Warren Ellis's Blog, page 67
April 25, 2012
Bookmarks for 2012-04-24
"The suggestion of a ghostly tongue bath was perhaps too much for Foucault to swallow."
(tags:writing )
BBC News – Ancient virus DNA thrives in us
"Traces of ancient viruses which infected our ancestors millions of years ago are more widespread in us than previously thought. A study shows how extensively viruses from as far back as the dinosaur era still thrive in our genetic material."
(tags:med bio history )
Three-toed horses reveal the secret of the Tibetan Plateau uplift
"Fossils of the three-toed horse genus Hipparion that have been found on the Tibetan Plateau have provided concrete evidence for studying the uplift of the plateau, including a skull with associated mandible of Hipparion zandaense from Zanda."
(tags:history )
April 24, 2012
Kemper Norton’s UNREQUITED Volume 3
Kemper Norton’s been a regular name here over the last few years, with his unique “slurtronic” wyrd ambient. He’s just released a new collection – and “collection” does seem to be the word, as it’s really a gathering of sonic flotsam from the shores of his cider-drenched brain – and it’s free to download. Listen here, click through to grab it.
The Mini-Jets Of The Saturnian F-Ring
At this link here, an article and short video by NASA illustrating and explaining these bright blazing anomalies in Saturn’s outermost ring. It looks like it’s growing spines or barbs in places.
"I think the F ring is Saturn’s weirdest ring, and these latest Cassini results go to show how the F ring is even more dynamic than we ever thought," said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at Queen Mary University of London, England. "These findings show us that the F ring region is like a bustling zoo of objects from a half mile [kilometer] in size to moons like Prometheus a hundred miles [kilometers] in size, creating a spectacular show."
Bookmarks for 2012-04-24
"As the pictures were shown to the court, Mrs Sebire and coroner Fiona Wilcox agreed that at no point did anyone seem to be following him." Because, of course, if you were a kill team tasked to kill a man without leaving an obvious cause of death, fold his body into a holdall and padlock it shut, and then probably leave four years' worth of women's clothes in his flat, you'd be DAMN sure to get yourself seen on CCTV, wouldn't you?
(tags:crime pol )
Sudan bombs South Sudan as Bashir vows not to negotiate | FP Passport
"South Sudan announced last week that it was withdrawing from the disputed Heglig border region in order to avoid all-out war, but the scope of the current attacks seem to go beyond Heglig, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has vowed not to negotiate until all South Sudanese troops are out of Sudan since southern leaders “do not understand anything but the language of the gun and ammunition." Last week, he referred to the South Sudanese leadership as "insects" and vowed to drive them from power."
(tags:pol war )
BBC News – Europe: A crisis of the centre
"There were two "moments" in the defeat of liberal centrist politics in Germany, Austria, Spain etc. in the 1930s: the first, where polite society realised the working classes were swinging to the right and left, but patronisingly reassured themselves that the world of Jazz, surrealist poetry and foreign holidays could never end. That is, they said to themselves: the workers are clinging to the past, but we, avatars of a more liberal and progressive future, have economic history with us, which points only in the direction of liberalism and economic co-operation."
(tags:money pol history )
The “Classical” Button (MP3)
"I like to think that this particular hotel radio is tuned to sounds leaking back from the future, a time when this kind of electronic noise, this light industrial piece, this static-laden minimal techno, is considered classical music."
(tags:music sound future )
April 23, 2012
Experiments In Food: Baked Eggs With Stuff In My Fridge
Am finding the time to cook a little bit, lately. Nothing flashy. I did a pasta sauce from scratch which I’ll probably note in MACHINE VISION this week. But I also did a quick lunch, which went like this:
Small roasting tin. Slice up a handful of tomatoes – I had 12 cherry tomatoes still in the veg box – into halves and quarters, and lay them skin side down in the tin. Drizzle over a little olive oil, a tiny pinch of sugar, a twist of salt and a dash of balsamic vinegar if you have it. It will all look quite appetising. Enjoy it, because it’s the last time this tin will look appetising for some while.
Bang it in the over at around 190C (Gas mark 5 or 375F) for half an hour, or until the tomatoes are starting to char.
Get the tin out, and smash the tomatoes up a little bit with a fork, to release a little liquid. Leave the oven on.
Now… what’s in your fridge? I had a handful of Swedish meatballs and a couple of spring onions. So I sliced those up and scattered them over the tomatoes. I attempted to make a couple of shallow indentations in the mess.
(I wouldn’t recommend bacon, or chorizo, because they’d release fat into the tin, and I think that would end badly for you. But if you habitually keep cooked meats in the fridge, as I do, this is a great way to use stuff up.)
I then took two eggs, fresh from the chicken’s bum, and carefully cracked them into the two indentations. If you have some smoked paprika in the house, sprinkle some over the yolks. Bang it back into the hottest part of the oven for ten minutes or so, until the whites go white rather than that sort of phlegmy transparent disgusting nonsense.
At which point you get baked eggs with smoked paprika tops on a bed of (whatever was in your fridge), spring onion and quick-roasted tomato.
Which, yes, does look like some terrible accident happened in your roasting tin involving a chicken and a dog that got run over by a bulldozer while throwing up. But it tasted really good, and took no time at all. It’s mostly just slicing stuff and tossing it into a tin.
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GUEST INFORMANT: Anonymous (warrenellis.com)
GRAVEL Director Announced (warrenellis.com)
LOGOTONE: Ian Holloway
And we begin the week like this, thanks to the wonderful Ian Holloway. This is the sound of warrenellis dot com this week:
Download audio file (Logotone-for-Warren.mp3)
Related articles
logotone (warrenellis.com)
LOGOTONE: Kim Boekbinder & David J (warrenellis.com)
April 20, 2012
SPEKTRMODULE 10
SPEKTRMODULE
10
Dirt Launchpad
27 minutes and 52 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 / merch
An uninterrupted mix.
1. logotone
2. “No Step” - Filastine (album: LOOT)
3. “Turu Ru Ru” – Un Caddie Renversé Dans l’Herbe (album: Fork Ends)
4. “Universes All” - Stag Hare (album: Liight Being Traveler)
5. “Teka Teka Šviesi Saul?” - Etnografinis Ansamblis (album: Senoji Lietuviu Liaudies Muzika (1971))
6. “October” - David Cain and Ronald Duncan (album: The Seasons (from the BBC Radio Schools Series ‘Drama Workshop’))
7. “space animals” - Technicolour Sattva (EP: technicolour sattva)
8. “Wilt” - Virgin Blood (album: Dreamt My Lover)
9. “Labor Day” - Foie Gras (album: HATE)
10. “Mantric” – Tomorrowland (album: Sequence of the Negative Space Changes)
11. “Telstar” – Takako Minekawa (album: Cloudy Cloud Calculator)
12. logotone
Lack of speech in this edition (again) is due to two long phone conferences and an exceptionally fraught work period (which is why this is also a week later than normal).
PREVIOUSLY: 1 – Fire Axes In Space | 2 – The Lane | 3 – Comfort And Joy | 4 – Long Count| 5 – Underfoot | 6 – The Chamber | 7 – Spark Gap | 8 – Death Is No Obstacle | 9 – Misty Eyed
Bookmarks for 2012-04-19
"East Africa's most populous city, Nairobi, is a booming metropolis, regional headquarters to major international corporations like Coca-Cola and Google, and filled with upwardly mobile urban dwellers. And all the trash they produce has to go somewhere. It ends up in Dandora, the city's only municiple dumpsite, where thousands of workers — men, women, and children — pick through refuse daily, looking for food and recyclable scraps to sell. It's a hard, toxic life — but it's also the only job available…"
(tags:eco photography pol )
April 12, 2012
Bookmarks for 2012-04-11
"Winglee and his students continue research in his Johnson Hall laboratory on the possibility of placing mag-beam units in orbit around Earth and around a planet such as Mars that humans might want to explore. With a unit on each end – one to give a spacecraft a high-velocity push on its journey and the other to slow it at its destination – a mission to Mars could be accomplished in as little as 90 days, rather than the 2.5 years it would take with conventional means."
(tags:space )
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