Well, well. It’s all coming apart pretty horribly. Ellsworth thinks Alma has to get ripped to the tits on cheap opiates in order to be able to face her conjugal chores and is now sleeping in a ditch somewhere. Doc Cochrane’s coughing up chunks of lung all over the camp. Tolliver recovers a shred of sanity, and then loses it in believing Farnham would help him out for a lousy two hundred bucks. Odell’s got QUICK DEATH written all over his face. Charlie Utter really just wants to shoot some cocksucker. Sol doesn’t have a fucking clue what’s going on with anyone, and Trixie isn’t helping, what with her habit of not giving anyone the other half of any fucking conversation she has and leaving everyone not having the faintest idea what she’s talking about. Blasanov’s losing his shit, Merrick’s looking like he’s repressing the urge to fuck the next thing that falls in front of him, Joanie loves Jane, Bullock’s crazy, George Hearst is crazier… and, tonight, the camp elders gather to decide what to do about him.

But, of course, George Hearst has already sent a wire to points unknown.

My copy of DEADWOOD comes to me tomorrow. Are the rest of you geared up for it?

Matt Fraction texts from Nerd Prom:

Guy in line in front of my table peeling the skin off his forehead and eating it

also we just sold out of CASANOVA #1

Patton Oswalt blogs from San Diego. This is the entire entry:

I’m about to stand close to a bunch of people who don’t like other people close to them. Including me. Did that make sense? I’m high on sadness.

“Sunna” — the spinal tats are reference:

Photo by Charlie Chu:

(original)

Ms Monster and the B- booth:

Trixie’s entry in the Flickr colouring contest. Add to faves.

Courtesy of Amandarama:

(taken with Nokia 7610, night-filter mode)

Photo by Susann Rezniczek, via ModBlog:

Sharing a bed with someone could temporarily reduce your brain power – at least if you are a man – Austrian scientists suggest.

When men spend the night with a bed mate their sleep is disturbed, whether they make love or not, and this impairs their mental ability the next day. The lack of sleep also increases a man’s stress hormone levels. According to the New Scientist study, women who share a bed fare better because they sleep more deeply…

No updates until Thursday — I’m off into London Weds afternoon and won’t have web access until I get home Thurs morning. Email to warrene @ aol.com will work, but I won’t be checking it more than twice at best.

>DJ Winter’s Etherea

• allAfrica.com: Uganda: France Writes Off Uganda’s 8 Billion Euro Debt
  …and last week, Britain announced to cut its budgetary support to Uganda for the financial year 2006/07 by £20 million…
  (tags: pol)
• Analysts fret over new Internet ‘bubble’
  The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that some Silicon Valley observers believe speculative capital is once again chasing technically unsound ideas and that another shakeout like the disaster of 2000 could occur
  (tags: net)
• Think fast Scientists unlock nerve speed secret
  scientists have defined the function of a key protein that nerve cells use to pass information quickly
  (tags: sci med bodymod)
• Molecular DNA Switch Found to be the Same for All Life
  The molecular machinery that starts the process by which a biological cell divides into two identical daughter cells apparently worked so well early on that evolution has conserved it across the eons in all forms of life on Earth
  (tags: sci med bodymod)
• Quantum Computer Laser tweezers sort atoms
  Physicists of the University of Bonn have taken one more important hurdle on the path to what is known as a quantum computer: by using ‘laser tweezers’ they have succeeded in sorting up to seven atoms and lining them up
  (tags: sci)
• After the Big Bang Project explores seconds that shaped the universe
  This huge insight allows scientists to study matter in its earliest form
  (tags: sci)
• First direct observations of spinons and holons
  a team of researchers has observed the theoretical prediction of electron “spin-charge separation” in a one-dimensional solid — ONE-DIMENSIONAL SOLID!!!!!
  (tags: sci)
• Death toll from rainstorms, flooding rises to 115 in China
  Torrential rain hit provinces including Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Zhejiang, forcing millions of residents to be evacuated
  (tags: weather)
• What’s Gore Doing About I-Pod Slave Labor? | Sweetness & Light
  (tags: pol social)
• BBC NEWS | England | Roads melt as temperatures soar
  Roads have been melting in parts of England as the heatwave across most of the country continues
  (tags: dooooooom)

An apartheid society existed in early Anglo-Saxon Britain, research suggests.

Scientists believe a small population of migrants from Germany, Holland and Denmark established a segregated society when they arrived in England. The researchers think the incomers changed the local gene pool by using their economic advantage to out-breed the native population.

Estimates range between 10,000 and 200,000 Anglo-Saxons migrating into England between 5th and 7th Century AD, compared with a native population of about two million.

To understand what might have happened all of those years ago, UK scientists used computer simulations to model the gene pool changes that would have occurred with the arrival of such small numbers of migrants.

The team used historical evidence that suggested native Britons were at a substantial economic and social disadvantage compared to the Anglo-Saxon settlers. The researchers believe this may have led to a reproductive imbalance giving rise to an ethnic divide. Ancient texts, such as the laws of Ine, reveal that the life of an Anglo-Saxon was valued more than that of a native’s…

Nano-sized fluorescent probes that can slip inside living cells and elucidate life’s most fundamental processes, or track the effectiveness of cancer-fighting drugs, are barely noticed by the cells they enter, according to a team of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Using a high-throughput gene expression test, the team determined that the probes, which are specially coated quantum dots, only affect 0.2 percent of the human genome. This finding should quell concerns that the mere presence of these promising but potentially toxic sentinels disrupts a cell’s function, confounding quantum dots’ ability to accurately track cellular processes or monitor the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals…

Kelly Sue got one started: SDCC06.