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Alex Pasternack
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Alex Pasternack is the editor of Motherboard.tv, a cutting edgy science and technology culture site.

As a journalist specializing in culture, politics and the environment, Alex has written for Time, The Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, Far Eastern Economic Review, Paper, The New York Observer, Huffington Post and TreeHugger.com, among others.

He is honored to be the only blogger for the Huffington Post who is actually paid.*

Find him at alexp at motherboard dot tv or at treehugger dot com.

(*Not paid in money, of course, but in honor.)

Blog Entries by Alex Pasternack

The Saddest and Most Expensive Home Movie Ever Made: On Zapruder's JFK Assassination Film

(89) Comments | Posted November 24, 2012 | 6:00 PM

Because the president’s limousine passed almost exactly in front of Dallas clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder on Nov. 22, 1963, just as he was playing with his new film camera, and precisely at the moment that Lee Harvey Oswald fired his rifle from a nearby books depository, his silent, 26.6-second home...

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Can Chinese State TV Compete With CNN? Billions in RMB Say Yes

(4) Comments | Posted November 5, 2012 | 2:42 PM

Last November, Michelle Makori, a business reporter formerly of Bloomberg News, joined a small group of seasoned Western television journalists for a whirlwind tour of China. The trip, arranged by China Central Television (CCTV), the world's largest broadcaster, culminated in a visit to the network's two headquarters: on the...

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New York's Giant, Beautiful New Park, Built Atop a Landfill, Makes New York City Millions

(1) Comments | Posted June 27, 2012 | 4:38 PM

Public parks don’t tend to be cash cows, not unless they get advertising or become, well, private. But the park that sits on top of the old Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island is different. It won’t initially open for at least another three years, and its full opening...

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What the Sold-Out Ultra-Orthodox Anti-Internet Rally Was About

(25) Comments | Posted May 22, 2012 | 10:11 PM

From Motherboard:

“What do you think this is about?” was the question that bounced back when I asked the same of Sruly, a smiling, bespectacled twenty-something Hasidic student and erstwhile packer and shipper from Williamsburg. We were on the G train, on our way to what may have been the...

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Occupy Reality: A Video Interview With Douglas Rushkoff on Facebook, Community, and Starting a Good Zombie Apocalypse

(0) Comments | Posted May 1, 2012 | 2:04 PM

[From Motherboard]: Understanding how things work in order to make them work better is the basic hacker ethos, and Douglas Rushkoff has applied it to his broader discussion of the way the culture and politics of the many are driven by the interests of the few. Between his...

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Why You Can't Find "I Have a Dream" on YouTube

(286) Comments | Posted September 1, 2011 | 1:10 PM

If you weren’t alive to witness Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the Washington Mall 48 years ago this week, you might try to switch on the old YouTube and dial it up. But you won’t find it there or anywhere else; rights to its usage...

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The Tabloid Truth of Errol Morris: A Video Interview

(5) Comments | Posted July 25, 2011 | 7:14 PM

There are plenty of things that make Tabloid newsworthy – sex, Mormons, kidnapping, cloning – but it was by total chance that Errol Morris’ documentary opened in theaters just as the tabloid-worthy “British hacking scandal” was descending upon a slice of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid empire.

It was also by considerable...

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Did the New York Times Miss the Point Of Page One?

(0) Comments | Posted June 17, 2011 | 7:38 PM

In his review in the New York Times today, Michael Kinsley calls Page One, the documentary about the New York Times, “a mess.” He’s right, but not in the way he thinks it is.

This is a movie about the news industry: of course it’s messy. Director Andrew Rossi...

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How Criminals Steal Passwords, Bank Websites, and the Internet: An Interview with Rod Rasmussen

(4) Comments | Posted June 13, 2011 | 7:00 PM

[Motherboard]: The Tacoma, WA-based company Internet Identity wasn't meant to be a security outfit. When Rod Rasmussen started it in 1996, he was providing simple enterprise services like email. And then, in 1997, as tends to happen on the internet, someone did something bad: they set up an...

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Humanity's Greatest Spectacle

(33) Comments | Posted April 15, 2011 | 11:57 AM

When Space Shuttle Endeavor lifts off from the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center next week as scheduled, it will be unusually notable. First, it's the second-to-last launch of a shuttle, before the whole program is retired later this year. Second, the craft's commander, Mark Kelly, is the husband of...

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Facing Budget Woes, a City in California Ponders a Library Without Librarians -- or Books

(8) Comments | Posted April 4, 2011 | 4:59 PM

From Motherboard.tv:

Facing the likelihood of state budget cuts that would eliminate $15 million for library and reading programs -- and, apparently, a future in which people no longer read things on paper -- the city of Newport Beach is considering turning its first library into a...

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SXSW Interactive: The Tech Conference as Bloatware

(3) Comments | Posted March 25, 2011 | 3:57 PM

From Motherboard:

Somewhere in the wake of the panels and the keynotes, the trade show booths, pitch sessions, free tacos, apps, lines for free tacos, maps, parties, energy drinks, branded lighters, metrics reports, the impromptu meetings around tables already strewn with a forest's worth of...

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Tim Wu Talks Net Neutrality, Information Empires and Freedom

(1) Comments | Posted March 21, 2011 | 7:31 PM

Watch the video interview at the bottom of the page.

We all know that as technology empowers us to do more, it carries with it all manner of problems. But one of our biggest pickles tends to slip right by us: We're not free.

So argues Tim Wu, law professor,...

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When Your Country Gets Erased From the Internet: Egypt, Net Neutrality, and Web Freedom

(7) Comments | Posted January 31, 2011 | 5:05 PM

Motherboard.tv: Websites go down. Countries block citizens’ access. But entire countries’ websites don’t just disappear from the Internet.


And then they do. In Egypt, at precisely 12:34 a.m. EET (22:34 UTC) on Friday morning, the government apparently shut down Internet access not just...

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The Arizona Shooting Was Less About Politics, More About Weird Grammar

(9) Comments | Posted January 14, 2011 | 10:37 AM

From Motherboard:

He’s reminded us of our terrible political discourse and gun control policies, but the insane 22-year-old who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six bystanders on Saturday isn’t a representative of Tea Party vitriol. A believer in government slavery and hologram worlds, a lover...

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Our Big Facebook Profile: Some More Thoughts on The Social Network

(3) Comments | Posted December 7, 2010 | 11:10 AM

From Motherboard.tv:

After an advance screening of “The Social Network,” I met an excited film student from NYU outside the theater and asked him what he thought of the movie. He focused on the film’s contemporaneity, its speed, which I couldn’t stop thinking about either.

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NASA Apologizes for Not Finding the Aliens

(64) Comments | Posted December 3, 2010 | 12:10 PM

From Motherboard.tv

“I’m sorry if they are disappointed.”

That’s how Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, actually responded to a USA Today reporter at a press conference today, in response to a question about how doggone annoyed newspaper readers and internet users were that

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Did Google Get Hacked Because a Chinese Official Didn't Like His Search Results?

(1) Comments | Posted November 29, 2010 | 5:12 PM

The Chinese government has been running a hacking ring that launched a hack attack on Google earlier this year, according to a diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks yesterday.

And it wasn’t a simple matter of corporate espionage or a strategic show of cyber force: according to a secret “contact”...

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To Young Social Innovators, Sometimes the Highest Tech Is Low

(0) Comments | Posted November 24, 2010 | 11:07 AM

Mention social good to generation Y -- or other generations for that matter -- and the focus easily turns to high tech innovation. It's an angle emphasized by big events like TED, which emit a steady feed of technology-heavy ideas.

Take the Rolex Young Laureates Program, the watch company's...

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How Cities Get Science -- or Don't

(0) Comments | Posted October 26, 2010 | 3:28 AM

This article originally appeared at Motherboard.

Of course, science tells us, we’re all products of our environment. Just like our ability to be creative, our scientific prowess depends upon how easy it is for us to share ideas. And there’s no better place for...

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