago say that people don't suffer from true carpal tunnel afflictions -- only that it may be a widely mis-diagnosed condition.

Please drop quarters into your bedside cable modem kzinti writes: "Over two years ago CmdrTaco posted a story about a video clip archive and an animated short called 'Tripping the Rift' by Chris Moeller of 'King of the Hill.' TTR is a bawdy parody of popular science fiction like Star Trek and Star Wars, and is one of the funniest things you'll ever see. Alas, the clip available in 1999 from the archive (which has since shut down) was small and of poor quality. I recently decided to see if I could find a better quality copy on the net somewhere and struck gold at, wouldn't you know it, trippingtherift.com. Not only does this site have a newly posted, high-quality MPEG edition of TTR, but it also has a couple of DivX versions and links to Quicktime and other versions of TTR. The best news is that a second episode of TTR has been produced and should be available for download 'shortly.' Trip Now!"

Lookin' clever. Regarding Chris DiBona's walk through the recent Society for Information Display expo, SID Attendee writes: "Your SID correspondent missed one of the coolest demos, from eInk. These displays use charged particles with black & white pigments on opposing ends to form a pure reflective display. The contrast and resolution was great, easily like a newspaper. They consume zero power when the display is static, and can be made incredibly thin (less than 1mm). This could be the thing that makes ebooks/webpads for real. Color is on the horizon (they had a very crude color demo at the show).

PS - I wasn't that impressed with the OLEDs - many of the LCD displays outperformed them, and seem to have fewer lifespan issues."

Thanks for the first-hand report.

6 points for Canada! iamklerck writes: "Apparently the Scientology critic who was to go on trial for interfering with a religion has been granted "refugee" status in Canada. I wish him luck, as I'm sure we all do. Perhaps some day he'll be able to return to the U.S. without having his rights violated."