BOSTON — Do you remember Friday nights at the Museum of Science in high school and college? Laser lights, special effects and Pink Floyd and Zeppelin. This summer it's back — but with a local band and a 21st-century touch. 
 
"The technology is video projection, but like video projection on steroids," said David Rabkin, director of the Museum of Science planetarium.
 
To be exact, it isn't actually a laser show.
 
"It's all digital video, there's no lasers involved," he explained. "The range of colors and the detail and the motion that we can do now, there's just no comparison. It's a completely different media."
 
Using the same 3-D digital animation software that engineers at Pixar use, the Museum of Science staff have animated an album's worth of '70s-style rock music by the band Ghosts of Jupiter.
 
The result is a trippy movement through space, the human body and whirling geometric shapes. At times it can even induce a little vertigo.
 
The show is purely entertainment, Rabkin said, in keeping with the previous, popular laser shows.
 
"It was sort of this cultural icon, and I think sort of a rite of passage is a good way to think about it. Sort of a touchpoint in Boston," he said.
 
Rabkin called this the most technologically advanced digital theater in New England, thanks to a $9 million renovation that was completed last year and funded through the Charles Hayden Foundation and private donations.
 
And he was eager to point out that the museum isn't just for children. The new animation and other planetarium shows are attracting lots of adults, including Ghosts of Jupiter guitarist Johnny Trama.
 
"When I first came to town I think I was here every weekend. That's why this is like really cool," Trama said. "Back then it was just a couple of squiggly lines in the dark. Now it's — I mean, you're literally flying through space. It's pretty cool."
 
 
"The Ghosts of Jupiter: Music Experience" opens June 22 at the Museum of Science.

BOSTON — Lady Gaga was joined by Oprah Winfrey, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her mom at Harvard University on Wednesday for the launch of the singer's Born This Way Foundation.

In one part of the lengthy forum, Gaga told the crowd assembled at Harvard's Graduate School of Education that parental involvement in their children’s lives is essential.

“It’s okay to say ‘you can’t use that website’ or ‘you shouldn’t be on that program’ or ‘this kind of language is inappropriate’ or ‘stay away from' — educating your kids about social media today is as important as anything,” she said.

The singer sported a monochrome look: basic black with a wild headpiece and shoes.

The members of the Twitterverse who watched in person and online had largely positive reactions to the event, with many praising Gaga's message as "powerful" and "inspiring." (Also, they liked her mom.)

The Born This Way Foundation addresses self-confidence, well-being, anti-bullying, mentoring and career development issues through research, education and advocacy. 

Comedian Baratunde Thurston was raised by a black activist mother in the projects in Washington, D.C. He attended a largely white private high school, went on to earn a philosophy degree at Harvard and cofound a politics website before moving to the satirical news website, The Onion and most recently striking out to start his own entrepreneurial venture that uses humor to connect communities.

Most importantly, along the way Thurston accrued more than 32 years of experience of “being black.” These years of wisdom inspired him to write a book that’s both a childhood reminiscence and a tongue-in-cheek guidebook. How to Be Black tackles satirical conundrums, from what it means to be someone’s “black friend” and “how to be the next black president,” to the right way to celebrate Black History Month. Thurston mines his own history for a fresh take on identity, race, and politics.

When Callie spoke with Baratunde in February 2012, listeners had a lot to say. Here's some of their reactions

BOSTON — They came, they bought and now they're off to save the world — after school that is.

"I have class until three, when I get back I'll finish my work and then probably play it all night," said student Mike Donahoe.

"Modern Warfare 3," the third video game in the wildly popular "Call of Duty" series, went on sale at midnight Monday night – but sales are already expected to top last year's video game installment, "Black Ops," which made over $650 million dollars in sales in its first week. "Modern Warfare" producer Mark Rubin said the success of these games comes from listening to customers.

"What we've done with 'Modern Warfare 3' is come into our own and understand our audience and find out what they want to get out of 'Call of Duty.'" Rubin said.

The new game has players act as "Special Operation" forces, defending U.S. and European targets against a Russian invasion. The series, known for its extreme violence and realism, even includes a controversial scene where a girl is killed in a truck bombing. Rubin says it's about being as realistic as possible.

"We're trying to tell a story that shows the impact of war and the impact it has on civilians and non-combatants. Our games show that it's challenging for the soldiers but also for everyone else in the world."

"I had this on reserve two months ago, in the summer for my son. I called him in Israel, he ordered it in Israel and then he came here," video gamer Nir Plag said.

Student Robert Mast also just bought "Modern Warfare 3." "I'm going to be playing this all day. I have an English essay, but I'll probably just do that later. I just can't wait," Mast said.

According to Activism, the games' publisher, six million people play the game every day making it one of the world's best selling game series, as customers like Nir Plag and Robert Mast can attest.

Almost a year ago, President Obama deployed an additional thirty thousand troops to Afghanistan. He did so even though our nation was fighting an economic war of massive proportions, when war funds could have been used to extend unemployment benefits or cut into our national debt.

July 2011 was the original target date that President Obama suggested for a drawdown of troops. Now, the administration is developing a plan to transfer security duties to Afghan forces, with combat missions ending by 2014.

President Karzai wants an immediate decrease in military operations in Afghanistan. A bipartisan report sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and backed by military experts says that we should consider dramatically cutting troops unless progress can be made.

But now we may be in Afghanistan until 2014.

That would bring this war to a total of 13 years. More deaths and injuries should be expected. And the impact on our national budget will be felt for decades to come.

When we are numb, we can’t remember if it matters to be rational in the face of danger or death. But if we are truly alive, which is a privilege of those of us not on the battlefield, we can take the important and powerfully clear stand of insisting our government end this war. Not in 2014, but right now.

It’s time to snap out of numbness. War is not, nor should it ever be, status quo.

Salman Rushdie in WGBH's studios. (Vanessa Weigel/WGBH)

BOSTON — The novelist who became a household name for having a Fatwah on his head is, these days, thinking about video games.

In 1981, Salman Rushdie published the novel Midnight's Children, which earned him the prestigious Booker Prize and a host of other awards. Seven years later, the Iranian government called for his death because of what they said were irreverent depictions of Islam in his novel, The Satanic Verses.

But Rushdie kept writing. His work transcends the globe and the ages, exploring past and present with his famous magical realist style.

Rushdie's newest book, Luka and the Fire of Life, is a children's book of sorts. A follow-up to Rushdie's first book for younger readers, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Luka is a fantastical journey through a video-game world.

Rushdie told WGBH's Emily Rooney that any technological leanings in Luka's subject matter don't represent a huge leap from the epic, layered historical fiction for which he's known. "The thing that interested me (about video games) were the paralells with very old-fashioned quest stories that you find in this leveling up that's what goes on in these games," Rushie said. "Because what happens in these old narratives is the same thing."

"When Beowolf kills the monster, Grendel, he immediately has to face a bigger monster, which is his mother. And that idea that the obstacles go on increasing in magnitude and difficulty and you have to overcome them as you achieve your goal, it's both a very ancient way of telling a story and a very modern (one)."

It's a very personal book, Rushdie said, written for his son Milan. Rushdie was about 50 when Milan was born -- which, he said, causes his mortality to loom large for his kids. "There's this fear amongst children that they might lose their parents," Rushdie said.

And that, he said, is the engine of the story. "He looks like his father and is in fact filling up with his father's fading life," Rushdie says of the title character.

Rushdie was relieved to learn his son actually liked what is quite a scary story. "I thought, maybe this kid has a little dark side in him."

Interview Highlights

On Children's Books vs. Grownup Books

I think (Luka and the Fire of Life) is an everybody's book... One of the things I really liked about Haroun and the Sea of Stories, what happened to that book, is that adults enjoyed it as much as children. Grown-ups came at it and got one set of things from it, kids got another set of things. There are some interesting books nowadays that sit on this borderline between young adults and adults.

There's a point at which you stop asking yourself the question who's it for and you just write. I think children are wiser and smarter than we think, and maybe grown-ups are more playful and childlike than we think so everyone crosses over and meets in the middle.

On The Harry Potter Series

I had to read them to keep up (with my son)... In fact, I was fortunate enough to be able to introduce him to J.K. Rowling and they had a few minutes of conversation, during which he spoke with the erudition of a Ph. D. student. He was saying to her, 'You know how in Vol. III, Snape says such-and-such, how do you reconcile that with the fact that in Vol. V,  the following happens.' And her jaw was hanging open and she said, 'Well, you've really read these carefully, haven't you?' Which, of course, everybody did, all these kids did. I think we all owe her a debt of gratitude (because) she's managed to persuade children to read 900-page novels. This is a good thing!

On His Favorite Writer

One of my all-time favorite writers is P. G. Wodehouse, and I can, if pushed, quote passages from various books. Christopher Hitchens and I vie for who knows more P.G. Wodehouse than the other. As usual, he wins, of course.

On His Forthcoming Autobiography

The point of origin of the book was to tell that story (of the Fatwah placed on my life by the Iranian government in 1989). I think if, as a writer, you have the misfortune of acquiring an interesting life, there's a point at which you have to tell the story.
 

Book Excerpt: Luka and the Fire of Life

Chapter One: The Terrible Thing That Happened on the Beautiful Starry Night

There was once, in the city of Kahani, in the land of Alifbay, a boy named Luka who had two pets, a bear named Dog and a dog named Bear, which meant that whenever he called out, "Dog!" the bear waddled up amiably on his hind legs, and when he shouted, "Bear!" the dog bounded toward him, wagging his tail. Dog, the brown bear, could be a little gruff and bearish at times, but he was an expert dancer, able to get up onto his hind legs and perform with subtlety and grace the waltz, the polka, the rhumba, the wah-watusi, and the twist, as well as dances from nearer home, the pounding bhangra, the twirling ghoomar (for which he wore a wide mirror-worked skirt), the warrior dances known as the spaw and the thang-ta, and the peacock dance of the south. Bear, the dog, was a chocolate Labrador, and a gentle, friendly dog, though sometimes a bit excitable and nervous; he absolutely could not dance, having, as the saying goes, four left feet, but to make up for his clumsiness he possessed the gift of perfect pitch, so he could sing up a storm, howling out the melodies of the most popular songs of the day, and never going out of tune. Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, quickly became much more than Luka's pets. They turned into his closest allies and most loyal protectors, so fierce in his defense that nobody would ever have dreamed of bully_ing him when they were nearby, not even his appalling classmate Ratshit, whose behavior was usually out of control.

This is how Luka came to have such unusual companions. One fine day when he was twelve years old, the circus came to town-and not just any circus, but the GROF, or Great Rings of Fire, itself; the most celebrated circus in all of Alifbay, "featuring the Famous Incredible Fire Illusion." So Luka was at first bitterly disappointed when his father, the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, told him they would not be going to the show. "Unkind to animals," Rashid explained. "Once it may have had its glory days but these days the GROF has fallen far from Grace." The Lioness had tooth decay, Rashid told Luka, and the Tigress was blind and the Elephants were hungry and the rest of the circus menagerie was just plain miserable. The Ringmaster of the Great Rings of Fire was the terrifying and enormous Captain Aag, a.k.a. Grandmaster Flame. The animals were so scared of the crack of his whip that the Lioness with toothache and the blind Tigress continued to jump through hoops and play dead and the skinny Elephants still made Pachyderm Pyramids for fear of angering him, for Aag was a man who was quick to anger and slow to laugh. And even when he put his cigar-smoking head into the Lioness's yawning mouth, she was too scared to bite it off just in case it decided to kill her from inside her belly.

Rashid was walking Luka home from school, wearing, as usual, one of his brightly colored bush shirts (this one was vermilion) and his beloved, battered Panama hat, and listening to the story of Luka's day. Luka had forgotten the name of the tip of South America and had labeled it "Hawaii" in a geography test. However, he had remembered the name of his country's first president and spelled it correctly in a history test. He had been smacked on the side of the head by Ratshit's hockey stick during games. On the other hand, he had scored two goals in the match and defeated his enemy's team. He had also finally got the hang of snapping his fingers properly, so that they made a satisfying cracking noise. So there were pluses and minuses. Not a bad day overall; but it was about to become a very important day indeed, because this was the day they saw the circus parade going by on its way to raise its Big Top near the banks of the mighty Silsila. The Silsila was the wide, lazy, ugly river with mud-colored water that flowed through the city not far from their home. The sight of the droopy cockatoos in their cages and the sad dromedaries humphing along the street touched Luka's generous young heart. But saddest of all, he thought, was the cage in which a mournful dog and a doleful bear stared wretchedly all about. Bringing up the rear of the cavalcade was Captain Aag with his pirate's hard black eyes and his barbarian's untamed beard. All of a sudden Luka became angry (and he was a boy who was slow to anger and quick to laugh). When Grandmaster Flame was right in front of him Luka shouted out at the top of his voice, "May your animals stop obeying your commands and your rings of fire eat up your stupid tent."

Now it so happened that the moment when Luka shouted out in anger was one of those rare instants when by some inexplicable accident all the noises of the universe fall silent at the same time, the cars stop honking, the scooters stop phut-phuttering, the birds stop squawking in the trees, and everyone stops talking at once, and in that magical hush Luka's voice rang out as clearly as a gunshot, and his words expanded until they filled the sky, and perhaps even found their way to the invisible home of the Fates, who, according to some people, rule the world. Captain Aag winced as if somebody had slapped him on the face, and then he stared straight into Luka's eyes, giving him a look of such blazing hatred that the young boy was almost knocked off his feet. Then the world started making its usual racket again, and the circus parade moved on, and Luka and Rashid went home for dinner. But Luka's words were still out there in the air, doing their secret business.

That night it was reported on the TV news that, in an astonishing development, the animals of the GROF circus had unanimously refused to perform. In a crowded tent, and to the amazement of costumed clowns and plainclothes customers alike, they rebelled against their master in an unprecedented act of defiance. Grandmaster Flame stood in the center ring of the three Great Rings of Fire, bellowing orders and cracking his whip, but when he saw all the animals beginning to walk calmly and slowly to_ward him, in step, as if they were an army, closing in on him from all directions until they formed an animal circle of rage, his nerve cracked and he fell to his knees, weeping and whimpering and begging for his life. The audience began to boo and throw fruit and cushions, and then har_der objects, stones, for example, and walnuts, and telephone directories. Aag turned and fled. The animals parted ranks and let him through, and he ran away crying like a baby.

That was the first amazing thing. The second took place later that night. A noise started up around midnight, a noise like the rustling and crackling of a billion autumn leaves, or maybe even a billion billion, a noise that spread all the way from the Big Top by the banks of the Silsila to Luka's bedroom, and woke him up. When he looked out his bedroom window he saw that the great tent was on fire, burning brightly in the field by the river's edge. The Great Rings of Fire were ablaze; and it was not an illusion.

Luka's curse had worked.

The third amazing thing happened the next morning. A dog with a tag on its collar reading "Bear" and a bear with a tag on its collar reading "Dog" showed up at Luka's door-afterward Luka would wonder exactly how they had found their way there-and Dog, the bear, began to twirl and jig enthusiastically while Bear, the dog, yowled out a foot-tapping melody. Luka and his father, Rashid Khalifa, and his mother, Soraya, and his older brother, Haroun, gathered at the door of their house to watch, while from her verandah their neighbor Miss Oneeta shouted, "Have a care! When animals begin to sing and dance, then plainly some witchy business is afoot!" But Soraya Khalifa laughed. "The animals are celebrating their freedom," she said. Then Rashid adopted a grave expression, and told his wife about Luka's curse. "It seems to me," he opined, "that if any witchy business has been done it is our young Luka who has done it, and these good creatures have come to thank him."

The other circus animals had escaped into the Wild and were never seen again, but the dog and the bear had plainly come to stay. They had even brought their own snacks. The bear was carrying a bucket of fish, and the dog wore a little coat with a pocket full of bones. "Why not, after all?" cried Rashid Khalifa gaily. "My storytelling performances could do with a little help. Nothing like a dog-and-bear song-and-dance act to get an audience's attention." So it was settled, and later that day it was Luka's brother, Haroun, who had the last word. "I knew it would happen soon," he said. "You've reached the age at which people in this family cross the border into the magical world. It's your turn for an adventure-yes, it's finally here!-and it certainly looks like you've started something now. But be careful. Cursing is a dangerous power. I was never able to do anything so, well, dark."

"An adventure of my very own," Luka thought in wonderment, and his big brother smiled, because he knew perfectly well about Luka's Secret Jealousy, which was actually Not So Secret At All. When Haroun had been Luka's age he had traveled to the Earth's second moon, befriended fishes who spoke in rhyme and a gardener made of lotus roots, and helped to overthrow the evil Cultmaster Khattam-Shud, who was trying to destroy the Sea of Stories itself. By contrast, Luka's biggest adventures to date had taken place during the Great Playground Wars at school, in which he had led his gang, the Intergalactic Penguins Team, to a famous victory over the Imperial Highness Army led by his hated rival Adi Ratshit, a.k.a. Red Bottom, winning the day with a daring aerial attack involving paper planes loaded with itching powder. It had been extremely satisfying to watch Ratshit jump into the playground pond to calm down the itch that had spread all over his body; but Luka knew that, compared to Haroun's achievements, his really didn't amount to very much at all. Haroun, for his part, knew about Luka's desire for a real adventure, preferably one involving improbable creatures, travel to other planets (or at least satellites), and P2C2Es, or Processes Too Complicated to Explain. But until now he had always tried to damp down Luka's lusts. "Be careful what you wish for," he told Luka, who replied, "To be honest with you, that is easily the most annoying thing you have ever said."

In general, however, the two brothers, Haroun, and Luka, rarely quarreled and, in fact, got on unusually well. An eighteen-year age gap had turned out to be a good place to dump most of the problems that can sometimes crop up between brothers, all those little irritations that make the older brother accidentally knock the kid's head against a stone wall or put a pillow over his sleeping face by mistake; or persuade the younger brother that it's a good idea to fill the big fellow's shoes with sweet, sticky mango pickle, or to call the big guy's new girlfriend by a different girlfriend's name and then pretend it was just a really unfortunate slip of the tongue. So none of that happened. Instead Haroun taught his younger brother many useful things, kickboxing, for example, and the rules of cricket, and what music was cool and what was not; and Luka uncomplicatedly adored his older brother, and thought he looked like a big bear-a bit like Dog, the bear, in fact-or, perhaps, like a comfortable stubbly mountain with a wide grin near the top.

Luka had first amazed people just by getting born, because his brother, Haroun, was already eighteen years old when his mother, Soraya, at the age of forty-one gave birth to a second fine young boy. Her husband, Rashid, was lost for words, and so, as usual, found far too many of them. In Soraya's hospital ward he picked up his newborn son, cradled him gently in his arms, and peppered him with unreasonable questions. "Who'd have thought it? Where did you come from, buster? How did you get here? What do you have to say for yourself? What's your name? What will you grow up to be? What is it you want?" He had a question for Soraya, too. "At our age," he marveled, shaking his balding head. "What's the meaning of a wonder like this?" Rashid was fifty years old when Luka arrived, but at that moment he sounded like any young, greenhorn father flummoxed by the arrival of responsibility, and even a little scared.

Soraya took the baby back and calmed its father down. "His name is Luka," she said, "and the meaning of the wonder is that we appear to have brought into the world a fellow who can turn back Time itself, make it flow the wrong way, and make us young again."

Soraya knew what she was talking about. As Luka grew older, his parents seemed to get younger. When baby Luka sat up straight for the first time, for example, his parents became incapable of sitting still. When he began to crawl, they hopped up and down like excited rabbits. When he walked, they jumped for joy. And when he spoke for the first time-well!-you'd have thought the whole of the legendary Torrent of Words had started gushing out of Rashid's mouth, and he was never going to stop spouting on about his son's great achievement.

The Torrent of Words, by the way, thunders down from the Sea of Stories into the Lake of Wisdom, whose waters are illumined by the Dawn of Days, and out of which flows the River of Time. The Lake of Wisdom, as is well known, stands in the shadow of the Mountain of Knowledge, at whose summit burns the Fire of Life. This important information regarding the layout-and, in fact, the very existence-of the Magical World was kept hidden for thousands of years, guarded by mysterious, cloaked spoilsports who called themselves the Aalim, or Learned Ones. However, the secret was out now. It had been made available to the general public by Rashid Khalifa in many celebrated tales. So everyone in Kahani was fully aware that there was a World of Magic existing in parallel with our own non-Magic one, and from that Reality came White Magic, Black Magic, dreams, nightmares, stories, lies, dragons, fairies, blue-bearded genies, mechanical mind-reading birds, buried treasure, music, fiction, hope, fear, the gift of eternal life, the angel of death, the angel of love, interruptions, jokes, good ideas, rotten ideas, happy endings, in fact almost everything of any interest at all.

Excerpted from Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie Copyright (c) 2010 by Salman Rushdie. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.