Apr 08
ROBOT COCKROACH SWARM unleashed in Sheffield lab: If you’re ever under some rubble just take a deep breath and relax: Any minute now, robotic cockroaches will swarm over you. The medical benefits of a programmable group of nanobots are pretty obvious, but the swarm could also have military applications such as search and rescue operations …
Apr 04
Six Ballard Documentaries: I haven’t seen any of these (maybe The Atrocity Exhibiton? – can’t remember) but I’ve been sitting on it for months so, here ya go. Enjoy. If you’re into that sort of thing. Ever heard the sound of a nuclear bomb going off? Historian unveils one of the few surviving audio recordings …
Apr 03
Patakk: Just a lovely little gif site. Arty, ya know? Jose Molina on Jose Molina: Umpires are part of baseball. So fooling them is also part of baseball. Jose Molina (one of the famed Molina brothers) is one of the best in the game at stealing strikes. He explains how. J.P. Arencibia’s night in 9 …
Mar 31
A Stoned Cop Explains Why He Doesn’t Stop Crime In Dystopian Cairo: Gangs supported by political groups, hard drugs and corrput cops. I have no idea if any of this is true (the source is a stoned cop after all) but it makes for an interesting read. Thousands of paroled CA sex offenders, felons easily …
Mar 25
SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK. “ARCHITECTURAL PARALLAX; SPANDRELS AND OTHER PHENOMENA OF CLASS PUGGLE: ŽIŽEK writes about architecture and plucks his usual strings. The highlight for me was this: On the southern side of the demilitarized zone that divides North from South Korea, the South Koreans built a unique visitor’s site: a theater building with a large screen-like …
Mar 22
Work, leisure, nature, and culture, all previously dispersed, separate, and more or less irreducible activities that produced anxiety and complexity in our real life, and in our ‘anarchic and archaic’ cities, have finally become mixed, massaged, climate controlled, and domesticated into the simple activity of perpetual shopping. All these activities have finally become desexed into …
Mar 20
The Borg Complex: A blog that explores “the Rhetoric of Technological Determinism” and calls it The Borg Complex. As in “resistance being futile.” Borg Complex pronouncements are not necessarily wrong, but they do obscure complex realities and foreclose serious discussion. I’m interested in understanding the sources of Borg Complex rhetoric and examining the ends to …
Mar 18
Twitter’s tribes ‘have their own languages’: Real live scientists have discovered that different groups of people on twitter have their own slang. Or that you can group people together based on slang. I’m not really sure which. Either way, patents have been filed and advertisers alerted. What Did 1988 Los Angeles Think 2013 Los Angeles …
Mar 15
Bee safe; as the weather warms, Eureka urban beekeeper explains how to handle a visit from a swarming colony: Basically, don’t bug them and they won’t bug you. Bees are pretty laid back. For those unfamiliar with a swarm, 76-year-old Margaret Applegate advises not to reach for the hose to spray the cluster or a …
Mar 14
Gang of chimpanzees kills their alpha male: Seems that chimps sometimes kill their leaders. Wilson says male chimps compete for access to small numbers of females, so they have an incentive to kill each other. But rival groups sometimes attack them, so they also have a reason to keep their fellow males around for support. …
"This ultra-sharp, darkly satiric, hyper-speed novel is set in a world where multi-level mega malls serves as city states and everything on the outside lies in ruin. On the lower red levels, gang violence and media saturation and bio-tech designer drugs rule. During the weekend, slummers from the green levels leave their safe lives of jobs and families to partake in risky, sometimes deadly, fun on the red levels. And on every level, TV and advertisements literally penetrate the mind. Death is easy and life cheap, until that life is your own or your beloveds. Extreme stylization, great characters, and a high-level of intensity is maintained throughout. This is a whip-smart, truly violent novel that has at its core a still very human pulsing heart."
