Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 705

Dead Media Beat: British teletext

*"What's teletext?" our younger readers naturally wonder.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/jersey/hi/tv_and_radio/newsid_8366000/8366937.stm

The Teletext information service on analogue and digital television will close across the UK on 16 December.

Limited services including holidays, racing and bookmaking and the subtitles on analogue channels will remain available. ((("analogue channels")))

Teletext's chat and dating TV channels on Freeview will also be unaffected.

Speaking to the BBC in Jersey...

Crank literary intellectual ponders crank literary intellectual

*I'm gonna miss stuff like this when it's not around any more.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/hitchens-koestler

"… in his last two decades Koestler abandoned every kind of scruple and objectivity and became successively bewitched by "theories" of levitation, ESP, telepathy, and UFOs. He was enthralled by Timothy Leary and played for a sucker by the paranormal spoon-bender Uri Geller. The sleep of his reason did not even bring forth monsters: poor Koestler simply gave a fair wind and his ...

Denialists, skeptics, warners and calamatists

*I always wanted to be in a fifth camp which was aesthetically opposed to polluting the sky for design reasons. I mean, why exactly did we want the blue sky we inherited to be brown for our grandchildren? 'Cause it was cheap? 'Cause we knew no better? That was it? Those were reasons enough for our misbehavior?

*Very wise and foresightful things by Stewart Brand here. Except for one issue. Real calamity, as opposed to futurist calamities and scifi calamities. If we all figure out that w...

Experience Design Treasure Map

*I just keep stumbling over this thing, and every time I do, I stare at it for a longer period and I feel a bit more uneasy.

Australian coal junketeers blow the genocide whistle

*I can tell (without even bothering to look, frankly) that these smoke-blowing fanatics are somehow in the pay of the Australian coal industry. The thing that interests me about this weird screed is that it finally talks so openly and frankly about killing large numbers of people in order to avert climate change. I've been expecting this for quite some time.

*From a market-centric perspective, it's long been obvious that mass murder is the cheapest, most commercially effective, most final...

Search engine privacy

*You might guess that that very idea is an oxymoron, but not according to Katherine Albrecht.

*One hasn't been hearing a lot out of Katherine lately. Her relative silence is a sign of ill health for the RFID business. If she can't be bothered to condemn them, they must not be up to much.

Dear Colleague:

Recent privacy discussions about Microsoft and Google have re-ignited

the important debate about search engine privacy. In a CNBC interview

aired last week, the issue was made clear:

"If ...

Chicken tikka masala was invented in Britain.

*Or so he claims. I'm finding that hard to believe.

*Maybe chicken tikka is better described as a global dish. Sort of like a hamburger, which after

being ported all over the planet sure doesn't have much to do with Hamburg.

*One could likely compose an entire cookbook of dishes of transnational origin, especially because so many nations have ceased to exist while their food just chugs right along.

*If you deconstructed most modern restaurant meals you'd find the ingredients came from most e...

German steampunk role-playing convention

*You have to admire that Teutonic attention to detail.

http://clockworker.de/cw/2009/09/28/first-german-steampunk-con-die-reise-nach-tunguska/

When drama is at a premium, reticence and delicacy communicate best

*Brian Eno's diary from over 30 years ago.

*The guy actually talks to HIMSELF in this way. No wonder he has trouble sleeping, with that cavalcade of beautifully framed ideas.

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/melma77b.html

via @ballardian

Bollywood Bling with Kalki Koechlin

*Our Kalki has been hitting her P.R. stride lately. Social software and vernacular video are acting on Bollywood like a tonic. I'm following currently Priyanka Chopra, Mallika Sherawat, Abhishek Bachchan and Karan Johar, while Kalki's boyfriend/director Anurag has a high-minded cinema blog.

*Kalki is the most intriguing of all current Bollywood personnel because Kalki is so wildly improbable and yet so totally imperturbable. I"m sure that Kalki doesn't consider herself incredible (even...