Digital Analysis "Fingerprints" Artists: Quote: "Statistical analyses of the texture of artwork that has been digitized can reveal forgeries, according to an article published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The method discriminates between authentic drawings and imitations, and indicates how many different artists contributed to a single painting."
Link Entropy: Video art. Quote: "the focus of the work lies on movement. a computer program designed to trace only the moving parts in film/videosequences translates scenes into one picture. the physical appearance of objects/subjects disappears. this results in a representation of concentrated layers of movement."
Link How Arnold won the West: Recalling The Recall. Quote: "It's arguably the most entertaining film Arnold Schwarzenegger has ever starred in (and certainly the cheapest) but the plot is ludicrous as ever. A former bodybuilder from a Styrian village turns to politics in a distant land and runs for leadership of the world's 5th largest economy."
Link Classic SF Reprints: Locus recommends some brand new SF reprints... a 20th anniverary edition of Neuromancer, plus new editions of fiction by Greg Bear, Jonathan Carroll, Harlan Ellison, Keith Laumer, and Pamela Sargent, and an anthology of Christmas tales edited by David G. Hartwell.
Link UF Researchers Build Mars Simulator To Put Interplanetary Greenhouses To The Test: Ray Bucklin can remember when "Mars jars" were sprouting up in laboratories around the country. In the years after the Viking probes landed on the surface of Mars, many scientists spent their spare time building bottle-like devices that replicated the thin air or the surface of the Red Planet -- and using them to see whether plants could survive under Martian conditions.
Link The Murtogh D. Guinness Collection: A huge collection of music boxes. The articles about the objects include a description, sound files and a movie of the beastie in action. Quote: "The Murtogh D. Guinness Collection reflects the passion of its namesake for preserving and sharing the joys of antique mechanical musical instruments and automata. Murtogh D. Guinness (1913-2002) regarded the collection as his life’s work, and he persistently traveled the globe to search for the finest surviving instruments of their kind. He lived day-to-day with these devices, studying and refining for over 50 years what became a collection of nearly 700 pieces." (via DaddyD)
Link An Open Letter to the European Parliament on Biometric Registration of all EU Citizens and Residents: Sign it!
Link New monochrom content online // Special Forces: Go on a mission with the men of the bio-squad special forces.
Link Largest digital panoramic photo in the world: TNO has produced the largest digital panoramic photo in the world. So, what do we mean by large? After all, modern consumer cameras can easily take a picture with 5 million pixels. Well, we are talking about a photo of completely different dimensions. One with 2.5 billion pixels - that's 500 times more pixels. If this photo were printed, it would measure 6.67 m by 2.67 m (300 dpi). The photograph shows Delft and its surroundings in the autumn of 2004. It was taken from the top of the Electrical Engineering faculty of Delft University, at a height of about 100 m, by TNO.
Link VibraExciter: Quote: >Gizmodo aims to be a classy, family-friendly operation, so we'll keep the double entendres and bawdy puns to a minimum when discussing the VibraExciter. This cellphone add-on provides a 30-second jolt of pleasure to the nether regions whenever someone rings or texts. The communication between phone and VibraExciter is done via RF, which means there's always the chance that the ringing of a passer-by's handset will get the "bullet" attachment rumbling in your undies. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. Just be forewarned.<
Link Europe prepares to go for fusion alone: EU says it could build a new reactor without Japanese support.
Link Trespass Against Us: Twenty Things to Know About Dow Chemical on the 20th Anniversary of Bhopal.
Link Unknown Fish Netted at McMurdo: Art DeVries, an American scientist renowned for his work on big fish, may have discovered a new small species in Antarctica.
Link New monochrom content online // The Department for Criticism against Globalisation: Picture documentation of our installation from 2002.
Link Psychologist Seeks Scientific Answers to Theoretical, Philosophical Questions About Soul: The phrase "don't speak ill of the dead" appears to be more than just good manners. University of Arkansas psychology professor Jesse Bering has been working on a series of experiments that show people tend to upgrade their valuations of another person when they think that person has died. Bering's work will be highlighted in a 2005 issue of "Human Nature."
Link The Changing Face of Space Robotics: Dr Eddie Moxey of the University of Surrey recently gave a speech at the IEE seminar on the Changing Face of Robotics. His speech concentrated on the use of robotics in space. The talk reviewed the past, present and future of the two main strands of space robotics research and development On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) and Planetary Exploration.
Link The Drive to Discover: By James Cameron. Quote: "I have a confession to make. I made the movie Titanic because I thought I could talk the studio into letting me dive and film the real ship, 12,500 feet down in the North Atlantic. I was an avid wreck diver, and it was the ultimate shipwreck."
Link Census Slowly Reveals Ocean's Hidden Denizens: Oceans cover more than two thirds of the earth's surface and cataloging the variety of life that they contain is a monumental task. To that end, researchers in more than 70 countries are working together on the Census of Marine Life (CoML), a decade long, $1-billion project.
Link American Antigravity? Two interviews with John Dering on the subject of Antigravity, new-physics, the Philadelphia Experiment, and Nazi secret-weapons research. Oh oh.
Link JFK Reloaded: Quote: "You are about to take part in the world’s first interactive reconstruction of John F. Kennedy’s assassination."
Link Water, Women & War: Water was the biggest buzz at the 2004 Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom Congress held in August in the town of Kungälv, Sweden. During the week-long conference … over 300 women from 31 countries discussed the condition, distribution, and availability of water in their own countries.
Link Girl with a Pearl Earring: Can You See this Picture? Neither history nor art lesson—this is a media theory about the new medium having the old medium as its content, and the new medium’s overheated reversal into its former self.
Link Drama of America's Great Witchcraft Scare: A conversation with Mary Beth Norton, author of In The Devil's Snare, about the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials.
Link Scared Crow: Sheryl Crow's stalker Ambrose Kappos explains his telepathic methodology. If he 'super-hydrates' by drinking at least two gallons of water, the resulting improvement in 'nerve conduction velocity' lets him have telepathic conversations.
Link New Carrots Offer Colorful Surprises--and Health Benefits: Researchers with the Agricultural Research Service may have found the best way to entice consumers to eat their veggies: Surprise them. They're breeding carrots that come in a palette of totally unexpected colors including yellow, dark orange, bright red--even purple.
Link Necromania: Quote: "Necromania, the long-lost final movie of Ed Wood, considered the worst filmmaker of all time, has been rediscovered, the Reuters news service reported. The 1971 movie is a porn film documenting the sexual enlightenment of a young couple at the hands of a coven of witches, the news service reported. [...] Necromania was filmed over two or three days with a budget of no more than $7,000, and the only copies went missing soon after it was made, Reuters reported. Rudolph Grey, author of a biography of the director, and a fellow Ed Wood enthusiast, movie distributor Alexander Kogan, unearthed Necromania in a warehouse in Los Angeles after more than 15 years of detective work. A year ago they contacted the editors of a pornography Web site called Fleshbot, which this week will start selling the DVD by mail order for $19.99. The DVD will feature two versions of the film, one soft-core, the other more explicit, Reuters reported."
Link Amityville Murderer Trying to Stop Film: Convicted murderer Ronald DeFeo fears the British-directed remake of a movie based on his lies about demonic possession may undermine his chances of being granted parole.
Link Pheromone Ringtones? Quote: "The mobile service market is flooded with a hoard of value added services. Among them, a service of SK Telecom, that can allegedly make users more attractive, is targeting those youths seeking for their soul mates. The service is to combine a certain sound wave with the song of Quincy Jones or Marvin Gaye. The sound wave, dubbed Cupid’s Arrow, completed a TRIAL TEST IN A NEUROTHERAPY HOSPITAL IN UZBEKSISTAN. The Cupid’s Arrow would increase blood pressure, pulse and breath by 10% so that people can more open their minds to others, SK Telecom argued. Men and women can choose different sound wave and match-making information by blood types are provided. Users can download the pheromone music to their mobile phones to use it as their ring tones."
Link The "World Beard and Moustache Championships" will be held in Berlin, on Saturday, October 1, 2005. (via We make money not art)
Link Childhood Experience and the Image of Utopia: The Broken Promise of Adorno's Proustian Sublimations.
Link Following in Pioneer's footsteps: Calls grow for a mission to find out why old space probes are slowing down.
Link The Joy of Sexual Physics with Dr John:
"Love is a matter of chemistry, sex is a matter of physics". Link Where the People Voted Against Fear: Intro: "A few days before the election of the President of the planet in North America, in South America elections and a plebiscite were held in a little-known, almost secret country called Uruguay. In these elections, for the first time in the country's history, the left won. And in the plebiscite, for the first time in world history, the privatization of water was rejected by popular vote, asserting that water is the right of all people."
Link Mack, the life: In snubbing professor John Mack’s memorial, ‘official Harvard’ testifies to the power of his brilliant unconventionality.
Link Green Car Sets Speed Record: Quote: "When the non-profit organisation IdéeVerte Compétition decided to create a 'green' racing car, they turned to space technology to make it safer. Running on liquefied petroleum gas, one of the least polluting fuels, and lubricated with sunflower oil, the car is protected against fire hazards by space materials."
Link The blood bankers: Book review by Andy Worthington. Intro: >As an attorney, former chief economist at McKinsey and Co, and now an investigative journalist who has spent 10 years researching corruption and injustice in 50 countries, James S Henry brings an unusual breadth of experience to this devastating critique of global economics. Over 400 pages of densely-packed information (sometimes poorly proof-read, as if propelled by its own indignant momentum), he exposes how, between 1970 and 2003, over three trillion dollars loaned to developing countries by First World banks and governments disappeared, leaving "little to show... except giant white elephant projects, widespread corruption and private elites that had learned to stash much of their liquid wealth back in the First World".<
Link Lucifer, Arisen: San Francisco Weekly report on the making of Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising, with Bobby BeauSoleil.
Link The Peter Principle and the Neocon Coup: Quote: "The bloodletting has begun. I'm not referring to the latest attempt to reconquer Iraq, but rather the wholesale political revenge campaign being waged by the hard-liners in the Bush administration against anybody and everybody inside the government who challenged the way the second Persian Gulf war in a decade was marketed and run."
Link I run, therefore I am: Humans were born to run and evolved from ape-like creatures into the way they look today probably because of the need to cover long distances and compete for food, U.S. scientists say.
Link Clouds of pollution pictured from space: Haze and dust from industrial activity blanket low-lying regions of eastern China and northern India, satellite images reveal.
Link monochrom event // Roböxotica 2004 / Vienna (19 November - 27 November): Roböxotica is the first and, inevitably, leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. Until recently, no attempts were made to publically discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebensraum, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Mr. Turing would without a doubt test this out.
Scientists, researchers, computer geeks and artists from all over the world participate to build cocktail robots and discuss about technological innovation, futurology and science fiction. You tried to build a Cocktail Robot? You failed? Perfect! The theme of this year’s Roböxotica symposion is ‘Beautiful failure’. In the study of technological development, focusing attention on the failure, the error, the breakdown, the malfunction means: opening the black box of technology. Science and Technology Studies (especially Langdon Winner and Bruno Latour) have convincingly demonstrated that the widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are “left over.” However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural, and last but not least political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products (developmental derailments, sobering intermediary results, useless prototypes) are not discussed. The aim of the symposium is to illuminate the richness of technological development processes without denunciatory intention, to show which cultural patterns are at their basis. Thus, in addition to technological development, the motif of “failure as opportunity” will be investigated in a cultural context. The approach is transdisciplinary (i.e. not only scientific approaches are at issue, but also those from the practice of technological development and from art). In getting away from the paradigm of automatic progress through technology, it seems especially important to promote a discursive culture that brings together the various logics and forms of discourse found in the technical sciences and in technological development, in cultural studies and philosophy, in forms of use and in artistic approaches. Link 1 Link 2 Dead Be Not Proud: S. T. Karnick's interpretation of the zombie movie and particularly Shaun of the Dead. Great stuff. Quote: "But as with Romero's films, the ghoulishness and mayhem have a greater purpose. The mess and tangle in the streets, the violent public behavior, and the frequent sirens don't set off any alarm bells among the central characters, although we know that these disturbances are all being caused by zombies in their shambling hunt for food. That this level of disorder has become so commonplace in the Britain of today, and that people have become resigned to it, is a highly accurate satirical point."
Link World's strongest acid created: The world's strongest acid, at least a million times more potent than concentrated sulphuric acid, has been made in a lab in California. Perhaps confusingly, it is also one of the least corrosive.
Link PAC(MaN): The site of the Philedelphia Ambient Consortium (Music and Noise). I quote: >Hello Kitty appeared on this site mysteriously, as if Ambient music needed or wanted a popular celebrity to stand up to the world and scream "I AM A STRIDENT CHILL AMBIENT PURIST!" Ha! The significance is much deeper however...Why Hello Kitty? Don't be fooled by the red hairclip! It is actually representative of the pineal gland ruptured through the skull of the enlightened initiate. Hence, HK is an appropriate indexical signifier of the PAC(MaN) hidden agenda. Please don't tell anyone whose Pineal gland has not yet been liberated from their brain sheath.< (via DaddyD)
Link Russia retreats into repression: Article by Ignacio Ramonet. Intro: "The hostage stand-off in Beslan, North Ossetia, was called Russia’s 9/11 and the comparison is valid in an important way: Russia can now see the world in terms of pre-Beslan and post-Beslan, just as the United States divides time into pre-and post-9/11, 2001. The mass hostage-taking on 3 September became a nightmare with at least 370 people dead, some 160 of them children. The world looked on mortified as this slaughter of the innocents happened before its eyes; it was also horrified by the Russian special forces’ brutal and blundering intervention."
Link Dark Side of the Band: Across the world, high-powered transmitters with global reach are broadcasting seemingly meaningless strings of numbers or letters, along with a lot of buzzing and beeping noises.
Link Study Shows Hands-free Cell Phones Dangerously Distracted Drivers' Attention: Driving with one hand on the wheel and another on a cell phone has led to legal restrictions and proposals to require drivers to use hands-free phones. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have tested the hands-free approach and found that drivers -- young and old -- struggled to see dangerous scenarios appearing in front of them.
Link I Heart Huckabees: Premodern Help for Postmodern Times. Is Mark Wahlberg the real existential detective?
Link Indonesian History... And Lies: "Terlena: Breaking Of A Nation" – a film about the brutality of Suharto’s dictatorship.
Link Nothingland - or Venezuela? Reviled by Venezuela’s TV channels, survivor of a US-backed coup attempt and a two-month employers’ strike, Hugo Chávez has been given yet another popular mandate—to the ill-concealed dismay of the financial press. Eduardo Galeano’s miniature snapshot of a flourishing Latin American democracy.
Link Mars Gullies Likely Formed By Underground Aquifers: Space.com reports: If these pockets of water are indeed subsurface on Mars, they could act as a 'user friendly' habitat for Martian microbes.
Link Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments? Scientific knowledge has a vital, if limited, role to play in shaping our moral values and helping us to frame wiser judgments. Ethical values are natural and open to examination in the light of evidence and reason.
Link Parpolity Interview: In the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Stephen Shalom presented a "rough draft" essay entitled "ParPolity: Political Vision for a Good Society." The essay spells out a vision for a democratic, participatory political system complementing participatory economics. Participatory Economics is an alternative economic system developed by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. Its defining features are democratic planning, worker and consumer councils, and balanced job complexes. It is an alternative to both Capitalism and Central Planning and is very different and probably much more just than our economic system of today. Until Stephen’s essay, however, there had been no detailed proposal for a complementary political system where citizens can fully participate in political matters as well as economic. Stephen is a professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He is the author of numerous books, most recently "Which Side are You On?: An Introduction to Politics." Matt Grinder of the Vancouver Parecon Collective spoke with Stephen Shalom about his political vision.
Link DNA Puts New Spin On Moa Extinction: The moa story usually unfolds like a morality tale. But new research indicates volcanic eruptions and epidemics of disease, not people, may be to blame.
Link Hunting for Vampires: Anthony Head: 'I met the retired head of the exorcism division at the Vatican. The guy talked completely seriously about an incident when iron nails manifested in the entrance of someone's mouth and another time when six people tried to hold down someone who was being levitated.'
Link Stormy Uranus takes astronomers by surprise: Spring brings weird and tempestuous weather to what had been considered the most boring planet in the solar system.
Link Swiss eco-activist found guilty of murder: Sam Wild (Red Pepper) reports from Zurich on the latest chapter in the remarkable life of Swiss eco-activist Marco Camenisch.
Link Romero's Land of the Dead: This is great news. In the 4th installment to George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" series, the zombies have taken over the earth. The surviving humans live on a small secluded strip of land, with two sides cut off by rivers. The humans strive to survive, while outside the zombies are steadily evolving. To quote Amy's Robot: >In these dark days of culture wars and political alienation, what hope is there for we Americans who just want to get along and live our lives and watch a lot of movies? What reason do we have to go on? I'll give you a reason: George Romero is making a fourth zombie movie: LAND OF THE DEAD. I know I don't have to say anything else here to give you a sense of optimism and joy in your disappointed and wretched lives, but let me give you just a few more details: The cast features John Leguizamo, Asia Argento, and Dennis Hopper. Three of our favorite actors ever (we only include Hopper in this list because of his genius performance in 24 as Victor Drazen.) It also includes Shawn of the Dead's Simon Pegg in a "Zombie Cameo", surely one of the most desirable film roles ever. Following the trend Romero established with his earlier zombie movies of referencing contemporary social issues (such as the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement in Night of the Living Dead,) this movie will deal with post-9/11 fears of terrorism.<
Link A Utopia Realized: Cyber For All: Essay by Thierry Bardini (associate professor in the department of communication at the Université de Montréal). Intro: "Here, ONE will perhaps read that Kublaï Khan dreamed of the Internet, or that the computer was at first a calculationes machine and therefore found its origins in the scholastics! Indeed, why not the radical anachronism? ONE also says, and from authorized sources it would seem, that the Internet was invented for/by the American military to protect against the possibility of nuclear attack on their territory. It is a subtle anachronism, because packet switching, ARPANET's operating principle -- the Internet's precursor -- was invented in 1962 by Paul Baran at RAND, the Pentagon's think tank. It was invented for reasons such as: a sputnik in orbit, a pylon or two exploding in Utah, the threat of a glacial war and the first terrorist attack on US soil. But the Internet came ten years later; ARPANET, seven years later... A small anachronism becomes History, subtlety grounds interpretation, compromising the chronology, oh just a little, just an extrapolation."
Link T-rex 'ate like a human': Tyrannosaurus rex scraped the meat from the ribs of its prey in much the same way a human might gnaw on a serving of barbecued ribs, a meeting of geologists has heard.
Link Mouse Study Sheds Light on Nicotine's Addictive Power: Quote: "More than four million people die from smoking-related causes each year, making nicotine addiction a leading cause of preventable mortality worldwide. But nicotine's highly addictive nature makes kicking the smoking habit very difficult. A report published today in the journal Science identifies brain receptors in mice that may help explain why it's so hard to quit, and help scientists develop new drugs to help smokers butt out."
Link Prohibition Creeps Back: Essay by Wendy Kaminer. Intro: "Prohibition was a disaster, as nearly everyone must know. By banning the legal sale of alcohol, the Nineteenth (and stupidest) Amendment to the Constitution, enacted in 1919, effectively promoted illegal sales of sometimes toxic substitutes, spawned lucrative new criminal enterprises, and greatly increased police corruption without decreasing alcohol consumption. Congress and the states repealed Prohibition fourteen years later in a belated fit of common sense. (According to one legend, the Yale Club presciently laid in a fourteen-year supply of alcohol when the Nineteenth Amendment passed; coincidences like this make people believe in conspiracy theories—or God—or at least the value of a Yale education.) But the calamitous failure of a law or social practice doesn’t condemn it to obscurity; sometimes we treat policy failures of the past not as cautionary tales but as challenges to try again. (Maybe that’s why Americans are considered optimistic.) They surely seem unwilling to give up on the supposed promise of Prohibition. It’s not just the disastrous war on drugs—some drugs, anyway—that demonstrates the faith we invest in the strategy of Prohibition, against all the odds and the evidence that criminalizing particular drugs greatly erodes civil liberties, increases violent crime and the supply of guns on the street, and encourages police corruption without decreasing drug use. Consider the efforts to ban abortion, if not directly then indirectly, by limiting access, shortening the time period in which abortions may be performed legally, endowing fetuses with rights that may someday trump those of pregnant women, and limiting the abortion procedures doctors may employ."
Link Huckabees: Metaphilm is impressed. They recommend a very good interview with Huckabees director David O. Russell by Jeff Overstreet for Christianity Today. Quote: "People are used to seeing these ideas taken seriously in movies that are dramatic like The Matrix or The Passion of The Christ. Or they're satirized by independent cinema. I'm doing something different—I'm taking the ideas seriously in a comedy, even though I'm being off-handed and joking about it as well. I think the most daring thing about this film is its sincerity and its optimism. As a Zen monk once said to me, ‘If you're not laughing, you're not getting it.’"
Link Japan's Earth Simulator loses its title as the world's fastest supercomputer after being surpassed by the USA's IBM prototype Blue Gene/L and NASA's Columbia. (via Wikipedia)
Underwater Robot Makes History Crossing Gulf Stream: Quote: "Like the sailing vessel used by Captain Joshua Slocum to sail solo around the world 100 years ago, another ocean-going vehicle is making history. A small ocean glider named Spray is the first autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, to cross the Gulf Stream underwater, proving the viability of self-propelled gliders for long-distance scientific missions and opening new possibilities for studies of the oceans."
Link I Also Dated Zarathustra: Info. All lines spoken by Zarathustra were assembled from Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the translation by R. J. Hollingdale.
Link The Corporation: A film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan. Quote: "One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The corporation is unlikely to be the first to defy history. In this complex and highly entertaining documentary, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive MANUFACTURING CONSENT: NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE MEDIA, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence. Based on Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, THE CORPORATION charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force."
Link Helium 3? Former Apollo astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt
argues that with its vast stores of nonpolluting nuclear fuel, our lunar neighbor holds the key to Earth's future.
Link Zombies on the web: Excellent philosphy link compilation about zombies. Quote: >Zombies are hypothetical creatures of the sort that philosophers have been known to cherish. A zombie is physically identical to a normal human being, but completely lacks conscious experience. Zombies look and behave like the conscious beings that we know and love, but "all is dark inside." There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.<
Link Imaginary Blog Posts From History: Quote: "The deja-vu that wouldn't stop – here's a little bloxploitation in my attempt to go back (and forward) in time, pretending to have been running a blog during historical dates... talk about quality memes. You are invited to join the what-if covering other events in your own blog."
Link Dangerous Sports Club: The Dangerous Sports Club hit the headlines in May 2000 with a trebuchet style catapult that uses a weight release system to hurl objects 70 feet in the air at a speed of up to 45 mph... for example: humans. The Human catapult is available for public bookings.
Link Who Laid The First Egg? In 1998, Shuhai Xiao and colleagues reported finding thousands of 600 million year old embryo microfossils in the Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation, a fossil site near Weng'an, South China. But what kind of adult would these ancient embryos have hatched into?
Link KnightReplicas.com: Quote: "Devoted to the Review, Education, and Creation of Replicas Vehicles for Knight Rider. [...] Why Create a Knight Replica? Each person has their own reason for creating their replica. Many of us were children when the Knight Rider television series originally aired, and some of us were parents who watched the show with our children. Most of us wished they had KITT, a few of us wanted to wreck havoc in KARR. All of us wanted a car that was smart, fast, and fun to drive. And who can argue against the powerful alure of being the lone crusader, Michael Knight?" Hmm... well...
Link The Puzzling Origins of AIDS: Although no one explanation for the origin of AIDS has been universally accepted, four rival theories provide some important lessons.
Link Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python: Talk by Gary L. Hardcastle. Intro: >My aim in this talk is to present a comprehensive overview of each and every one of the main themes endured by analytic philosophy in the last sixty years or so, and to argue the bold historical claim that the whole lot is well represented-indeed, often best represented-in the work of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, collectively and henceforth referred to as "Monty Python."<
Link Baseball, Football, Bloodline All Failed Kerry Bid: Comment by Patricia Zengerle. Quote: "Forget misleading exit polls. The Washington Redskins, Burke's Peerage and even the candidate's height fell short when it came to forecasting the outcome of Campaign 2004."
Link Cracking the Cultural Code: Methodological Reflections on Kracauer's `The Mass Ornament'. Intro: "Since the mid-1980s there has been a major revival of interest in the work of Siegfried Kracauer, focusing on the essays he wrote during the Weimar Republic for the Frankfurter Zeitung. As a result of this renewed interest in Kracauer's early writings, a revisionist school of Kracauer criticism has emerged, particularly in the USA. Where he had once been dismissed as a peddler of naively realist or simplistically psychological film criticism, Kracauer is now accorded a privileged position in the pantheon of post-structuralism and post-modernism, as the putative saviour of cultural studies from its own tendentious reflexivity."
Link William S. Burroughs: To quote DaddyD: "William S. Burroughs is one of my favorite writers. Not only is he my favorite writer, but he has influenced most of my other favorite artists. Despite the decades separating his world from the one I grew up with, his view through reality was always disturbingly real. For a quick introduction to this dead-mans works, what could be more appropriate than a page from a dead magazine. The Australian based iZine seems to have given up the ghost sometime around 1999, there collection of pages on Mr. Burroughs remains however, including and interview, excerpts from his novels and examples of some of his paintings."
Link Phil Spector: The Last Trial of the first 'Teen Tycoon of Teen'? Headpress asks: "Can this be the strange end to one of the strangest tales in Rock history? Can Phil Spector — who invented the ‘Wall of Sound’ and the entire concept of modern Pop record production, really end up on trial for murder?"
Link NASA to Track Odd Explosions: NASA plans to launch a new space telescope later this month capable of spinning around at a moment's notice to catch sight of elusive bursts of gamma rays.
Link Digging Deeper: Q&A with Peter Brown. A discoverer of an extinct dwarf species of human reflects on one of the most startling paleoanthropological revelations in living memory.
Link Comment by R.U. Sirius: "Kerry lost Ohio, and the election, over cultural issues. Polls show that voters trusted him more on the economy AND on Iraq, but they voted for Bush over “moral values.” Apparently moral values include lying the country into war; killing over 100,000 people; torture – including sexual torture in prisons; ad infinitum (everybody here already knows the litany). But the most important moral value is in not acknowledging love between two people of the same gender. Secondary values of import include voicing the words “under god” while putting your hand over your heart and pledging your faith to your nation state’s icon. Etc. As Tom Franks points out, people in the Headless Heartland vote to end abortion and clean up the media but what they actually GET is deregulation and policies favoring the factory farms that put them out of business. But now, as the political realities clarify, the cultural conservatives may actually start to win some serious political victories, pushed along by a Bush Supreme Court. The next four years belong to John Ashcroft and the American Taliban which also means that
ANTI-authoritarians take center stage..."
Link Building Block Created For Quantum Computing, Secure Communication And Quantum Internet: Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany have achieved unprecedented control over the creation of single photons (Nature, October 28, 2004). By using a tightly trapped single calcium ion, localized between two ultra-high reflectivity mirrors, and subjecting it to an external laser pulse, the scientists could emit photons one by one.
Link Peaceable assembly, Bloomberg-style: An excerpt of a longer account written by Carmel McMahon, describing her experience of being incarcerated for nearly 50 hours during the Republican National Convention in New York City in early September. The ACLU is representing her and hundreds of other detainees in a lawsuit, arguing that the city violated their rights under law.
Link Humanism on the Front Line: Douglas Gearhart calls on philosophers to develop practical moral guidance for soldiers in war zones.
Link Plans 1 through 8 from Outer Space: Bad acting, worse special effects ... or possibly the end of the world?
Link Independent and then some: Quote: >If Jack Grimes were in charge of America, he says, he would finally set things right. He would establish a fascist dictatorship based on the teachings of Benito Mussolini and Saddam Hussein, and he would rely on telepathy and astrology to help him make his decisions. It's bound to happen, he says, since he's been sent "by the gods" to revive the "Roman empire." Which is why Grimes, the leader of the United Fascist Union, is running for president this year. His destiny, he says, is nothing the American people should fear.<
Link Ancient nuclear power controlled by water: Geological reactors might hold lessons for today's nuclear plants. Quote: "Nuclear power was invented in Africa 2 billion years ago. Now scientists think they have figured out how geological processes conspired to create the equivalent of a 100-kilowatt nuclear plant that produced pulses of power every three hours for a period of about 150,000 years."
Link [The Archives] 
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. . monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993.
[more] Booking monochrom: [Europe] [USA] External monochrom links: [monochrom Wikipedia] [monochrom Flickr] [monochrom blip.tv] [monochrom GV] [monochrom Youtube] [monochrom Facebook] [monochrom iTunes] [monochrom Twitter] 
[ P r o j e c t s ] Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 2 / The Adventure Game Krach der Roboter: Hello World! Slacking is killing the DIY industry (T-Shirt) Carefully Selected Moments / CD, LP Freedom is a whore of a word (T-Shirt) International Year of Polytheism 2007 Santa Claus Vs. Christkindl: A Mobster Battle Kiki and Bubu and The Shift / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Self / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Feelings / Short film / Short film Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 1 / The Adventure Game I was a copyright infringement in a previous life (T-Shirt) Firing Squad Euro2008 Intervention I can count every star in the heavens above -- The image of computers in popular music All Tomorrow's Condensations / Puppet show The Redro Loitzl Story / Short film Law and Second Order (T-Shirt) They really kicked you out of the Situationist International? When I was asked to write about new economy Arse Elektronika 2007, 2008, 2009 etc. The Void's Foaming Ebb / Short film The Charcoal Burner / Short film Fieldrecording in Sankt Wechselberg / Short film Campaign For The Abolition Of Personal Pronouns Entertainment (Unterhaltung) / Short film Nicholas Negroponte Memorial Cable Experience the Experience! (West Coast USA/Canada Tour 2005) A Holiday in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Massive Multiplayer Thumb-Wrestling Network Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Metroblogging Every Five Seconds an Inkjet Printer Dies Somewhere 452 x 157 cm² global durability Blattoptera / Art for Cockroaches An attempt to emulate an attempt The Department for Criticism against Globalisation Disney vs. Chrusov / Short film Turning Threshold Countries Into Plows Roböxotica // Festival for Cocktail-Robotics Cracked Foundation For The Fine Arts Oh my God, they use a history which repeats itself! (T-Shirt) Administrating:  . . . . . |
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