Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 710

The Pirate Stock Exchange

*Another breakthrough in black globalization, and this one is straight out of Margaret Thatcher. A real ownership society, for Somalians. I wonder if narcotics and suicide bombings could be privatized in this way.

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idUSTRE5B01Z920091201?sp=true

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"One wealthy former pirate named Mohammed took Reuters around the small facility and said it had proved to be an important way for the pirates to win support from the local community for their...

Dwelling in Space

*A fun assignment. I don't write 'em like this every day.

http://www.dwell.com/articles/space-living-astro-home.html

http://www.dwell.com/articles/life-in-space-email-from-the-iss.html

Sugru polymer clay

*Nice vernacular video. Maybe it's just me, but this harmless, hack-friendly pitch sure has the strong vibe of being the first two minutes of a really good TWILIGHT ZONE episode. Cubic centimeter by cubic centimeter, the infectious Clay From Out of Space eats its way into everything!

"He and his wife had gone with the three professors from Miskatonic University who hastened out the next morning to see the weird visitor from unknown stellar space, and had wondered why Nahum had called it so l...

Augmented Reality Resources for Software and Hardware

*Have at it, developers.

http://sproke.blogspot.com/2009/11/augmented-reality-resources-for.html

"One aspect of AR DevCamp is building and hacking stuff. Augmented Reality has been around for quite some time and there are many software projects and some hardware projects. I'll cover what I found after a couple of days of searching. This isn't intended as a comprehensive list, rather its a sampler of what's available right now.

"Marker based Augmented Reality

"Augmented Reality has been...

Good News from Ars Electronica

*Wait a second — Ars Electronica is bigger? More popular? They even fed people? And this in a tough year for festivals, that was like lighting a fire in wet snow? That's good stuff to hear.

2009 Has Been a Very Successful Year for Ars Electronica

Attendance Boom at the New Ars Electronica Center

(Linz, November 30, 2009) More than 230,000 visitors, big demand for the facility as an event venue, rave revues for the food & beverage offerings, and two international architectural prizes-less...

Jonathan Littell

*Life must have its wrangles for Mr. Jonathan Littell. He just "won" a "Bad Sex Award," which is a prank given out by British literateurs in order to tease people for writing about sex in ways the British find unacceptable. I've seen other "Bad Sex Award" nominees, and they usually write about sex in ways that are silly and banal. Whereas Jonathan Littell's supposedly "bad" sex writing doesn't look very bad to me at all. It's not even very sexual. His "award" makes his critics look like ...

Music Break

*"Hand drawn," he says. Well, yes, but not "hand drawn" as that activity was formerly understood in animation.

Flightpattern from Gwen Vanhee on Vimeo.

The Friends and Family of J G Ballard

*Science fiction writers are pretty interesting, but the lifelong intimates of science fiction writers are interesting in their own way.

http://www.ballardian.com/rick-mcgraths-letter-from-london-jg-ballard-memorial

Arphid Watch: RecycleBank

*The RFID system is on the trash collector rather than the recycled items, but the pay-consumers-for-trash system is an interesting twist.

http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/733246

Nov 11, 2009, By Elaine Rundle

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Incentive-based recycling may have a strange ring to it — especially to the ears of city officials — but that's what some cities are doing to discourage citizens from throwing away recyclables. By reducing the amount of waste cities must dump at landfills, they save money in tipping ...

Nocturno: Cinema, Televisione & Cultura Popolare

*Valerio Evangelisti writes for this Italian orrore/fantascienza film mag. And Valerio writes some pretty to-the-point material, too, such as "Perche perdo tempo a guardare questo merda?"

http://www.nocturno.it/default.aspx