Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 700

Kandinsky in Processing

http://www.openprocessing.org/collections/?collectionID=136

*Just gives one a warm, fulfilled feeling, somehow.

Next up for finance: China's a bubble, entire countries go broke

*So, the good ol' World Economic Forum in Davos, soulful rich guys always frettin' about something… Y'know, the mortal enemies of the World Economic Forum over at the World Social Forum ought to be absolutely dancing in the streets about the downfall of global capitalism. They've been predicting this for years.

*Wait a minute… They're NOT dancing in the streets? Not one gloating street-puppet to be seen? Gosh all fish-hooks.

Drift, a short movie

via @vanderbeeken, who has good taste in these things

Drift from mustardcuffins on Vimeo.

Software Versus Weather

*Weather wins

How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?

http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_1.html#kelly

(…)

"Someone watching me surf the Web, as I jump from one suggested link to another, would see a day-dream. Today, I was in a crowd of people who watched a barefoot man eat dirt, then the face of a boy who was singing began to melt, then Santa burned a Christmas tree, then I was floating inside mud house on the very tippy top of the world, then Celtic knots untied themselves, then a guy told me the formula for making clear glass, then I was watching...

Green sea slug is part animal, part plant

*Speaking of humans with viruses for brains, what the heck gives with a mollusc that can photosynthesize? No, it doesn't have algae on board, it IS a freaking algae plant.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/green-sea-slug/

"SEATTLE — It's easy being green for a sea slug that has stolen enough genes to become the first animal shown to make chlorophyll like a plant.

"Shaped like a leaf itself, the slug Elysia chlorotica already has a reputation for kidnapping the photosynthesizing...

We're genetically eight percent virus, and that's why our brains malfunction

*Makes you wonder how human beings would behave if we were genetically 98 percent virus.

*Maybe it'll turn out that there's some ethnic group among us who is only one percent virus. Do we exterminate them, or make them our kings?

*Definitely the best anthropological science news since learning that Neanderthals wore makeup.

http://www.uta.edu/ucomm/mediarelations/press/2010/01/genome-biologist-reports.php

"ARLINGTON - A recent study on the 8 percent of human DNA that is derived from viruses may ...

Jaron Lanier is watching all his friends turn into peasants

*Well, somebody's noticing, even if it's in the Wall Street Journal, where the grinches grind the bones of the peasantry every day.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703481004574646402192953052.html

(…)

"I am appalled that our old fantasies have become so entrenched that it's hard to get anyone to remember that there are alternatives to a framework that isn't working. (((There's probably a way to sum this up in five words, and it would make a great T-shirt for aging Baby Boomers.)))

"...

French Bluestockings Have At It

*Literary plagiarism catfight! Everybody pile on!

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6982491.ece

France's notoriously lofty literary world is watching in slack-jawed amazement as the country's leading female writers lunge at each other with daggers drawn in a ferocious battle about plagiarism.

A tennis metaphor — "ladies' finals" — has been deployed in a magazine headline to evoke the extraordinary energy being invested by the novelists Camille...

Haul Out the Digital Pioneer Plotter Drawings

This exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum contains many early

works from the BCS Computer Arts Society SG collection:

The Victoria and Albert Museum, London presents a new display of early

computer-generated art and design.

Digital Pioneers

7 December 2009 - 25 April 2010

Julie & Robert Breckman Prints and Drawings Gallery, Room 90 and

Paintings, Room 88a

Free admission

This display provides an overview of the first decades of the
computer's history in art and design. It includes some of ...