monochrom Event / // The Flower Currency / Pictures and progress: Finally some pictures of the flower picking event (April 17, 2005) are online.
 Currently we are busy pressing, counting and preserving the flowers. Also we are working on the web site, graphic design and social rules of the new value system. Anyone wishing to get involved is welcome. We aim to make this as simple and fun as possible. Naturally you can help if you have the know-how integrating your web site with www.theflowerbank.org - we would like to launch the web site with as many communities using it as possible. Second we are working on using it for a series of workshops entitled "Food 4" - so we need help preparing and making food. Link Mirrors can help do away with wrinkles: First we program mirrors and they program us in response. Russian cyberneticist Vitaly Pravdivtsev studied the mysterious characteristics of mirrors and came to a conclusion that we program the mirror into further programming us.
Link Scientists Confirm Earth's Energy Is Out Of Balance: Using satellites and computer models to study the Earth's oceans, scientists have concluded that more energy is being absorbed from the Sun than is reflected back to space, throwing the Earth's energy "out of balance" and warming the planet.
Link The Struggle over Modernity in the U.S.: Some notes on the power of the neoconservative revolution, by Lawrence Grossberg. Intro: "A number of writers have, over the past decade, referred to the radical changes that have characterized the United States since the 1960s. Frances Fukuyama, for example, speaking of the mid-1960s through the 1990s, claims that there has been »a Great Disruption in the social values that prevailed in the industrial-age society of the mid-twentieth century,« marked at the very least by »seriously deteriorating social conditions.« I want to talk about these changes as the »unsettling« of the modernity of the United States, and the struggle to redefine that modernity."
Link (Springerin main page) No booze needed for beer goggles: The mere thought of beer or wine can influence your sex drive, according to a study of undergraduates.
Link Barbarian Names: Languagehat writes: >In an effort to find out something about the Isaurians and their language (a vain effort, and if anybody knows anything beyond "warlike" and "unknown" I'd appreciate hearing about it) I ran across Vassil Karloukovski's Page, with its many Bulgarian-related links; what particularly attracted my attention was the section devoted to The Language of the Huns, Chapter IX of O. Maenchen-Helfen's The World of the Huns (University of California Press, 1973).<
Link The Cathartic Potion of Living Together: Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Jonardon Ganeri report on a convivium in Delhi.
Link Wanna buy the Pope's old Volkswagen? Cardinal Ratzinger's used Golf is being sold on eBay Germany.
Link Intelligent MIDI Sequencing with Hamster Control:
 Quote: "After much consideration of different technical design aspects and contemplating various musical ideas, I was able to arrive at a project that would fulfill all of my musical and engineering goals. An intelligent MIDI sequencer was designed with hamster control [...] In culmination, 3 simultaneous voices were produced spanning 3 octaves and 3 rhythmic tiers. Each voice was controlled by two hamsters: one that was responsible for adjusting the rhythmic qualities of the melody and another that modified the note sequence [...]" (via Knoke) Link Oðblgshezi (pronounced /oth-blg-SHEH-zee/, with a syllabic /L/) is the name of a "language" consisting of English written with the digits of a calculator.
 You type in a number and then turn the calculator upside down to see the word. In order to make use of all ten digits, I persuaded the Anglo-Saxon letter eth (ð) to return from retirement to stand in for 'TH' (via Der Wiener Lloyd). Link Cinema Therapy? Quote: "Cinema therapy can be a powerful catalyst for healing and growth for anybody who is open to learning how movies affect us and to watching certain films with conscious awareness. Cinema therapy allows us to use the effect of imagery, plot, music, etc. in films on our psyche for insight, inspiration, emotional release or relief and natural change. Used as part of psychotherapy, cinema therapy is an innovative method based on traditional therapeutic principles. Even outside a therapist’s office, following certain guidelines for choosing films and watching them consciously can support personal and spiritual growth. In the case of long-standing psychological problems this is only recommended in the context of psychotherapy."
Link We're Rich, You're Not. End of Story: No amount of evidence can shake Norway's idea that it is the world's wealthiest country.
Link Company Uses Science and the Bible to Find Oil in Israel: An American oil company is relying on science and the Bible to find oil in Israel. The U.S.-based Zion Oil & Gas Corporation, led by an Evangelical Christian, says it wants to help the Jewish state become energy independent.
Link Old Star's "Rebirth" Gives Astronomers Surprises: Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope are taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch an old star suddenly stir back into new activity after coming to the end of its normal life. Their surprising results have forced them to change their ideas of how such an old, white dwarf star can re-ignite its nuclear furnace for one final blast of energy.
Link Barbecue Bud Chicken:
 I found this picture on the site of Barbecue America, "A Pilgramage In Search Of America's Best Barbecue" ...well... true American Spirit. Hi-Res Picture Link Ivory Coast: colonial adventure: The actions of the French Operation Unicorn peacekeeping force in the former French west African colony of Ivory Coast have exposed the greed and seaminess of France’s dual role as both mediator and participant (via histologion).
Link What is the origin of five digits on most species, and what is the best estimate of why we have that number? Michael Coates, associate professor in the department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, explains.
Link The Devil You Know: Review of M. Scott Peck's Glimpses of the Devil in "National Catholic Reporter".
 Quote: >By attempting to persuade, even "trick" his patients into accepting Christianity and even to study Christian theology, Dr. Peck also seems to have transgressed the boundaries of professional ethics. But this is a matter for his peers to evaluate.< Link Is There a Shire in the Text?
 The Professor and the Dream Factory. This excerpt from a new book on the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy explores the issue of sophistication and the happy ending, or the ways fantasy films speak to and for the inner child. Link monochrom Event / Cancellation // Of Yooks And Zooks And Technological Kooks: We are sorry to inform you that we had to cancel our Dr. Seuss event on April 27 due to illness of Dave Dempsey, the host. More information about a new date for the event will be available soon.
John Gottman: Psychologist John Gottman's goal is "to be like the guy who invented Velcro. Nobody remembers his name, but everybody uses Velcro". He is a psychologist who looks at relationships and focus on the interaction, the "fleeting architectural fluid form that people are creating as they talk to each other, as they smile, as they move."
Link Remote-controlled rats to sniff out explosives: An elite squad of real but remote-controlled rats could soon be scouring enemy bases and sniffing out explosives for the US military.
Link Open Raw: Quote: "Most camera manufacturers use a proprietary file format to store the raw data from their digital cameras. In the short history of digital photography, manufacturers have dropped support for asset management applications, abandoned settings from older RAW processor versions and changed the methods of storing basic camera settings without documentation. The Problem with Proprietary RAW files: Closed, proprietary. The OpenRAW Solution: We want camera manufacturers to publicly document their RAW image formats — past, present, and future." (via DD)
Link Papa Sith:
 (Thanx to Martin Pi) monochrom Event // Of Yooks And Zooks And Technological Kooks: A Reading For Obsolete Children: monochrom and David "DaddyD" Dempsey are proud being able to invite you to the first Dr. Seuss speciality evening that ever happened in bloody Vienna, Austria.
 We'd love to introduce you to the marvellous, witty anapestic tetrameter wonderlands and tour de force drawings of the one and only, the great "glorious and gandorious" Theodor Seuss Geisel -- the guy who presented the world with terms like "nerd" and "grinch". "[..] until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew Whether this one was that one or that one was this one. Or which one was what one or what one was who." (Non-existing) God bless you, Dr. Seuss, wherever you are! April 27, 2005; 8 PM; monochrom-Space at Museumsquartier, Vienna. CMS:
 Quote: "CMS... those three letters usually stand for Content Management System. It's something a lot of startups in 2001 went out of business writing. At one point it seems as though I knew at least 15 different developers who were all trying to make the perfect system. And cash in. Trouble is, because a couple of highly incompetent companies were making really terrible software and charging outrageous sums of money for licensing and consultation, everyone and their brother started making their own solutions. I can still remember the joy with which I watched Broadvision go down in flames. Nothing like seeing a company be forced into a 1 for 9 reverse stock split. As long as it's the other guys company anyway... Anyway, that's basically what blog software is. Which means any one who has a blog, has used a software solution that companies were charging millions for just a few years ago. Things have developed so far that basic installations are amazingly simple, and many average users have started running their own. If you have been playing with the idea of getting serious about blogging (or you just haven't found that perfect blog service yet) then you may want to check out opensourceCMS.com. They have loads of information on quite a few of the available packages, as well as basic background information you may need in order to figure out what you are doing. The best thing they offer though are the live demos. Every CMS they have on their site includes a standard install with access to an admin account. You can run it through it's paces to try to get a better feel for what you might be getting yourself into. That's a lot nicer than mucking about with multiple installations on your own machine." (via DD) Link Christians, Pedophiles, and Abortion Clinics:
 David Edelstein writes about Todd Solondz new film. Quote: >The Todd Solondz problem will always be in our faces because that's where he puts it. He doesn't have the nyah-nyah attack of such punk auteurs as Larry Clark or Harmony Korine—just the opposite: I can't think of a filmmaker who combines so much aggression with so little affect. But he's one of the few writer-directors who can earn an NC-17 rating for a movie without nudity or profanity; his films are just so conceptually grotesque that you wouldn't want to show them to anyone below the age of ... I was going to write "40," but that would be too glib. I actually respect Solondz's purity of vision and thought Happiness worked beautifully as a sicko sitcom. I also respect his obstinacy: No matter how much his distributors plead for a slightly softer product, he'll always show us the world through shit-colored glasses. Does Solondz deserve a rating of his own? Say, NR-DS—"Not recommended for persons depressed or suicidal"?< Link Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivia: A Dialectic of Dialogue and Conflict: Álvaro García Linera interviewed by Jeffery R. Webber. Intro: "On Sunday morning, April 10, 2005 I sat in the book-lined living room of Álvaro García Linera’s modest La Paz apartment and talked to the former guerrilla and political prisoner – now a mathematician and sociologist – about the Bolivian traditions of Marxism, indigenism, and the contemporary state of the Left and popular movements in the country."
Link Fifteen years of Hubble: After a decade and a half in orbit, the famous telescope could be nearing retirement.
Link Exploding Toads Baffle Experts: Hundreds of toads have met an unexplained, explosive demise in Germany in recent days. The scene is described as like "a science fiction film."
Link Why Google Is Like Wal-Mart: One is an internet search powerhouse, the other a massive retailer. They have more in common than you might think. Commentary by Adam L. Penenberg.
Link Ghosts in the Machine: A new pocket-sized device promises to alert its owner to the presence of eight different types of spectre, from "lost souls" to "evil spirits".
Link Free Trade and Resistance in Guatemala: CAFTA was negotiated behind people's backs which is why people today are protesting. It favors profits over human rights and sustainability.
Link ChosenCouture.com:
 Quote: "ChosenCouture.com is a mainstream retailer that caters to the Jewish demographic. We are dedicated to providing you with the most unique products inspired by Jewish tradition and culture. is a mainstream retailer that caters to the Jewish demographic. We are dedicated to providing you with the most unique products inspired by Jewish tradition and culture." Link Antarctic glaciers in mass retreat: Almost all the glaciers that flow into the sea off the Antarctic Peninsula are retreating. The discovery comes from an analysis spanning more than half a century of aerial photographs and satellite images.
Link The Myth of Tsunami Survivors' Sixth Sense: Intro: >Shortly after the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami tragedy, stories and news reports appeared making claims that animals and aboriginal tribes had escaped the danger because they possessed a mysterious "sixth sense" that somehow warned them in time. For example: "no dead animals have been found as a result of the tsunami, confiming animals’ sixth sense" and "no one has found dead animals in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami". These reports are simply incorrect.<
Link monochrom content // Turning Threshold Countries Into Plows: Three years ago we were asked to pose for a strange Austrian dot com lifestyle/business magazine. Just found the picture in our archive...
 Link Reinventing Big Brother: A short story examining the proposition that the telescreens in 1984 would be impractical because the govenment would be responsible for their manufacture and maintenance - the assumption being most would be broken most of the time! Maybe not... (via DD)
Link Halliburton: Poster Child of the War Profiteers: More and more revelations about contract abuse by Halliburton come out regularly. Just last week Rep. Henry Waxman issued a report that found Halliburton overcharging in Iraq now totaled more than $200 million. Activists in Houston are working with national groups, including Democracy Rising, to highlight corporate contract abuse by Halliburton when they hold their shareholders meeting this May 18. In the interview below with DemocracyRising's Kevin Zeese, Scott Parkin, a Community Organizer for Houston Global Awareness describes their plans and how it fits into the overall goals of the organization.
Link Deconstructing Fear:
 A Reading of M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan's films ask us questions about the ways we cope with our fears in hopes of affecting our unspoken ideologies. Link Why There Are No Professional Popular Science Book Authors in China: There are no full-time professional popular science book authors in China. To investigate the reasons behind this anomaly, some researchers interviewed several authors and publishers in China.
Link Where have all the wild rivers gone? The untamed rivers of the world are rapidly becoming extinct, through damming for hydroelectricity or irrigation, research reveals.
Link Russian Astrologist Plans to Crash NASA’s Independence Day: Russian astrologist Marina Bai has sued NASA over its Deep Impact mission, saying the agency's plans to blast the Tempel-1 comet to smithereens will irrevocably harm her 'system of spiritual values'.
Link The Future of Organized Labor in the U.S.: Reinventing Trade Unionism for the 21st Century. By Kate Bronfenbrenner, Donna DeWitt, Bill Fletcher, Jr., et al.
Link Brazil: religion of the poor: Intro: >It was often said during Brazil's local elections last year that religion and politics do not mix. Everybody said that, especially the religious authorities and candidates of all faiths, but the sentiment was not reflected in newspaper and magazine headlines the Brazil's largest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. "The gospel according to the politicians" (Veja, June (...)<
Link Professor Showcases 'Mini' Ion Accelerator:
 Particle accelerators are a key research tool in a high energy physicist's arsenal, but they take up a lot of space -- miles and miles of it. Tom Cowan, director of the Nevada Terawatt Facility at the University, and his research partners have produced a proton beam that has 100 times higher quality than any conventional particle accelerator and fits on a tabletop. The Marxtrix: Quote: "I'm still holding to my neo-Marxist reading of the first [Matrix] movie. The Matrix is a metaphor for capitalism, under which humans (the proletariat) are kept in a state of passive illusion (false consciousness) while the machines (the bourgeois) feed off their 'energy' (alienated labour). That's why the humans-as-batteries scenario is necessary, even though it's just silly in science-fiction terms - for the metaphor to work, the bad guys have to be stealing the labour of the good guys."
Link Our Lady of the Underpass? Curiosity seekers joined the faithful today to view what some said was an image of the Virgin Mary at an underpass of the Kennedy Expressway on Chicago's Northwest Side.
Link A Weightless Hegemony: New Labour’s Role in the Neoliberal Order: Causes and consequences of Britain’s distinctive contribution to the repertoire of latter-day neoliberalism. The domestic and foreign record of the Blair regime, and its hybrid role in a shifting Atlantic order.
Link Superhands: DaddyD writes: "Manual Dexterity is a very good thing. You never know when you might need to make copious amounts of questionable material seem to vanish in thin air. Or do a coin trick. Now, although Superhandz might sound like the title of a bad book on Esalen, its actually a site with loads of videos on extreme hand sports. Sports like extreme pen spinning, card manipulation and cup stacking. Didn't know they were sports? Well, to be honest, neither did I. As a matter of fact, even though I juggle I sort of had to snicker at the sheer audacity of using the term extreme in connection with any of these things. It's sort of like powernapping. Or extreme Ironing. Both of which actually exist. Anyway, this stuff really is extreme. The videos on the site are chock full of amazing feats of manual dexterity. Jaw Dropping tricks that had me wondering if I should be more amazed at the skill displayed; or the amount of time that I KNOW these people had to spend locked in their rooms playing with their fingers."
Link New monochrom content // April 23 is "World Book and Copyright Day". By celebrating this day, UNESCO seeks to "promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright". Well... here's our statement on this issue.
 The picture is published in "Profil" #16/05. Link U.S. Military's Elite Hacker Crew: The U.S. military has assembled the world's most formidable hacker posse: a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets. The group's existence was revealed during a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last month. Military leaders from U.S. Strategic Command, or Stratcom, disclosed the existence of a unit called the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, or JFCCNW.
Link Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world: Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome. Intro: "For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible. Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed."
Link Moon images reveal bright spots for lunar base:
 Perpetually sun-drenched sites could become prime real estate. Link ComputersForArt.org is a non-profit organization which aims to promote the re-use of redundant technology, such as computer/office equipment, through collecting and storing such equipment for use by artists in public exhibitions. The organization is based in Glasgow, Scotland, and has facilities to transport and store almost any number of computers. At present we have around 100 computers, both Apple Macs and PCs, around 100 monitors of varying proportions, and a raft of other equipment including printers, scanners, televisions, videos, video cameras and other such equipment. We welcome donations of almost any kind of equipment, be it hardware, software, office furniture or other. This resource is available for use by artists in Glasgow, and has been used by several artists since it was made available. Artwork made with the equipment has been shown in several Glasgow galleries, and we hope to establish our own permanent space to act as a free computing centre for the public to use, and also as a space for artists to try out projects with technical assistance and in a safe environment. (via pasta and vinegar)
Link Downloads to make UK-Chart debut: The first chart to include legal music downloads and singles bought from shops will be unveiled on Sunday afternoon- That's today! Link will get you to the BBC website that has a further link to the chart-show at 4pm BST (that's British Summer Time, perhaps aka GMT).
Link The Biggest Family Tree Ever:
 Ever wondered where your family's ancestors roamed 60,000 years ago? Now you can find out by participating in the world's most ambitious project tracing the genetic and migratory history of the human race. Link "Post-feminism" or plain old sexism: Which Side Are You On? Intro: >"Post-feminism" is the phrase du jour among mainstream political pundits, often accompanied by derogatory comments toward anyone who continues to complain that women lack equality. U.S. society has entered a “post-feminist” phase, a level playing field, according to this group of commentators. Women’s oppression belongs to a bygone era, and ideas of women’s liberation are merely outdated relics of that era. If anything, these pundits inform us, the women’s movement of the 1960s went too far and now must be reigned in. This is the typical rationale for curbing abortion rights.<
Link Mathematics Is Biology's Next Microscope, Only Better; Biology Is Mathematics' Next Physics, Only Better: Essay by Joel E. Cohen. Intro: "Although mathematics has long been intertwined with the biological sciences, an explosive synergy between biology and mathematics seems poised to enrich and extend both fields greatly in the coming decades [...]. Biology will increasingly stimulate the creation of qualitatively new realms of mathematics. Why? In biology, ensemble properties emerge at each level of organization from the interactions of heterogeneous biological units at that level and at lower and higher levels of organization (larger and smaller physical scales, faster and slower temporal scales). New mathematics will be required to cope with these ensemble properties and with the heterogeneity of the biological units that compose ensembles at each level."
Link Eggs Found Inside a Dinosaur: The rare discovery of eggs inside a dinosaur has given scientists new clues about the reproductive biology of the creatures and more support for the theory that birds came from dinosaurs.
Link 43 Folders: Web site and wiki devoted to "productivity and time management practices, Macintosh OS X software, life hacks and other smart heuristics, cool tools and productivity pr0n. And any cool ideas that help people to accomplish their goals, route around bad behaviors or replace them with good ones, reduce stress, find - or make - the time to do things they enjoy."
43 Folders web site 43 Folders wiki Wordorigins.org: This site is devoted to the origins of words and phrases, or as a linguist would put it, to etymology. Etymology is the study of word origins. (It is not the study of insects; that is entomology.) Where words come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons. Often, popular tales of a word's origin arise. Sometimes these are true; more often they are not. While it often seems disappointing when a neat little tale turns out to be untrue, almost invariably the true origin is just as interesting.
Link For an International Day Against Homohobia: "According to an opinion widely held, homosexuality is said to be freer today than ever before... For the slightly more attentive observer, the situation is globally very different. This is why we propose an International Day Against Homophobia. It will have as a goal to articulate action and reflection in order to struggle against all physical, moral, or symbolic violence related to sexual orientation or to gender identity. It intends to inspire, support, and coordinate all initiatives contributing to the equality among citizens in right, as well as in fact, and to achieve this in all countries where action is possible. The organization of an official day for the fight against homophobia in each country will allow us to place our struggle within a campaign of solidarity with all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans persons (LGBT) around the world. But it is also a question of placing our struggle within a wider campaign for the defence of human rights."
online petition Pigalle Place, Paris: Joe Scott Wilson (Headpress) goes to France and takes the Metro to the sex shops.
Link (PDF) European scientists peer into the abyss:
 Intro: "Europe's deep-ocean margin - where the continental shelf plunges from a depth of 200 metres to the abyssal plain some 4,000 metres below - stretches for some 15,000 kilometres, from the Arctic to the Iberian peninsular, extending through the Mediterranean and into the Black Sea. The majority of this frontier lies within Europe's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and its biological, energy and mineral resources are therefore of great strategic interest. But exploiting these resources in a sustainable manner requires a thorough understanding of the ocean margin ecosystem - something that does not exist today, but which a new 15 million euro EU research project is aiming to provide. The HERMES project (hotspot ecosystem research on the margins of European seas) is funded under the global change and ecosystems priority of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). With a consortium made up of 36 research institutes and nine small companies from 15 countries, HERMES is one of the largest projects of its kind in the world." Link Born Again Ideology: The New Protestant Ethic: By Arthur Kroker: Intro: "One hundred years after the publication of Max Weber's classic text, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the fateful relationship between Protestantism and capitalism has been renewed in American political discourse. Except this time it is no longer the original convergence theorized by Weber between the spirit of Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism whereby Christianity was destined to be ultimately secondary to the unfolding historical project of capitalism, but the opposite. In a contemporary political climate marked by the resurgence seemingly everywhere of faith-based politics, capitalism and its historical correlate -- modernism -- have actually folded back on themselves, quickly reversing modernist codes of economic secularism and political pluralism, in the interests of being reanimated with the evangelical spirit of religious fundamentalism. What Weber foresaw as a primal compact between Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism -- this migration, first in Europe and then in Puritan America, of Puritan attitudes towards personal salvation based on giving witness by habits of frugality, hard work, and discipline into the essentially acquisitive spirit of capitalism -- has been renewed in new key. On the centennial of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the political universe is suddenly dominated by the spirit of what might be called the New Protestant Ethic as the ideological reflex of the age of networked capitalism and empire politics."
Link Your Neighbours May Be Aliens: Aliens may be living among us, say two scientists, who argue we may even carry some alien genes. Australian researchers Professor Paul Davies and Dr Charles Lineweaver outline their hypothesis in the latest issue of the journal Astrobiology.
Link Arms And Rights: Rawls, Habermas and Bobbio in an Age of War: In an era of serial war, Rawls, Habermas and Bobbio as theorists of a perpetual peace. Jurisprudence and force in three parallel philosophical constructions of the present international order, and the unsettled afterthoughts—American, German, Italian—that accompanied them.
Link Like McNuggets, McRevolutions may also leave an unwanted aftertaste: Histologion writes: "Apostate Windbag, has an excellent piece about the revolutions popping up all over the former CIS (and beyond) and, among other things, how they are received in the corporate US press, in comparison with the uprsings and revolutions occuring in Latin America."
Link At The Molecular Level, The Predator Is The Prey: An evolutionary arms race between predatory garter snakes and their newt quarry is turning out to be something of an illusion. At the molecular level, another battle rages. And in this second, miniature realm, it's the newt who's the aggressor.
Link One Size Does Not Fit All for New Pope: Cardinals start choosing a new pope next week, but the successor to John Paul will be all sewn up well before the secret conclave opens.
Link Russian rockets to launch from South American base: The Soyuz rockets will lift off from the European Space Agency's spaceport in French Guiana from 2008, following a new deal.
Link New monochrom content // Experience the Experience: Let's potlatch the experience’s own country - and its northern neighbor: monochrom's USA/Canada West Coast Tour, June/July 2005.
 Why? So-called "experience" is a highly Anglo-American term. Roughly speaking, everything is plugged as "experience". Whether it is a "dining experience" in a restaurant or the "Disney experience" in Orlando or "experience the sorrow and tragedy of Ground Zero" in New York City... everything has to be made "experiencable" or presented as an "experience". Yet there is not even a word for it in German. monochrom now has the idea of conveying a total of 7 new "experiences" to the local population in three North American cities, making them "experiencable" in performances and events. The Experiences: Experience The Experience Of Being Buried Alive (June 14: Los Angeles, June 30: Vancouver, July 8: San Francisco) // Experience The Experience Of An Illegal Space Race (June 25: Los Angeles) // Experience The Experience Of Growing Money (July 10: San Francisco) // Experience The Experience Of A Magnetism Party (June 18, Los Angeles) // Experience Ehe Experience Of Catapulting Wireless Devices (July 16, San Francisco) // Experience The Experience Of A Brick Of Coke (June 21: Los Angeles) // Experience The Experience Of 1 Baud (July 22: San Francisco) More info / Link Indigenous Russians Unite Against Oil and Gas Development: Indigenous leaders of the island of Sakhalin in the far east of Russia have joined forces as a new wave of oil and gas development on the island is encroaching on their traditional lands.
Link Gamma ray burst may have wiped out sea life: A mighty blast of radiation from an exploding star may have wiped out much of life in the sea 450 million years ago, scientists claim.
Link Calling a Spade a Shovel: Intro: "Does rational argument ever change anybody’s mind? I hope so. Otherwise I'm wasting my time being a philosopher, unless building arguments is worth doing for its own sake (like painting pictures – impressionists need not win over classicists, etc., for their work to have value). It does seem to me to be a common experience to have my mind changed in this way. A life steeped in philosophy has given me a degree of flexibility of intellectual commitment (which in turn can influence my feelings and behavior), so that I am often taken aback (and at times appalled) by the rigidity of belief and aversion to argument shown by others (to the point where they will deem it rudeness or an attack for me to question what they are saying or thinking). What I like to do in these moral moments is provide specific, concrete examples of general claims and abstract inferences. Therefore let me illustrate the above point about the power of reasoning to alter someone’s view by relating a recent experience where that happened to me (twice!)."
Link World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there. Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.
Link Hotel Rwanda: Memory, Witness, and Departure:
 Alone in its genre, this film asks the ancient question of being our brothers' keeper in a way we might actually hear and respond to. Link Will DNA profiling fuel prejudice? Keeping samples taken from innocent people helps to catch more criminals, but civil liberties may be the price.
Link Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance:
 ST:TOD is an examination of the relationship between the Star Trek television series (including The Next Generation and the films) and the Star Trek industry using the techniques and discourse of modern sociology. It identifies the awkward symbiosis between the two by a succession of subtle inversions: the relentless hyperreality of the Star Trek industry contrasted with the deft exploration of reality and illusion in the Star Trek television series; the industry's obsession with aliens contrasted with the exploration of humanity contained in the series; above all, the pop science edifice of the industry contrasted with the skepticism towards science exhibited by the series. Link Student Engineer Finds 'Structural Art' in 19th Century Bridges: To most people, a bridge is simply an assembly that allows travelers to move safely across a river or gorge. But to Christina Terpeluk, a Johns Hopkins senior from Chestertown, Md., a bridge can be a piece of structural art.
Link Gods and Sex in the USA: Like children in a nursery, Americans are fascinated by naughty things.
Link When all life changed: John Kelly traces the advance of the Black Death in The Great Mortality, but loses sight of its wider impact, says Andrew Rissik.
Link New monochrom content // The Flower Currency: A Hippyesque Post-Hippie Approach To Changing the World: A project to explore a value exchange system, created and owned by children, to enable artists to collaborate on the creation of interdisciplinary art works.
 David Bovill and monochrom invite you to join! Link Mortado's Page of Filth: Quote: "I have been a big fan of eyeball related violence in horror films for a long time. There's just something about damage to eyes that makes me cringe." Well, the good man set up a page devoted to eye mangling in Italian splatter pics.
Link Woolly Mammoth Resurrection, 'Jurassic Park' Planned: A team of Japanese genetic scientists aims to bring woolly mammoths back to life and create a Jurassic Park-style refuge for resurrected species. The challenge, though, is finding viable woolly mammoth DNA.
Link New York Romscapes by nullsleep.
 A short series of photographs capturing those fleeting moments where New York meets Nintendo. Have you seen the flying goombas hanging out with the pigeons lately? Oh, and watch out for those giant flesh eating plants that pop out of the green sewer pipes. Link Safe from the Spam Flood? Rumored to be capable of deluging your inbox with spam, Brian McWilliams reports that the ProxyLock feature may not be a threat after all. Thus far, spammers haven't embraced ProxyLock as a means to circumvent blacklist operators' abilities to reveal their true IP addresses. Brian, author of Spam Kings, explains why (via Schockwellenreiter).
Link Superglue Of Planet Formation: Sticky Ice: How dust specks in the early solar systems came together to become planets has vexed astronomers for years.
Link New monochrom content // A patriotic fireman:
 In September 2003 monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner (Vienna) discovered a notice in the display window of an outlet of the photo chain „Glamour Shots“ (Altamonte Springs Mall, Altamonte Springs, Florida). The notice indicated that there was a special offer on getting a patriotic photograph taken -- wearing a fireman's uniform. Johannes Grenzfurthner saw the chance of a lifetime and grabbed it. Link (larger picture) Florida eyes allowing residents to open fire whenever they see threat: Florida's legislature has approved a bill that would give residents the right to open fire against anyone they perceive as a threat in public, instead of having to try to avoid a conflict as under prevailing law (via histologion).
Link Haunted Glasses?
 Quote: "My team won the pub quiz at one of the locals, the prize was 20 quid each and a lucky dip in the 'lost and found'. I searched for a while and discovered a pair of glasses. I was later told by the landlord that they'd been left by a local, an old man who would frequent the pub, though one night he took off the glasses and never came back. I OWN HAUNTED GLASSES!" Link UA students taught about spiritual warfare by monsignor: Exorcism is but one weapon that can be used in spiritual warfare, Monsignor James Mancini told an estimated 100 students at the University of Arkansas Wednesday.
Link Look Out for Giant Triangles in Space: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence could be taking the wrong approach. Instead of listening for alien radio broadcasts, a better strategy may be to look for giant structures placed in orbit around nearby stars by alien civilisations.
Link The sophisticate of Harrogate: Intro: "Gyorgy Janos Simon, born in 1894, was one of a generation of gifted Hungarian artists overrun by the first world war. Like his contemporary, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, he served as an officer on the losing side. Like Moholy-Nagy, Robert Bereny, Bela Czobel, Jozef Nemes Lamperth, Bertalan Por, Lajos Tihanyi, Bela Uitz, and photographers Brassai (Gyula Halusz) and André Kertesz, he found life uncongenial in postwar Budapest. Like all except Uitz he headed west - to Switzerland, while he waited for papers to enter France, then Paris. But he was the only such émigré artist to end his days a British citizen, and in the Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate at that."
Link Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix: Quote: "Imagine movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony. The technique suggested in the patent is entirely non-invasive. It describes a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating 'sensory experiences' ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds. This could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or hear, the patent claims."
Link Superdickery:
 DaddyD writes: "Superdickery offers a rather large collection of compromising comics. Cover pages and panels from those questionable comic years before the artists freed themselves from the comic code. This stuff is almost Springeresque in its vileness. Some of the covers look as though there may be a couple of security types just off stage waiting to jump the first person to pick up a chair. Of course, for even more fun you can chekc out the collection of (hopefully?) unintended double entendres. It's like being in Junior High all over again." Link The Chimp Genome Reveals a Retroviral Invasion in Primate Evolution: Quote: "It's been known for a long time that only 2%–3% of human DNA codes for proteins. Much of the rest of our genomes—often referred to as junk DNA—consists of retroelements: genomic elements that are transcribed into RNA, reverse-transcribed into DNA, and then reinserted into a new spot in the genome. Human endogenous retroviruses make up one class of these retroelements. Retroviruses can insinuate themselves into the host's DNA in either soma (nonreproductive cells) or the germline (sperm or egg). If the virus invades a nonreproductive cell, infection may spread, but viral DNA will die with the host. A retrovirus is called endogenous when it invades the germline and gets passed on to offspring. Because endogenous retroviruses can alter gene function and genome structure, they can influence the evolution of their host species. Over 8% of our genome is made of these infectious remnants—infections that scientists believe occurred before Old World and New World monkeys diverged (25–35 million years ago). In a new study, Evan Eichler and colleagues scanned finished chimpanzee genome sequence for endogenous retroviral elements, and found one (called PTERV1) that does not occur in humans. Searching the genomes of a subset of apes and monkeys revealed that the retrovirus had integrated into the germline of African great apes and Old World monkeys—but did not infect humans and Asian apes (orangutan, siamang, and gibbon). This undermines the notion that an ancient infection invaded an ancestral primate lineage, since great apes (including humans) share a common ancestor with Old World monkeys."
Link Understanding Turbulence In The Fast Lane -- Mach 10 And Beyond: Although NASA's X-43A and other hypersonic airplanes use air-breathing engines and fly much like 747s, there's a big difference between ripping air at Mach 10 (around 7,000 mph) and cruising through it at 350 mph. These differences are even more pronounced when hypersonic aircraft sip rarified air at 100,000 feet, while commercial airliners gulp the much thicker stuff at 30,000.
Link The man who will be president: Quote: "To many people the story of Ian Khama, the son of Botswana’s first president Sir Seretse Khama, is the stuff of fairies. A lot of youngsters grew up to yarns of the vice president as a young gifted soldier with extraordinary powers."
Link HumanTone: the ScanYourSkin reference book:
 Quote: >Join the project, send us your skin. We invite everybody to join this project: the purpose is to create a massive database including as many different skin characteristics as possible. How? Send us a sample of your skin as an image JPEG file (please follow the instructions below): we're preparing "HumanTone", a complete reference book of human skin tones and hues as an ironic support to the ScanYourSkin website. Please join this part of the project by adding your skin and distribute this message.< Link Discs Are So Dead: Two new formats aim to bury the DVD, but web distribution will kill them all.
Link Stasiland: Book review by Kevin Higgins. Funder's acute awareness of the absurdity that often accompanies the worst tyrannies saves the book from worthiness.
Link Metallic glass: a drop of the hard stuff:
 It sounds futuristic, but researchers have now produced metallic glass three times stronger than industrial steel and 10 times springier. Link Geometries of Power: Tamiko Thiel presents her project Geometries of Power, a multi-user online 3D world that uses the interactive characteristics of space, geometry and sound to question concepts of power and control. Shared event VRML technology connects participants simultaneously at both the Goethe-Institut Boston and the program angels/lothringer13 in Munich in real time. Link
Ian's Shoelace Site - Shoe Lacing Methods: Quote: "How many possible ways are there to lace an average shoe? This simple question, when answered with mathematics, results in some surprisingly big numbers - on an average shoe with six pairs of eyelets, there are 1,961,990,553,600 ways to feed a shoelace though those 12 eyelets. That's almost 2 TRILLION possibilities! However, many of these can't be considered "Lacing Methods" because they don't even fulfil the primary purpose of holding the shoe closed, whilst many are hopelessly tangled messes, and many are minor, irrelevant variations. Nonetheless, even with real-world constraints , there are countless possible lacing methods. In this section, I'll present a (somewhat more realistic) few methods that I consider worthy of devoting the time required to create instructions, either because they have a particular benefit or just because I like the way they look." (via DD)
Link Rock On, Rock ON! The Balanced Rock Art of Bill Dan:
 Quote: "This site is dedicated in specific to the work of San Francisco, California balanced rock sculptor Bill Dan and to the art, discipline and craft of rock balancing in general. It includes images of Bill's balanced stones and rocks, links to other rock balancers and examples of their work, with information about naturally balancing rocks and world-wide stone balancing and rock stacking traditions." Link Attack of the psychic soldiers: "The Men Who Stare At Goats" by Jon Ronson. Simon & Schuster, $24.
 Review: >Jon Ronson's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is quite funny, until suddenly it isn't. And that's a problem. Ronson, a British humorist who in an earlier book, "Them," cozied up to American extremists (including a Ku Klux Klan leader) for material, now investigates the American military's foray into paranormal warfare. In 1981, Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine III, the Army's head of intelligence, commanded a Black Op unit of soldiers who were required to transform themselves into psychic spies. Stubblebine himself repeatedly tried to walk through walls. The resultant bruises advertised his failure. Meanwhile, the Army Special Forces was working its own angle at Fort Bragg, N.C., where "supersoldiers" strained to telepathically drop one of the debleated goats there. It's said one man succeeded. Ronson tries to chase him to ground while tracking how, post-Vietnam, the dispirited military intelligence grasped for the ultimate weapons: the means to view enemy installations from afar, and invasive mind infiltration. It sounds wacky, and is amusingly so - until Ronson presents chillingly suggestive evidence that derivative techniques, refined to be far more menacing, are being employed in the current war on terror. It's unfortunate that he's not quite reporter enough to nail the story down. Instead, he leaves us a book of "believe it or nots."< (by Sherryl Connelly) Link Sexy Yeast Reproduces More Efficiently Than Yeast Lacking Sex: Quote: "A New Zealand team led by Matthew Goddard, from the University of Auckland, conducted a study with two strains of yeast, only one of which was able to reproduce sexually. Yeast cells are normally asexual. But when stressed they undergo a process that produces four spores equivalent to the male and female gametes involved in sexual reproduction."
Link History of Robots in the Victorian Era: Extensive collection of images and information on Victorian-era robots. Link
Yoga Deathmatch: Video by Jim Munroe about the similarities between the ancient Hindu art of spiritual discipline and the rather more modern art of online gaming. Watch the higher self rack up high scores getting to the next level of consciousness in the transcendentally physical world of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. Link
Introducing The Constitution Restoration Act: Say Hello To Taliban America And Goodbye To Godless Judges, Courts And Law: Intro: >Tired of waiting for the Second Coming to enforce Christ's rule on Earth? Fortunately, so is your Congress and they know how to "bring it on." Just when you thought the corporatist/Christian Coalition had milked the 9/11 "surprise" for all it was worth in powers, profits and votes, we regret to report that you may have to think again. Just in case you've briefly fallen behind on your rightwing mailing lists, you might have missed the March 3rd filing of Senate bill S. 520 and House version is H.R. 1070, AKA the "Constitution Restoration Act" (CRA). In the worshipful words of the Conservative Caucus, this historic legislation will "RESTORE OUR CONSTITUTION!", mainly by barring ANY federal court or judge from ever again reviewing "any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."<
Link In from the cold: Sixteen years after the hope, hype and recriminations, cold fusion is news again. David Adam investigates a scientific controversy that won't go away.
Link Pets In Uniform:
 Quote: "Imagine: your dog, cat, or other pet in full military regalia. I make this fantasy a reality. Using the latest digital techniques, I combine a photo of your pet with the uniform and background of your choice." Link Charcoal fuel gets green light: Jessica Ebert reports that Africa will win environmental and health benefits if it stops burning wood. Quote: "If current trends in fuel use in sub-Saharan Africa continue, the number of premature deaths among women and young children exposed to wood smoke from stoves will reach nearly 10 million by 2030, from about 400,000 in 2000. What's more, cooking fires will pump 6.7 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases in the next 45 years, the researchers calculate."
Link A Statistical Portrait of the U.S. Working Class: Review by Michael D. Yates. Quote: "The biennial State of Working America (hereinafter SWA), written by economists at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., is the best compendium and analysis of U.S. labor market statistics there is.* In one convenient book, there are data on the distribution of income and wealth, all aspects of wages and benefits, employment and unemployment, poverty, regional labor markets, and international labor comparisons. In addition to the data, there are explanations for all of the major labor market trends. Does the stagnating minimum wage contribute to poverty? Is rising wage inequality the result of the growing educational requirements of jobs? Are trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) necessarily good for workers as mainstream economists keep telling us? Why do the wages and incomes of racial and ethnic minorities continue to lag behind those of whites? Does the labor market model of the United States, with its very limited regulation, deliver better results for workers than does the more institutionally-constrained model of most European nations?"
Link Joke and Folklore Scholar Alan Dundes Dies:
 Alan Dundes, 70, a folklorist whose lively explorations of everything from the office memo to the Koran made him one of the most celebrated figures in his field, died March 30 at a hospital in Berkeley, Calif. Link Free trade may have finished off Neanderthals: Quote: "Modern humans may have driven Neanderthals to extinction 30,000 years ago because Homo sapiens unlocked the secrets of free trade, say a group of US and Dutch economists. The theory could shed new light on the mysterious and sudden demise of the Neanderthals after over 260,000 years of healthy survival."
Link The "Nearly Hairless Club":
 Quote: "This web page is dedicated to Hairless guinea pigs (Skinny and Baldwin). Some people think they're ugly, some people think they're pretty, and reminds them of a small hippo or miniature horse. This depends on people's imagination , but nobody is indifferent when they see pictures of Hairless guinea pigs, or the guinea pigs themselves. We guess you'll never be here if you don't like them :-). Well for those of you who don't know it, Hairless guinea pigs are relatively a new variety of guinea pigs, and you couldn't find much information about these cute little creatures from the web (actually, I do have a few links to other people's pages, so you can take a look at them from here). They are not as popular yet as other short and long haired types of guinea pigs and more expensive because of it." Link Passport Chip Criticism Grows: More critics speak out against a government plan to put remotely readable chips in U.S. passports. Opponents of the plan include business travel groups, security experts and privacy advocates.
Link Democratic materialism and the materialist dialectic: Alain Badiou's article published on the site of Radical Philosophy.
Link Bigfoot experts and enthusiasts boycott new Sasquatch film, calling it "misleading and inexcusably violent.": Intro: "A Massachusetts man, claiming to be a renowned Bigfoot researcher and scientist, has declared a ban on the upcoming Sony Pictures DVD release of Sasquatch Hunters, calling the film untruthful and a misrepresentation of the Bigfoot legacy. His petition letter, which goes on in great length about the peaceful nature of the beast, sites the movie as an abomination that will hurt further research and testing in the field of cryptozoology. He’s angered that the film presents Sasquatch as a vicious killer. Something he clearly is not..."
Link Black holes 'do not exist': Intro: >Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist. Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion. George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. "It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist," he claims.<
Link [The Archives] 
. . . . . |
. . 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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