Presidential Diseases: Quote: "From George Washington's toothlessness (he has no teeth left by middle age), to Grover Cleveland's gout, to Franklin D. Roosevelt's polio, to Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer disease, and finally to George W. Bush's colon polyps, presidents throughout history suffer from the same diseases and ailments like the rest of us. Find out what diseases you have in common with the leaders of the free world!"
Link China: the sky darkens: The Chinese government made it clear at the UN climate change conference in Montreal last December that it was aware of the extreme dangers that China faces from both immediate and long-term climate change.
Link The Poor Man's Air Force: A History of the Car Bomb: By Mike Davis. Quote: >>Twenty-first century hindsight makes it clear that the defeat of the U.S. intervention in Lebanon in 1983-84, followed by the CIA's dirty war in Afghanistan, had wider and more potent geopolitical repercussions than the loss of Saigon in 1975. The Vietnam War was, of course, an epic struggle whose imprint upon domestic American politics remains profound, but it belonged to the era of the Cold War's bipolar superpower rivalry. Hezbollah's war in Beirut and south Lebanon, on the other hand, prefigured (and even inspired) the "asymmetric" conflicts that characterize the millennium. Moreover, unlike peoples' war on the scale sustained by the NLF and the North Vietnamese for more than a generation, car-bombing and suicide terrorism are easily franchised and gruesomely applicable in a variety of scenarios. Although rural guerrillas survive in rugged redoubts like Kashmir, the Khyber Pass, and the Andes, the center of gravity of global insurgency has moved from the countryside back to the cities and their slum peripheries. In this post-Cold-War urban context, the Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks has become the gold standard of terrorism; the 9/11 attacks, it can be argued, were only an inevitable scaling-up of the suicide truck bomb to airliners.<<
(via histologion) Part 1 Part 2 Space Observatory Digs Into The Secrets Of Fossil Galaxy Clusters: Taking advantage of the high sensitivity of the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and the sharp vision of NASA's Chandra X-Ray space observatories, astronomers have studied the behaviour of massive fossil galaxy clusters, trying to find out how they find the time to form...
 Link Danube bursts its banks: Should we expect more flooding in Europe? On 15 April, the River Danube reached its highest level for some 111 years, forcing residents of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia to flee their homes. With weeks of snowmelt and rain swelling Europe's second-longest river, the waters haven't dipped below that level since. Meteorologists are warning that the flood represents yet more evidence that climate change is gearing up to play havoc with our weather. News@nature.com asks what caused the events of the past few days in Eastern Europe, and whether those living near other major river systems can expect the same this year.
Link The New Seven Wonders? The list to choose the new seven modern wonders of the world has been narrowed to 21. They include: Acropolis in Athens; the Alhambra in Granada, Spain; Angkor, Cambodia; Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico; Christ Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro; the Colosseum in Rome; Easter Island Statues, Chile; Eiffel Tower, Paris; Great Wall, China; Hagia Sofia, Istanbul; Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan; Kremlin/St. Basil, Moscow; Machu Picchu, Peru; Neuschwanstein Castle, Füssen, Germany; Petra, Jordan; Pyramids of Giza, Egypt; the Statue of Liberty, New York; Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom; Sydney Opera House, Australia; the Taj Majal, Agra, India; and Timbuktu, Mali.
Link Review of Marcel Proust's Remembrance Of Things Past: Intro: >>A la recherche du temps perdu, by Marcel Proust is not really a novel, by any stretch of the imagination, for it violates the precepts of novel writing - plot, characterization, etc., to an even greater degree than Herman Melville's Moby-Dick does, and it is not considered an autobiography, because it twists facts, and uses fictive techniques for its nonfiction. [...] Proust's work is to literature what the sitcom Seinfeld was to television - a piece of art that glorifies nothing, in the sense that the whole work really is a document of thirty-three hundred plus pages of high society 19th Century French gossip."
Link Torture In Our Time: Essay by Lawrence Davidson. Quote: >>The Bush administration’s reaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal was to deny that the photos and stories reflected present or historical American policy. On the contrary, President Bush was quick to tell Al-hurra TV (the feeble American answer to Al-Jazeera) on May 5, 2004 that the United States was a compassionate country interested in the well-being and freedom of every individual in Iraq and elsewhere. That meant that, according to Mr. Bush, torture at Abu Ghraib was just the “wrongdoing of a few,” or as the Army’s Inspector General, Paul Mikolashek put it in April of 2004, all cases of abuse are simply “an individual failure to uphold Army values.” On the other hand, FBI personnel present at many of the interrogations carried on in 2003 and 2004 at Guantanamo Bay filed no less then 26 complaints alleging abuse and mistreatment of detainees, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which did unannounced inspections of many US interrogation facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, has documented widespread and consistent interrogation techniques that are “tantamount to torture.” This practice was (and still is) so widespread and so consistent that one must speak of a policy of torture, which now works itself out in a system of hellish prisons and interrogation centers stretching from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to Kabul in Afghanistan and Baghdad in Iraq. This policy has subsequently been confirmed by investigations carried out by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The past and present pattern of behavior is so manifestly obvious that one must conclude that both the President and the Inspector General were either totally ignorant of decades of CIA and military interrogation practice, as well as the consequences of their own on-going “enemy combatant” policy, or they were lying. Did President Bush happen to recall his own findings of January 2002 removing the protection of the Third Geneva Convention from the prisoners taken in Afghanistan and Iraq? What did he think the result would be?<<
Link France: The Children's Hour: French students rioting to save their non-existent pensions: it’s a spectacle rather unlike the events on the streets in 1968.
Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
 CARLA BOZULICH - evangelista (constellation) DATAFUCKLATENIGHTSHOW - s/t (self released) JAKUZI's ATTEMPT - s/t (self released) LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR - the ultimate destroyer (southern lord) MORD - christendom perished (southern lord) POOCHLATZ - victims of self-preservation (Maor Appelbaum) STELARC in conversation with Arthur & Marilouise Kroker: Stelarc is a world renowned Australian-based performance artist whose work explores and extends the concept of the body and its relationship with technology. He is Visiting Professor, School of Art and Design, at the Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Link Hybrid Animal Human Page? "All about altered animals and humans, fantasy animals that would have made the world more interesting if they had existed today."
Wow, that's how bad photoshopping looks like.  Link Sex Toy or Baby Toy? In practice, sex toys and baby toys have nothing in common. However, looked at from a different perspective, these molded plastic creations can seem all too similar. Take our quiz and see if you can tell the difference.
 Link Your Thoughts Are Your Password: Scientists hope that mind-reading computers will one day replace typed passwords, making fingerprint readers and retina scans obsolete. Skeptics say don't count on it.
Link monochrom project // Kultplay reports about Roboexotica 2005: We don't understand a single word of Hungarian, but it really looks nice.
 Link Voyage to Aquarius: When NASA wants to practice for expeditions to the Moon and Mars, astronauts go for a swim - to the Aquarius underwater laboratory.
 Link Letterman: Crispin Glover: In 1987, Glover appeared on Late Night with David Letterman wearing a long wig and platform shoes to promote his new movie River's Edge. His bizarre appearance was equalled by his strange behavior, which is thought by many to have been influenced by LSD. Glover later explained this as appearing on the show in-character, participating in the interview as the character of Rubin.
Link Bacteria Render Beans Easier to Digest and More Nutritious: In the absence of meat, common black beans are a primary source of protein, minerals and vitamins in much of the developing world. But beans are notoriously hard to digest, failing to freely release many of their nutrients in the gut. Now researchers have discovered that fermenting beans with two strands of common bacteria free up many more nutrients and make the legumes easier to digest.
Link Hu Goes There? Sino-Globlism And The Ghost Of Tiananmen: Intro: "When Fei Xiaotong died at 95 in 2005, China lost one of its last effective voices for democratic reform from within establishment ranks. Fei's classic, Peasant Life in China, reminds us of how rural Chinese paid the price for change in the formative years of Chinese communism (Thurston 2005). Now, likewise, they are paying for Chinese capitalism. The difference is that the former gave them some actual benefits in return. They not only got minimal health care, but the psychological satisfaction of knowing that however bad things were, the hardship was broadly distributed. Anyone who thinks those are insignificant benefits should consider becoming a World Bank economist."
Link Of African Dictators & Experimental Electronica: Did the world really need an opera about Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy? Perhaps not, but English National Opera is preparing to stage one anyway. "The opera is a huge gamble for [ENO] - not just because of its incendiary subject matter, but also because of the experimental nature of the music. It's not often the venerable opera house plays host to an alternative electronica collective like Asian Dub Foundation, who specialise in breakbeat, dub, bangla and ragga. More challengingly, the opera will feature Egyptian and Libyan musicians alongside the ENO orchestra"
Link Become a Socialist hero - in 4 simple steps:
 Your portrait painted like a propaganda poster. Offer yourself a beautiful oil painting, executed by an artist painter. Originality guaranteed. Link Scientists Develop Simple Alternative For Harvesting Daylight And Saving Energy: Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center (LRC) have developed a simple, cost-effective, energy-saving device designed to harvest daylight automatically. The DaySwitch was designed as an alternative to traditional dimming ballast systems that adjust light levels by reducing the lamp current.
Link Lease A Sheep: Professional sportsmen walk around with shirts showing their sponsors. Why not your livestock?
Link Losing the message in the medium: By John Eades, Tokyo University. Abstract: "I here examine the mystifying way that science stories have sometimes been covered by the media over the last several years. In doing this, I am drawing largely from personal experience with newspapers, radio and TV channels in the UK, the US, Switzerland, France, Canada, the US and Japan, and as a consumer of science reporting as well as an occasional media interviewee. I conclude that we only have ourselves to blame for the consequences of this."
Link US reveals sins of emission: The Environmental Protection Agency has published a round-up of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States from 1990 to 2004, showing record highs. News@nature.com puts the numbers into perspective.
Link Will Sousa Help Parkinson's Patients? Scientists have discovered that playing music helps Parkinson's patients move better. Now a new study will try to pin down how and what music works. "We will start with metronome patterns and move up to ballet music, marches and popular music that is very dance-oriented and popular music that is not — all those types."
Link New monochrom project // Waiting for GOTO: Today our theatre play "Warten auf GOTO" ("Waiting for GOTO") premieres at Volkstheater/Hundsturm in Vienna. Sorry, German only, but Philipp wrote a short English language post for Vienna Metroblog.
 Actresses: Sabine Osthoff und Annette Isabella Holzmann Voices: Gregor Seberg, Anna-Sophie von Gayl, Robert Stachel, Roland Gratzer Script and directing: Johannes Grenzfurthner Script support: Frank Apunkt Schneider, Roland Gratzer Correction: Evelyn Fürlinger Director's assistant: Anna-Sophie von Gayl Dramaturgy: Brigitte Auer Visual design: Anika Kronberger, Daniel Fabry Gadgets: Franz Ablinger Sound design: Christoph Marek With best wishes to Michael Marrak, Cory Doctorow and Johannes Ullmaier. Premiere: April 21, 2006, 8 PM (Volkstheater Hundsturm, Margaretenstraße 166, Vienna) Premiere party: Super-8 projections by Lenzo Further dates: April 22/26/27. May 2/3 8 PM Link Hallucinations after eating fish: Quote: >Two men have suffered terrifying visual and auditory hallucinations after eating a popular local seafish in Mediterranean restaurants. [...] The effects of eating ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes, such as certain mullet, goatfish, tangs, damsels and rabbitfish, are believed to be similar to LSD, and may include vivid and terrifying auditory and visual hallucinations. This has given rise to the collective common name for ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes of "dream fish".< (via Ronald Ortner)
Link Modelling Virtual Dogs: It's A Walk In The Park!
 Dog walking is a national pastime, but how does your dog walk? Different breeds have different gaits, for example greyhounds tend to be thin and fast whilst labradors are thicker set and tend to waddle. Using computers to simulate the way dogs walk, scientists at the Royal Veterinary College in London have found that fairly simple models can be used to explain the mechanics of canine locomotion. Link E.T., There's No Place Like Dome: In the middle of the California desert, the mysterious Integratron is a mecca for UFO enthusiasts.
Link Liquid Grammar, Liquid Style: On the East-Asian Way of Using English or Reflections on the "Linguistic Air-Guitar". Quote: >The Western visitor of East Asia marvels at English expressions that he encounters in advertisements, in magazines, on T-Shirts, and elsewhere that seem to come "out of another world." Single words and short adjective-loaded English sentences, rarely longer than five words, suggest something like the invention of a new language. In Japan and in Korea this phenomenon has been thriving for decades; in China it is more recent but developing along the same lines. The use of English in East Asia is linked to a certain part of East-Asian social history. "Japano-English" for example, is neither "real" English nor Japanese but symbolizes, within the domain of linguistics, the co-existence of two cultural spheres. In Japan, after the mid-1880s, an earlier uncritical and unsystematic acceptance of things Western gradually gave way to the view that Japanese and Western culture can exist side-by-side. From then on the question was: how can East Asia incorporate the West without being culturally overwhelmed by it?<
Link Computer glitch hits climate prediction project: Tiny software mistake puts results back by months.
Link The Tree Sweater: Quote: "Outside our building is a sorry little sidewalk tree. At the height of summer, it had about five leaves. A dead glowstick has been dangling from its branches for three months. Tonight while I was out on a smoke break, I looked at the tree and thought, 'Man, that is one sad tree. It looks cold and wet and pathetic. It needs a sweater!'"
 Link Corporate Shadow on Indian Agriculture: As recent developments indicate, global corporate giants are out to establish their dominance over Indian agriculture. In this they are being helped by powerful quarters from both inside and outside the country. It is needless to add that their success will lead to serious repercussions for the country.
Link First images of Venus’s south pole revealed: Within a day of entering orbit, Venus Express took the first pictures of the swirling atmosphere above the planet’s south pole.
Link A Daily Chat with Jesus' Mom: Ivan Dragicevic, one of six children from Medjugorje, carries on a conversation with the Blessed Virgin Mary each day at 6:40 p.m. Hundreds gathered at the Holy Cross Catholic Church in East Derry, New Hampshire Wednesday night to witness in person.
Link How Odors Are Sensed: A Complex System Clarified
Yale scientists have systematically plotted the responses of the entire Drosophila (fruit fly) olfactory system, providing the first multi-dimensional map of the range of odorants sensed and the regions of the brain that are stimulated.
Link The tide is full: By Michael Griffin. Intro: "With Eurostar charging £190 for a six-hour day-trip to Brussels, where I briefly had business, I cast back to simpler times when there was more choice in how one travelled to what was then called 'The Continent', and speed was of less concern. In those days, you reserved a day for the trip from Charing Cross to Dover and the cross-Channel ferry forward to your destination on the other side. My immediate concern was whether it would be cheaper to go solo through roads our grandfathers took to Flanders, rather than pay the exorbitant price demanded by Eurostar, a bankrupt company that has secured a near-monopoly on land-based travel from London to Paris, Brussels and Lille. Opinions of Eurostar have changed since the service was launched 12 years ago this November. Those who use it tend to approve of it and, in so doing, participate in the EU vision of a first-class Europe free of borders, of seamless travel and windows on the world that do not open. To that extent, it is a medium with a distinctive message. Eurostar carved new roads through virgin landscapes in France and Belgium that were unencumbered by the brown-field sites that steam travel encouraged - and which are a mortification for the new Europe's image of itself. A Eurostar ride to Brussels became a revelatory exploration of a misty, fictional utopia, though a 'state' journey through the rusting steel mills along the River Meuse arguably provides a more acute snapshot of people’s lives in contemporary Belgium."
Link Is Boredom Good For Kids? Sure, If You're An Adult: Quote: "Parents worry a lot about keeping their children entertained. In the holiday season especially, the thought process goes: we are a lot older than their fun little friends, plus we both have a hangover. Must entertain little bleeders. Must entertain and improve. In fact, you could not be more wrong. According to research by Dr Richard Ralley, a psychology lecturer at Edge Hill College in Ormskirk, Lancashire, boredom is valuable for children... What I would say, though, is that boredom is like olives, or antiques, or green vegetables, or black-and-white films. Children might get force-fed with boredom just in the run of things, and it might actively be good for children, but only adults will really appreciate it."
Link The Second Life: Sick of living in the real world? Try this: "Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from around the globe."
 Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
ALEXANDR VATAGIN - valeot (mirakelmusik) CALEXICO - garden ruin (city slang) DEEP / DISCOTHEQUE GRÖNLAND - split (stillstand) FLAMING LIPS - at war with the mystics (Warner) The Sociological Implications for Contemporary Buddhism in the United Kingdom: Socially Engaged Buddhism, a Case Study: Intro: >Buddhist Studies has, for well over a century, been seen by many in the academy as the domain of philologists and others whose skills are essentially in the translation and interpretation of texts derived from ancient languages like classical Chinese, Pali, Sanskrit, and its hybrid variations, together with the commentarial tradition that developed alongside it. Only in the last thirty-five years has there been an increasing number of theses, journal articles, and other academic texts that have seriously addressed the developments of a Western Buddhism as opposed to Buddhism in the West. As Prebish (2002:66) attests, based on his own 1975 experience of teaching Buddhism in the United States, "Even a casual perusal of the most popular books used as texts in introductory courses on Buddhism at that time reveals that Western Buddhism was not included in the discipline called Buddhist Studies."
Fundamentally, this paper addresses Buddhist identity in contemporary settings, and asks what it means to be Buddhist in the West today. This is the overarching theme of my doctoral research into socially engaged Buddhism in the United Kingdom, which addresses the question of how socially engaged Buddhism challenges the notion of what it means to be Buddhist in the twenty-first century. The scope of this paper is to portray part of that work, and, in so doing, it suggests methodological approaches for students of Western Buddhism, using my research into the identity of socially engaged Buddhists in the United Kingdom as a case study.< Link Why A Spider Hanging From A Thread Does Not Rotate:
 The extraordinary properties of spider's thread are like a blessing for researchers working on polymers. However, the amazing twisting properties it displays are still not very well understood. How can one explain the fact that a spider suspended by a thread remains completely motionless, instead of rotating like a climber does at the end of a rope? Researchers at the Laboratoire de physique des lasers (CNRS/University of Rennes) have described the exceptional properties of this material which still has some secrets to reveal. The results will be published in Nature on 30 March 2006. Link Music fingerprinting system is fastest yet: It can identify songs from a database of 17 million songs in under 1 second, say its creators – but music fans may want more than speed.
Link North Korean slaves: North Korea, for all its nuclear ambitions, is close to economic disaster, and is short of food, fuel and the simplest material goods. To pay its debt to Russia (which Moscow will not cancel), it exports a migrant labour force to be cruelly exploited in Russia's far eastern wild west.
Link Bacterium makes nature's strongest glue: Microbial adhesive is three times stronger than superglue.
Link ESA's Venus Express To Reach Final Destination:
 It was on 9 November last year that ESA's Venus Express spacecraft lifted off from the desert of Kazakhstan onboard a Soyuz-Fregat rocket. Now, after having travelled 400 million kilometres in only about five months, the spacecraft is about to reach its final destination. The rendezvous is due to take place on 11 April. Link Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Geeks of War! Quote: "Oh, those little geniuses. People sometimes ask me, do I worry about the potential of our nation to produce technological leaders who can solve the difficult problems of tomorrow? And I proudly say, no, I do not. Because our science leaders-in-training can steal two-ton cannons and smuggle them across country just for the fun of it. [...] How did they transport a cannon cross country without getting caught? Homeland security!"
Link Dancing Soldier: The relationship between Counter Strike and Michael Jackson is closer than assumed.
 Link Crushed by History: Andrew Stevens interviews young author Noah Cicero about existentialism, wage slavery and kinky sex: "I wrote the book because I wanted to show that kinky sex is normal in America now. And to demystify the sex in the book, that is usually considered perverted by the media. But in reality weird sex is a billion dollar business and it wouldn't make billions unless it was completely normal like toilet paper or milk. It came out of meeting people at XXX theatres and swingers, that were just normal everyday people. You don't need to be a hippy to have a kinky sex anymore."
Link Sopranos in Drag:
 An interpretive review of The Sopranos in the Washington Post. It includes an interesting idea: >The mob story, it might be argued, replaced the Western as the great American epic in the last third of the 20th century. As the counterculture was shredding the myth of the West into a million little pieces with movies such as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Wild Bunch" and even "Midnight Cowboy," the first two "Godfather" movies were winning Best Picture Oscars. Those films retold the American epic on the urban frontier. "Goodfellas" solidified the idea that "Mafia + Movie = Art."< A story of the American Dream, a sitcom in dramatic drag (via metaphilm). Link The Future of Hegel by Catherine Malabou: Peter Benson bravely reads a difficult book (by Catherine Malabou) about a difficult philosopher (G.W.F. Hegel).
Link How to bleed an astronaut -- safely: Taking blood from arteries can be crucial in diagnosing problems in health emergencies – but doing so in the microgravity of space is tricky and potentially dangerous.
Link The movie Sony re-HEALLY doesn't want critics to see: How bad is "The Benchwarmers"? So bad that Sony disinvited the press, al over America, from seeing the darned thing. Except in Orlando. And therein, is a tale...
Link The gospel of Judas: An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of what is known as the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years. The text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him, scholars reported today. In this version, Jesus asked Judas, as a close friend, to sell him out to the authorities, telling Judas he will "exceed" the other disciples by doing so.
Link Antique Spectacles: David Fleishman, M.D., a retired ophthalmologist, has compiled a rather extensive collection of information about spectacles and their importance in history. In addition to many examples of early spectacles and information about the spectacles worn by figures in history, there is a general history - Eyeglasses Through the Ages (via Metafilter).
 Link Can We Talk? Conversation is an illusion, claimed Rebecca West. It is "intersecting monologues, that is all." Really? Carlin Romano is not so sure...
Link Movie Theatre Pulls Trailer About Downed Jet: A New York movie theatre has stopped showing a trailer for an upcoming movie "United 93," which chronicles the hijacked United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. "I don't think people are ready for this. One lady was crying. She was saying that we shouldn't have played the trailer. That this was wrong."
Link Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy: Daniel Hausman and his collaborator Michael McPherson (formerly President of Macalester, now of the Spencer Foundation) have just published the new edition of their book Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy.
Link Neoliberalism: Myths and Reality: Agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have enhanced transnational capitalist power and profits at the cost of growing economic instability and deteriorating working and living conditions. Despite this reality, neoliberal claims that liberalization, deregulation, and privatization produce unrivaled benefits have been repeated so often that many working people accept them as unchallengeable truths. Thus, business and political leaders in the United States and other developed capitalist countries routinely defend their efforts to expand the WTO and secure new agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) as necessary to ensure a brighter future for the world’s people, especially those living in poverty.
Link Kripke, Duchamp & the Standard Metre: Stuart Greenstreet isn’t quite sure how long a metre is. Are you?
Link Scientists Build Liquid Crystal Bifocals: Eyes lose their flexibility with age, sometimes making it difficult to shift focus from near to far or vice versa. To combat the problem, Benjamin Franklin devised bifocals--eyeglass lenses shaped for near viewing in the lower half and distance vision in the upper portion--more than 200 years ago. Now researchers have created liquid crystal lenses that can change between long-distance and reading modes with the flick of a switch.
Link Thought Experiments can be Harmful: In "Thought Experiments can be Harmful", Bob Damper asks if thought experiments can sometimes be misleading or even harmful. In an analysis, citing various examples of thought experiments from Galileo to John Searle, Damper highlights some of the problems and drawbacks in trying to understand the phenomena that thought experiments are supposed to elucidate.
Link Bio-engineered bladders successful in patients: It is the first time a discrete, complex organ has been grown and transplanted into people – the researchers are now working on hearts and pancreases.
Link The CIA: Cowboys, Indians and Whistleblowers: David MacMichael is a former CIA Analyst, US Marine and historian. He was a senior estimates officer with special responsibility for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the CIA's National Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983. He resigned from the CIA rather than falsify reports for political reasons and testified at the World Court on the illegalities of Iran-Contra.
MacMichael started The Association of National Security Alumni, an organization to expose and curtail covert actions, and is a steering committee member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). MacMichael discusses his background, ethical issues in intelligence, and the relevance of Iran-Contra to current national security issues. Link nam-shub web beta 0.1: A project by Jörg Piringer. Quote: "nam shub web is a website processor. it takes the textual content of external websites and applies user defined rules to generate visual poetry out of it. these rules consist of operations that change the text or modify the visual appearance. each set of rules can be stored and published for others to view and alter. however nam shub web does not store any actual content. it only records commands of how to alter the external website content. in case of a dynamic website as the source the visual and textual results change with the dynamic content."
Link Full Body Pornolize Your Words! We tried it with "mono"...
 Thanx to Carlos Katastrofsky for the hint. Link New Test Boosts Search For Extraterrestrial Life: Researchers have identified a new test case that could be used for evaluating extraterrestrial samples for evidence of life. The new test could ultimately allow the use of simpler analytical instrumentation on future space missions.
Link Apple vs. Apple (Again): Apple Computer is being sued in British court by the Beatles' record label, Apple Corps, with the label claiming that a copyright infringement occurred the moment the computer company moved into the music business with its iTunes downloading software. It is the third time that Apple Corps has gone after the maker of Macintosh computers and the iPod. At issue in the current fracas are differing interpretations of the out-of-court settlement that resulted from the last clash between the two Apples.
Link Caveman Crooners May Have Aided Early Human Life: Music gives biologists fits. Its ubiquity in human cultures, and strong evidence that the brain comes preloaded with musical circuits, suggest that music is as much a product of human evolution as, say, thumbs. But that raises the question of what music is for. Steven Mithen, author of The Singing Neanderthals, says "language may have been built on the neural underpinnings of music."
Link Nietzsche and the Meaning of Noir:
 Movies and the 'Death of God'... Mark Conard looks at definitions and the meaning of Film Noir in this excerpt from 'The Philosophy of Film Noir'. 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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