Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 718

Australian political flap over YouTube parody

*You'd think that yet another Hitler "Downfall" parody mashup would be no problem these days –

gosh, there are hundreds of the things — but they've become a vernacular video for political score-settling. You put the needle in with this Hitler thing and they'll have your job, "totally unacceptable," "thorough investigation," the whole nine yards.

*So much parody Hitler that you can't see it's Hitler any more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26wwln-medium-t.html

*The offensive video i...

Syd Mead

*It's just like hanging out with veteran design-fiction guru Syd Mead in a car, because that's in fact what's happening here:

http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~mstoll/?p=967

(…)

MICHAEL: You once said that your normal approach is to take an object from the present and by alienating it, transferring it into your future visualisation. Is this for the recipient's orientation?

SYD MEAD: Well that's important because I'm commercial. For me fine art doesn't have to be necessarily commercial. (And if it is, ...

Design Fiction at Institute for the Future

*Futurism, vernacular video and imaginary gadgets. We're gonna see a lot more stuff like this.

http://www.iftf.org/node/3162

The Open Road London (1927): a silent film in colour

*Eerie media-survival here. Advanced and retrograde at the same time.

Guns and Dope

*Man, only in the USA.

http://www.kval.com/news/local/692448...

KVAL 13 - Eugene, Oregon

Smoke medical pot, lose your Second Amendment gun rights?

by BRAD CAIN Associated Press

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The right of Oregonians to use marijuana for medical

reasons and also to obtain concealed handgun permits is being challenged

by local sheriffs who say federal law prevents those people from packing

heat.

Advocates for the state's medical marijuana law countered Wednesday in
the Oregon Court of...

Jury Statement, Share Prize 2009

The winner of the SHARE Prize 2009 is Andreas Muxel for his mobile sculpture "Connect." This mesmerizing installation, with its precarious mixture of bouncing rubber and flying steel, is like a world financial crisis all by itself. With simple but powerful elements, "Connect" generates endless dramatic episodes of comical failure and heroic determination. The vital network of "Connect" won't stop changing, and we can't stop looking at it.

The honorable mention goes to Ralf Baecker for...

Do Not Attempt To Light With Match

http://www.nextnature.net//?p=2892

The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown

*Favela satellites.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom?currentPage=2

*The missing aspect here is a satellite "stuffed animal" or a satellite "squelette." These would be satellites formerly owned by defeated and extinct military forces, or commercial satellites that failed and were never formally completed, so that their skeletons can be occupied by space-squatters.

*Fantastic story here. A ne plus ultra of cyberpunk high-tech lowlife.

Web Semantics: fabricator jargon

*The cool thing about this torrent of verbal weirdness is that he's trying to explain it as simply as possible to hapless newbies.

"If you have to meshes that have a widely disparate density of vertices, like an organic mesh being unioned with an eight-vertex cube, subdivide the one with the lower density and then triangulate."

http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/prepping_blender_files_for_3d_printing

Cayce Pollard, design icon

*Not bad for a character from a science fiction novel.

http://nogoodforme.filmstills.org/blog/archives/2009/05/22/style_icon_cayc.html