Warren Ellis's Blog, page 75

Bookmarks for 2012-02-23

Anwar Kamal | The Economist

(tags:ifttt facebook like )
Researchers say galaxy may swarm with 'nomad planets'
Researchers say galaxy may swarm with 'nomad planets', from PhysOrg.com – latest science and technology news stories http://www.physorg.com/
(tags:ifttt googlereader PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories )
Study shows Maya civilization collapse related to modest rainfall reductions
Study shows Maya civilization collapse related to modest rainfall reductions, from PhysOrg.com – latest science and technology news stories http://www.physorg.com/
(tags:ifttt googlereader PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories )
The many moods of Titan
The many moods of Titan, from PhysOrg.com – latest science and technology news stories http://www.physorg.com/
(tags:ifttt googlereader PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories )

GAMMA

 

Unknown Field's Division collaborators Factory Fifteen have just released their short film GAMMA, shot on location during our 2011 expedition from the Chernobyl Exculusion Zone to Baikonur Cosmodrome. The landscapes experienced with the division have been reimagined as stage sets for a post nuclear future and members of the division are recast as actors navigating the ruins.

Full press release and details.

SPEKTRMODULE 07

SPEKTRMODULE
07
Spark Gap
34 minutes and 12 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

No voice from me this time.  One long radiophonic meditation.

1.  logotone

2.  "Music of Spheres" – Delia Derbyshire 

3.  "Untitled" -  Eduard Artemiev     (album:  Andrey Tarkovsky's 'Solaris')

4.  "Oddments" – Daphne Oram, Andrea Parker & Daz Quayle  (album: Private Dreams and Public Nightmares)

5.  "Snow Burial (While Blue Skies Gather)" – From The Mouth of The Sun  (album: Woven Tide)

6.  "Modern Approach" -  Fresh Touch  (EP: Fresh Touch)

7.  "John Three Sixteen" -  Cellutron And The Invisible   (album: Reflecting On The First Watch)

8.  "It's Raining In Atlantis" – Brother Raven  (album: Diving Into The Pineapple Portal)

9.  "The Tomorrow People Theme" – Dudley Simpson   (album: The Tomorrow People – Original Television Music)

10.  "Hang Garden" – Ochre   (album: Like Dust of the Balance)

11.  "Fell Sound" – Mirroring   (album: Foreign Body)

12.  "At The Boards" -  Loops Of Your Heart  (album: And Never Ending Nights)

13.  "Sea Bed Meditation" -  Jürgen Müller   (album: Science Of The Sea)       

14.  "New worlds" -  John Baker   (album: BBC Radiophonic Music)

15.  logotone

 

PREVIOUSLY: 1 – Fire Axes In Space | 2 – The Lane | 3 – Comfort And Joy | 4 – Long Count| 5 – Underfoot | 6 – The Chamber

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Bookmarks for 2012-02-22

Stratospheric superbugs offer new source of power
"Bacteria normally found 30 kilometres above Earth have been identified as highly efficient generators of electricity."
(tags:sci energy )

Night Music: Motion Sickness Of Time Travel

Discovered them last year, and this particular record still does regular service in my office.  As, indeed, it is right now.  Click through to buy your own download for Name Your Price, or stream the whole thing right here:

Slow Architecture by Motion Sickness of Time Travel

Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization Is Indistinguishable From Nature

I first came across this idea, I think, at Charlie Stross' blog some weeks ago.  I only chewed on it a bit, because I think I was still zoned out after finishing GUN MACHINE.  But it's just popped up in my feeds again, and this is the takeaway:

(Karl) Schroeder explains the Fermi Paradox – the apparent contradiction between the likelihood that extraterrestrial civilizations exist and the lack of evidence for them – by speculating that we have not yet encountered our cosmic neighbors because they are indistinguishable from their native ecology.

Which is a fascinating thought experiment, and gives a marvellously wiggy megascale corollary to Arthur C Clarke's famous dictum about any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

What I haven't seen dealt with yet in my skim-reading of the topic, and maybe it'll be there when I drill down, is this: the experiment seems only to work if we assume such societies generated no electromagnetic noise at all in their transition to that level of civilisation.  We have to conceive of a civilisation that had no period of electromagnetic broadcast in its lifetime, or else there would be ambient evidence and Fermi would seem to me to reinstate itself.  Which is a fascinating workout for the imagination.

Apparently This Is Something People Still Have To Say

Tom Spurgeon:

I would argue that the comics shops moved past any real, collective desire to even try to sell alternative and independent comics long before the publishers of those comics by necessity switched some of their focus to the book trade.

Bookmarks for 2012-02-20

Remembering Anthony Shadid | Foreign Policy
"Once, on a trip to Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, he purchased a video disc from a tea shop. Unlike Starbucks, which once sold music intended to relax the listener, the offering in Tikrit was titled "Anger." It was a compilation of bloody images of U.S. and insurgent attacks that was sickening to watch. Anthony bought it not because of its shock value, but because he knew he needed to see it to understand how Iraqi public opinion was being shaped."
(tags:writing war culture )
Where Have All the George Washingtons Gone? – By Aaron David Miller | Foreign Policy
"Lincoln gave four major speeches during his presidency; FDR gave only four fireside chats during his first year. Barack Obama gave over 500 speeches and major remarks during his first 365 days in office."
(tags:pol media )
Rhizome | Drone Desire
"In the world of robotic warfare, human pilots are apparently still good for something:  shooting down wayward drones."
(tags:drones war )
Researchers resurrect new species of life from ancient Andean tomb
"Carvajal and his team resurrected a number of different yeast strains, but not a one was saccharomyces cerivisiae — the yeast used in contemporary fermentation techniques. In fact, two of the strains were a new species entirely, and beonged to the genus Candida, many species of which are known to cause skin and vaginal infections. Carvajal's team named the new species C. theae, meaning "tea.""
(tags:sci )

The Trippy Soviet SF Art Of Nikolai Lutohin

The tumblr YUGODROM has been posting a lot of art by Yugoslav-born Soviet illustrator Nikolai Lutohin recently.  Take a look at this:

So They Let Me Into The Government Last Tuesday

Which was very interesting, actually.

I don't believe I'm allowed to mention why I was there, but I can assure you that it had nothing to do with national security or any actual function of government.  You are all safe.

It was all part of An Interesting Thing that an old acquaintance of mine has put together.  If said Interesting Thing survives the panel-beating that we're all taking to it, then I imagine it'll become public in due course.  You may be amused to learn, as I was, that I was drafted in as "the voice of not-sanity."

The phones get taken away as soon as you enter No 10, of course, after going through an airport-like security process.  "It's like an airport, except we don't want your shoes."  So I didn't even attempt to get shots of the interior, which is very townhouse-like, only with state dining rooms.  Not all that interesting.  What I enjoyed more was the company: technologists, diplomats, political operators, educators and other arcane specialists, the sort of people I don't often get to talk with.  The company alone made it worth an 830am meeting (830am being in all other ways a time that I do not believe humans should be forced to exist in).

So that happened.