Scientists May Have Uncovered Secret To Longevity In Tubeworms:
 With an incredible lifespan of up to 250 years, the deep-sea tube worm, Lamellibrachia luymesi, is among the longest-lived of all animals, but how it obtains sufficient nutrients -- in the form of sulfide -- to keep going for this long has been a mystery. Link chongqed.org - trying to fight wiki spam, blog spam, and guestbook spam:
Spammers are taking advantage of wikis, blogs, and guestbooks to promote their websites. That's why many wikis are under a constant spam attack; that's why many comments on blogs don't make any kind of sense; that's why you never look at guestbooks. The spammers do this to influence the results that Google and other search engines will return for certain keywords. If there are many links to one page on the web and all these links contain a certain keyword, e.g. 'viagra', then a search engine is more likely to return this page at the top of its list of results when you search for 'viagra'. By spamming wikis, blogs, and guestbooks, the spammers try to get as many links as they can for their pages. chongqed.org is trying to fight this kind of spam. We do this by linking the spammers' keywords to pages that contain information about spam and the spammer. We hope that these pages documenting the spamming will be higher up on the search engine results pages than the pages of the spammers. Link Protesting Sexism at the Pompidou:
The Centre Georges Pompidou's current exhibition "Dionysiac," which features only male artists, has been the target of a protest. A statement signed by the collective Artpies was distributed at the opening last Tuesday night and has been circulated since then on blogs and flyers. "Finally, the Pompidou has opened up to male art!" the statement begins, in an ironic tone that continues through the entire declaration. "Since its inauguration in 1977, only 86% of the artists in the collections of the Musée national d'Art Moderne are men. Within these collections, only 93% of the artworks were made by male artists. We note with relief that 'Dionysiac' has finally passed the barrier of 100% pure male." While linking the all-male show to the policies of the conservative politician Nicolas Sarkozy, Artpies goes on to congratulate the show's curator Christine Macel for "revolutionary" zeal in her "engagement in the fight against sexism." Link Link runme.org's 300th birthday:
The runme.org software art repository: 2 years + 1 month old celebrates 300+ projects Runme.org is a software art repository, launched in January 2003. It is an open, moderated database to which people are welcome to submit projects they consider to be interesting examples of software art. Software art is an intersection of two almost non-overlapping realms: software and art. It has a different meaning and aura in each. Software art gets its lifeblood and its techniques from living software culture and represents approaches and strategies similar to those used in the art world. Software culture lives on the Internet and is often presented through special sites called software repositories. Art is traditionally presented in festivals and exhibitions. Software art on the one hand brings software culture into the art field, but on the other hand it extends art beyond institutions. The aim of Runme.org is to create an exchange interface for artists and programmers which will work towards a contextualization of this new form of cultural activity. Runme.org welcomes projects regardless of the date and context of their creation. The repository is happy to host different kinds of projects - ranging from found, anonymous software art to famous projects by established artists and programmers. Runme.org is structured in two major ways: taxonomically/rationally (category list) and intuitively (keyword cloud). The best works submitted to Runme.org will be reviewed by the "experts", who will change over time. Link "We shall overcome":
 Here's the wonderful video of "We shall overcome" by radical-left electropop heiress 'Gustav'. Enjoy! (via Otto Europa) Link Follow my leader: Intro: "Few people realise just how much modern technology has its roots in the military. In fact, warfare has always been a major driver of progress, and this trend looks more than ever set to continue. If you want to see the future of the civilian world, look at what the military are doing now.
This is evident even from the way we talk about the different eras in human history. The Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, which was succeeded by the age of gunpowder, and now we have our own era - variously called the space age, the nuclear age, the computer age, the Internet age. When bronze replaced stone and iron replaced bronze, the ancient metal-workers were not making trinkets. Bronze was mainly prized for making better spear points, arrowheads and armour, not cloak-fastenings or ornaments. Steel was valuable because it meant a sword could be made stronger and sharper than ever before. Ploughs and axes were important for tilling the soil and clearing woodland, but the symbol of power is not the plough but the sword. In both Europe and Asia, swordsmiths were working with literally cutting edge technology. What about the great innovations that have been used to define the modern age - space travel, nuclear power, computing, the Internet? Military, every one of them. And as for the next age, who knows? But whether it is the Nanotechnology Age, the Artificial Intelligence Age or some other unguessable technology, chances are we can already see its precursors in the military labs of today." Link Starless Galaxy Said Found: Astronomers announced yesterday that they have discovered what is believed to be the first dark galaxy ever detected, a starless mass of spinning matter located some 50 million light-years away in the Virgo cluster of galaxies.
Link Google? Intro: >I googled, she googled, we all googled together and it seems as though more than a few of us are becoming wary of the Google. Googling for the phrase "I hate Google" turns up quite a few rather interesting links. And they aren't all from frustrated bloggers who just can't get a decent page ranking either. Some people are concerned about privacy, others about security, and still others are just pissed at being kicked out of googles ad program. Since Google currently generates something like 75% of all page referrals, I suspect that the number of nay sayers will only continue to grow.<
Link 'The Road to Reality': A Really Long History of Time: Review of Roger Penrose's A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Quote: "This is the book alien archaeologists may study for a rigorous, comprehensive view of how the 21st-century inhabitants of the third rock from the sun believed the world worked."
Link 400 Mph On Water:
 Russ Wicks is betting his life to set a water speed record--but he's not alone. Link Condoleeza Rice vs. Democracy in Mexico: A Plot to Kick a Candidate Out of the 2006 Mexico Presidential Race Provokes an Unprecedented Public Revolt (via histologion).
Link Formaldehyde claim inflames martian debate: Formaldehyde has been found in the martian atmosphere, according to a senior scientist working with the Mars Express orbiter. If correct, the discovery provides strong evidence that Mars is either extremely geologically active, or harbouring colonies of microbial life. But many experts are not yet convinced.
Link Freak Show: A brand-new television show taps into the Russian appetite for paranormal phenomena.
Link Moores Law Next Generation: "What’s the clock speed on the CPU(s) in your current workstation? Are you running at 10GHz? On Intel chips, we reached 2GHz a long time ago (August 2001), and according to CPU trends before 2003, now in early 2005 we should have the first 10GHz Pentium-family chips. A quick look around shows that, well, actually, we don’t. What’s more, such chips are not even on the horizon—we have no good idea at all about when we might see them appear." Nice article preview by Herb Sutter.
Link
Welcome to the Australian Famous Television Writer’s School: Have you ever wanted to write you own television drama series? Well now you can...
Link Notes on a Strange World: Facts and Fiction in the Kennedy Assassination:
 Intro: >Investigating historical mysteries is, possibly, one the most fascinating and rewarding aspects of the work of a skeptical researcher. Mysteries that appear to have no possible solutions, that could certainly be termed “cold,” can, sometimes, become clearer thanks to a more careful investigation of the original sources and also to the advancements of science. Think only of the many historical enigmas and crimes that DNA-testing techniques have helped to solve, like the riddle of Anastasia Romanoff’s claimed survival (Gill 1994, 1995) or the real origins of Kaspar Hauser (Weichhold 1998). However, cases are often made more difficult to solve when facts get confused with imagined realities and unfounded conclusions. Eyewitness testimonies and self-styled experts, even in good faith, can alter details and hide important clues that—if untouched—could lead to radically different conclusions. In order to give you some clear examples of what I mean, I will examine one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century.< Link Frozen Bacterium Adds to Mars Speculation: A newly-discovered life form that froze on Earth 30,000 years ago was apparently alive all that time and started swimming as soon as it thawed, says NASA's Richard Hoover.
Link Media Censorship: David Barsamian interviewed by Omar Khan. Journalist, author, and lecturer, David Barsamian is perhaps best known as the founder and director of Alternative Radio, a weekly one-hour public affairs program that began in 1986 and today reaches millions of listeners from on top of an alleyway garage in Boulder, Colorado. Like Dahr's Dispatches, Alternative Radio is a news medium sustained solely by the support of individuals.
Link The Hitchhiker Adventure Game - 20th Anniversary Edition: DaddyD writes: "Infocom used to be THE name for interactive fiction. Or as we used to all them, tex adventures. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy used to be THE name for fiction. Period. Which is one of the reasons you will probably be reading lots about aging geeks getting all giddy about the Guide movie that's due out. It's also the reason that Infocoms game version of the Guide has attained near legendary status amongst a certain group of technofetishists. Some people would say it may have been one of the greatest games ever written. They would most likely be exagerating and probably trying to sell you something as well. Anyway, you can now find out. The BBC has put up a flashbased version of that classic text adventure, complete with new and nifty graphics designed by fans and professional artists alike. It should be fun, and much much easier than way back when (they have cheats posted on the same site, no work needed)."
Link A Biased History Of Interactive Media: Way back before the stock market bubble, even before the web, a lateral tribe of artist-programmers accidentally invented something called the New Media Industry (via bb).
Link The 'Anarchic Hand': Quote: "The phenomenon of the 'anarchic hand' is probably one of the strangest things researchers in the field of cognitive neuroscience will ever come across. People with this bizarre condition have one hand that is under full mental control whilst the other hand seems to behave as if it had a will of its own and competes with the other hand to perform actions. Professor Sergio Delia Sala (University of Edinburgh) has been studying this condition. So peculiar is it that some have come to call it 'Dr Strangelove's syndrome', after the film in which Peter Sellers plays a mad scientist who has to grab his arm to stop it making Nazi salutes. The symptoms can be humorous to watch but can be devastating for the afflicted person."
Link Drop the Mummy, and Nobody Gets Hurt:
 Recent controversy over moving King Tut puts Egyptologists in the spotlight. Quote: >Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s most publicized Egyptologist and the secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA), is renowned for the number of controversies he can stir. Brushing the controversies aside as nuisances "begun by backward people who are jealous," as he told Egypt Today, Dr. Hawass keeps on working regardless of any setbacks.< Link What's a science fiction writer doing hanging out with designers anyway? Bruce Sterling on SF and design. Quote: >Design's bad habits are bad for designers, but they're absolutely great for science fiction writers. I'll give you a cogent example. Let's say you're an industrial designer trying to get a bunch of skeptical industrialists in some corporate boardroom to pony up 20 million dollars so they can retool the factory and build something you've just invented with a pencil and graph paper. This is basically a "suspension of disbelief" operation. It has distinct literary, fictionalizing qualities.<
Link "Intolerable Beauty" in LA:
 Quote: "The sheer enormity of it all gave me the shivers as I looked at Chris Jordan's photographs at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery. Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption is made up of large photos (mostly 40 x 50") that present seas of discarded cell phones, broken bottles, unwanted circuit boards, and compacted cars stacked like pancakes. Jordan hangs around the garbage dumps and shipping ports of the Pacific Northwest to bring us scenes like these, going places most of us would rather avoid, but, oddly enough, the result is a beautiful series of photographs. Colorful patterns emerge in the rubble and somehow his images lend the garbage a graceful presence. His photos are tinged with a certain amount of sympathy for the items our disposable society tosses aside so quickly when something newer and better comes along." Link 1 Link 2 Mars may have subterranean frozen sea: A frozen sea surviving as blocks of pack ice may lie just beneath the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine says, citing observations from Europe's Mars Express spacecraft.
Link Were the dinosaurs done in by fungus? Quest to figure out why mammals are warm-blooded led to new theory.
Link Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe: Quote: "You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world. Fools. The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy. This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison. This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore." (via DaddyD)
Link Israeli expedition to unlock mystery of human origins: Quote:"Since the discovery of a 160,000-year old human-like skull in Ethiopia in 2002, scientists have been refocusing their interest on questions relating to the evolution of Homo sapiens. Where and when did modern humans first appear and what were their routes of dispersal?
The only way to solve this puzzle, say scientists, is to uncover human remains in archeological layers older than those found in Ethiopia - dating to between 150,000 to 250,000 years ago. However, no accurately dated well-preserved hominid fossils from this period have been discovered. Now, through a grant given by the Dan David Foundation a project is underway in northern Israel to unearth the oldest remnants of Homo sapiens outside of Africa. The foundation was launched by Dan David, a Tel Aviv University honorary doctor and founder of the annual Dan David Prize administered by TAU." Link Cassini's Cameras View Titan In A Different Light:
 Cassini's third close approach to Titan on Tuesday, Feb. 15, yielded intriguing new views of the planet-sized moon, as the spacecraft's powerful cameras looked at and through the orange murk of its thick atmosphere. Link ArtBots 2005 Call for Works:
 The fourth annual ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, an international art exhibition for robotic art and art-making robots, will take place at Saints Michael and John Church in Dublin, Ireland on July 15-17, 2005. Creators of talented robots are invited to submit their work for possible inclusion in the show. Proposals and works-in-progress are welcome, provided a detailed production timeline and samples of previous work are included in the application. The deadline for entries is April 1st, 2005. The ArtBots curators for 2005 are: Douglas Repetto (Columbia University Computer Music Center), Michael John Gorman (The Ark), and Marie Redmond (Trinity College Computer Science). ArtBots 2005 is sponsored by The Ark and The Columbia University Computer Music Center and is being produced as part of The Ark's summer "Save the Robots" festival. Link The democratisation of aid: Quote: "What is the best way to ensure disaster relief programmes achieve their stated goals instead of simply funding aid-agency bureaucracy, neo-liberal 'restructuring programmes' or even religious extremists? By giving to organisations rooted in the communities affected. The global alliance Via Campesina follows exactly that approach. Here, Peter Rosset and María Elena Martínez explain how Via Campesina works."
Link Spectrezine is a radical journal of the European Left, with a global perspective. Beginning as a print magazine in 1997, Spectrezine has been an online journal for the last four years and now, in our latest redesign, incorporates a weblog, allowing readers to respond to news items and participate in debate (via histologion).
Link What sort of patterns do scientists working on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project look for? Peter R. Backus, observing programs manager at the SETI Institute, explains.
Link Operation Zero in Haiti: A very multilateral coup. Franco-American harmony and unanimous blessings from the Security Council for the overthrow of a constitutional government and crushing of popular hope, in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation-state.
Link 'Big Bang': The Real Creation Science: Simon Singh tells the story of the universe and profiles the people who have explained that story.
Link Moon measurements might explain away dark energy: Plans to trace the Moon's orbit with extraordinary new accuracy could reveal kinks in Einstein's theory of gravity and help explain the mysterious accelerating expansion of the universe, says a US researcher.
Link Divine intervention - or sheer chance and probability? Ever Bumped Into An Old Chum In A Far-Flung Place? It Could Be More Than A Coincidence, As Laura Kendall Finds Out.
Link How Torture Became Acceptable: Intro: >One day in the autumn of 1942 Kim Philby, an officer in Britain's secret intelligence service, received a message from a colleague in MI5. The MI5 man, Helenus Milmo, was in a state of near despair about a Spanish prisoner and suspected spy, Juan Gomez de Lecube, who had been under interrogation since his arrest in the Caribbean that summer.
Despite Spanish protests, Lecube had been transported across the Atlantic and imprisoned, incommunicado, in Britain's interrogation centre for suspected enemy agents at Camp 020, the codename for Latchmere House in Middlesex. MI5 and MI6 had high hopes for war-shortening information from Lecube. They believed they had verified beyond doubt that he was a spy. They only needed to make him talk. But after a week, Milmo wrote: "No progress has been made ... it looks as though he is going to be an extremely obstinate nut to crack." Soon afterwards, Milmo wrote to Philby, seeking approval to apply special measures to the interrogation of the detainee. Sixty years later, in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Milmo and Philby's counterparts in US military intelligence and the CIA faced what they believed was a similar dilemma. All over the world, US agents and soldiers were seizing and interrogating hundreds of foreign men whom they suspected held information that would enable new terrorist attacks to be prevented. Like Milmo, they began coming up against stubborn prisoners. Like Milmo, they wrote to those higher up the chain of command seeking permission for special measures to make the prisoners talk.< Link Don't panic, it might never happen: Statistically speaking, it seems that things can only get worse. A study of the statistics of global terrorism concludes that attacks will become more severe in the future, and that an attack that kills as many people as the destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 is likely within the next seven years. It all sounds very depressing and seems to imply, depending on your viewpoint, either that the 'war on terror' is essential or that it is futile. But can we really assert these things based on statistics alone?
Link Lyotard and Greek Thought: Sophistry:
 Quote: "In this well-researched and thoughtfully articulated book, Keith Crome presents a case for the serious consideration of the relationship between Jean-François Lyotard – variously philosopher of desire, theorist of the postmodern condition, disenchanted Marxist or acute reader of Kant’s Critique of Judgement – and Greek thought. Or rather, he presents half a case, as this book is only the first of a projected two volumes, dealing with, in turn, sophistry and Aristotle." (Keith Crome, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2004. 224 pp.) Link Opening up the controversy about teaching creation/evolution: Essay by Joachim Allgaier (The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK).
Intro: "An issue that is reported on periodically in the news since the Scopes Trial in the USA in the 1920s is the difference between scientists’ explanations of the emergence of mankind and the Earth and the seemingly opposing explanations of religious groups and how this issue is tackled in compulsory science education. This debate is often dubbed the 'Creation vs. Evolution' controversy. Variations of this debate have been reported in e.g. the USA, Italy, Serbia, Switzerland, Brazil among others and more recently the debate about teaching creationist theories alongside evolution theories in a couple of faith schools in England. The news reports were not only about what was happening in their own country, but also about the situation in other countries. Investigating issues like these it is quite surprising to find out that not much research has been done yet on the relationships between education and the media or connections between education and religion. Before we dive deeper into this debate, I would like to remark that the intention of this paper is not to support or to promote any particular way of teaching any accounts of the origin of humans and the Earth. With a background in science studies the nature of this account of the so-called ‘Evolution vs. Creation’ Controversy is exploratory and tries to start from a symmetrical point of view, which means that none of the opposing groups or viewpoints will be granted a more truthful position from start. The aim of this exploration is rather to open up some complexities of this debate instead of narrowing down this particular debate to a simplified account. I am going to illustrate the case of Emmanuel College based on newspaper reports." Link Plutonium books don't balance at UK plant: The Sellafield plant for reprocessing nuclear fuel in northwest England is unable to account for about 30 kilograms of the plutonium it handled in 2004. That amount would be enough to make seven nuclear bombs.
Link Iran: the wrong threat: Article by Ignacio Ramonet. Intro: >Along the beautiful avenues of Tehran, with their apocalyptic traffic jams, you don’t get the sense that people are particularly worried by the threat that the United States - currently present and nearby in Iraq and Afghanistan - is about to knock at the gates. No feverish activity at the airports, where security measures seem ridiculously lax compared with those in Europe and the US. Local media don’t have much to say about it; they are more concerned with President Mohammad Khatami’s trip to Africa, the trial of Charles Graner, "the torturer of Abu Ghraib", and elections in Iraq.<
Link The Case of the Mutant AIDS Virus: Quote: "Was New York right to sound the alarm? You bet. [...] On Friday, New York City health officials issued this chilling announcement: A man is infected with a form of the AIDS virus that is not only resistant to three of the four classes of anti-HIV drugs, it is apparently so virulent that it causes full-blown AIDS in a matter of weeks rather than the usual decade or more. It will be super-difficult to treat, and it may be a super-fast killer."
Link Tassie tiger cloning 'pie-in-the-sky science': The more than $350,000 spent trying to clone the extinct Tasmanian tiger had gone to "pie in the sky" science and it was sensible for the Australian Museum to have abandoned the project, scientists said yesterday.
Link Ancient art of invention: Quote: >You've just ordered a pint. You’re sitting gazing out at the concrete building opposite. The footie is on the television above the bar. A vending machinewinks beside the door to the toilets.
You might think that the things around you are quintessentially modern. But you’d be wrong. All of the components in this picture (well, ok, apart from the telly) were invented by ancient peoples who lived more than 1,000 years ago. The makers of What The Ancients Did For Us, which starts on BBC2 this week, believe we have the peoples of Mesopotamia, Central America, China, India, Arabia, Greece and Rome to thank for many life-changing discoveries, from rubber bands to central heating. "We have a tendency to think of ancient peoples as being stupid because they didn’t have television or mobile phones," says series presenter Adam Hart-Davis. "But of course they were just as intelligent as we are, and they didn’t waste their time watching television or texting each other. So they used their intelligence and invented some wonderful things."< Link Black holes bend light the 'wrong' way: Refraction effect may be distorting astronomers' results. Astronomers could be misinterpreting their observations of distant stars, suggest mathematicians.
Link For Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, Was It De-Lovely? An unusual question came up at a recent symposium on Neanderthals: "Did Neanderthals and modern humans do it?"
Link Is this Jesus? Forensic experts in Italy have come up with this computer-generated sketch of a fair-skinned young Jesus with wavy hair and dark eyes, based on historical data and images from the controversial Shroud of Turin.
Link Liberation Conspiracies: A review of: Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains, Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, Houghton Mifflin, 468pp., $26.95.
Link Grid Expectations For Networked Computing: From Global Earth Monitoring To Black Hole Detection: Whether dealing with high-power particle accelerators, astronomical observatories or Earth-watching spacecraft, modern science involves vast volumes of information, and researchers require powerful Grid computing techniques to manage this data deluge.
Link monochrom info // monochrom at "Just do it": Thomas Edlinger, Raimar Stange and Florian Waldvogel are curating an exhibition on Culture Jamming at the Museum of Modern Art in Linz.
 The exhibition features some projects by monochrom: "Instant Blitz Copy Fight Project", "Ikea" and some stuff that is not online yet. Opening: February 25, 2005. Link Remilitarizing Japan: Quote: "Relations between Washington and Europe have been under the spotlight since 2001; less so those between the US and Japan. Koizumi's constitution-breaking dispatch of SDF units to Iraq, and American strategies for containing China and re-arming the East Asian rim."
Link Scorpion robot could conquer worlds: Walking machine may go where wheeled explorers cannot.
Link (Article) Link (Video) The perfect cuppa: Fancy a cup of tea? Make sure you follow the instructions, says Marc Abrahams (via DRT).
Link Siberian craftsman makes art microscopic: Quote: "Look out for Siberian craftsman Anatoly Konenko in the next edition of the Guinness Book of Records. He is responsible for the smallest book in the world, Anton Chekhov's story 'Chameleon,' which is less than a square millimeter in size, and includes three hand-colored illustrations."
 (Picture: A caravan of camels strolling through the the eye of a needle. Each camel is made of gold and is 0.25mm tall.) Link Multi-player PacMan jumps between devices: The new computer game lets characters leap from one mobile console to another, aiming to encourage interaction and cooperation.
Link Participatory Economics: Quote: "Participatory Economics (Parecon for short) is a type of economy proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalism. The underlying values are equity, solidarity, diversity, and participatory self management. The main institutions are workers and consumers councils utilizing self managed decision making, balanced job complexes, remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, and participatory planning. This page links to articles, interviews, talks, instructionals, Q/A sessions, and books about parecon and closely related matters."
Link 'Birdbrain' No Longer Means 'Stupid,' Asserts Scientific Consortium: An international consortium of 29 neuroscientists has proposed a drastic renaming of the structures of the bird brain to correctly portray birds as more comparable to mammals in their cognitive ability. The scientists assert that the century-old traditional nomenclature is outdated and does not reflect new molecular, genetic and behavioral studies that reveal the brainpower of birds.
Link Sick bags should be fun: Beautiful designs and a great idea from virgin atlantic. Why not be reminded of nice things when youre feeling rotten?
Link New monochrom content // Let's network it out: Our new version of the networking anthem "Let's network it out" is finally online. The track was produced for the CD of "Update", an exhibition at Künstlerhaus Vienna.
The original version of the song was created for our project at the São Paolo Biennial 2002.
 Background story: Since February 2000 Austria has been governed by a very right-wing government. Thus the independent art curator’s selection of monochrom as Austria’s national representatives at the São Paolo Biennial 2002 was a quite an interesting political statement. We decided to do a tactical-ironical project. Instead of doing an exhibition as monochrom, we decided to send Georg Paul Thomann to Brazil. Who is Georg Paul Thomann? He is a fictitious 57-year-old Austrian avant-garde artist. We wrote his complete biography (around one hundred pages) and asked fellow artists, writers and pop theorists to write articles about his life and work, which were published as the catalogue of the exhibition. It took the media quite a long time to actually figure out the whole art-avatar maneuver. The Thomann biography grew to be an amusing overview of pop, art and intellectual history during the past four decades with fictitious guest appearances from people like William Gibson, Peter Handke or Alan Jenkins. Anyway, you might like our approach - and by the way: Georg Paul Thomann saved the country of Taiwan ... Let's network it out (MP3) // Link Georg Paul Thomann biography // Link No email? Homepage of the 'International Conference on Machine Learning 2005': "We assume all authors will have access to standard software for word
processing, electronic mail, and ftp file transfer. Authors who do not have
such access should send email with their concerns to proceedings at icml2005.ais.fraunhofer.de"
Well... Link Jimmy Brown Sauce: Out will walk a 42-year-old who has been an ever-present at the Masters since 1981 and was champion in 1984. It will be a left-handed player with a face familiar to millions but an altered identity. Jimmy Brown will, in fact, be the potter formerly known as Jimmy White, who has changed his name by deed poll for the duration of the tournament.
With the full backing of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), the sport’s governing body, White has officially become James Brown because of a deal with HP Sauce, which has also become the sponsor of the brown ball at the Masters and other events this season. Link 1 (Times Online) Link 2 (for the non-brits...info on brown sauce. Yes, it IS commonly known as just "brown sauce".) Domen Lombergar:
 DaddyD writes: "Domen Lombergar is a Slovenian artist and digital manipulator who makes some rather pleasant images. Some of them sort of remind me of my favorite painter, Renee Magritte. Some of them are a bit more Gigeresque. Most of them are nice. You can download them and use them as desktops, or you can be really generous and order signed prints on canvas. You don't have to though. That's what I know about him." Link Apocalypse Now: How Mankind Is Sleepwalking To The End Of The Earth: Quote: "Floods, storms and droughts. Melting Arctic ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. The world's top scientists warned last week that dangerous climate change is taking place today, not the day after tomorrow. You don't believe it? Then, says Geoffrey Lean, read this..."
Link Creature from the deep:
 Quote: "A rare - and dead - oarfish washed up at City Beach in Perth yesterday, proving more than a handful for Troy Coward, Andy Mole and Axel Strauss (pictured). The serpent-like animal was found six metres offshore, bringing to at least six the number of oarfish that have washed up on the West Australian coast in recent months. Prefering to live in the depths of the ocean they have only been known to come to the surface when sick or dying and have rarely been seen alive." Link Outcast star quits the Milky Way: A star is zooming out of the Milky Way, the first seen escaping the galaxy, astronomers have reported.
Link Dutch Political Posters 1918-2004:
 Quote: "A fairly broad selection of Dutch political (party, individual candidate, anti-Fascist, anti-Communist, etc.) posters spanning almost 100 years." Link Why Napster will be a fully-integrated flop: Quote: >Napster today graced the world with a "revolutionary new way to enjoy music" by starting something called the Napster To Go service. As we all know, revolutions often deliver unintended consequences. So let's have a look at where Napster's service may lead.<
Link Diamond Planets: Rich Possibilities for Other Worlds:
 Quote: "The solid planets in our solar system are made mostly of silicates. Rock, basically. A new study shows that planets around some other stars might be made mostly of carbon instead. Deep inside such worlds, where pressures are intense, the carbon would make layers of diamonds that could be miles thick." Link The Erotic Museum / The Human Body Project: Quote: "The Erotic Museum is conducting an ongoing research project intent on recording the full breadth of natural and altered human physiology. By creating a massive image database of everyday people of every race, age and size we hope to provide the public with an enduring image of mankind's actual appearance in all of it's natural and unnatural forms. The project records natural skin coloration patterns, tattoos, body modifications, common body hair distribution and other characteristics seldom represented in the media. The database of images has been indexed, categorized and cross-referenced with profile data for each individual to be used in an upcoming exhibition in the Self-consciousness exhibit which explores body image and the sense of self."
Link The Phenomenon of Evidence: Article by David Boersema (Pacific University).
Intro: >I want to begin with two stories, as it were, though by “stories” I do not mean they are fictional. Indeed, they are not. First story: Stanford philosopher John Perry tells of a time he once followed a trail of sugar on a supermarket floor, pushing his cart down the aisle on one side of a tall counter and back the aisle on the other, seeking the shopper with the torn sack to tell him he was making a mess. With each trip around the counter, the trail became thicker, but Perry seemed unable to catch up with the offending shopper. Finally it dawned on him that he was the person he was trying to catch. Second story: In the late 1970s, Berkeley geologist Walter Alvarez came across an unusual layer of clay near the town of Gubbio, Italy. It was a layer of clay only a few inches thick and lay stratigraphically at the boundary between two recognized geological periods, the earlier Cretaceous and the later Tertiary, a boundary known to geologists as the K-T boundary, formed approximately 65 million years ago. An analysis of this clay boundary revealed that it contained a small amount (9.4 parts per billion) of a rare inert metallic element, iridium. As small as this amount was, it was 300 times the levels of iridium that was expected, given the levels found on either side of the K-T boundary. As relatively high levels of iridium (up to 500 ppb) are known to exist in meteorites, an extra-terrestrial origin of the Gubbio iridium level was hypothesized and, along with other data, this information led in 1980 to the hypothesis that the mass extinction of life on earth that occurred 65 million years ago was the result of bolide impact (i.e., of a meteorite or other celestial body striking the earth). Many geologists, skeptical of this impact hypothesis, claimed that such a high iridium spike does not entail bolide impact and that, in fact, it could be accounted for by terrestrial volcanic activity. To support this claim, Dartmouth geologist Charles Officer noted that the 1983 eruption of Mount Kilauea in Hawaii resulted in an iridium deposit that was 11,500 times the background concentration. Indeed, many geologists have pointed to the K-T iridium spike (which is found at numerous sites around the world) and to iridium spikes or “extended deposits” at other stratigraphic points in the geologic column to bolster their contention that the K-T mass extinction and other mass extinctions were the result of terrestrial vulcanism not bolide impact. What do these two stories have to do with each other and what do they have to do with issues relating to evidence?< Link Michael Pollan on Food Chains, Dead Zones, and Licensed Journalism: Michael Pollan interviewed by Russell Schoch.
Link Muppets Overtime:
 Title: Over Time (Original) ... Directed By: Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, Damien Ferrie. Link Dutch Pigs Push Software Propaganda & Razzias: Quote: "The pigs are coming down on illegal software in Holland. The NVPI, the branch organisation of the entertainment industry, has launched a 2 million euros anti-piracy campaign this week called B.I.G.. The name is an acronym for Banish Illegal Games & Software and also the Dutch word for pig. That is about the only thing that does not stink about this campaign, because the people who have shaped and execute it are truly the filthy shit diggers they pretend to be. B.I.G. is aimed at children and uses the proven methods of fear and intimidation."
Link One Love (Almost): A massive party in Africa, a sour argument, a strange little town and some wise words from Patrice. Bob Marley's 60th birthday.
Link Vintage Vandals:
 DaddyD sez: "This is lovely. Some artists were asked to go to a second hand store and find some kitsch that they were then asked to deface. I mean, enhance. You know, make a work of art out of them that could then be sold at a respectable gallery. The results are pretty cool." Link Sex and the single robot: Quote: "Scientists have made them walk and talk. There are even robots that can run. But a South Korean professor is poised to take their development several steps further, and give cybersex new meaning. Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software, which will be installed in a robot within the next three months, will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire."
Link With Zimbabwe's health sector in ruins, witchdoctors are busy: Quote: >The collapsing health sector in Zimbabwe, once among the best in Africa, is forcing thousands of the sick and elderly to seek out traditional healers or "witchdoctors" for treatment, human rights groups say.<
Link Laughter plays tricks with your eyes: Laughter changes the way you process clues from the world around you.
Link New monochrom content // The Micro Graphic Novel Project:
 One day in Autumn of 2004 I found a heap of old cardboard boxes and other discarded packaging material in my grandfather's shed. Among it was a box for a chainsaw. On the back of it there was this peculiar sequence of drawings in black and white. I looked at it for a while but to be honest, I couldn't make any sense of it. Commissioned art printed on the back of the box for chainsaws, only to be discarded, never to be seen by anyone else again. And there I was, looking at these pictures on a cold day in October. The pictures began to whisper to me. Little tales of love and sorrow, hate and terror, big ideas and small hopes. Man creates universes, first with his thoughts, then with with his words. That is why this very webpage exists. I want to fill this hollow space of empty pictorials with your words, the words of the graphic novel. Help me bring the stories in the drawing come to life, there's a hell of a lot of them in there. Now, you write one, too. Link BASIC.net: Seems that this cat can't be killed. BASIC still exists! Now it appears as BASIC.net. Featuring all nice things the .net framework offers combined with the simplicity of the good old BASIC language. Writing webservices is a simple as a PRINT statement was 10 years ago...
Link Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth: Boosting people's sense of self-worth has become a national preoccupation. Yet surprisingly, researchshows that such efforts are of little value in fostering academic progress or preventing undesirable behavior.
Link Finland receives first PhD in trolls: Fear of trolls was adapted to Christian framework.
 Quote: "Finland has received what appears to be the first doctoral dissertation on traditional forest trolls. Master of Philosophy Camilla Asplund Ingemark, 30, has researched the subject for six years. She will defend her doctoral dissertation, which is classified as a work on folklore, at the Åbo Akademi University in Turku on Friday. The study describes the world of trolls according to the beliefs in the folklore of Swedish-speaking Finns." Link Russian wine 'anarchists' use lake as cellar: Twelve bottles of prestigious French wines will be kept for six months on the bottom of Russia's Lake Baikal by a group of people looking to push the boundaries of wine consumption and production.
Link 'Zero intelligence' trading closely mimics stock market: A computer model in which virtual traders buy and sell purely at random can reproduce the real behaviour of stock markets.
Link Eric Hobsbawm: Delusions About Democracy: Histologion points out to an article by Eric Hobsbawm, probably the leading Marxist historian of our era.
Link Salim Lone, former adviser to Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN envoy to Iraq killed in 2003, writes in the International Herald Tribune on the elections in Iraq. The message is unambiguous (via Dead Man Left).
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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