February 15th, 2012 | brainjuice
Wake up, little SUSY (Blog) – physicsworld.com
"some of the most reliable gossips in the particle-physics blogosphere had being saying to expect news of evidence for a supersymmetry particle – or sparticle – to come from the Large Hadron Collider today… four or five searches for several supersymmetric partners of various quarks and leptons – squarks and sleptons called the stop, stau and sbottom…"
(tags:sci neologism )
Post #13743
February 14th, 2012 | brainjuice
How secret renditions shed light on MI6′s licence to kill and torture | World news | The Guardian
"Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act offers protection not only to spies involved in bugging or bribery, but also to any who become embroiled in far more serious matters, such as murder, kidnap or torture – as long as their actions have been authorised in writing by a secretary of state."
(tags:war pol crime )
Post #13742
February 14th, 2012 | comics talk
Comics artist Francesco Francavilla’s hobby appears to be slinging gorgeous illustrations up on the web for the fun of it. Check this recent gem from his Pulp Sunday artblog:
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmlkshk.com%2Fr%2FCL7C)
Post #13738
February 14th, 2012 | photography
Post #13737
February 13th, 2012 | photography, researchmaterial
Jan Chipchase is in Dire Dawa, in Ethiopia, and got these shots of houses being cladded with hammered-down food-aid tins.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmlkshk.com%2Fr%2FCL4K)
Jan notes:
The ongoing geo-political situation in the surrounding countries, creates a steady stream of refugees.
Post #13736
February 13th, 2012 | music
A remix/reinvention of Brooks’ MUSIC FOR DIETER RAMS, a radiophonic marvel in which every single note and sound was sourced from the Dieter Rams-designed Braun AB-30 alarm clock. It was a fascinating bit of work, but RECONSTRUCTIONS is more my speed – reconfiguring the original piece as a 21-minute long motorik ride-out into a very beautifully designed aether. The redoubtable Head Technician of Pye Corner Audio gives it some proper kosmische on the accompanying piece. Stream it here, or click through and buy for four quid. Splendid.
[ http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=1622671096/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/ ]
Post #13735
February 13th, 2012 | brainjuice
Planck mission steps closer to the cosmic blueprint
"It comes from the region surrounding the galactic centre and looks like a form of energy called synchrotron emission"
(tags:space )
Post #13741
February 13th, 2012 | photography

On the move for the next couple of days on business. Let’s see if the post-scheduler thing works again.
Post #13740
February 13th, 2012 | researchmaterial
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmlkshk.com%2Fr%2FCL3U)
I do love a bit of speculative architecture:
The scenario describes a structure that grew out from the ocean—facing a progressive rising of water as its colonizers struggle to maintain an equilibrium. It is forever undergoing constant repair as it struggles to stay afloat—supported only by a system of mechanic agents who supply it with the necessary substances and means to create inhabitable grottoes. Without this ongoing system, the structure would easily collapse, returning back to the depths of the ocean from which it has once risen.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm8.staticflickr.com%2F7057%2F6865488807_5a752d93c3_z.jpg)
The colonizers live in fragile pockets, grottoes created by the voids between the calcium carbonate deposited by the machines and the resulting upward forces of gases. These spaces are always fluctuating, their morphology adjusting to deal with the constant beating of forces from water currents and pressure. The machines themselves are not immortal—over time as they continue to deposit substance, the calcification process eventually renders them immobile, trapping them in their own secretions…
Click through for more and bigger.
Post #13734
February 12th, 2012 | stuff2012
ZONA is a book about a man sitting in a room watching a film about a man going to sit in a Room. The film is STALKER, Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, based upon the sf novel ROADSIDE PICNIC by the brothers Strugatsky. (I like STALKER.)
The man is Geoff Dyer, a man who has watched STALKER so often that he is compelled to write a book about it. A book about the film STALKER, and a book about the act of watching STALKER, and a book about him watching STALKER and all the times he’s watched STALKER. Which probably sounds appalling. But, even as the story of STALKER unfolds as a journey into the deepest core of the characters, ZONA becomes a ride into the depths of the film, and of the nature of cinema, and, often quite affectingly, into Dyer’s own life. I must’ve watched STALKER half a dozen times, but Dyer teased new angles out of the film for me, with clear sight and cranky humour, and I’d recommend it just for that – but there is a lot more to like in ZONA.
on Amazon.co.uk
| on Amazon.com
Post #13733
February 12th, 2012 | brainjuice
Remote Sensing Tutorial Table of Contents
" Remote Sensing is a technology for sampling electromagnetic radiation comprising a signal emanating from its source target that is used to acquire and interpret non-contiguous geospatial data from which to extract information about features, objects, and classes on the Earth's land surface, oceans, and atmosphere (and, where applicable, on the exteriors of other bodies in the Solar System, or, in the broadest framework, celestial bodies such as stars and galaxies)."
(tags:tech sci drones surveillance space ) Guernica – Inside & Out: A Talk at Fordham University-Lincoln Center
“I note what you say about your aspiration to edit a magazine. I am sending you by this mail a six-chambered revolver. Load it and fire every one into your head. You will thank me after you get to hell and learn from other editors there how dreadful their job was on earth.”
(tags:magazines ) Hidden Communal Guns Are More Common – NYTimes.com
"Somebody said, ‘Get the Waka Flocka.’ Two men broke off, crossed East 161st Street, entered the lobby of an apartment building, approached the bank of 207 mailboxes and opened one. Waka Flocka is the name of a rapper. But to these men, the phrase described something else. The community gun."
(tags:crime social ) Unknown Fields Division
Living Jelly, from UNKNOWN FIELDS DIVISION http://www.unknownfieldsdivision.com
(tags:ifttt googlereader UNKNOWN FIELDS DIVISION ) NASA Unveils Future Aircraft Designs: Stunning Models (PHOTOS)
"The stunningly innovative designs, which NASA calls "greener flying machines for the year 2025", are being developed by three firms under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project."
(tags:tech design+fiction ) [Video] Artist’s Time-Lapse Map of the World’s 2053 Nuclear Explosions
"The video was created in 2003 as a series expressing Hashimoto's view of, "the fear and the folly of nuclear weapons." The video represents nuclear tests with a colored dot and a beep on a map. It starts slow in 1945, showing a world view of a couple flashes in the southwestern United States before zooming in on the two bombs dropped in Japan. The video then pans out and continues for the duration from a birds-eye view of the world. The climax comes between 1955 and 1970 as the Soviet Union joined the U.S. as a nuclear power and England, France, India and Pakistan eventually joined the arms race."
(tags:war )
Post #13730
February 11th, 2012 | brainjuice
Russia sounds alarm over spiralling teenage suicides
"The number of 15 to 19-year-olds taking their own lives is almost three times higher than the world average at 19 to 20 per 100,000, the health ministry's chief psychiatrist Zurab Kekelidze told a round table in Moscow."
(tags:social ) Mystery of Britain’s Largest Meteorite Solved. Found at Druids burial site near Stonehenge « Stonehenge News and Information
"With a weight that rivals a baby elephant, a meteorite that fell from space some 30,000 years ago is likely Britain’s largest space rock. And after much sleuthing, researchers think they know where it came from and how it survived so long without weathering away."
(tags:space geo )
Post #13729
February 10th, 2012 | about warren ellis/contact
My lovely fashion photographer friend Ellen Rogers (her credits include i-D, Vice and Dazed), incredibly kindly did me some new head shots for the forthcoming publication of GUN MACHINE.
You can see a wider selection at her Facebook page here, which you should Like if you can because she’s always adding wonderful new work to it. But this is the one we’ve settled on for immediate use.

Again, Ellen, thank you, so much.
Post #13727
February 10th, 2012 | brainjuice
Humans, Version 3.0 § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
"This mystery mechanism of human transformation is neuronal recycling, coined by neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, wherein the brain’s innate capabilities are harnessed for altogether novel functions."
(tags:bodymod future bio neuro ) Sentient Developments: PETA names plaintiffs in their suit against SeaWorld: Five orca whales
"This is the first time a U.S. court will hear legal arguments over whether animals should enjoy the same constitutional protections as humans. The lawsuit invokes the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution, which abolished "slavery or involuntary servitude" in that country."
(tags:law ) Guernica / Russ Baker: Is Israel Really Iran’s Main Adversary? The West Doth Protest Too Much
"The battle between the Prime Minister and the former spymasters got so intense that Netanyahu ordered an investigation into leaks about an impending Israeli attack on Iran, which he believed had been perpetrated by the retired spooks. How do we know about this secret leak investigation? The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz picked up a report from a Kuwaiti newspaper which cited an unnamed Israeli source. Such arcane telegraphs reek of covert struggle. The public is the last to know what’s really going on, or why."
(tags:pol war ) Guernica / White on Noir
"…the town is a post-apocalyptic industrial hellhole. When you first get there you think, “This is the ugliest place I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing attractive about it, there’s nothing inviting, let’s just leave.” After two hours, you realize that every place you’re going is numbered, as if you’re inside the guts of a circuit board or you’re living in a combination lock. The two people I was traveling with would send me a text, “Oh we’re in Region 8” or “Come meet us at 8174.” After the first three or four hours we started looking around and saying “Oh my god, we’re in an Alphaville set…”"
(tags:cities energy war )
Post #13726
February 9th, 2012 | microlog
When I am England football manager, there will be no more talk of 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 formations. There will only be THE DEATH ARROW FORMATION.
Post #13725
February 9th, 2012 | brainjuice
Legacy of nuclear drilling site in Colorado still lingers | MNN – Mother Nature Network
"In 1969, the US government detonated a subterranean nuclear bomb to break loose natural gas deposits from tight sandstone formations more than 8,000 feet below ground on a Colorado mountain. The bomb was twice as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945."
(tags:eco energy ) an atlas of iphone landscapes – mammoth // building nothing out of something
(tags:eco comms )
Post #13722
February 8th, 2012 | researchmaterial
There is something faintly disturbing about this device.
To help alleviate physical weight on troops, DARPA is developing a highly mobile, semi-autonomous legged robot, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), to integrate with a squad of Marines or Soldiers.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmlkshk.com%2Fr%2FCFOD)
Post #13723
February 8th, 2012 | brainjuice
North Korea Developing UAV Based on U.S. Drone | sUAS News
"The North Korea drones are based on Raytheon’s MQM-107D Streaker target drones, which are used by the U.S. Army, and imported from a Middle East nation believed to be Syria, Yonhap news agency reported."
(tags:drones war pol ) Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil
"The genome represents the first high-coverage, complete genome sequence of an archaic human group – a leap in the study of extinct forms of humans. “We hope that biologists will be able to use this genome to discover genetic changes that were important for the development of modern human culture and technology, and enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world, starting around 100,000 years ago” says Pääbo."
(tags:history sci )
Post #13717
February 7th, 2012 | people I know
My old mate Garth Ennis is Kickstartering a children’s book, to be illustrated by Rob Steen:
ERF is the story of four friends at the dawn of time; Figwillop, KWAAAH!, the Booper, and Erf himself, and their adventures in the primordial world of long ago. The four take their first nervous steps out of the ocean and onto the shore, and are soon exploring the exciting new lands beyond. But danger lurks in the prehistoric jungle, and soon our heroes come face to face with the mighty and terrifying Colossux . . . An evolutionary tale of love and loyalty for children aged four and up.
Post #13719
February 7th, 2012 | spektrmodule
SPEKTRMODULE
06
The Chamber
50 minutes and 59 seconds
Direct mp3 link. Press Play on the player then find the menu button in the bottom left for other functions. iTunes link.
@warrenellis / warrenellis@gmail.com
1. logotone
2. “Initiation – Invocation†– Paul Horn (album: “Inside the Great Pyramidâ€)
3. Hello.
4. “Sacred Works Of Liberation†- Lama Gyurme (album: Rain Of Blessings: Vajra Chants)
5. “Celiesi, Brãliti (Mid-Summers Eve Latvian Pagan Celebration)†- Skandinieki (album: Global Celebration: Dancing With the Gods (Religious Celebrations) )
6 “(Summoning)†- Mount Eerie (album: White Stag)
7. Me again. I record all these on my phone, because I like the lo-fi, conversational sound.
8. “The Invocation†– The Flowers Of Hell (album: Come Hell Or High Water)
9. “hot saints†- Baloo (album: Avid Equestrian)
10. “4†- Reedbeds (album: G’morning gomorrah)
11. Me again.
12. “Interlude†- Julia Holter (album: Tragedy)
13. “New Beginning (Tidal Darkness)†- Deaf Center (album: Owl Splinters)
14. “Russian Waterfall†- Sarin Smoke (album: Smokescreen)
15. “Theme Number Eight†- Pye Corner Audio (album: Black Mill Tapes Vol.3)
16. “Swamp Magic†– Timber Timbre (album: Creep On Creepin On)
17. Me again.
18. “Parting Chant†– The Haxan Cloak (album: The Haxan Cloak)
19. “Want You†- Afrirampo (album: Kore Ga Mayaku Da)
20. logotone
PREVIOUSLY: 1 – Fire Axes In Space | 2 – The Lane | 3 – Comfort And Joy | 4 – Long Count | 5 – Underfoot
T-shirt?
Post #13716
February 7th, 2012 | brainjuice
Can Bees Make Tupperware?: Scientific American
"…it’s emblematic of the fact that there’s an enormous amount we don’t know about the world around us. It makes me wonder how many other things there are like this."
(tags:eco materials sci ) BBC News – ExoMars cooperation between Nasa and Esa near collapse
The American space agency looks set to pull the plug on its joint missions to Mars with the European Space Agency… budget woes…"
(tags:space ) Doyle McManus: U.S. targeted killing program needs discussion – latimes.com
"We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him," Hayden notes, "but we didn't need a court order to kill him. Isn't that something?"
(tags:drones war pol crime ) High planetary tilt lowers odds for life?
"Highly-tilted worlds would have extreme seasons, subjecting life to alternating periods of scorching and subzero temperatures. This could make the development of all but hardiest, simplest creatures a long shot."
(tags:space ) Cult Den interview answers – Jeff Noon, Feb 2012. – MOVIES.SHOWS.COMICS.BOOKS.GAMES.MORE
"Science Fiction is a massive, ever-expanding experiment with content, and I love it for that, I really do. Nothing else comes close. But I’m always surprised by the way the genre tends (apart from some notable examples) to ignore the experimentation of form. Form is the Host, Content is the Virus."
(tags:sf writing ) BLDGBLOG: Object Cancers
"…object cancers: bulbous, oddly textured, and other dramatically misshapen errors that only appear in 3D-reprinted objects. Chairs with tumors, mutant silverware, misbegotten watches—as if the offspring of industrial reproducibility is a molten world of Dalí-like surrealism."
(tags:fabbing printing physibles art )
Post #13705