When I am England football manager, there will be no more talk of 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 formations. There will only be THE DEATH ARROW FORMATION.

• Legacy of nuclear drilling site in Colorado still lingers | MNN – Mother Nature Network
  "In 1969, the US government detonated a subterranean nuclear bomb to break loose natural gas deposits from tight sandstone formations more than 8,000 feet below ground on a Colorado mountain. The bomb was twice as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945."
  (tags:eco energy )
• an atlas of iphone landscapes – mammoth // building nothing out of something

  (tags:eco comms )

There is something faintly disturbing about this device.

To help alleviate physical weight on troops, DARPA is developing a highly mobile, semi-autonomous legged robot, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), to integrate with a squad of Marines or Soldiers.

• North Korea Developing UAV Based on U.S. Drone | sUAS News
  "The North Korea drones are based on Raytheon’s MQM-107D Streaker target drones, which are used by the U.S. Army, and imported from a Middle East nation believed to be Syria, Yonhap news agency reported."
  (tags:drones war pol )
• Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil
  "The genome represents the first high-coverage, complete genome sequence of an archaic human group – a leap in the study of extinct forms of humans. “We hope that biologists will be able to use this genome to discover genetic changes that were important for the development of modern human culture and technology, and enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world, starting around 100,000 years ago” says Pääbo."
  (tags:history sci )

My old mate Garth Ennis is Kickstartering a children’s book, to be illustrated by Rob Steen:

ERF is the story of four friends at the dawn of time; Figwillop, KWAAAH!, the Booper, and Erf himself, and their adventures in the primordial world of long ago. The four take their first nervous steps out of the ocean and onto the shore, and are soon exploring the exciting new lands beyond. But danger lurks in the prehistoric jungle, and soon our heroes come face to face with the mighty and terrifying Colossux . . . An evolutionary tale of love and loyalty for children aged four and up.

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SPEKTRMODULE 06 The Chamber 50 minutes and 59 seconds

Direct mp3 link.  Press Play on the player then find the menu button in the bottom left for other functions.  iTunes link.

@warrenellis / warrenellis@gmail.com

1. logotone

2.  “Initiation – Invocation”  – Paul Horn   (album: “Inside the Great Pyramid”)

3.  Hello.

4.  “Sacred Works Of Liberation” -  Lama Gyurme    (album: Rain Of Blessings: Vajra Chants)       

5.  “Celiesi, Brãliti (Mid-Summers Eve Latvian Pagan Celebration)” -  Skandinieki    (album: Global Celebration: Dancing With the Gods (Religious Celebrations) )

6  “(Summoning)” -  Mount Eerie   (album: White Stag)

7.  Me again.  I record all these on my phone, because I like the lo-fi, conversational sound.

8.  “The Invocation” – The Flowers Of Hell   (album: Come Hell Or High Water)

9.  “hot saints” -  Baloo    (album: Avid Equestrian)     

10.  “4” -   Reedbeds   (album:  G’morning gomorrah)       

11.  Me again.

12.  “Interlude” -  Julia Holter     (album: Tragedy)

13.  “New Beginning (Tidal Darkness)” -  Deaf Center    (album: Owl Splinters)

14.  “Russian Waterfall” -  Sarin Smoke        (album: Smokescreen)          

15.  “Theme Number Eight” -    Pye Corner Audio     (album: Black Mill Tapes Vol.3)

16.  “Swamp Magic” – Timber Timbre   (album: Creep On Creepin On)

17.  Me again. 

18.  “Parting Chant” – The Haxan Cloak  (album: The Haxan Cloak)

19.  “Want You” -  Afrirampo    (album: Kore Ga Mayaku Da)

20.  logotone

PREVIOUSLY: 1 – Fire Axes In Space | 2 – The Lane | 3 – Comfort And Joy | 4 – Long Count | 5 – Underfoot

T-shirt?

• Can Bees Make Tupperware?: Scientific American
  "…it’s emblematic of the fact that there’s an enormous amount we don’t know about the world around us. It makes me wonder how many other things there are like this."
  (tags:eco materials sci )
• BBC News – ExoMars cooperation between Nasa and Esa near collapse
  The American space agency looks set to pull the plug on its joint missions to Mars with the European Space Agency… budget woes…"
  (tags:space )
• Doyle McManus: U.S. targeted killing program needs discussion – latimes.com
  "We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him," Hayden notes, "but we didn't need a court order to kill him. Isn't that something?"
  (tags:drones war pol crime )
• High planetary tilt lowers odds for life?
  "Highly-tilted worlds would have extreme seasons, subjecting life to alternating periods of scorching and subzero temperatures. This could make the development of all but hardiest, simplest creatures a long shot."
  (tags:space )
• Cult Den interview answers – Jeff Noon, Feb 2012. –      MOVIES.SHOWS.COMICS.BOOKS.GAMES.MORE
  "Science Fiction is a massive, ever-expanding experiment with content, and I love it for that, I really do. Nothing else comes close. But I’m always surprised by the way the genre tends (apart from some notable examples) to ignore the experimentation of form. Form is the Host, Content is the Virus." 
  (tags:sf writing )
• BLDGBLOG: Object Cancers
  "…object cancers: bulbous, oddly textured, and other dramatically misshapen errors that only appear in 3D-reprinted objects. Chairs with tumors, mutant silverware, misbegotten watches—as if the offspring of industrial reproducibility is a molten world of Dalí-like surrealism."
  (tags:fabbing printing physibles art )

• On This Whole “Web Is Dead” Meme | John Battelle’s Search Blog
  "No one site on the web is any more or less accessible than any other site. If it’s on the web, you can find it and visit it. This is a corollary of “no gatekeepers,” but again, it bears elucidation. In current versions of AppWorld, finding anything is a challenge, and the winners are almost always those who get special treatment in a gatekeeper’s storefront."
  (tags:web )

A new short film by Timo Arnall, tying into a piece by his BERG comrade Mr Jones of Wales:

How do robots see the world? How do they extract meaning from our streets, cities, media and from us?  This is an experiment in found machine-vision footage, exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye.

It’s like watching a child learn.  Imagine it as, perhaps, the infant days of a young machine intelligence.  This is what it could look like.  This is how it might see.

(I’m not big on Singularitarianism and the future of strong artificial intelligence.  But this does make you think, and wonder.)

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Libby Bulloff

Recorded at a cafe in Hackney for London Fields Radio a few weeks back, me and Laurie basically jabbering away for several hour while the estimable Joe Stannard tries to get a word in edgeways:

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Go on.  Tell me you’re not just the least bit amused by that. Brian Churilla’s THE SECRET HISTORY OF D.B. COOPER plays like Mike Mignola at his most hard-boiled adapting every goofy film about dreams that you ever sat through. If you love Mignola’s HELLBOY, you’ll find a lot to like in Churilla’s comically grim, energetically cartooned tale of an oneiric sniper scowling his way through Lovecraftian mindscapes.

Also, Occult Mutilated Teddy Bear.  Money in the bank.

There’s a fuller preview of the first issue at this link here.  I think COOPER will develop into an entertaining genre mashup in the mode of THE SIXTH GUN.

It comes from Oni Press (who sent me PDFs of the first three issues, so I know whereof I mumble), and launches on March 14.  You can contact your local comics store and give them the Diamond order code JAN12 1215.

• deconcrete: Neil Harbisson’s third eye
  "Neil Harbisson introduces himself as the first cyborg ever legally recognized by any Government (2004). He was born colour-blind; so he can only see in black and white (Achromatopsia disorder). An electronic device implanted in his neck allows him to translate colours into sounds. The camera that hangs from his forehead 24/7 was accepted as part of his British passport photo. By that very fact, the camera became congenital and not prosthetic to his body anymore. Thanks to it, light frequencies are captured and translated into sound frequencies by the chip, which in turn sends them to his brain. He literally listens to colours with his electronic eye. A standard eye perceives light, tone and saturation. Harbisson’s organic eyes perceive light, but tone is converted into sound, and saturation into volume through his third eye."
  (tags:bodymod )

A new game produced by Big Robot, the dev project run by writer Jim Rossignol, whose name should be familiar to regulars. AVSEQ works like this: connect atoms, play music. Look:

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• Future Perfect » The Reverse Tip
  "Thoughts for today: the situations where the buyer or seller will shift a measurable value (cash, money) into other less comparable forms (fapioa, …) to disguise the real value of the exchange. Who they are disguising it from. The legal and social rules surrounding the exchange. Aftermarkets for the receipts."
  (tags:money culture social )

Regular reader will recognise the latter three names as being well-beloved in this parish. These three pieces, amusingly tagged on Soundcloud as “satanic psychedelia,” are as magnificently strange and beautiful as you would expect.

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• Yemen’s State Within a Failed State – Photos By Tom Finn | Foreign Policy
  "The Arab uprisings, however, have shifted the dynamics of the struggle. With the regime's firepower focused on dissenters in the major cities, Saada quietly slid out of its control. A mini-state has sprung up, run almost entirely by the Houthis, who have taken on the responsibilities of government. They have appointed their own governor (a notorious arms dealer), police the streets, and rebuilt schools and houses destroyed in the war. Despite their efforts, Saada remains a destitute city, filled with sprawling graveyards, bullet-pocked mud-brick houses and lean-looking children on crutches hobbling frantically alongside lines of moving traffic, begging for food and money."
  (tags:pol photography war )
• BBC News – Bournemouth resident mystified by ‘blue sphere shower’
  "Mr Hornsby, a former aircraft engineer, said: "The sky went a really dark yellow colour. "As I walked outside to go to the garage there was an instant hail storm for a few seconds and I thought, 'what's that in the grass'?""
  (tags:fortean weird )

At VICE’s Motherboard blog, I’m interviewed by Abraham Riesman about space travel and the somewhat confused recent claims of Speaker Gingrich.

Well, let’s start with the “51st State” bit that’s being bandied about. Speaker Gingrich knows as well as the next political mammal that the Outer Space Treaty forbids any one nation from claiming sovereignty over the moon. So, not so much with the 51st State crap…

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I write books and comics and articles and other things.  I live in south-east England.  My next novel, GUN MACHINE, is due autumn 2012 from Mulholland Books.  The film RED 2, sequel to RED, based on the graphic novel I wrote, is due autumn 2013.  I have author pages at Amazon and Amazon UK.  My most recent original work was SVK, produced in partnership with the design & invention unit BERG.

Public email address: warrenellis@gmail.com (gets checked once a day or so)

@warrenellis on Twitter.  Facebook Page.  Username warrenellis on Instagram and This Is My Jam.

If you need to contact me about writing for print or web, please contact my agent Lydia Wills using the link in the righthand menu bar.

If you need to contact me about anything involving film, tv, games or other things that move and make noises, please contact my agent Angela Cheng Caplan using the link in the righthand menu bar.

Sometimes I speak at conferences, or do other kinds of talks and appearances.  I’ve previously been a columnist for WIRED UK and Reuters.

I occasionally podcast.

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