Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 716

The Real Preity Zinta

*Bollywood actress, minor sports mogul and sometime human-rights campaigner Preity Zinta has discovered Twitter.

*This woman is so searingly intelligent that she is currently in Harvard taking a business-school course in mergers, acquisitions and negotiations. Why an actress would want to suffer in this odd way is a little beyond me — presumably it has something to do with the fortunes of her cricket team. Because she owns one.

*The other thing I don't get about Preity Zinta is that she...

We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die

*European literary intellectuals, man, there's nothing like 'em.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,659577,00.html

SPIEGEL: Mr. Eco, you are considered one of the world's great scholars, and now you are opening an exhibition at the Louvre, one of the world's most important museums. The subjects of your exhibition sound a little commonplace, though: the essential nature of lists, poets who list things in their works and painters who accumulate things in their paintings. Why...

Augmented Reality: ARForce

*Mighty odd input device there.

http://artimes.rouli.net/2009/11/new-video-for-arforce.html

FireEye versus Mega-D

*Get 'em.

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/11/researchers-well-aimed-stone-take-down-goliath-botnet.ars

"Security researchers have taken down a major spam offender, though the dip in spam levels may be only temporary. Members of the FireEye security team coordinated an attack on the Mega-D botnet (also known as Ozdok) last week by preemptively registering domains meant for the botnet's command and control channels (CnCs) and shutting down others. Spam coming from Mega-D stopped almost ...

Nokia 2015

*I was getting a little bored here until the Barcelona club girl and the Bollywood fisherman showed up.

Augmented Reality: augmented airbrush

*Just the cutest. It's sheer nifty.

http://thomaskcarpenter.com/2009/11/11/digital-airbrushing-with-spatial-augmented-reality/

Water and Space: call for papers

*They're really out-there.

CALL FOR PAPERS

WATER and SPACE: Societal, Educational and Cultural aspects

International Astronautical Congress

27th September – 1st October 2010, Prague

A joint session (E1.6.-E5.4) between the IAF Space Education and Outreach Committee and the IAA Commission VI and co-sponsored by ITACCUS on the topic "Water and Space: Societal, Educational and Cultural aspects" will be hold during the International Astronautical Congress that will take place in Prague in 2010.

Inter-...

Those Irrepressible Brazilian Steampunks

Hi there, Mr. Sterling, (((Olá!)))

I have some other news about Conselho SteamPunk (SteamPunk Council) here in Brazil. (((No kidding.)))

We started up a SteamPunk Encyclopedia (www.steampedia.com.br), already with a couple of foreign entries and with an automatic translator attached to the inner pages.

The great news though is even bigger. We managed to launch the SteamBook ~ The SteamPunk Social Network (www.steambook.com.br) - with an automatic translator in a bunch of languages so people...

Cumbia Sicodélica

*Bogota, Colombia:

http://www.myspace.com/bombaestereo

via @AlexSteffen

Love is Strange

*Now that I follow several members of the astronaut corps on Twitter, this scandal surprises me less. Come on, ladies and gentlemen, we're all mortal.

*I wouldn't post this if I hadn't posted it earlier on the blog here. A sad, very human story, and I'm pleased that none of the major characters are dead or in prison.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/10/florida.astronaut.trial/

Orlando, Florida (CNN) — A former astronaut who was accused of assaulting a romantic rival in the parking lot of t...