Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 767

Rock critic at the Royal Academy of Music

*I've never seen Paul Morley get so wrapped up in a topic. It looks like the gentleman

absorbed a fullscale humanistic education over there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/12/classical-music-becoming-a-composer

"As I write, I am completing a piece for string quartet. Yes, I am. At some point during the last few months the thought seemed to be the most exotic thing imaginable, and because it is such a difficult discipline, and very exposed, lacking the protection of blasting, chirping ma

Google Moon

*Google knows how to time their releases these days.

Facial Recognition + Social Networks = Augmented ID

*It's a conceptual piece, but alarmingly plausible. Be careful you don't venture out

to the Republican fundraiser with your Gay Disco Party Animal ID turned on.

Brazilian Steampunk has Lodges

*Lodges. Like Masonic Lodges? Boy, that's awfully 19th century.

"Hi there, Mr. Sterling,

"I am the founder of Conselho SteamPunk (SteamPunk Concil) in Brazil and felt honored by your mention of it on the Wired website.

"We offer infrastructure for regional lodges in Brazil so enthusiasts can have a place to host their websites and the necessary technology to produce digital SteamPunk culture in our country.

"If you have the time to look into it, I am sending you some of our other websites:"

Council

The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Street-War

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/ethnic_clashes_in_urumqi_china.html

*A bunch of well-chosen photos here of ethno-religious rioters busting up the joint in central Asia… ugly, of course, but nothing particularly remarkable there… However, check out the atemporal cellphone/spiked mace techno-mashup brandished by this agitated local urbanite. You see that hardware? He probably invented that. He made that gizmo up and he assembled it himself, I reckon. That's kinda like MAKEZINE gear for

Arphid Watch: Passport Sleeves

*Haven't had any arphid news on BEYOND THE BEYOND in a while. Not because we lost interest in RFID, but because the technology itself looks snafu'd. As the technology ages, its original headlong tech impetus is unable to overcome its many poorly-designed deployments.

*Here's the Obama State Department shrugging about their RFID train wreck, and hoping nobody notices that the previous Administration installed zillions of terror-friendly radio beacons in the purses and pockets of the American ci

Taos Digital Humanities Seminar

*They may be "scratching the surface of the surface," but wow, they sure are scratching a whole acreage of it. Looks like you could click the Humanities links here and live in that

page for a couple of centuries.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ajhmqphrhf8q_24cdk7hbwb

Restarting Car Design

(((Having a nifty designer fit of textbook "dark euphoria" in the ICSID site.)))

http://www.icsid.org/feature/current/...

(…)

"A quarter of a century has now elapsed and we once again find ourselves in a situation that could not be more dramatic. The age of petroleum is coming to a dramatic end and we can assume that all accompanying crises are directly or indirectly connected with this.

"The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk talks about a past decade of frivolity and intoxication. After repe

Texas: State of Disaster

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/07/17/0717drought.html

Drought aid tough to come by

Perry declares 167 Texas counties to be in a state of disaster.

By Juana Summers (((the improbably aptly-named)))

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, July 17, 2009

In letters to Gov. Rick Perry in February asking him to declare a state of emergency, officials in Bastrop and Caldwell counties said the areas were "facing significant threats to life, health and property" because of the persist

More mayhem from the Yes-Men

*This should help people who somehow imagine that Sascha Baron Cohen is

an outrageous comedian.

July 13, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"B'EAU-PAL" WATER SCARES DOW EXECS INTO HIDING

Plans to contribute to climate action in lead-up to Copenhagen

begin to take shape

Photos:

http://www.theyesmen.org/blog/dow-run...

London - A new, beautifully-designed line of bottled water - this time
not from the melting Alps, nor from faraway, clean-water-deprived
Fiji, but rather from the contami