Freiheit für Mumia Abu-Jamal! Michael Schiffmann interviewed by
Hans Bennett.
German author Michael Schiffmann's new book Race Against Death. Mumia Abu-Jamal: a Black Revolutionary in White America (an expansion of Schiffmann's Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Heidelberg), has just been released in Germany this past month. Schiffmann recently took time out of his busy schedule (touring Germany promoting Race Against Death) to interview with Axis of Logic. Link Night Of The Living Enzyme: Nano-chambers Mimic Living Cells: Inactive enzymes entombed in tiny honeycomb-shaped holes in silica can spring to life, scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found.
Link Road to the Stars (USSR):
 Road to the Stars was one of the most amazing special effects accomplishments in film history. Pavel Klushantsev began working on the colour film in Leningrad in 1954. His aim was to explain and realistically portray the coming age of space exploration. With technical advise from Tikhonravov (who was secretly developing the Soviet Union's first manned spacecraft at the time), Klushantsev showed tremendous ingenuity in explaining and portraying man's conquest of space. The film was nearing completion when Sputnik 1 was launched. Klushantsev hurriedly filmed a sequence illustrating this feat, and the film was released internationally a month later. The film begins in Kaluga, following the life of Tsiolkovskiy, as he finds the basic technical solutions to spaceflight. Each discovery is explained in layman's terms. The early experiments of GIRD are restaged. The final section of the film portrays the launching of the first Soviet man into space, the first space station, and the first landing on the moon. In creating this footage Klushantsev created marvellous special effects, using techniques copied by Stanley Kubrick ten years later for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Indeed, some sequences in 2001 seems a shot-for-shot duplication of Road to the Stars... Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
 HANS APPLEQVIST - naima (Häpna) ELODEA - cataclysm (basement apes ind) MÚM - the peel sessions (Fat Cat) PANDA BEAR - bros (Fat Cat) PUPILLE / SUPERSTATIC REVOLUTION - split (basement apes ind) TANG - another thousand days, out of this world (emolution) Burma: a 24th province for China: Burma's military junta announced in October that it would resume drafting a new constitution. A few days later it arrested many of its opponents, particularly from the National League for Democracy, whose leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest. The junta has relocated the capital and continues to run Burma for its own profit.
Link Lloyd Cole, Film Interpreter: metaphilm reports that perennial hopeful-yet-melancholic Lloyd Cole has a new album out, Antidepressant, which is worth noting for the song, Woman In A Bar, which is a fine tribute to both Lost In Translation as well as Girl With A Pearl Earring.
Opening lyrics: Idealized vision of a woman through a smoke-filled, twentieth-century screenplay, advancing, Toward protagonist with paperback and beard, manifestly failing, to disappear. Now that the children are asleep, you want to play, But you're so lazy... She walks into the bar, There you are. Still life watercolour Woman In A Window... Other films seem to be referenced, which your publisher has not seen, and then later in the song, Cole admits what his true obsession was all along: No longer angry, No longer young, No longer driven to distraction, Not even by Scarlett Johansson. I am Not a Man I am Dynamite: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition: Brian Morris deplores John Moore and friends’ views on Nietzsche and anarchism.
Link Everybody's doing it... Explicit sex in films and books used to be shocking but there are signs of a new liberalism gaining ground. This autumn John Cameron Mitchell's film Shortbus - which shows unsimulated sexual relationships in all their fun and intimacy - opened in America without a peep from anyone. Are we growing up at last?
Link Get ready for 24-hour living: Quote: >>So Much to do, so little time. Between a hectic work schedule and a thriving social life, Yves (not his real name), a 31- year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one. "If I take a dose just before I go to bed, I can wake up after 4 or 5 hours and feel refreshed," he says. "The alarm goes off and I'm like, let's go!" Yves is talking about modafinil, a stimulant that since its launch seven years ago has acquired a near-mythical reputation for wiring you awake without the jitters, euphoria and eventual crash that come after caffeine or amphetamines. Yves has been popping modafinil on and off for the past three years and says it is "tremendously useful". "I find I can be very productive at work," he says. "I'm more organised and more motivated. And it means I can go out partying on a Friday night and still go skiing early on Saturday morning."<<
Link New monochrom content // The Flower Currency / Phase 2: Video: A project to explore a value exchange system. We just returned from the flower laminating in Amstetten, Lower Austria. And here's a short video interview with Ian Grigg and Stefan Lutschinger.
 Link / Project Page Link / YouTube 'Jaws' Record-breaking Catfish Caught in Spain: Its not the only one out there. An animal like this could easily be mistaken for a "sea serpent" or lake monster if sighted near the surface.
Link More Poison, Says Bush: Thanks to the Bush administration, farmworkers and many other Americans will continue to be exposed to methyl bromide, one of the most dangerous of the pesticides that seriously endanger public health. Methyl bromide is so toxic that an international treaty signed by more than 180 nations in 1987, the Montreal Protocol, banned its use worldwide as of 2005. But there's a gaping loophole in the treaty that the administration slipped through last year and again this month to allow U.S. growers to keep using thousands of tons of the poison through at least 2008. Despite the objections of European nations and the treaty staff's technical committee, the United States was again granted an exemption from the ban by invoking a provision in the treaty that allows methyl bromide to be used if there are no feasible alternatives.
Link Snake Oil: A Guide for Connoisseurs: Quote: >>In an earlier article, "Peddling Snake Oil" (Nickell 1998), I addressed the question of snake oil's existence. At least one source had asserted: "There is no such thing as snakeoil, though many thousands of bottles containing stuff called snakeoil were sold to gullible patrons of carnival sideshows in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries" (Morris and Morris 1988). Actually, real snake oil was prized for its reputed medicinal properties. However, those were modest compared to the claims of later cure-alls sold under the name "snake oil." Here is an attempt to trace the evolution of both the product and its labeling-with examples from my personal collection".<<
Link Mirror, Mirror: Evidence that psychology, like biology, is conserved between human and nonhuman species augurs a shake-up for science and society.
Link Detecting Aggression in the Human Voice: Officials in a Dutch town have set up a system of street microphones set to pick up on aggressive sounding voices. The system "helped police make three arrests in a trial run earlier in the year. According to New Scientist Tech, the secret sauce is software that detects 'high frequency vowel sounds [that] span a broader frequency range'."
Link monochrom appearance // Jake Appelbaum @ Cranky Geeks: Our San Francisco ambassador Jake Appelbaum was interviewed for Cranky Geeks.
Link monochrom event // The Flower Currency, part 2: Lamination: The Flower Currency is "a hippyesque post-hippie approach to changing the world". It is a project to explore a value exchange system, created and owned by children, to enable people to collaborate on the creation of interdisciplinary (art) works.
In May 2006 we invited interested people to a flower picking Saturday afternoon in Amstetten, Lower Austria. Now it's time to return to Amstetten. November 25 (4 PM) we'll all meet again at Cafe Kuckuck and we plan to laminate the dried flowers into credit card sized plastic cards, turning the flowers in tradeable tokens. If you can't come along, maybe you want to listen to the project song by monochrom/Kertal.  monochrom, Ian Grigg, Stefan Lutschinger and other friends invite you to join! Link Ulysses Starts New Journey Around The Sun's Poles:
 Sixteen years after its launch on Oct. 6, 1990, the Ulysses spacecraft has begun its third "solar polar orbit" -- a journey around the poles of the sun. The mission, a joint NASA-European Space Agency venture, studies how the sun's gaseous outer atmosphere spews into space, creating huge space storms. This violent "space weather," in turn, can affect Earth's electricity, satellite and cell phone communications. Link OurSpace: the new frontier: The left needs to do much more than simply oppose the marketisation of public services – it must promote a positive alternative. In a series of articles this month, Red Pepper authors consider how that might be done. Hilary Wainwright sets the scene.
Link My God Problem: By Natalie Angier. Intro: >>So, on the issue of mainstream monotheistic religions and the irrationality behind many of religion's core tenets, scientists often set aside their skewers, their snark, and their impatient demand for proof, and instead don the calming cardigan of a a kiddie-show host on public television. They reassure the public that religion and science are not at odds with one another, but rather that they represent separate "magisteria," in the words of the formerly alive and even more formerly scrappy Stephen Jay Gould. Nobody is going to ask people to give up their faith, their belief in an everlasting soul accompanied by an immortal memory of every soccer game their kids won, every moment they spent playing fetch with the dog. Nobody is going to mock you for your religious beliefs. Well, we might if you base your life decisions on the advice of a Ouija board; but if you want to believe that someday you'll be seated at a celestial banquet with your long-dead father to your right and Jane Austen to your left-and that she'll want to talk to you for another hundred million years or more—that's your private reliquary, and we're not here to jimmy the lock.<<
Link Communication guerrilla - a message out of the deeper german backwoods: Intro: "This message is directed to those who are fed up with repressive politics at their doorsteps, who are not frustrated enough to give up their critical positions and a perspective of political intervention, and who are refusing to believe that radical politics must be straight, mostly boring and always very serious. It addresses those who are interested in bending the rules of normality using textual, artistic, spacial expressions, playing with all kinds of materials and techniques such as wall-painting, woodcarving or the internet. It is sent by some communication guerrillas in provincial germany. It is an invitation to participate in, criticise, renew and develop a way of doing politics which acknowledges the relentless seriousness of reality without sending the more hedonistic parts of ourselves immediately to sleep. Wittyness in a situation of increasing racism, state-control and decline of the welfare state? Yet - even Karl Marx didn't declare boredom as revolutionary..." (All rights dispersed.)
Link Green light for nuclear fusion project: A seven-member international consortium signed a formal agreement on Tuesday to build a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear fusion reactor that will emulate the nuclear processes of the Sun. "This is a new step in an exceptional adventure," French President Jacques Chirac said at the signing ceremony in Paris, France. The project aims to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves, although nuclear fusion remains an unproven technology (see No future for fusion power, says top scientist).
Link Concerns about Google's book project: Jean-Noel Jeanneney is president of France's Bibliotheque Nationale. And he has some concerns about Google's project to digitize the world's books. Quote: >>Jeanneney, in short, looked at Google's 'boast' on its Corporate Information page - 'Google's mission is to organize the world's information' - and thought, 'Mais non. Not your job.' And too important a task to be run by a company whose "dominant philosophy is still that of short-term profit."<<
Link The interview: Robert Pirsig: The Seventies bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was the biggest-selling philosophy book ever. But for the reclusive author life was bitter-sweet. Here, he talks frankly about anxiety, depression, the death of his son and the road trip that inspired a classic.
Link Left Behind: Religion, Technology, and Flight from the Flesh: An online book by Stephen Pfohl.
 Preface: One Nation Under God: Quote: >>The United States of America is history's first formally secular republic. The U.S. constitution guarantees legal separation between church and state. This is one reason why America has long been viewed as a beacon of modern enlightenment, democratic governance, and scientific rationality. This is the sober and pragmatic America envisioned by the nation's "founding fathers," most of whom were deists. This is an America governed by "self-evident" rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is also the America of "the Protestant ethic" described by Max Weber, an America that believed that "the rational and utilitarian uses of wealth ... were willed by God for the needs of the individual and the community." In this America, enlightenment and religion stroll as cordial companions, each complementing the existence of the other. But this is only one side of a decidedly Janus-faced America. Since its inception, another powerful -- and far less rational -- religious spirit has split the nation's attention, bifurcating America's vision of itself and its place in world history. The second American religious spirit is the intense, emotionally charged, and judgmental Christian spirit of a nation believing itself to be the divinely ordained agent of God's kingdom on earth. This is an apocalyptic religious spirit, a harbinger of God's imminent intervention into the course of human history. From the time of the American Revolution to the present, when political leaders invoke this second spirit to praise the virtues of freedom and liberty, the terms they use are "saturated with religious meaning." This is to speak of freedom in ways that transcend the human rights and democratic principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. Here, freedom is drenched in biblical connotations and blood, an offspring of grace and the unerring authority of the Gospel. This suggests a special kind of freedom -- not simply freedom from tyrannical rule and unjust authority, but freedom found in "the joy of conversion, and a liberation from the pain and sorrow of normal life."<< Link Hubble sees dark energy's youth: Ancient supernovae show that mysterious force existed early in Universe.
Link Iran Bans Dozens Of Classics: Dozens of literary masterpieces and international bestsellers have been banned in Iran in a dramatic rise in censorship that has plunged the country's publishing industry into crisis.
Link When scarification goes bad: An unhappy body modification customer undergoes some repair work. This is *really* gory. Beware.
 Link Beyond intention: In March the British House of Lords approved the antiterrorist law proposed by the Blair government after the London Transport attacks of 7 July 2005. The law represents a new step in the British government's ability to criminalise any political act, as well as support for such an act or even spoken opposition.
Link The laugh's on extremists: Even as the cultural chasm between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists widens, a new generation of Muslim comedians are attempting to bring everyone who falls in between the two extremes back to their senses, and to the basic reality that everyone loves to laugh.
Link Ideology Has Consequences: Bush rejects the politics of prudence: Quote: >>Many Republicans must feel like that legendary man at the bar on the Titanic. Watching the iceberg slide by outside a porthole, he remarked, "I asked for ice. But this is too much." Republicans voted for a Republican and got George W. Bush, but his Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party we have known. Recall the Eisenhower Republican Party. Eisenhower, a thoroughgoing realist, was one of the most successful presidents of the 20th century. So was the prudential Reagan, wary of using military force. Nixon would have been a good secretary of state, but emotionally wounded and suspicious, he was not suited to the presidency. Yet he, too, with Henry Kissinger, was a realist. George W. Bush represents a huge swing away from such traditional conservative Republicanism.<<
Link Cosmonaut to tee up for monster orbital golf shot: Never mind that he has played golf only twice in his life. Next week the Russian flight engineer aboard the International Space Station will hit a drive that even Tiger Woods couldn't match.
Link Where the Bombs Are: Ever wondered where all those nukes are stored?
 A new review published in the November/December issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists shows that the United States stores its nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads at 18 locations in 12 states and six European countries. Link 9 Billion-Year-Old 'Dark Energy' Reported: Astronomers have discovered that billions of years before a mysterious antigravity overcame cosmic gravity and sent the galaxies scooting apart, it was already present in space, affecting the evolution of the cosmos.
Link What can we learn from a babbling brain? A new study suggests that religious people who believe that God can take over their minds and cause them to "speak in tongues" are at least correct that those in such a state are not fully in control of their own brains at the time. Another study proves that brains can like ice cream. "These studies play with the ticklish notion that our brain mediates all of our inner experience—whether we're angry, or in love, or enjoying a vanilla ice-cream cone. Every feeling can be expressed in patterns of neural activity spread out on a computer screen. But does the specific pattern associated with enjoying ice cream tell us anything new—about the brain, or ice cream, or ourselves?"
Link monochrom related event // RE/Search PRANKFEST: Announcing RE/Search PRANKFEST, the official Pranks 2 Book Release Party. Pranks 2 features Yes Men, Billboard Liberation Front, monochrom and many other pranksters. PRANKFEST will take place at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California; November 18th, 2006.
 Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
aMUTE - the sea horse limbo (intr version) MELODIUM - music for invisible people (autres directions) METALLIC FALCONS - desert doughnuts (voodoo eros) THE SADIES - in concert vol.1 (Yep Roc) CHAD VAN GAALEN - skelliconnection (sub pop) WELCOME - sirs (fat Cat) FUCK: "Scholars and linguists will examine the long history of fuck. Comedians, actors, and writers who have charted and popularized the upward course of fuck will be heard from, often while defending the Constitutional Right of Free Speech, all the way to the Supreme Court. FUCK will visit with those who actually fuck for a living. We'll hear from advocates who oppose fuck and it's infringement into our everyday lives. We'll watch some of the most famous and infamous film and television clips that feature fuck, we'll hear some of the most famous fucks ever uttered and we'll feel the impact of fuck on our everyday lives."
The trailer looks amazing, it features Ice T, Kevin Smith, Janeane Garofalo, Billy Connolly and fucking Hunter S. Thompson! Link X-Men vs. Superman: Mutation, Eugenics, and the Politics of Evolution: On the surface, both the X-Men and Superman films push a message of hope over fear, but what deeper instinctive fear could there be than that of being genetically supplanted?
  Link Michael Albert interviewed by Kritische Masse: Michael Albert, born in 1947, is an author and political activist of the anarchist-syndicalist movement, living in Boston (Massachusetts / USA). Albert founded the alternative publisher "South End Press" and is the author of seventeen books and hundreds of articles. Together with Robin Hahnel he conceived the vision participatory economics which is currently in a big discourse. In the book titled "Parecon" - which is short for "participatory economics" - Michael Albert describes a post-capitalist society and economy. This book, highly praised and translated into many languages including German, by publisher name, he describes a complex system radically different from the dominant capitalist economy of exploitation and private ownership.
Link US: Republican deficits: The Democrats made full use of the situation in Iraq in their successful campaign for Senate and House seats in the mid-term elections. Although George Bush will stay on until the end of his presidency in January 2009, his job will be directly affected by the Democrats' victory.
Link Air Guitarists Rejoice: Engineers Design Wearable Instrument Shirt:
 Australia's scientific research agency, CSIRO has 'built' a shirt which could fulfil the fantasy of anyone who has, in the privacy of their homes, jammed along with one of rock 'n roll's great lead guitarists. Link How many hits? Quote: "Every year, a handful of songs do much, much better than all the others, and nobody has much idea why. If the hits only did a little better than the non-hits, this unpredictability wouldn't matter. But that's not how it works. Only about one-fifth of artists end up making money for the label, and a few make so much that they subsidise everyone else, but you can't tell in advance which ones will do well." But new software hopes to have cracked the hit code.
Link monochrom admin // Dorkbot Vienna #1: November 15, 2006 (8 PM) the first Dorkbot Vienna will be held at werkzeugh. The first guest will be David Moises. He is currently building a DIY helicopter and will talk about the project.
 German info Ruyi - train transport as you wish: A new train connection between north China and Germany begins formal operation after test run. The train, named Ruyi (chinese: as you wish it) cuts down transport duration to 15 days. It will operate twice a month and has an annual capacity of 50.000 tons.
Link Reset Design / Tattoos: DaddyD writes: "I like tattoos. I even used to do them. I also used to be a graphic designer. Although there are some skill sets shared by both jobs, a good tattoist doesn't always make a good designer, and a good designer doesn't always make good tattoo designs. Reset Design is giving it a shot though. They have sponsored an exhibition of tattoos designed by some of there favorite designers, who have been asked to propose new directions for tattoos."
 Link Kyoto: a false consensus? At the UN climate talks in Nairobi, Kenya, from 6-17 November, many participants are likely to concentrate on defending and extending the Kyoto Protocol against the Bush administration's opposition. However, a new book critiques the embattled Kyoto agreement and other carbon trading schemes from a different social justice.
Link Meteorites: Friend or Foe? In this interview, Monica Grady discusses the varieties of dust and meteorites that have fallen to Earth, and explains what they tell us about the history of the solar system and its potential for life.
Link Asserting Our Right to Kill and Maim Civilians: At the talks beginning in Geneva today, the British government will fight attempts to ban cluster bombs.
Link Signs Of Intelligent Classical Life On The Net: Quote: "Make no mistake: there is intelligent life in classical blogworld and it is getting smarter. It is also getting read. Classical blogs come in two streams, pro and am. One the pro side are newspaper critics who blog on their employers’ website; on the am, there are buffs and fans and wannabes."
Link Fear And Money In Dubai: On the rim of the war zone, a new Mecca of conspicuous consumption and economic crime, under the iron rule of Sheikh al-Maktoum. Skyscrapers half a mile high, artificial archipelagoes, fantasy theme parks—and the indentured Asian labour force that sustains them.
Link Y2K-like fears create shuttle scheduling crunch: NASA hopes to get its next space shuttle off the launch pad and back on the ground by the end of 2006 in order to avoid computer problems similar to those once ascribed to 'Y2K'. It is now considering moving the shuttle Discovery's planned lift-off ahead by one day, to 6 December. The space shuttle's computer software is about 30 years old and does not recognise when the calendar year switches. On 1 January 2007, for example, it will think it is day 366 of 2006 – a problem NASA calls 'year-end rollover'.
Link A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise: Agnes L. runs a blog about vegan ice cream. Quote: "I'm a vegan. I like ice cream. I also like playing around in the kitchen. Add it all together and you get this blog. Store-bought vegan ice cream can be expensive and your flavor choices are limited. So make your own!"
Link monochrom review // Spectacle - Art - Society: Guy Debord and the Situationist International: English language review of our recently published book.
"Spectacle - Art - Society" is the titel of a recently published german reader about Guy Debord and the Situationist International edited by Stephan Grigat, Johannes Grenzfurthner [monochrom] and Günther Friesinger [monochrom]. What is it all about? The Situationist International (SI) was a very small group of international, political and artistic agitators with roots in Marxism, Anarchism and the early twentieth century European artistic avant garde. Formed in 1957, the SI was active in Europe through the 1960s and had aspirations for major social and political transformations. In the 1960s the group, split into a few different groups, including the Situationist Bauhaus, the Antinational and 2ns SI. [...]Link That's Cool: A Flotilla Of Parasols In Space: A scientific proposal to stop climate change. Let's use trillions of small sunshades launched into an orbit between the Sun and the Earth to reduce solar radiation and cool the Earth.
Link Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Link World Trade Center Museum Delayed Until 2010: Quote: "The World Trade Center Memorial Museum's opening has been pushed back beyond the original target date of 2009, the Daily News has learned. Though the WTC Memorial, with two sunken pools marking where the twin towers stood, is still due to welcome its first visitors in 2009, the adjoining museum containing WTC artifacts won't open until mid-2010. The delayed museum debut must await completion of a visitors center, which will provide access to the museum's underground exhibition space."
Link Aeronautics Engineers Design Silent, Eco-friendly Plane:
 MIT and Cambridge University researchers unveiled the conceptual design for a silent, environmentally friendly passenger plane at a press conference Monday, Nov. 6, at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London. Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
BOUTROS BUBBA - hearing voicst in a beer commercial ... (narrowminded) VITOR JOAQUIM - flow (cronica) PFAFF - how to explain the flipstand ... (narrowminded) PETER REHBERG - kapote muzieck by (korm) CHAD VAN GAALEN - skelliconnection (Sub Pop) WELCOME - sirs (fat Cat) TRANSMISSIONARY SIX - radar (Glitterhouse) ANDREA BELFI - between neck & stomach (häpna) Fossils Of Ancient Sea Monster Found In Montana: A fossil-hunting trip to celebrate a son's homecoming resulted in the recent discovery of an ancient sea monster in central Montana.
Link this is japan, part 2: The second part of my gallery on my recent (well...summer) trip to Japan is online. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
 Link Is Google Evil? "Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don’t assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans--and everybody else--beware."
Link Computer Gaming World 1-100:
 You can read and download digitized versions of the first 100 issues of "Computer Gaming World" magazine, beginning with the first issue in November 1981, and then see covers of all the rest of the magazine's run through the final issue in November 2006. Founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe, Computer Gaming World began life as a small, self-published, independent magazine for the then small community of computer game hobbyists (it was, in fact, the first magazine dedicated to the hobby), but grew over the years into one of the most important and powerful media voices in all of digital entertainment, thanks to its strong editorial voice and reputation for tough but fair reviews. From its earliest days, covering games for the Atari and Apple II systems, through the recent era of blockbuster titles for high-end PCs, CGW has always been known for the expertise, passion, and talent of its editorial staff, from Johnny Wilson to Scorpia to Loyd Case and more, and this archive is dedicated to them. Link Man-Hood: The Undergarment for Circumcised Men:
 For circumcised men who consider investing in a substitute foreskin. Link The Prokofiev Diaries: Prokofiev's diaries have been published for the first time. "The diaries, translated by Anthony Phillips, were written by Prokofiev between 1907 and 1914."
Link Z Machine Melts Diamond To Puddle In Experiments On Capsule For Nuclear-fusion Fuel: Sandia's Z machine, by creating pressures more than 10 million times that of the atmosphere at sea level, has turned a diamond sheet into a pool of liquid.
Link CENTENARY OF WOMEN'S FULL POLITICAL RIGHTS IN FINLAND: "The year 2006 is the 100th anniversary of universal and equal suffrage in Finland. The year 1906 represents an important milestone for women's social and political participation. Finland was then the first country where women could fully exercise their voting rights and eligibility to stand for elective office. Altogether nineteen female MPs were elected to Parliament in 1907."
Link Name Dropping: Want to Be a Star? If you think that a star can be named after you, and that once one is, it's all official, think again. The whole commercial "star registry" charade is awkward for astronomers.
Link The Critical Distinction Between Science and Religion: The view that all human experience can be reduced to the function of biological activity may be satisfying to scientists, but it is anathema to theologians. The researchers Marguerite Lederberg and George Fitchett recognize this problem in an interesting article with the provocative title "Can You Measure a Sunbeam With a Ruler?" In it, they explore the scientific problems with attempts to reduce the experience of religion to the measurable quantities of science. The point of their title is to reiterate a longstanding concern in science: the difficulty of quantifying human experience. By attempting to measure a sunbeam and in so doing reduce it to that which can be quantified by a ruler, we lose the character of the sunbeam itself. While such measurement may be possible, it cannot capture the essence of the sunbeam and in fact may distort it.
Link South Park meets World of Warcraft: "How can we kill him? He's got no life!"
 (via open sourced brain) Link Programming Language Inventor Or Serial Killer? Can you tell the difference between murderous butchers and programming language inventors?
Link Born Again Ideology: Religion, Technology, and Terrorism: An online book by Arthur Kroker.
 Intro: >>One hundred years after the publication of Max Weber's classic text, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the fateful relationship between Protestantism and capitalism has been renewed in American political discourse. Except this time it is no longer the original convergence theorized by Weber between the spirit of Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism whereby Christianity was destined to be ultimately secondary to the unfolding historical project of capitalism, but the opposite. In a contemporary political climate marked by the resurgence seemingly everywhere of faith-based politics, capitalism and its historical correlate -- modernism -- have actually folded back on themselves, quickly reversing modernist codes of economic secularism and political pluralism, in the interests of being reanimated with the evangelical spirit of religious fundamentalism. What Weber foresaw as a primal compact between Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism -- this migration, first in Europe and then in Puritan America, of Puritan attitudes towards personal salvation based on giving witness by habits of frugality, hard work, and discipline into the essentially acquisitive spirit of capitalism -- has been renewed in new key. On the centennial of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the political universe is suddenly dominated by the spirit of what might be called the New Protestant Ethic as the ideological reflex of the age of networked capitalism and empire politics.<< Link / Book's index Sweden calls for a ban on cluster bombs: A global assessment of cluster weapons estimates they have killed or wounded about 100,000 people since the 1960s – 98% of them civilians.
Link Pollock Sale May Be A New Record: Hollywood mogul David Geffen has sold a Jackson Pollock painting for a reported $140 million. The price, if accurate, is the highest ever paid for a painting, outstripping last year's $135 million acquisition of Gustav Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I."
Link FRN623 Ring TV:
 A nondescript TV sits on top of a small dresser. When activated glazed plexiglass screen drops with a crash and out Ring Girl flies up, out and down out of the front of the TV. Price: $2,895.00 Link Motivating Science: Science communication from a philosophical, educational and cultural perspective: Edited by Nigel Sanitt. Quote: "Motivating Science is a selection of articles taken from The Pantaneto Forum. The Forum seeks to inspire debate on how scientists communicate and how communication could be improved by embracing and understanding the philosophical foundations of science."
Link Coming Soon: A Carbon-Neutral Movie: An independent filmmaker has made a green film. "This means that all of the carbon dioxide emitted by the filmmaking process -- lights, cameras, transportation -- was totaled up and offset by comparable investments in renewable energy. Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to climate change."
Link Thai Artist Bakes Edible 'Body Parts': Inside a dark room, realistic-looking "human body parts" are stacked on shelves and hanging on meat hooks. The place looks like a mortuary or the lair of a serial killer, but in fact, it's a bakery. What appears to be putrefying body parts are the bread sculptures of 28-year-old art student Kittiwat Unarrom. (Thanx, Carlos Katastrofsky!)
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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