From the graphic novel DESOLATION JONES: MADE IN ENGLAND, released October 5:

Don’t look. Seriously. Something important in you may die.

(Except Siege. I owe you about five brain-scars. You can look.)

Via ModBlog:

Researchers at the University of New South Wales have created a tiny wire that doesn’t even use electrons to carry a current.

Known as a hole quantum wire, it exploits gaps – or holes – between electrons. The relationship between electrons and holes is like that between electrons and anti-electrons, or matter and anti-matter.

The holes can be thought of as real quantum particles that have an electrical charge and a spin. They exhibit remarkable quantum properties and could lead to a new world of super-fast, low-powered transistors and powerful quantum computers.

Quantum wires are microscopically small, in this case about 100 times narrower than a human hair. They are so narrow that electrons can only pass along them in single file.

Manufacturers are keenly interested in them because they hold the potential for new high-speed electronics applications, known as spintronics, where semiconductor devices have both electric and magnetic properties…

Roscoe, by “Zoomar”:

• Marine Corps looking for MySpace buddies
  Teens looking to hook up with a friend on the popular Web community MySpace may bump into an unexpected buddy: the U.S. Marine Corps
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• D’Blog of ‘Israeli: A Blast Not Only From The Past, But The Very Depths Of Obscurity…
  Phoenix 5, Raumpatrouille Orion
  (tags: tv)

By Lauren Martin:

Since the news broke that Warner Bros will offer the unaired AQUAMAN pilot on iTunes, I’ve been pelted with emails asking if the same thing will happen with the unaired GLOBAL FREQUENCY pilot (based on my books).

The answer is: I have no idea, but I doubt it.

There was a move afoot at one point to try and get the show out direct-to-DVD, but the pilot leaking on to bit torrent so incensed some of the powers-that-be, according to my understanding, that that initiative was crushed dead.

I strongly doubt that this version of GLOBAL FREQUENCY would ever be made available for purchase. Which is a shame.

Pandering cheaply to all the people who recently “discovered” Magdalene Veen here, here’s a shot of her at work with Abney Park via Robert from Abney Park’s pictures from their weekend Mechafest gig:

NASA has reportedly eliminated the promise “to understand and protect our home planet” from its mission statement.

That statement was repeatedly cited last winter by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who said he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

But NASA officials told The New York Times the elimination of the phrase that was used by Hansen was “pure coincidence.” The statement now proclaims the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

A NASA spokesman said the change brings the agency into line with U.S. President George W. Bush’s goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the moon and Mars.

One observer noted results from NASA’s increasing involvement in monitoring the Earth’s environment have sparked political disputes concerning the Bush administration’s environmental policies…

The first plasma discharge from China’s experimental advanced superconducting research center — the so-called “artificial sun” — is set to occur next month.

The discharge, expected about Aug. 15, will be conducted at Science Island in Hefei, in east China’s Anhui Province, the Peoples Daily reported Monday.

Scientists told the newspaper a successful test will mean the world’s first nuclear fusion device of its kind will be ready to go into actual operation, the newspaper said.

The plasma discharge will draw international attention since some scientists are concerned with risks involved in such a process. But Chinese researchers involved in the project say any radiation will cease once the test is completed.

The experiment will take place in a structure made of reinforced concrete, with five-foot-thick walls and a three-foot-thick roof.

The highlands of Titan may be riddled with caves, according to the latest images of Saturn’s giant moon.

On 30 April, the Cassini spacecraft flew over a large bright region called Xanadu that spans about 4000 kilometres. Xanadu was already thought to be a highland area, where bright hills of ice poke up above Titan’s dark sooty plains. A new picture made with the spacecraft’s haze-penetrating radar confirms this.

In fact, the interior of the region is crossed by mountain chains that rise more than a kilometre high – while most of the moon appears relatively flat. “These are the highest mountains measured on Titan so far,” says radar team member Ralph Lorenz of the University of Arizona in Tucson, US.
But it seems that the mountains are not solid. The radio waves bouncing off Xanadu reveal that it has peculiar electrical properties – specifically a low dielectric constant.

“The only reasonable material makeup that could have a very low dielectric constant and still hold together enough to form the structures that we see would be some sort of porous stuff – most likely porous water ice,” says another team member, Steve Wall of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US.

He suggests the region might be filled with caverns, presumably carved out by the methane rain that is thought to fall on Titan…

(Another piece of colour for IGNITION CITY)

(Original)

• Ed Byrne
  finds MySpace
  (tags: people comedy)
• ProteinNanoparticle Material Mimics Human Brain Tissue
  composite material consisting of a horse protein and metallic nanoparticles displays magnetic properties very similar to those of human brain tissue
  (tags: med neuro)
• Schwarzenegger gives 150M stem cell loan
  A day after President Bush vetoed expanded federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday authorized a $150 million loan to fund California’s stem cell institute, which has been stalled by lawsuits
  (tags: sci med pol)
• 1,500yearold Byzantine port discovered
  “This was the ancient harbor of Byzantium, the Theodosian harbor,” Pulak said, pointing to the dusty site around him, which he said was probably an expansion of an earlier port known as Eleutherion
  (tags: history)
• AVN :: Articles – Clothing Line Made by Prostitutes Gains Popularity
  (tags: sex design)
• AVN :: Articles – Industry Alert: Senate Agrees to Revamping of 2257 Statute
  (tags: sex pol)
• Wired News: Meet the Remote-Control Self
  his demanding schedule was eating up all his time. So he built an android version of himself to pick up the slack
  (tags: sci)

“In the Summertime” by Derek Sherinian featuring Billy Idol and Slash – video directed by my old friend Chad Michael Ward:

She bounds along on all fours through long grass, panting towards water with her tongue hanging out. When she reaches the tap she paws at the ground with her forefeet, drinks noisily with her jaws wide and lets the water cascade over her head.

Up to this point, you think the girl could be acting – but the moment she shakes her head and neck free of droplets, exactly like a dog when it emerges from a swim, you get a creepy sense that this is something beyond imitation. Then, she barks.

The furious sound she makes is not like a human being pretending to be a dog. It is a proper, chilling, canine burst of aggression and it is coming from the mouth of a young woman, dressed in T-shirt and shorts.

This is 23-year-old Oxana Malaya reverting to behaviour she learnt as a young child when she was brought up by a pack of dogs on a rundown farm in the village of Novaya Blagoveschenka, in the Ukraine. Oxana Malaya is now in a clinic and unlikely ever to leave as she lacks the skills to survive…

Google Earth, the satellite imaging site that brought us hovering cars, is now the source of a mysterious new find – this time an unusual man-made landscape in a remote part of China.

The Chinese site based in the very remote Huangyangtan region, appears to be a small-scale model of a piece of territory complete with snow-topped mountains, streams and valleys.

The find, recorded by a German member of a Google Earth community site, has triggered speculation that the site might have a military purpose.

The Keyhole site hosts discussions among enthusiasts who closely watch the geographical satellite data presented there and the find was reported by British IT news website, The Register.

According to comparative data gathered by members of the community, the rectangular simulation bears an uncanny resemblance to 450 kilometres of territory occupied by China, but claimed by India, in the Karakoram mountain range…

Scientists believe they have found a way to probe the mysterious phenomenon of feeling you have witnessed something before – deja vu.

Leeds Memory Group researchers say they have gone some way to recreating the sensation in the lab using hypnosis.

Two key processes are thought to occur when someone recognises a familiar object or scene. First, the brain searches through memory traces to see if the contents of that scene have been observed before. If they have, a separate part of the brain then identifies the scene or object as being familiar. In deja vu, this second process may occur by mistake, so that a feeling of familiarity is triggered by a novel object or scene.

The Leeds team set out to create a sense of deja vu among volunteers in a lab. They used hypnosis to trigger only the second part of the recognition process – hoping to create a sense of familiarity about something a person had not seen before…

The first men on the Moon had to use a pen to fix a broken switch on their lunar module and return home to Earth, British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported Monday ahead of a new television documentary.

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, and Buzz Aldrin, his fellow astronaut, accidentally snapped off the switch of a circuit breaker, and found they could not take off without it. Aldrin then jammed a ballpoint pen into the hole where the switch had been, allowing the astronauts’ lunar module Eagle to leave the surface of the Moon.

According to the documentary “Apollo 11: The Untold Story”, to be aired Monday on Britain’s Channel Five television, the US was so eager to beat the Soviet Union to putting a man on the Moon, it launched its historic 1969 mission before it was completely prepared.

Then-president Richard Nixon even prepared an address to the nation announcing the deaths of Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins.

“In looking around at some of the lunar dust on the floor, I discovered something that really didn’t belong there — a broken end of a circuit breaker,” Aldrin told Channel Five in excerpts printed in the Daily Mirror. “In the countdown procedure I used a pen, one of several that we had on board that didn’t have metal on the end, and we used that to push the circuit breaker in.”

The documentary also shows how the US government ordered NASA to cut links with the astronauts if disaster was imminent, not wanting the world to watch images of American astronauts spinning off into space.

Aldrin revealed how the astronauts believed they saw an unidentified flying object during the flight as well, adding that NASA covered it up for thirty years. “There was something out there that was close enough to be observed,” Aldrin said.

(Which latter comment, ordinarily, I’d write off, but I had a very interesting conversation with someone last week that’s set me thinking about it again.)

“I collect old cameras — mostly cheap plastic ones that you can find at your local Salvation Army… Currently I have in use five toy cameras ranging from a Kodak, a Holga and a newer model Sony … “