• Keynote: Bruce Sterling (us) on Atemporality | transmediale
  "If progress is to go beyond the banal indulgences that give rise to a never-ending array of car shell designs then we need to analyse our present time with regard to its aesthetics and its media. The second conference session is being introduced with Bruce Sterling's Keynote on Atemporality."
  (tags:video )

• The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer – Movies – New York Times
  "Mr. Mailer is almost always testing a hypothesis that the most hyperbolic presentation of the self will also be the most authentic. " "…Mr. Mailer describes what he is doing… as pursuing 'an attack on the nature of reality'…"
  (tags:culture social )

• New Spider-Man Device Could Let Humans Walk on Walls – Yahoo! News
  "A new high-tech suction device could allow humans to walk on walls like Spider-Man or create adhesive devices that could be turned on and off with the flick of a switch."
  (tags:sci bodymod )

• Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy
  "There is a growing sense that the properties of the universe are best described not by the laws that govern matter but by the laws that govern information."
  (tags:sci )

• BBC News – Iran launches rocket carrying animals into orbit
  "Iran has launched a rocket into orbit carrying what state-owned Al-Alam televison describes as an "experimental capsule". The Kavoshgar 3 (Explorer) rocket has a cargo of live animals…" Ahmadinejad may be an evil prick, but his black, kinky sense of humour is undeniable. Obama just cut the nuts off NASA, and Iran (it claims) puts a capsule in orbit.
  (tags:space )

• Daniel Bjarnason
  Neo-classical compositions.
  (tags:music )
• RAT CORPSE on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
  because hideous grinding noise pleases me sometimes
  (tags:none)

For a while, I had a capture of my twitter feed running here. It ended up doing something weird to my API calls, stopping me from running my desktop client, so I killed it. Which is probably just as well, as I talk a lot of shit on Twitter. It’s basically mental slurry, the wet lumpy bits from a day spent at the keyboard vented off into a trap so the buildup doesn’t blow some crucial valve in my head. Look at these, from the last six weeks or so:

* Stratford looks more and more like the construction site for the tenth circle of hell

* Apparently Oral Roberts is dead, but no reports yet of his being staked, beheaded and garlic being shoved in the stump

* I’m told that @Paul_Cornell is so mean that he once staked a vampire with his willy and left it to sparkle to death on the lawn

* Also, @ZolaJesus once fucked all the hair off a werewolf and threw it in the snow to die

* Anthrax found in dead Glaswegian heroin user. It’s true: anthrax is undetectable in Glaswegian food.

* Jobless, homeless people everywhere, and not one offers me rental of their freshly disinterred guts for warmth. They must WANT to be poor.

* Why do Xmas cards never show a woman in a shit-covered cowshed squatting a baby out into a rotting feed trough?

* I just became the mayor of your wife on #foursquare

* So, listen, I’ve been thinking a lot about field-dressing you and wearing your skin like a cape. But not in a creepy way.

* Warren’s Rule: if Warren has been awake less than two hours, then it is Morning, no matter what the clock says

* GF and daughter stranded in car in sudden snowfall. May be in market for new GF and/or daughter. Send CVs.

* Okay, they made it home alive. So if we can just pretend my last send didn’t happen, that’d be great. (Email CVs privately, for future ref)

* I worry for the minds of all the people voting for me in the Shorty Awards for "cultural institution."

* Haven’t trimmed my beard in so long that it’s gone from Crackling Virility Hedge to Hobo Rape Thicket.

* Me: iTunes For Windows, you are an evil bloated piece of shitware. iTunes: HA HA FUCK YOU THERE IS NO ESCAPE

* pitching my new kid’s tv show THE OMAR LITTLE / BROTHER MOUZONE ACTION HOUR

* Since the dawn of time itself, humans have dreamed of killing other humans with sharpened ducks

* Haven’t shaved my head in a few days, and now my skull has the texture of an old Fuzzy-Felt board

* pitching my new TV show THE IT’S REALLY NO DIFFERENT FROM VICTORIANS TOURING ASYLUMS FOR FUN ON A SUNDAY FACTOR

* That new Pan Sonic/Keiji Haino record: nice fuzzy drone, then someone pukes a million exploding frogs into a steel toilet.

* Tomorrow, "dogs" will be reclassified as "air sharks," and dolphins as "bastards of the ocean." Good night.

* People say I complain a lot about things, but good news! Oral Roberts is still dead.

* The worst thing about being self-employed is the constant workplace sexual abuse from my boss.

* Child: talking endlessly about wanting a raccoon. Me: thinking about feeding her to one.

* Ah, Skullflower. I love how your CDs still sound like a mad priest using a power drill to make an iron and rabbit smoothie.

* Martian rover Spirit stuck in sand for good: which is of course what happens when you give a human’s job to a skateboard.

* The stages of listening to a new Eluvium album: 1) this is pretty 2) I feel cold 3) I really am totally alone 4) death sounds warm

• Nokia?s Mobile Radar Concept | MobileBehavior
  Oh, Nokia. You mean well. It's like watching the most committed and brilliant minds in Scando telecoms design the best, most secure and efficient bicycle that any fish could possibly want.
  (tags:phone tech awwww )
• The Apple Tablet?s Role in Emerging Markets
  "The Apple iPad at $499 is already at the same price point of many netbooks sold here in Uganda. (I?ve seen $200 ASUS EEPC?s sold at the equivalent of six hundred dollars here!) So even if a base price of $500 is marked up to $800 in a country like this, it?s still $200 dollars less than the last Acer or Dell laptop I purchased here…"
  (tags:tech social )
• Postcard for February 2010 Art Walk on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  Seattle exhibition: Margaret Killjoy (photography) and Noah Beasley (3-D printed jewelry). Portfolio work by Marc17, Libby Bulloff, Angel Ceballos, Mearcair Studios, and Bloodengel Photography will be available for viewing and purchase.
  (tags:exhibition art people )
• A human being is a union of vertebrate and virus | Beyond The Beyond
  "It is also probable that this ?virolution? is continuing today…. HIV-1 might have the potential to enter the human germ line, perhaps taking our evolution in new and unexpected directions. It?s a plague to us – but it could be vital to the biology our descendants…"
  (tags:med evolution weird )
• Dualtrack: VA – Songs In The Key Of Z (2004)
  "Double CD compiled by Irwin Chusid, the author of the Bible of Weirdness, Songs In The Key Of Z. Absolutely essential listening."
  (tags:music )
• READYMADE V.I.C.
  new label by member of Pizzicato 5
  (tags:music )

• scraplab ? Extractomatic in Sinatra on JRuby on Google App Engine on the Internet
  "…a very simple web-based API to detect and extract the main content from a web page, removing all of the clutter, such as headers, footers, advertising and so on. I guess it?s somewhat similar to Readability or Instapaper, but more suitable to building into your own applications…"
  (tags:web )
• Prometheus: Over Easy
  "Prometheus displayed its pockmarked, irregular surface for NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Jan. 27, 2010. "
  (tags:space )
• Scientists grow solar cell components in tobacco plants
  "scientists are trying to harness the finely tuned systems in tobacco plants in order to use them as the building blocks of solar cells. Scientists predict that the technique could lead to the production of inexpensive, biodegradable solar cells."
  (tags:biotech solar )
• Researchers identify brain protein for synapse development
  "A new study from UC Davis Health System identifies for the first time a brain protein called SynDIG1 that plays a critical role in creating and sustaining synapses, the complex chemical signaling system responsible for communication between neurons. "
  (tags:neuro )

• VDenari records on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
  postpunk-y electropop, from the grimmer and more crepescular end of the spectrum
  (tags:music )

• Obama’s budget slashes moon mission, new rockets
  "NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there."
  (tags:space pol bleeding+obvious )
• Climate change experts argue for international geoengineering effort
  "Internationally coordinated research and field-testing on 'geoengineering' the planet's atmosphere to limit risk of climate change should begin soon along with building international governance of the technology…"
  (tags:geoengineering geo eco )
• The color of dinosaur feathers identified
  "The research found that the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx had simple bristles – precursors of feathers – in alternate orange and white rings down its tail, and that the early bird Confuciusornis had patches of white, black and orange-brown colouring…"
  (tags:history )
• Japanese Scientist Develop Elastic Water – Gizmo Watch
  "The material called elastic water is developed by scientists at Japan?s Tokyo University, with a mixture of two grams of clay, some organic matter and natural water that gives this a jelly like nature. Perfect to be used in medicines and tissue repair, this elastic water could also pave way for ecologically clean plastic materials."
  (tags:sci eco materials )
• Omenopus on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
  slightly spacy, slightly grim Midlands synthpop. Which, to an Eighties kid like me, is practically classical music.
  (tags:music )

• 20 best: Minimal Wave | FACT magazine: music and art
  "Most of the Minimal Wave bands recorded in their home studios and created their own album artwork, which naturally paved the way for a D.I.Y. aesthetic to emerge. Generally, the musicians were influenced by avant-garde movements such as futurism and constructivism as well as by the literature of science fiction and existentialism. They had an innovative, unique approach to music-making…"
  (tags:music )
• Spasers set to sum: A new dawn for optical computing – tech – 25 January 2010 – New Scientist
  "Dubbed a "spaser", this minuscule lasing object is the latest by-product of a buzzing field known as nanoplasmonics. Just as microelectronics exploits the behaviour of electrons in metals and semiconductors on micrometre scales, so nanoplasmonics is concerned with the nanoscale comings and goings of entities known as plasmons that lurk on and below the surfaces of metals…" SPASERS! NANOPLASMONICS! fapfapfapfap
  (tags:sci tech )

From Fever Ray:

• stamen design | HQ2 week 2
  "One of our clients talked about how, far from the iPhone being a fancy phone for yuppies, it's better to think about it as a primary computer for low-income people. So we're going to have to address this sooner or later…" I'm not sure this is correct, but it's interesting to consider.
  (tags:comms computing culture )
• Guardian editor hits back at paywalls
  "The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has delivered a riposte to Rupert Murdoch's campaign to introduce paywalls to newspaper websites, claiming that it could lead the industry to a "sleepwalk into oblivion"."
  (tags:news net )
• Maximum height of extreme waves up dramatically in Pacific Northwest
  "A major increase in maximum ocean wave heights off the Pacific Northwest in recent decades has forced scientists to re-evaluate how high a "100-year event" might be…"
  (tags:eco )
• Study predicts HIV drug resistance will surge
  "New research predicts that a wave of drug-resistant HIV strains will emerge in San Francisco within the next five years, hampering efforts to control the pandemic."
  (tags:med )
• BBC News – Eighth Scots anthrax drug death
  "An eighth drug addict has died after being infected with anthrax, health officials have confirmed…"
  (tags:drugs crime med )
• Global Guerrillas: BOOK REVIEW: American Apocalypse
  "There's a new little book of fiction out by a writer named Nova called, "American Apocalypse." It's a wild west scenario with the second American depression (D2) as a backdrop…"
  (tags:books )

• Ghost Bikes | ghost bikes
  "Ghost Bikes are small and somber memorials for bicyclists who are killed or hit on the street. A bicycle is painted all white and locked to a street sign near the crash site, accompanied by a small plaque."
  (tags:culture )

This is me testing a new mobile posting solution. It’s unlikely to work well when drunk, luckily for you.

• Modern Love | A record label – Demdike Stare mix
  "A very special hour-long mix from Demdike Stare available to download here for the time being?" Demdike Stare's debut album last year was a lot of fun.
  (tags:music mp3 mix )
• Icoeye: designer, who loves to make icons (pop-out(?) bookmarks)
  "I wonder that it would be great if we can use dust jackets and bookmarks together to create a unique image of a paper book. This idea can help to expand book?s space"
  (tags:book design )
• Cult murder-extortion brother attempts suicide
  "…The man's brother had enlisted him and a roommate in a cult-like plot to train Brazilian orphans to slaughter the leaders of the Mormon Church so he could become its prophet and "transform America"…"
  (tags:cult crime mad )
• ShakeItPhoto – Polaroid For Your iPhone!
  shut up I miss polaroids BECAUSE I AM VERY OLD YES I GET IT
  (tags:app )
• iPhone Apps – Polarize | Apptism
  yes okay so I got an almost-free iPhone 3GS shut up
  (tags:app )
• thebestcamera.com – iPhone App

  (tags:app )

• TrueHDR: A Nifty Photo App for the iPhone 3GS

  (tags:app )

• BBC News – Newsnight – Export ban for useless ‘bomb detector’
  "The UK government has announced a ban on the export to Iraq and Afghanistan of some so-called "bomb detectors".
  It follows an investigation by the BBC's Newsnight programme which found that one type of "detector" made by a British company cannot work. The Iraqi government has spent $85m on the ADE-65…" And it's basically a dowsing rod. The manual says it can detect both bombs and elephants. Really.
  (tags:war crime )
• InfraNet Lab – Post Peak Phosphorous
  "Phosphorus is at the heart of modern farming; an essential ingredient of agricultural fertilizers. It has no synthetic alternative and is being mined, used and wasted as never before."
  (tags:eco )
• Berlusconi moves to impose Internet regulation
  "Silvio Berlusconi is moving to extend his grip on Italy's media to the freewheeling Internet world of Google and YouTube." Hm. What do you think? Hit in the head too hard, or not hard enough?
  (tags:internet pol )
• DESCENDO: Prints
  prints by simon mallette-st-pierre
  (tags:art )
• Flaming Tusk: Old, Blackened Century
  Poisonous metal noise. "You may download Flaming Tusk's full-length in many high-quality formats, and pay whatever you find meet. If you choose to pay nothing, Flaming Tusk will play a free show in your town, and then afterwards when you go up to tell them how great they were, they will fix you with the evil eye and your line will perish."
  (tags:music )
• Chavez says US ‘weapon’ caused Haiti quake
  "Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez Wednesday accused the United States of causing the destruction in Haiti by testing a 'tectonic weapon' to induce the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country last week. "
  (tags:conspiracy nutters )

• Human running speed of 35-40 mph may be biologically possible
  "…n enticing view of how the biological limits might be pushed back beyond the nearly 28 miles per hour speeds achieved by Bolt to speeds of perhaps 35 or even 40 miles per hour."
  (tags:med bodymod )
• Weird Tales for Winter
  "Weird Tales for Winter is a collective hauntological experience to be broadcast over 8 days from 25th January 2010 on Resonance 104.4 FM."
  (tags:radio music haunt )

Over at my message board, both myself and the editors of COILHOUSE magazine are still taking questions etc until the weekend.

• IPC Media plans online revival of Melody Maker – Press Gazette
  "IPC plans to revive the Melody Maker name with a comprehensive online archive of the magazine – which ran from 1926 until it merged with the New Musical Express in 2000."
  (tags:journalism music )
• polis: a blog about cities: Journalism and the Urban Poor: Embracing Subjectivity
  "The Inter Press Service?s mission of ?giving a voice to the voiceless? may seem too loaded for palates tied to journalists? sacrosanct objectivity. But journalism is never a neutral affair. By acknowledging its power and their role in it, journalists can more responsibly and effectively wield the tools at their disposal."
  (tags:journalism )
• Copper-Free Click Chemistry Used in Mice
  "For the first time, the widely used molecular synthesis technique known as click chemistry has been safely applied to a living organism. A team of Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley researchers has developed a unique copper-free version of click chemistry to create biomolecular probes for in vivo studies of live mice. Conventional click chemistry reactions require a copper catalyst that is toxic to cells and organisms." CLICK CHEMISTRY!
  (tags:sci med )
• Chimps dance in the face of fire
  "Unusual behaviors have been observed in wild chimpanzees in West Africa in the face of grass fires. The chimps did not panic or flee, and some made ritualistic displays that suggest they understand fire and do not fear it, and they may even be able to control it. Since chimpanzees are the nearest relatives to humans, the observations may shed some light on how our early ancestors harnessed fire."
  (tags:social )
• Study suggests theory for insect colonies as ’superorganisms’
  "A team of researchers including scientists from the University of Florida has shown insect colonies follow some of the same biological "rules" as individuals, a finding that suggests insect societies operate like a single "superorganism" in terms of their physiology and life cycle."
  (tags:sci social )

• flower street bioreactor

  (tags:tech street+art eco energy )

Until the end of Friday this week, my message board Whitechapel is running two of its regular "residencies," or Q&A sessions and general conversation threads, with:

* the editors of COILHOUSE magazine, Meredith Yayanos, Nadya Lev and Zoetica Ebb.

* …and, um… me.

• Scientists turn stem cells into pork
  "Call it pork in a petri dish – a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon."
  (tags:food sci future transmet? )
• Recession Special: NASA cuts space shuttle price
  "…As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. NASA advertised them for $400,000 to $800,000 each in December 2008, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artifacts, for the cost of transportation and handling. Assembly will be required, however."
  (tags:space )
• Text service resumes 6 months after Xinjiang riots
  "Text messaging services restarted with some restrictions Sunday for cell phone users in far western China, more than six months after deadly ethnic rioting prompted the government to shut them down."
  (tags:pol comms war )
• Diamond Oceans Possible on Uranus, Neptune : Discovery News
  "Oceans of liquid diamond, filled with solid diamond icebergs, could be floating on Neptune and Uranus, according to a recent article in the journal Nature Physics."
  (tags:space utterly+insane goddamn )

• Counter-X > Comics >> Vulcan
  Site containing scans of 60s/early 70s British comics serials: The Steel Claw, Robot Archie, The Trigan Empire etc. Lovely idea.
  (tags:comics )
• The Third & The Seventh on Vimeo
  "A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects
  are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal…"
  (tags:architecture video )

• William S Burroughs – Nothing Here Now But the Recordings
  "An incredible, and incredibly rare, selection of WIlliam Burroughs? audio experiments, recorded on a variety of tape decks in London, Paris, New York and Tangiers, at various dates from the mid-50s to the late 1970s. This disc was compiled from hundreds of hours of such tapes by Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle, whose label released this."
  (tags:spokenword sound )
• InfraNet Lab » Blog Archive » Islands of Waste 1
  "The island has grown at the rate of a square metre a day, as more and more rubbish is dumped here. Mountains of rubbish ? plastic, metal tins and rusty oil barrels ? extend as far as the eye can see…"
  (tags:eco architecture )
• Jetting into the Quark-Gluon Plasma
  "After the quark-gluon plasma filled the universe for a few millionths of a second after the big bang, it was over 13 billion years until experimenters managed to recreate the extraordinarily hot, dense medium on Earth." QUARK-GLUON PLASMA!
  (tags:sci )

• Superfeedr Blog : Real-time RSS notifications on your iPhone

  (tags:app )

• BLDGBLOG: Nakatomi Space
  "…the emerging spatial techniques used by the Israeli Defense Forces in their high-tech, legally dubious 2002 invasion of Nablus. During that battle, Weizman writes, "soldiers moved within the city across hundred-meter-long 'overground-tunnels' carved through a dense and contiguous urban fabric." Their movements were thus almost entirely camouflaged, with troop movements hidden from above by virtue of always remaining inside buildings…"
  (tags:war cities )
• RCA’s Airenergy charger converts WiFi energy to electricity
  "Airenergy is a gadget that can harvest free electricity from WiFi signals such as those from a wireless Internet connection, apparently with enough efficiency to make it practical for recharging devices such as mobile phones."
  (tags:tech energy )
• Might not be a tomorrow: Youth anticipate early death
  "As Atlanta officials aim to tackle the city's safety problems this year, some of their toughest criminals to stop maybe young offenders whose desires to commit crimes are being fueled by an anticipation of dying early."
  (tags:social )

• New multi-touch screen technology developed (w/ Video)
  "Scientists from New York University have formed a company to bring flexible multi-touch screens using a new technology to a range of devices, from e-readers to musical instruments. The new touch screens respond to all kinds of objects, as well as fingers and hands."
  (tags:computing )
• Norway Time Hole ?Leak? Plunges Northern Hemisphere Into Chaos | Pakistan Daily
  "Russian scientists are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that the high-energy beam fired into the upper heavens from the United States High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) radar facility in Ramfjordmoen, Norway this past month has resulted in a ?catastrophic puncturing? of our Planet?s thermosphere thus allowing into the troposphere an ?unimpeded thermal inversion? of the exosphere, which is the outermost layer of Earth?s atmosphere."
  (tags:nutters conspiracy )
• Pope says gay marriage threat to creation
  "Pope Benedict on Tuesday linked the Church's opposition to gay marriage to concern about the environment, suggesting that laws undermining "the differences between the sexes" were threats to creation." (my daughter calls him Pope Bendy-dick)
  (tags:cult mad scumfuck )
• Coal from mass extinction era linked to lung cancer mystery
  "The volcanic eruptions thought responsible for Earth's largest mass extinction — which killed more than 70 percent of plants and animals 250 million years ago — is still taking lives today."
  (tags:history med geo )
• BBC News – Egypt tombs suggest free men built pyramids, not slaves
  "Tombs discovered near Egypt's great pyramids reinforce the theory they were built by free workers rather than slaves."
  (tags:history )
• cityofsound: Notes on New Songdo City. Or, What does your Seoul look like (Part 1)
  "Why not a Robot Science Future Pavilion? Every other aspect of urban life will emerge over time, or is within reach in Seoul, so why not start with the fantastical and let the mundane emerge later?"
  (tags:cities architecture culture )
• scribbles and lies – Self-Diagnose
  I know it sounds like a bad stand-up routine, but if any of the following are true, YOU MIGHT BE A DOPPELGÄNGER
  (tags:writing peopleiknow )
• An American Redhead in London: 18+, Or My Visit to The Armory
  "Like the castle it once was, The Armory now protects the heart of kink. It stands as a giant stone monument to pervs the world 'round. Whether you're into girls being fucked by robots, hogtying, electrified pussies, naked wrestling, gang bangs in public places, or bi-curious boys humiliated in the locker room by shemales, this is the building that houses and realizes these fantasies of yours…"
  (tags:sex architecture peopleiknow )
• Oceans losing ability to absorb greenhouse gas
  "Like a dirty filter, the Earth's oceans are growing less efficient at absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas produced by fossil-fuel burning, reports a study co-authored by Francois Primeau, UC Irvine Earth system science associate professor."
  (tags:eco dooooooooom )
• Music Apps & Interface Lag
  "…app developers aren?t merely managing a user?s response to alterations to their own programs; they?re also managing a major cultural shift. Music apps are on the front line of the rapid dissolution of the distinction between cultural production and cultural consumption. We?re entering a fourth stage in popular music…"
  (tags:tech music )
• Audiences experience ‘Avatar’ blues – CNN.com
  "James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora."
  (tags:nutters )

• Strange Attractors
  Siege on suckerpunch with a blurb by Susannah Breslin
  (tags:peopleiknow photography )
• Finnish firm to market cancer-prevention capsule
  "Finnish medical biotechnology group Biohit said Monday it had developed a capsule that could help prevent stomach and throat cancer by neutralising the cancer-causing compound acetaldehyde."
  (tags:med )
• Deep heat powers once-in-a-billion-year volcanoes on icy moon
  "The pent-up heat – enough to melt the interior, and possibly sustain a liquid water ocean under the ice – would be released as one catastrophic event around every billion years or so. Cassini just happened to fly into it, O?Neill said…"
  (tags:space )

FREAKANGELS illustrator Paul Duffield and KING CITY creator Brandon Graham have kindly agreed to do weeklong residencies at my message board Whitechapel starting today, where they will answer questions, show you stuff, and basically talk about anything they feel like talking about.

The Paul Duffield Residency.

The Brandon Graham Residency.