Weird and wonderful vocabulary from around the world: How come only German has a word for 'a person who leaves without paying the bill' (Zechpreller) or that Albanians need 27 words for moustache? A compelling new book uncovers the globe's most weird, wonderful - and meaningful - words. John Walsh picks his favourites.
Link Planetary man: Quote: >The world still waits, with bated breath, to know whether 2003 UB313, the object larger and farther away than Pluto whose discovery was revealed at the end of July, ends up as a planet or a mere Kuiper belt object, and what it will be called. Meanwhile, several colleagues have alerted us to the claim at http://watleyreview.com/2005/080205-2.html that "An Illinois man has added fuel to a furious astronomical debate by officially applying to the International Astronomical Union for status as a planet." We suspect that the site may, possibly, be satirical, but we appreciate the writer's grasp of the problem. "There isn't a good definition of what constitutes a planet," says Gerald Finkelschmidt. "I've put on a few pounds these past couple of years, but I'm clearly below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion... And I orbit the sun, obviously. So technically, I qualify."<
Link Universal/Dreamworks Merger Dies On The Table: Quote: "Dreamworks SKG, the movie studio founded by a trio of entertainment moguls including the director Steven Spielberg, has called off talks to be bought by NBC Universal for about $1 billion... The failure to reach a deal was thought to have resulted from disagreements over the price and Mr Spielberg’s reluctance to give up the independence that he has enjoyed at DreamWorks, which allowed him to work with competing studios."
Link Google TV: Google, the search-engine-turned-internet-juggernaut, is finalizing plans to begin streaming TV programs online. The company has "already signed up a channel in the United States to provide programmes for its Google TV station and is in talks with the BBC to broadcast its shows. [Google] hopes to build up a massive online database of programmes that can be searched and watched from any computer, with users able to search for episodes of any show from broadcasters who sign up to the service. It will also let British viewers watch hit television shows from the US months before they are shown in the UK."
Link The taste-makers: So you think you decide what goes into your music collection? Wrong. Alexis Petridis speaks to the people who control what you hear, like and buy.
Link Abracadabra! Social Norms and Public Perceptions through Harry Potter's Looking Glasses: Economic organization of the imaginary worlds depicted in popular literary works may be viewed as a mirror to public opinion on the economic organization of life. If a book becomes a best-seller, it is because the book conveys messages, feelings, and events the readers can relate to. In other words, the book's readers identify with the set of norms and rules that govern the development of the plot and the actions of its heroes. Therefore, a best seller, as a book that successfully relates to readers of its time, can teach us on the norms and believes of its audience. Following this line of thought, we use the method of deconstruction to analyze the highly successful J.K. Rowlings' Harry Potter series. Studying the books within their social context allows us to learn about people's norms, and their perceptions of issues such as the role of government, the structure of financial markets, poverty and inequality, etc. Thus, by looking at the Potterian economy through magnifying glasses, we obtain a perspective on what people might view as an ideal economic structure. Some aspects of this ideal world, we find, are quite different from the real world.
Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
 COLUMN ONE - dream time (90%wasser/dossier) FEAR FALLS BURNING - he spoke in dead tongues (prjekt/ikon) FRANKLIN DELANO - like a smoking gun in front of me (File13/madcap) DAVID KRISTIAN - rhythms for a rainy season (apegenine) monochrom live performance // The Art Of The Overhead is a mini-festival in Copenhagen/DK celebrating artistic expression in a medium almost forgotten in the age of digital reproduction - the overhead projector.
 monochrom teamed up with Oliver Hangl to present a melancholic pop smash hit. Live: Saturday, October 1st, 2005 @ Raca, Copenhagen. Link / Festival homepage monochrom interview online // Soviet Game of Future Lost: Our Johannes has been interviewed about 'Soviet Unterzoegersdorf/Sector 1' for mutednoise.com.
Intro: "Trying to summarize what Soviet Unterzoegersdorf is about is as easy as pronouncing its name. The free game, created by Austrian art-technology-philosophists monochrom, starts with a straight-forward premise that quickly explodes with quirky humor, challenging stereotypes, and intriguing play. As the name implies, Soviet Unterzoegersdorf tells the fictitious story of the last USSR republic. mutednoise was able to catch up with Johannes Grenzfurthner to talk about the work."  Link How A Zebra Lost Its Stripes: Rapid Evolution Of The Quagga: DNA from museum samples of extinct animals is providing unexpected information on the extent and effect of the Ice Age as well as the path of species evolution, according to a report by scientists from Yale University, the Smithsonian Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Link The Sweet Smell of Provenance: T.E. Lawrence's richly aromatic copy of Joyce's Ulysses is bound in wine-red leather and gilt and includes the owner's biscuit crumbs...
Link Why Are America's Schools Segregated? Quote: "One of the most disheartening experiences for those who grew up in the years when Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall were alive is to visit public schools today that bear their names, or names of other honored leaders of the integration struggles that produced the temporary progress that took place in the three decades after Brown v. Board of Education, and to find out how many of these schools are bastions of contemporary segregation. It is even more disheartening when schools like these are not in deeply segregated inner-city neighborhoods but in racially mixed areas where the integration of a public school would seem to be most natural, and where, indeed, it takes a conscious effort on the part of parents or school officials in these districts to avoid the integration option that is often right at their front door."
Link New monochrom content // Zeigerpointer: The Zeigerpointer (a German-English word-mix tautology that we feel free to give birth to) is the most penurious form of capitulation in the print media. Various people, predominantly in local newspapers or magazines of regional interest, are forced by photographers armed with Zeiss-lenses to indicate occurrences. These people have to point at things. With their bare hands! They have to present occurrences that withdraw themselves through their absence, through optical expiration or simply the course of time. Like car wrecks that have already been recovered, asylum seekers that have fled, or burnt down buildings that were entirely consumed by the fire. Ocurrences that elude the media machinery because of visual boredom or a state of simply-not-there-anymore. Well, then let's give our readers a Zeigerpointer! The Zeigerpointer shall zeigerpoint it out!
 Please help us to collect and archive all the Zeigerpointers that have been photographed on our planet. Please scan the pictures. Please upload them. Link BlöööödHag play short heavy metal songs about science fiction and fantasy authors, e.g. "Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore"... (thanx to Kurt Schal Tatze Rüssel)
Link Weird sex: Giant squid do it deeper:
 Research by marine scientists has shed startling new light on the secret sex life of the giant squid, one of the most mysterious monsters of the world's deepest oceans. Link Roman Holiday: How does Roman Polanski, who is a fugitive from U.S. justice living in France, manage to sue an American magazine in a British court and win? Vanity Fair’s editor explains...
Link Cursing Before We Walk: Quote: >Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech. Some researchers are so impressed by the depth and power of strong language that they are using it as a peephole into the architecture of the brain, as a means of probing the tangled, cryptic bonds between the newer, "higher" regions of the brain in charge of intellect, reason and planning, and the older, more 'bestial' neural neighborhoods that give birth to our emotions.<
Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
LIGHTNING BOLT - hypermagic mountain (load) MELODIUM - hum hum & bla bla (autres directions) SOVACUSA - centrepoint (expanding) TONY - itinerances (autres directions) VESSEL - resist (expanding) and here is one more for your reading pleasure LEMMY KILMISTER - white line fever (pocket) The Museum of Unworkable Devices:
 This museum is a celebration of fascinating devices that don't work. It houses diverse examples of the perverse genius of inventors who refused to let their thinking be intimidated by the laws of nature, remaining optimistic in the face of repeated failures. Watch and be amazed as we bring to life eccentric and even intricate perpetual motion machines that have remained steadfastly unmoving since their inception. Marvel at the ingenuity of the human mind, as it reinvents the square wheel in all of its possible variations. Exercise your mind to puzzle out exactly why they don't work as the inventors intended. Link Flipper the Firing Dolphin Let Loose By Katrina: It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Link The French table: Theater of the absurd? French housewives dream that their cooking will bring them happiness and love. So they cook with passion and care, "and then the family wants to go to McDonald’s"...
Link Hurricane Rita: Fruit of global warming, a catastrophe we have made for ourselves. But is it, really? Why not check a few facts?
Link How The Internet Is Changing Scientific Research: The internet is changing the way scientific research is being shared and published. "The internet—and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it—is making free access to scientific results a reality. This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report... makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific endeavour."
Link It's A Little Monster: New commercial for the Hummer H3.
 Classic love story of monster meets robot, monster loves robot, monster gives birth to expensive, environmentally devastating automobile. Link The Sex Machine Diaries: Blog for the forthcoming book "Sex Machines", featuring photos of such fascinating devices as "The Holy Fuck Machine" and the robot "Fuckzilla".
 "Sartan’s Workshop, a place known for being committed to advancing the art of sex machines, is cluttered with kids bikes and hedge trimmers tossed around the band saw and drill press. Sartan is really a guy named Paul, and he happily agreed to spend time with me as long as we were done by the time his kids were home from school. We hung out in his garage and his kitchen, surrounded by former domestic appliances he has converted into sex machines. A pasta maker chassis found at a thrift store had been transformed into a powerful love machine named The Thumpstir". Link Art from Genes: Creating abstract art from a sample of your DNA.
 "The process begins with the DNA being collected using a patented, non-invasive technique: depositing your saliva into a tube. This sample is then sent to our highly secure, certified laboratory, where the DNA is extracted to create a unique genetic fingerprint, using a technique that takes advantage of the variation that occurs among the DNA sequence of every individual. The DNA is then stained with a fluorescent dye and illuminated by UV light, which then glows, giving off a fluorescent signal. A special camera captures the image which is then digitally enhanced, cropped, color adjusted, adding colors and filter effects". Link Muslim Barbie: In the last year or so, Barbie dolls have all but disappeared from the shelves of many toy stores in the Middle East. In their place, there is Fulla, a dark-eyed doll with, as her creator puts it, "Muslim values."
 Fulla roughly shares Barbie's size and proportions, but steps out of her shiny pink box wearing a black abaya and matching head scarf. She is named after a type of jasmine that grows in the Levant, and although she has an extensive and beautiful wardrobe (sold separately, of course), Fulla is usually displayed wearing her modest "outdoor fashion." Link South of the Border: Richard Marshall talks to Coco Fusco about performance art and sex workers for 3:AM. Quote: "The date rape drug, catalepsy was another version I did some research about, -- you know, people being buried alive because they looked dead and then they wake up. So one thing was to do the almost hardcore journalism, you know, asking, who could this have happened to, but another thing to think about was what would it be like to be alive when everyone thinks you are dead, to be just an object, not to be seen, not to be recognised, not to be present for people. In that sense, thinking about it in a more metaphorical way, gave me a way to tell the story."
Link Are iPods Destroying Hearing? Audiologists have long expressed concern about hearing loss stemming from the use of headphones, but according to some, the new generation of digital music players pose a particular threat, allowing consumers to listen for long periods at high volume, and eliminating so much of the distortion and background noise common to, say, cassette players, that many listeners won't even realize how much sound they're pumping into their head. "Even with the sound piped directly into the ear canal, noise from the outside often competes with the music, and listeners turn it up louder. People listening to music while riding [commuter] trains, for example, frequently increase the volume levels to drown out the sound of the commute."
Link Who Rules America?
Questions and Answers. Q: So, who does rule America? A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. The details of the argument are presented in my book, Who Rules America? Q: Do the same people rule at the local level that rule at the federal level? A: No, not quite. The local level is dominated by the land owners and businesses related to real estate that come together as growth coalitions, making cities into growth machines. Q: Do they rule secretly from behind the scenes, as a conspiracy? A: No, conspiracy theories are wrong, though it's true that some corporate leaders lie and steal, and that some government officials try to keep things secret (but usually fail). Q: Then how do they rule? A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government. Q: Are you saying that elections don't matter? A: No, but they usually matter a lot less than they could, and a lot less in America than they do in other industrialized democracies. That's because of the nature of the electoral rules and the unique history of the South. Q: Does social science research have anything useful to say about making progressive social change more effective? A: Yes, it does, but few if any people pay much attention to that research. Link 8 Years for Killer Who Hacked Off Dad's Hand: Alan Smith was convinced his stepfather was a vampire who wanted to drink his blood.
Link US Considers Chinese Art Import Ban: The US is considering a request by the Chinese government to restrict imports of Chinese art. "The Chinese asked for the embargo in an effort reclaim stolen good and to stem looting and illicit export of archaeological material by reducing the market demand overseas. The request was made under the 1970 Unesco Convention regarding cultural property."
Link Time Change - Get Rid Of The "Leap Second"? Quote: "An international argument has developed between British astronomers and scientists working for American telecommunications firms who have called for the abolition of the "leap second" - the additional time unit used to keep modern atomic time-measuring systems in line with the earth's movement round the sun. Removing that extra second would make some communication systems run more smoothly, but very slowly the clock would start to fall out of sync with the sun, eventually leading to 12 noon falling in the middle of the night."
Link Rita and more: Quote: "If you live anywhere around the gulf coast: I'd say it's a good time to move north... It's hard to fathom that NOAA expects a minimum of 3 more severe hurricanes AFTER Rita."
Link 1 Link 2 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus: By Charles C. Mann.
 Publishers Weekly: "In a riveting and fast-paced history, massing archeological, anthropological, scientific and literary evidence, Mann debunks much of what we thought we knew about pre-Columbian America. Reviewing the latest, not widely reported research in Indian demography, origins and ecology, Mann zestfully demonstrates that long before any European explorers set foot in the New World, Native American cultures were flourishing with a high degree of sophistication. The new researchers have turned received wisdom on its head. For example, it has long been believed the Inca fell to Pizarro because they had no metallurgy to produce steel for weapons. In fact, scholars say, the Inca had a highly refined metallurgy, but valued plasticity over strength. What defeated the Inca was not steel but smallpox and resulting internecine warfare. Mann also shows that the Maya constructed huge cities and governed them with a cohesive set of political ideals. Most notably, according to Mann, the Haudenosaunee, in what is now the Northeast U.S., constructed a loose confederation of tribes governed by the principles of individual liberty and social equality. The author also weighs the evidence that Native populations were far larger than previously calculated. Mann, a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and Science, masterfully assembles a diverse body of scholarship into a first-rate history of Native America and its inhabitants." Link The Human Clock:
 Basically it is fotos by people that show the time. But it is a neat idea and way better than that little piece on the corner of your screen. Link Crime and no punishment: By Alain Gresh. Intro: "The United States Congress is angry about a scandal. It is alleged that from 1996 to 2003 the United Nations oil-for-food programme enabled Saddam Hussein to misappropriate hundreds of millions of dollars. Certain senior UN officials, particularly the man in charge of the programme, Benon Sevan, are said to have pocketed large kickbacks, and it is claimed that foreign, especially French, politicians took similar advantage of the system. These are serious accusations that warrant detailed investigation. But it must be immediately pointed out that there is a wealth of public documentation on the operation of the programme since 1996. It contains all the relevant information, including lists of all items supplied to Iraq in each six-month period."
Link Researchers Create Functioning Artificial Proteins Using Nature's Rules: By examining how proteins have evolved, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a set of simple "rules" that nature appears to use to design proteins, rules the scientists have now employed to create artificial proteins that look and function just like their natural counterparts.
Link Lula's Lament: Intro: >'When there is such an overwhelming disaster and you see yourself as part of this disaster, you begin to question your whole life. Why so many years of sacrifice and struggle?' Congressman Fernando Gabeira expresses the feelings of many petistas - members or supporters of the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) - when they heard that the party they built or supported as an instrument of democratic, ethical politics, was governing on the basis of systematic corruption.
The Brazilian left is in a state of profound shock and confusion. Over the past two decades hundreds of thousands of people have devoted their lives to creating the PT as a principled and forceful instrument of social justice against one of the most corrupt and unjust ruling elites in the world. Now they are having to come to terms with their own party's lack of principle.
The exact details of the corruption are still being investigated. It is generally admitted that the cúpula (group at the top) of the PT bribed political parties of the right to join their alliance in Congress and gave monthly payments to congressmen of the right to support their legislation. (The PT president, Lula, won with 67 per cent of the vote but the PT only has a fifth of the seats in Congress - though it is the largest party.)
As for the legislation itself, Lula's government pushed through neoliberal reforms of which Tony Blair would be proud. These included the reform - effectively partial privatisation - of an extremely unequal public pensions system, which nevertheless left the inequalities almost untouched; and amending Brazil's relatively radical, albeit contradictory, 1988 constitution to facilitate the creation of an independent bank with the freedom to raise interest rates as high as it wants. There have been social reforms - for example, a basic (but very low) income for all poor families - though these are hardly adequate to the problems; and many of them, along with the relatively progressive aspects of Lula's ambiguous foreign policy, did not need Congressional approval.<
Link Ants make 'devil's garden' of Eden: Ants use natural poison to kill all but their host plant. Quote: "Researchers have found an earthly cause for a phenomenon that Peruvian locals call 'devil's gardens' in the Amazonian rainforest. These gardens consist of just one type of tree (Duroia hirsuta). This is such an eerie and unusual sight in the otherwise diverse Amazon that locals presumed there to be a supernatural cause. But US researchers say it's ants, not the devil, that make this tree bloom."
Link Indira's India and the KGB: By Christopher Andrew. A charm offensive against Mrs Gandhi, agents in the media and the government, attempts to buy influence in Congress — in the second volume of the astonishing Mitrokhin archive Christopher Andrew reveals how the KGB targeted India.
Link Monk Competition Wraps Up In D.C.: Washington, D.C.'s annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Guitar Competition might be the genre's most prestigious contest, and this week, the 2005 edition was won by a Norwegian-born strummer now living in New York. Unlike many classical competitions, the students hoping for first prize weren't the only ones to take the stage - all the judges, whose names read like a roster of America's finest living jazz musicians - performed in addition to their jury duty.
Link Drink that looks like beer getting popular with kids: "Kidsbeer," a nonalcoholic brew aimed at children, is catching on with young drinkers and is posting monthly shipments of 75,000 bottles, according to its maker Tomomasu Co. The beverage, which uses the Latin American plant guarana as an ingredient, sells for around 380 yen per a 330-milliliter bottle, which is colored brown to make the drink look even more beer like, the company said.
Link Martin Waugh's Liquid Sculptures:
 Quote: "Liquid Sculpture is the process of creating shapes by dropping and splashing water, or other liquids. These sculptures are then photographed, since they last only a few thousandths of a second. Creating and capturing these engaging forms requires careful manipulation of the materials and precise control of the lighting and timing. I mostly use plain, clear water, sometimes with a little soap in it. I have experimented with food coloring, as well, and glycerin to increase the viscosity. Milk is a classic material and still enjoyable (gallery), and oil is very tempting. These sculptures (splashes) come in endless varieties. Their specific natures arise from the timing and position of the drops, exactly when they are photographed, and the qualities of the liquid. The behavior of the liquid is determined by its surface tension, density, and viscosity, as well as other traits I haven't yet explored. Liquid Sculpture images are mostly (though not necessarily) recognizable as liquid splashes, but they also provide engaging metaphors. The forms are as intriguing to the eye as they are provocative to the mind. As such, Liquid Sculpture finds a place as product or company logos, business card and letterhead images, and wall art for lobbies, waiting rooms, restaurants, and the like. All images are offered for sale, either as prints up to 36x48 inches, or as high-resolution digital images. Also, custom images using specified colors, shapes, and backgrounds can be created on a contract basis." (via DaddyD) Link The Forbes Fictional Fifteen: Quote: "If fiction can be regarded as a culture's subconscious, then it's clear that we are a nation obsessed with the very rich. From avaricious caricatures like The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns to literary character studies like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby, our culture--both high and low--is littered with images of billionaires and tycoons. Some characters are intentional riffs on real-life counterparts, most famously Orson Welles' blistering portrayal of William Randolph Hearst in Citizen Kane. Others, like Gordon Gekko from Oliver Stone's Wall Street, came to symbolize both a man--convicted inside trader Ivan Boesky--and an era: the go-go 1980s. To be sure, many are pure products of the imagination. But given the legion of publicity men and image handlers surrounding the typical real-life billionaires, understanding these fictitious characters is as close as most of us will come to grasping the minds of the very rich."
Link Modern Mummification (sm) for Pets & Animals:
 Quote: "Once, there was a time when ancients, believing in the promise of another tomorrow, mummified their pets and animals at their natural passing. Cherished by their families, these pets were mummified so that together they could continue on to their next life. Those people of long ago realized then, just as we do today, that there is a quality about some animals that makes them human, that makes them divine. These fortunate animals of ancient aristocrats were treasured during their lives and at their natural passing, royal Mummification arrangements were made for them. As nature abounds in endless cycles, once again, the sacred art and science of Mummification and Transference is offered to devoted pet lovers. Our extensive research, experience, and knowledge has resulted in Mummification that is the culminating union of medical technology, modern chemistry, and magnificent art. A very complete, precise, yet gentle system, Mummification will shelter the essence and body of your pet forever. Through this singular form of Permanent Body Preservation, your pet, at his natural earthly passing, will enter eternity in all of his splendor and beauty." Link Purdue Scientists See Biochemistry's Future - With Quantum Physics: Chemists who have trouble predicting how some large, complex biological molecules will react with others may soon have a solution from the world of computational quantum physics, say Purdue University researchers.
Link Bigfoot researchers weed through hoaxes: If there's something strange in your (remote, forested) neighborhood -- who're you gonna call?
Link Mysterious Ring of Stars Guards Andromeda's Heart:
 The Milky Way's near-twin galaxy, Andromeda, harbours a supermassive black hole at its core that is surrounded by an unexpected and unexplained disc of young stars. Link The kindness of strangers: Despite switching disciplines - from maths to law to history then the sciences - Robert Trivers profoundly influenced evolutionary biology with his theory that our sense of justice has Darwinian explanations. But he suffered severe mental breakdowns and his career at Harvard was dogged by controversy. After 15 years in genetics he has now turned to anthropology.
Link Slimming Down The America Culture... (Writer Goes On A AmCult Diet): Mark Ravenhill likes American culture. "The problem, then, isn't that American culture is a bad thing, just that it's a very dominant thing. And sometimes it's the only thing. So, a couple of months ago, I devised The Diet. If Dr Atkins could cut out the carbs, then I figured I could cut out the American culture. I'd set myself a date, do it for a month and see how it felt."
Link Every Unedited Thing in the Identity Theory: Nonfiction Box Regarding Facial Hair: "Barefaced for two decades, I lived through divorce, re-marriage, and re-divorce. Then I tried the beard again. To my horror, it grew a mix of brown, yellow, and copper streaked with gray, like the pelt of some exotic zoo animal. The buzzed-away remains in the sink made a pile of hideous confetti."
Link Opera now free: Quote: "Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal."
Link The semicolon? "The semicolon is ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog's belly, I pinch them out of my prose," says Donald Barthelme. Other writers disagree...
Link The Da Vinci Code's Real Detective: Maurizio Seracini is what Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown calls an "art diagnostician", which is "not a bad description for someone who probes paintings with state-of-the-art-technology, often to advise museums, dealers and collectors on their restoration. One question raised by Mr Seracini's painstaking investigation is why Da Vinci wanted to include such a bloody scene in a nativity painting, and why he - or someone else - thought better of it. But another question, and the one that will fascinate the Dan Brown fans, is what Da Vinci was up to on the other side of the painting in the last area of the panel to be fully rendered by Mr Seracini's technicians.
Link Darwin, Doubts, And Desires: Why are Americans still debating evolution almost 150 years after Darwin posited it? "A scientific-religious issue is being argued in courts and school boards, as if they ever could settle one's faith in God or what hominid line led to homo sapiens. Which is why Americans are still fighting about this while the rest of the scientific world has moved on. In this political struggle, Darwinians have relied on the courts to bar the unconstitutional use of tax money to teach religion. But in doing so, they have fueled widespread (and often Southern, regional) resentments against "elitist experts" and "activist judges." Creationists, meanwhile, tend to appeal to school boards and the public, knowing they can sway a popular vote.
Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
CORNUCOPIA - .c. works (Zeromoon) PXP - nada (dekorder) UN CADDIE RENVERSÉ DANS L'HERBE - Atlas saltA (dekorder) VIOLET + ALEXEI BORISOV + MICHAEL GENDRAU - bogatiri live in Russia (zeromoon) VOKS - darkvaks (dekorder) The Disappointment Artist: Essays by Jonathan Lethem.
 From Publishers Weekly: "Novelist Lethem's new collection of essays starts with an intriguing, if emotionally distant, consideration of his lifelong relationship with popular culture and develops into a moving memoir that transcends those references altogether. As the essays make clear, Lethem (The Fortress of Solitude) has always been obsessive: he watched Star Wars 21 times the summer it was released, then followed that with 21 viewings of 2001 a few years later; the novels of Philip K. Dick played as large a role in his growing artistic vision as did the canvases of his father, painter Richard Lethem." Link Skull Study Sheds Light On Dinosaur Diversity: With their long necks and tails, sauropod dinosaurs -- famous as the Sinclair gasoline logo and Fred Flintstone's gravel pit tractor -- are easy to recognize, in part because they all seem to look alike. The largest animals known to have walked the earth, sauropods were common in North America during the middle of the dinosaur era but were thought to have been pushed to extinction by more specialized plant-eaters at the end of that era. New discoveries, however, are showing that one lineage of sauropods diversified at the end of the dinosaur era, University of Michigan paleontologist Jeffrey Wilson says.
Link Titan's Long-Sought Sea Revealed By Radar: The first sea discovered on any surface other than Earth's may have been found on Saturn’s moon Titan.
Link In a Family Affair, Mother and Daughter Bats Share Mates: From National Geographic. Quote: "The idea of mother and daughter, and possibly even grandmother, chasing the same male would repulse most humans. But to female greater horseshoe bats, sharing a strong breeding partner can ensure fit offspring and strengthen the social group. During their life span, most female greater horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) revisit and breed with a specific male, according to a new study."
Link Or Maybe It'll Just Mean More Unwanted Phone Noise: For those who have been wondering what the big deal is about Apple's new iPod/phone hybrid, and even more for those who have become more than a little resentful about the whole iPod phenomenon, here's a pleasant thought: the MP3-playing phones, which come with powerful built-in speakers, may just have the potential to jerk us back into a reality in which music is meant for sharing with others. If the basic iPods "suggest that music is a solitary experience, comprised solely of plugging into your own greatest hits," the phone version allows for the possibility that music "can once again be something that is not just the soundtrack to your own little world, but which you enjoy with other people."
Link The gathering storm: Historic change is looming in the heart of Europe. At stake is far more than a mere change of leaders - Germany and France face economic and cultural upheavals of a kind that comes once in a generation.
Link New York's New Boldness: The Freedom Tower may be looking ever more like a lost cause, but "four years on, there is an architectural renaissance in New York that would have been difficult to imagine in the weeks that followed 9/11. Since the 1960s, the shape of New York’s skyline has been under the control of savvy developers who made fortunes erecting uniform brick apartment towers and boxy office buildings. Architects wanting to do something new had little choice but to look to Europe or Asia. This is changing: New York is once again becoming a city where adventurous architecture can happen."
Link Internet Phenomena: DaddyD writes: "This wikipedia article has a massive listing of some of the most popular phenomena, broken down into some general categories and offering links and descriptions for your browsing pleasure. It's just the thing for anyone who suspects they might have been missing out on something the last couple of years."
Link Amazing fossil puts Scotland's dinosaurs on the map: Last year on the Isle of Skye two locals found a set of fossilised footprints. Inside one of the footprints was another fossil that has turned out to be one of the most exciting finds in Scotland: a baby dino footprint.
 Link Do the Right Thing: Cognitive science’s search for a common morality: Sure, it’s naive to think that all moral beliefs are universal. But there may be an innate "moral sense" across cultures.
Link Louisiana Transplants - Living It Up In Lafayette: Quote: "No one knows what will come of the dispersal of New Orleans's artistic life, or whether the thousands of musical transients will become transplants. Like so much else in the aftermath of the hurricane, the question is unresolved. But here in Lafayette, where Cajun French can still be heard in the street, the signs are bilingual and old French Canada is the musical touchstone, musicians - locals and evacuees - are expecting a flowering of creativity."
Link Is The Wonderfully Workable Web Under Attack? Legal doctrines "being aggressively pushed by corporations and law enforcement officials" are attempting to lock up content and programs on the internet. "The better world is one in which we don't need to seek permission or risk punishment to do cool stuff that makes the world a better place. In the early days of the internet, a lot of people felt that we'd found that better world. Thanks to the internet's open protocols, many of the most useful innovations, from the web to instant messaging to internet telephony, emerged without developers needing anyone's permission to run their cool new code."
Link The Box Doodle Project: Artists transform cardboard.
 The rules are quite simple: rearrange a box to make any kind of figure or object. Make the most of the least. Link Most Distant Explosion Detected, Smashes Previous Record: Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite and several ground-based telescopes have detected the most distant explosion yet, a gamma-ray burst from the edge of the visible universe.
Link New Techniques Study The Brain's Chemistry, Neuron By Neuron: Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed tools for studying the chemistry of the brain, neuron by neuron. The analytical techniques can probe the spatial and temporal distribution of biologically important molecules, such as vitamin E, and explore the chemical messengers behind thought, memory and emotion.
Link The remaking of the left: Communist successor parties are winning support as they struggle to reinvent themselves, writes Hilary Wainwright.
Link What Cuba Has Offered the People of the Gulf Coast: Fidel Castro writes about the assistance offered to the victims of Katrina by the Cuban government (via histologion).
Link Comet reveals crumbly guts: Deep Impact results suggest Rosetta lander is in for a rough time. Comets are made of a loose collection of particles, like a weak sponge held together only by its own gravity. That is the conclusion of the Deep Impact team, who this week unveiled the latest results from their probe's smashing encounter with a comet.
Link Whip It! Some very cool fifth graders perform a rendition of the Devo hit. Complete with construction paper hats and little cowboys drinking cola.
 Via naive melodies Link Neanderthal Not a Hairy Oaf But a Sensitive Kinda Guy: A team of American scientists have reconstructed the most complete Neanderthal ever. And instead of the angry, ape-like figure of popular imagination, he emerges as a family man, in touch with his emotions.
Link Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan: Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons. By Walter Pincus. Quote: "The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons."
Link Finding Memory Enhancement In a Cigarette; Smoking cigarettes helps you concentrate (or so believe many smokers). But "scientists have found that nicotine really does boost certain transmitters in the brain that can help people think better. Now, the pharmaceutical industry hopes to improve on the effect, minus the lung cancer."
Link Good Old Boys: Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms helped create an unsettling brand of politics. Reviewed by Michael Lind.
Intro: >Even in his second century of life, the late Strom Thurmond was the center of controversy. On December 5, 2001, at a gala party on Capitol Hill celebrating Thurmond's 100th birthday, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi paid tribute to the long-serving South Carolina senator, who had been the presidential candidate of the segregationist States' Rights Democrats in 1948. "I want to say this about my state," Lott declared. "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either." Lott's remarks created a firestorm that ended only when he resigned as majority leader. In telling the story of their fellow South Carolinian, Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson show how the South helped to shape modern America by shaping Thurmond.< Link FedExFurniture: FedEx Furniture is furniture put together by empty FedEx Boxes, and held together by fedex packaging supplies. All of the furniture seen here is 100% functional. The couch is standing/sleeping approved, I sleep on the bed every night, I eat at the dining table, and I work at the desk almost 20 hours a day.
And FedEx is just about to shut him down for copyright infringements. Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
2L8 - Armed Angels, Frustrated Youth, the Art of Self Deceit and Music Industry (Poeta Negra) VASHTI BUNYAN - lookaftering (Fat Cat) ANIMAL COLLECTIVE - feels (Fat Cat) FENTON - pup (Plop) GUIDO MÖBIUS - dishoek (Dekorder) Bruce Lee (1940-1973): Philosophical notions of action and inaction, self and not-self, voidness and wholeness, spontaneity and concentration, simplicity and ornamentation, division and integration, balance, harmony, and the importance of awareness all find expression in and through the methods of Bruce Lee's fighting style, Jeet Kune Do.
Link A talent for ectoplasm: Conman or a miracle-worker? Philip Hoare on Peter Lamont's study of Victorian celebrity Daniel Dunglas Home, The First Psychic.
Link What's so extreme about extreme sports? Extreme sports challenge our sissified, safety-first, shrink-wrapped world! Oh, do they now? Horse riding is still more dangerous.
Link America On Top (In Universities): Quote: "Since the second world war Europe has progressively surrendered its lead in higher education to the United States. America boasts 17 of the world's top 20 universities, according to a widely used global ranking by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. American universities currently employ 70% of the world's Nobel prize-winners, 30% of the world's output of articles on science and engineering, and 44% of the most frequently cited articles. No wonder developing countries now look to America rather than Europe for a model for higher education. Why have European universities declined so precipitously in recent decades?"
Link Do We Want "Appropriate" Art For WTC Projects? Cultural buildings at the site of the World Trade Center are mired in debates about what is "appropriate." " 'The challenge for the curators is going to be: given the context of where these cultural institutions are, what's appropriate here?' Whatever else this particular controversy has illustrated, it is just the latest trouble to visit the four cultural structures of the new World Trade Center site. One way or another, the future of all four of them -- the memorial, the memorial museum, the performing arts center, and the cultural building -- is unclear.
Link Don't Refloat: The case against rebuilding the sunken city of New Orleans: So let's go ahead and think the unthinkable: how about not rebuilding New Orleans? Jack Shafer makes the case...
Link Information supplied by Yahoo! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison: The text of the verdict in the case of journalist Shi Tao - sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for "divulging state secrets abroad" - shows that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided China's state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him, Reporters Without Borders said today.
"We already knew that Yahoo! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well," the press freedom organisation said. Link LA Without Gravity Storms New York:
 Quote: "The landscape of Los Angeles is notoriously influential. New York based artist Adam Cvijanovic, whom you might remember from his recent Hammer Project Glacier, is opening his new hand-painted installation LOVE POEM (10 Minutes After the End of Gravity) at NY's Bellwether gallery. Eerily similar to what has just happened in New Orleans, this exhibition gives an imagined glimpse at what might happened if our lives in LA were literally turned upside down." Link Odd Behavior And Creativity May Go Hand-in-hand: A quirky or socially awkward approach to life might be the key to becoming a great artist, composer or inventor. New research in individuals with schizotypal personalities--people characterized by odd behavior and language but who are not psychotic or schizophrenic--offers the first neurological evidence that these individuals are more creative than normal or fully schizophrenic people, and rely more heavily on the right sides of their brains than the general population to access their creativity.
Link Native ingenuity:
 Scholars have known for decades that Native American societies were in many ways more technologically sophisticated than their European counterparts. So why do we still find this fact so surprising? Link Webern In Hindsight: Sixty years ago next week, Anton Webern stepped outside of his house for a smoke and was accidentally shot dead by an American soldier. Thus ended the remarkable career of one of history's brilliant and contradictory composers. Norman Lebrecht says that in order to appreciate Webern, it is best to embrace the contradiction. "Inspiration was anathema to Webern. All had to be strictly counted and numerically correct. If pleasure entered the process, it was the solitary satisfaction of making a line read the same forwards, backwards and upside down. Inverted by nature, Webern wrote music that turned in upon itself, rejecting every human value except absolute order. [And yet,] scan the entire canon, Passacaglia to posthumously published piano pieces, and you will not find one weak work of Webern's, or one that fails immediately to proclaim its authorship. In the history of western music, that statement is true only of Beethoven and Wagner."
Link Martian Methane Probe in Trouble: One of the best chances for solving Mars's methane mystery may have been lost. The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer on board the Mars Express orbiter seems to be broken, perhaps for good.
Link Katrina-Baghdad: Initial Iterations of a Strange Attractor: By Dion Dennis.
Intro: >On August 30, 2005, George W. Bush was sent to the wrong place, at the wrong time, to deliver, in his pseudo-folksy ham-handed way, the wrong script: Bush's political choreographers crafted a speech that was delivered at a 60th anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II, held at a California Naval Air station. As a salvo in the propaganda war over Iraq, Bush histrionically claimed the moral authority of World War II for the current U.S. occupation of Iraq. Besides the highly dubious claim of moral equivalence, the timing of the speech turned out to be inept. Unfolding events caught Bush and his handlers off-guard. Fifteen-hundred miles away, a concurrent event, the Category Five Hurricane Katrina, laid waste to a significant American city, New Orleans, and to a contiguous two-hundred mile swath of the Gulf Coast east of New Orleans. Mississippi's Governor, the former head of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour, unreflexively invoked another descriptive icon of World War II, as well. "It looks like Hiroshima is what it looks like," muttered a shocked Barbour, describing parts of a devastated county on the coast. Meanwhile, the Louisiana levees broke in at least three spots, unleashing the fury of the swollen waters of Lake Pontchartrain on New Orleans. Potable drinking water, electricity, and the other taken-for-granted basics of mundane life disappeared into a twenty foot high stew of sewage, toxic chemicals, Mississippi Delta mud, and Lake Pontchartrain spillage. Basic infrastructure was destroyed. Tens of thousands of houses were severely damaged or simply obliterated. Bloated bodies floated in the water, as much of the coastal population became a large and instant group of internal U.S. refugees. Meanwhile, police looked on passively as looters raided both the upscale downtown shops such as the Bon Marche, and less status-conscious looters stripped the shelves of several outlying stores of the behemoth proletarian vendor, Wal-Mart. On the night of August 30th, the CNN website described it this way: "New Orleans resembled a war zone more than a modern American metropolis on Tuesday." As Army Reservists and a remainder of National Guard troops rolled into New Orleans, they resembled nothing as much as their comrades-in-arms concurrently stationed in Iraq. Ironically, the shock and awe produced by Katrina's Gulf Coast invasion mirrored the effects of the Iraqi war, in novel and all-too-tragic ways. On Tuesday night, August 30, 2005, New Orleans became the de facto American Baghdad, as the contiguous Gulf Coast east of New Orleans became an analogue for the Iraqi countryside. It was no surprise, then, to see the juxtaposition of the following morning's (Wednesday, August 31st) split-screen front page headlines on MSNBC.com. A story on the "Nightmare" of Katrina refugees was paired with the "Baghdad Stampede" that killed 800 or more Iraqis. Panic, disaster, public disorder, the mass movement of refugees, tightening military occupation, combined with the key linkages between the disruption of oil production and refineries and long-term economic dislocation and debt accumulation; these are just the initial components of Katrina-Baghdad as a "strange attractor." This emergent strange attractor we now call Katrina-Baghdad will spin off and/or accelerate a series of complex economic, political and social iterations over the near and longer term.< Link A la 'Matrix,' vocations recruitment poster shows priest as hero: This vocations poster was the brainchild of Father Jonathan Meyer, associate director of youth and young adult ministry for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
 Quote: >"Just as Keanu Reeves fought against the powers of evil, a priest comes to help people fight against sin. There is a battle out there," explained Father Jonathan Meyer, associate director of youth and young adult ministry for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. He made the comments in an interview with Catholic News Service about a new vocations recruitment poster being distributed by his archdiocese.< Link Steve, don't eat it!
 But Steve does eat it. All the things no-one in his right mind would ever eat, like Pickled Pork Rinds, Beggin' Strips (that's dog food), Urkel-O's, Breast Milk, Cuitlacoche (that's corn infected by some hideous fungus). If he survives, he'll write about it in a damny funny way. Link SETI politics:
 Intro: "SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has a fundamentally fascinating hypothesis. Not only do SETI researchers assume extraterrestrial life exists, which most mainstream scientists now take as a given, but they further theorize extraterrestrial civilizations exist that can be detected from Earth. Since about 1960, a handful of SETI researchers have tested that hypothesis by scanning the heavens using radio telescopes and increasingly powerful, sophisticated search programs. Optical SETI, looking for ET laser pulses, is now beginning. The political situation of the times, however, has pushed those interested in SETI into a narrow philosophical position." Link System to Explain Facts That Slip Through the Cracks: Individual scientific disciplines are fairly well understood. But finding answers to complex systems requires cross-disciplinary study and language, something sorely lacking. The Foundations of Information Science meeting in July was the beginning of an attempt to remodel our current scientific universe.
Link The Moviegoer: For Susan Sontag, cinema was once "poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral – all at the same time." Sadly, she came to think at the end, film’s greatness is lost...
Link Female orgasm: Should we view female orgasm as an evolutionary by-product of male orgasm, a tag-along trait for the ladies? Shades of Adam’s rib...
Link Which Works Of Art Would You Want To Survive A War? The UK is signing on to a half-century old provision from the Hague convention's rules of war which allows for the protection of cultural treasures from marauding armies. British politicians had always dismissed the guidelines, which call for labeling specific works of great cultural or artistic significance with a blue shield, but reconsidered after the 2003 looting of Baghdad's museum in the wake of the American invasion. Now the government is launching a consultation process to determine the works of art that should be selected for the special treatment.
Link 911 in New Orleans: The development patterns that destroyed Louisiana wetlands are being repeated throughout America, with the support of an administration intent on removing all limits on private economic activity.
Link New monochrom content // Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / The Adventure Game / Sector 1:
 People of the world, you, who sit in your superficially secure third countries! Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced 'oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf') is the last existing appanage republic of the USSR. The enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding so-called 'Republic of Austria' or with the Fortress 'European Union'. The downfall of her motherland -- the Soviet Union -- in the early 1990s had a particularly bad effect on the country's economic situation. It is a great challenge to secure survival for the small but proud confederation. External reactionary forces put the country in danger. It's a lack of respect due to a morally corrupted and perhaps even non-existing unity of the peoples. The goal of a glorious future is almost unreachable. But there are a handful of people who don't give up on a vision for a better tomorrow. Let us tell you the stories of the brave citizens in the beautiful little country of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. It's a story that will go into history. Game for IBM PC. Windows or Linux/BSD. Russian with English or German subtitles. Appealing graphical game interface. Creative Commons License. Featuring music by 'Negativland', Jazz Dance Combinat 'Vibemaster', 'Motion Picture Expert Group', 'cccp.at', Joerg Piringer and others. Link Never Forget Another Password: Throw out your Post-Its! A Hushmail-inspired service stores all your passwords encrypted on a secure server for less than $30 a year.
Link Scientists Baffled By Mystery Heat Source on Saturn's Moon: Scientists are intrigued because neither radioactive decay nor gravitational tidal forces, thought to be the only two potential sources of internal heating of planetary bodies, should be able to generate the effects measured by Cassini.
Link Come out, come out, wherever you are: Epicurus proposed "infinite worlds both like and unlike ours." Kepler thought Jupiter inhabited, and Ben Franklin wondered about people on Mercury. Yet we still wait for E.T...
Link Do You Have To Be Young To Write A Good Pop Song? Quote: "As rock has got older, musicians and audiences have inevitably aged with it, but questions remain about what happens to the creative process over the years."
Link British duo probes origin of mad cow disease: Did human remains in food spawn the infection in cattle?
Link A Statistical Analysis Of Every US Supreme Court Decision: A researcher plugged in 26,000 opinions issued by the Supreme Court between the early 19th century and the present day into his computer. "He treated each of these cases as a node and each citation from one case to another as a link. The result was a complicated web resembling a map of cities linked by dozens of airlines. He found the most important opinions, at least judged by how many times they were cited, by working out which nodes were likeliest to fall on the shortest paths between two other nodes. Intriguingly, the cases mostly come from an advanced and esoteric subject..."
Link Night Of The Living Dead:
 George Romero's "Night Of The Living Dead" (1968) is one of the most beautiful cinematic commentaries of Vietnam and of the American civil rights movement. It's also considered to be the first modern horror film. And you can download it legally... for free. Here. 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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