- Hurricane Sandy as the Fibonacci Spiral/Sequence:
- I wonder how close this is to the character from 2001…? Someone has decided to make a HAL9000 robot for purchase and — I’m assuming — mounting on your wall somewhere? You can preorder it for $500 right now. LINK.
- Then we got some what looks to be hockey jersey’s that are really fucking nerdy and awesome at GeekJerseys.com. This Link jersey is really, really fucking awesome:
DNA sequencing of 36 complete Y chromosomes has uncovered a previously unknown period when the human population expanded rapidly. This population explosion occurred 40 to 50 thousand years ago, between the first expansion of modern humans out of Africa 60 to 70 thousand years ago and the Neolithic expansions of people in several parts of the world starting 10 thousand years ago.
- Warren Ellis FAQ featuring some interesting writing questions. Such as:
I was wondering if you had any advice regarding making ideas more important. I have pages of different events + characters that I can only develop so far because, after a time, all I can add to them are “WHO CARES?” and “WHY DOES THIS MATTER?” (I’m talking about events characters will go through. “Statues come to life all around Greece” is immediately followed by “WHO GIVES A FUCK?”) Does this ever happen to you? Thank you very much for your time, and sorry if you’ve answered a similar question!Ungh. This is a really tough one. There are two ways, maybe, to attack this.
1) One way of doing it, and this works okay for standard dramatic storytelling, is this: what do your characters WANT? The secondary questions are, what stops them from getting what they want, and how far are they prepared to go to get what they want? But start with the simple first question. What your character wants defines how we perceive and feel about them in the story. Find one thing they want, and see how that feels to you.
2) From a certain view, stories are two things. There’s what the story’s about, and what the story’s REALLY about. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS is about a Martian invasion of Earth. But it’s REALLY about something else entirely. There’s a subtext: there’s the thing Wells wrote the story toactually talk about. What you may be encountering is having a story that’s all surface, or a story with a subtext that isn’t working out for you. Find out what you really want to say with your fiction. If it matters to YOU, it’ll matter to other people.
- Wired.uk has an article reporting on new research about the microbe marine life levels in the Gulf of Mexico 2ish years after the now mostly forgotten BP oil spill. And it has been mostly forgotten; unless you live down there, and your economy is so closely tied to the ocean. Characters at my work have said that “it really isn’t as bad as it seems”, or that the whole thing was overblown by the “liberal media”. But, and this is from a strictly non-political viewpoint, I just don’t see how 210 million gallons of crude oil could be dumped into a gulf (we’re not talking the middle of the Pacific here) and it not affect the marine life. I was right. PLoSONE research group studied the shoreline and found “predatory fungal communities that can survive in harsher conditions appear to have replaced the previously diverse range of microscopic marine life that once populated the shoreline, including metazoan phyla, protists, algae and fungi.”
- From IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies), Patrick Lin of The Atlantic asks “Is It Possible To Wage A Just Cyberwar?”. Lin discusses 6 issues that relate to the righteousness of an act of war, as pertaining to cyberwarfare: 1) Aggression, 2) Discrimination, 3) Proportionality, 4) Attribution, 5) Treacherous Deceit, and 6) A Lasting Peace. Very interesting:
This digital evolution means that it is now less clear what kind of events should reasonably trigger a war, as well as how and when new technologies may be used. With cyberweapons, a war theoretically could be waged without casualties or political risk, so their attractiveness is great — maybe so irresistible that nations are tempted to use them before such aggression is justified. This essay identifies some important ethical issues that have been upturned by these emerging digital weapons, which in turn help explain why national cyberdefense is such a difficult policy area.
- Finally, On The Natural History of Surveillance likens science fiction tropes to the tech we have now. Well… “likens” might be the wrong word considering lots of the shit from 60′s science fiction (particularly PKD books) IS HAPPENING NOW tick for tock.
Upon hearing the phrase, we may not know exactly what a “cephalic sniffer” is, nor whether it is a real piece of technology. However, as to what such a nefarious device might be able to do, we could surely begin to imagine from the name alone. And as for whether it is technological reality (it is not, being invented by Philip K. Dick in his story Clans of the Alphane Moon), from its “sci-fi” sounding alliteration we might guess correctly that it is purely fantasy.
At least it was fantasy when PKD invented it in 1964. Today, advances in biometric identification mean that while a device that can search out an individual by his or her brainwaves is not yet on the market (at least publicly), searching out a person by face or speech pattern is decidedly real. Furthermore, brain-computer interface devices (BCI) have been commercially available since at least 1999.
- First off, apparently there’s a Tumblr page out there that specializes in Thai citizens using clever and unique ways to cope with flooding. Some of these are just brilliant, just slapping empty water bottles onto your dog to ensure it doesn’t drown, or air-sealing your car with a giant plastic bag to ensure it doesn’t get ruined. This is innovation at its finest.
- Then there’s this other ingenious Tumblr page which recreates classic album covers with kittens instead of the artists themselves. Artists range from Prince, the Cure, Sonic Youth, Mary J. Blige, the Ramones, Bob Dylan, etc, etc, etc. Excellent and cute stuff here.
- Not sure what country or city this is from, but if you’re looking for Internet wierdness, look into SUPERNATURE! on LiveJournal. Enough cryptic messages and bizarre visuals to make you question the very nature of reality.
“I have a friend that lives in Hawaii. He is of Japanese heritage. My friend (Stacy Sakata) believes the reason his people behaved honorably (no looting, no crime) in the aftermath of the tragedy in Japan is because the Japanese people have not been tainted by other cultures / immigrants.“
I despise getting into anything remotely political with people over e-mail (or on THIS site)… so I didn’t respond to this. Besides, there really isn’t much to say. Moving on.
- I’m finally wrapping up this thing I’ve been working on for what seems like far too long now. It’s a 14-track LP under the Mild Maynyrd guise which I’ll have on my Bandcamp page, and it’ll also be available for free download on Black Lantern Music. I’m gonna go balls to the wall with this because there just doesn’t seem to be any good reason not to; I’ll be making (fairly) nice hard-copies at home, assembled from a variety of sources. I’m not expecting many (or anyone) to want one… but it’s worth a try. I’ll probably carry a few around with me at places like the Turf Cluband First Ave.and the Triple Rock and Soundset. So wait, does this make me a “backpacker” then??
- Speaking of Soundset, I need to snag a ticket one of these days. I was really really hoping for some Aesop Rockor El-P (as that would foreshadow a new album this year from one of them probably)… but I’ll definitely take that line-up any day. Plus, ya know, there’s always the skate-park and b-boys and production showcases and merch tents and DJ sets and more.
- The latest Black Lanternrelease is a haunting, sample-friendly disc from a project called Black Ceiling. This thing will eat away at you, and you’ll slowly realize that everything around you that’s disgusting is actually very beautiful. Make sense? Makes me look like a fuckin hack; this guy knows what he’s doing (think this applies as “witch-house“). LINK.
Have a disgustingly beautiful rest of the day/night/lifetime/eon. Like this:
This is scary scary stuff. Death and radiation and economic uncertainty is flowing over Japan right now, and all some people can think of is that somehow is the act of a wonderful and loving God above. Glenn Beck thinks so. ABC News provided this clip from his radio show. And, if you’ve ever wondered if that religious fanaticism is just for show, by the pundits and big-wigs, or if it exists among us the common people, look no further than this YouTube vid:
Flip side. On Reuters‘ website, the news organization is offering “7 Safe Ways to Donate to Japan” (as many of those “charities”, especially online ones, are scams). And an artist named James White posted this image with donation links:
These days, you really don’t gotta be that creative to write cold, hard, speculative science fiction. You don’t. All you need is a newspaper and your own internal crystal ball. Back in the day, maybe. They had some of the issues we have today: Teddy Roosevelt (as a friend calls him, “the REAL Roosevelt) fought pollution as a conservationist way back in the 10′s, Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by what we’d now call terrorists in the same decade, and immigration (both legal and illegal) was the building block of this country. I’ll pick up a newspaper tomorrow — no, actually today — and get flooded with current events absolutely ripe for speculative fiction. Car bomb in Time Square. Massive ocean floor oil leak. Polarizing new law that orders, “papers, please”.
A really gifted writer — name’s Will Ellwood, check his shit out — from across the pond wrote a wonderful non-fiction piece for Weaponizer called “Social Realist Sci-Fi” back in January. In it, he talks about how not much science fiction of late seems to “feel very contemporary to my situation”. He talks about how the future is now. Right fucking now. Good science fiction doesn’t have to be mind-bending high concepts in the bowels of one’s brain matter, it can come from everyday life. Especially in 2010. Escapism is fine, believe me, I know. I wrote a Nano-Fic piece about a corporation harvesting the decapitated head of a “Herald” of that dimension which had been orbiting around the outside of their solar system since they invented any sort of language. I love a high concept. But I also write realism.
Take South Whitworth Nights, for one. It really didn’t take all that much creativity or internal output to produce. Sure, there’s some symbolism in there and hopefully some subjective meanings which change from person to person, but it was conceived in a very simple way: my Sunday paper. At that time, the “swine flu” epidemic was still a hot topic. High schools were even refusing to shake hands at graduation ceremonies due to the disease. That was the front page. Read the rest of this entry »
Philip K. Dick’s journals are going to be published next year. They’re called EXEGESIS. The journals span the latter part of his life and attempt to explain aspects of Christianity and other religions, not to mention a series of “visions and auditions” Dick experienced personally. Reading through the examples on Dicks official website, it almost seems as if he were trying to explain these things to himself, not anyone else. I suppose that’s what makes them all the more interesting and valuable for his fans and enthusiasts. Here’s a page lifted from his website, which was lifted from his typewriter:
And this story is just too feel good to not share:
Stuck with very little to do for work, Andrew put a call out online for editors, illustrators, designers, photographers and other creative people who were grounded in similar circumstances to take part in the project. Around 50 people contacted him.
- There Will Be Brawlis a modern noir-ish story complete with voice-overs (apparently Harrison Ford HATED the voice overs he did for Blade Runner), killings, sex, corruption, and interrogations. There’s one little twist though, There Will Be Brawl is based on the Nintendo series of games Super Smash Bros. Specifically Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Here’s how the creators describe it:
“In a Dystopian Mushroom Kingdom, corruption and avarice reign supreme. Even the greatest heroes of the land have buckled beneath the overwhelming will of the amoral elite. When a series of grisly crimes pushes an unlikely champion to seek the truth, a mystery unfolds that could completely destroy everything he holds dear.”
That “unlikely champion” is a weary, worn-out Luigi searching for the kidnappers of Princess Peach in place of his drunken, selfish, drug-abusing brother named Mario:
- Over at Cracked.com (“America’s only humor and video site since 1958″; they had Internet in 1958??) some funny bastard outlines the 5 Most Embarassing Failures in the History of Terrorism. He starts of by saying: “Terrorism isn’t exactly rocket science. It’s something pretty much anyone can do. You wake up one day and decide that you’d rather like to explode in the middle of a crowded shopping center, and BAM! There you go. You’re a certified terrorist. But, incredibly, people manage to fuck up even that. And if we can’t laugh at terrorists, who can we laugh at?”. I like the guy who wired the digital clock on the bomb upside down, noticing it counting from “h” minutes down to “E” minutes (4 seconds to 3 seconds), who would of course end up exploding himself to bits.
- I guess the government of Belarus has an “Emergency Control Ministry”. On the website English-Russia they’ve managed to gather some pictures of the branch’s testing site. I guess they’ve created this as a testing site to manage possible disaster scenarios, but the NERD in anyone thinks it looks like a post-apocalyptic movie shoot. First caption reads:
“That’s not Apocalyptic era, it’s just a testing base of the Emergency Control Ministry of Belarus. They tried to stimulate virtually any catastrophe you can imagine, and they really know what they do. It looks like a cemetery of human civilizations — planes, helicopters, trains, oil reservoirs. Houses, plants and many other objects. Kind of toys for grown-up boys.”
- Speaking of Post Apocalypse, one of my favorite sites SuperPunchposted a link to an office building designed by an architect named Tom Kundig for a company called T-Baily. I guess T-Baily makes things like wind turbines, heavy steel tanks and piping, massive cargo containers, etc. They’re based out of Washington. Anyways, Mr. Kundig’s idea for their new office building was to:
“The T Bailey Offices explore the idea of using the client’s product— pipes used in wind turbine towers — in the construction of their headquarters. This 11,700 sf office addition adjoins the existing heavy industrial manufacturing plant of T Bailey. All steel fabrication and erection takes place in the plant adjoining the project. Materials are unfinished – concrete floors, unfinished steel, and an exposed structure – giving the space a raw aesthetic while reducing the coatings and toxic materials added to the building. The roof’s slope directs runoff into a rain garden and adjoining landscape.”
Super Punch describes it as something you’d stumble across in Fallout 3as a home for survivors who have their shit together. Hence the “speaking of post apocalypse”…
