Bruce Sterling's Blog

*Science fiction writers like to get on Margaret Atwood's case because she badmouths science fiction as a commercial category, but maybe ol' Margaret can just write about Canadian mutant urban algae farms and we'll all be happy.

*I follow Margaret on Twitter and she comes across like a perky seventeen-year-old, which isn't bad for a glum, heavily politicized apocalypse-fan in her 7th decade.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/10/margaret-atwood-speculative-fictions-apocalyptic-optimist

For a...

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*There's about a million eccentric power-generation schemes; this one's especially cute because it's osmotic. There's an Arthur C. Clarke story — gosh, must be 50 years old by now — that had a passing mention of an "osmotic bomb."

*You gotta like the idea of Norway somehow running on membranes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8377186.stm

Norway's Statkraft opens first osmotic power plant

By Mark Gregory

BBC News technology correspondent

The world's first power project that generates energy by m...

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*An awful drought. Really bad. Things do look much better now.

*There are some few Texan ranchers *still inside* the shrinking areas of extreme drought, guys watching their neighbors recovering while they stay seared by the crisis. I wonder what kind of Thanksgiving those people are having. A stoical one. "Cow people, out of the old rock," as J Frank Dobie used to say. Well — maybe it'll rain.

Texas Ranchers Welcome Rain After Historic Drought

Date: 26-Nov-09
Country: US
Author: Ed...

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(((The takeaway here:)))

"Military Ties
"• Military cooperation and arms sales have become a central aspect of Israel-India relations.[28:] 

• In 2009, Israel overtook Russia as India's leading arms supplier, with Israel and India signing more than $1 billion in defense contracts in 2007 and 2008.[29:] 

• India has increasingly turned to Israel for sophisticated weapons systems. The Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 was particularly significant in expediting India's acquisition of air and n...

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/07/politics/washingtonpost/main5368594.shtml

(…)

"To some authorities, the new laws are essentially licenses to grow money. With a $100 investment in enriched soil and nutrients, almost anyone can cultivate a plant that will produce two pounds of marijuana that can sell for $9,000 in hundreds of medical marijuana clubs or on the street, according to growers.

"High-end marijuana grown under such special conditions often fetches 10 times the price of...

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http://www.guttergeek.com/page184/october2008/motioncomics/motioncomics.html

"The biggest issue of motion comics may be that they're trying to fill a niche that simply doesn't exist."

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*Okay, first, just have a look at THIS:

"Tears of the Black Tiger," a modern Thai cinema effort:

http://henryjenkins.org/2009/11/on_the_pleasures_of_not_belong_1.html

(…"

"Paradoxically, though, genres have had a tighter hold on our imagination in recent years as the range of cultural choice has broadened and audiences have fragmented. Film historian Rick Altman tells us that far from imposing rigid boundaries between genres, the old studio system depended on the idea that the same film could...

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Avatar Machine [LONDON:] 2008 from MARC OWENS on Vimeo.

http://www.marcowens.co.uk/index_frame.htm

"Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.

"The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment…."

via @_neural

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*American pop music used to be full of white middle-class Anglo kids who had taken some LSD and gotten all "weird." Nowadays we've got pop music by extremely dissociative, utterly globalized networked kids who enjoy backpacking in the Hindu Kush while contemplating Italian Futurism. With ProTools. And they can cook.

http://www.myspace.com/kundalinishockattack

(…)

"Ashvin and Yousuf are both avid cooks as well, the old KSA song "Botch It Up Boccioni" being a culinary reference to the Italian F...

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*Hey wow! Neat surveillance hack!

*Can't wait to see the law and order surge as girlfriends of prominent Tory politicians are marked "of interest." That would sure make great fodder for another anti-Tory "desperate housewives" sex blog.

*In fact, given the fact that "mission creep" in this system is so promising, why not mark ALL Tories "of interest?" Marking peace demonstrators "of interest" is sort of ridiculous, because they don't matter and nobody ever listens to them.

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