The reason for last week’s missed deadline can finally be revealed – the Blog Wyrm staff has just spent the last week across the pond in the German city of Munich. As might be expected, some things are really nice and other make us long for home. The people are generally polite and well ordered but we were really surprised by the number of smokers. All walks of life and all demographics are seen to light up on a fairly regular basis. In this respect, it was like stepping back in time to the 1960s. In other respects, they do several things much better. Especially convenient is the way that credit card purchases are done, especially in restaurants, where the waiters bring those small devices to the table to settle the check.
Munich itself is a lovely and clean city. It has a strange but delightful mix of old-world buildings and culture grafted with the globalized reach of modern business. It is not uncommon to see American exports, like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut built into buildings that date back hundreds of years and which once formed the castles or walls for the core portion of the city.
But enough of Munich. Returning closer to home, we have a nice set of columns this week.
At the top of the list, Green Screen gives a thoughtful review of the new movie Crimson Peak. This Gothic piece by Guillermo del Toro seems to have done a lot of things the right way and Green Screen is only too happy to talk about it.
Common Cents examines the recent move by Gravity Payments’ CEO Dan Price to set a minimum salary for all his employees. Perhaps this is the long-hoped-for control experiment that will help settle the controversy over the minimum wage.
What does the new comic Negative Space have in common with the old 1988 cult classic They Live? About Comics thinks a great deal. Read to find out why.
Is it ever wrong to killer a killer? Does it matter how you do it or why? Aristotle to Digital wrestles with these questions as it examines the actions of the robust and rotund fictional detective Nero Wolfe in the case of The Red Box.
Finally, Under the Hood looks at the most favorite approximation of the controls engineer – linearization. After all, when the only tool you have is a Laplace Transform every system tends to look linear.
Enjoy!