This one is gloriously mad:

The Newton stone is a small, rather unassuming pillar in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. On one side is faded, ancient writing, on the other a curling snake and cylindrical patterning. Many would say that it is a typical example of a Scottish standing stone.

Yet one man claims that this is no ordinary stone, that instead it holds the secret of our missing pre-history. That it shows the birth of Jupiter from Saturn and more explosively, that it proves that someone was around to witness this planetary catastrophe and that this someone may not be human.

Stan Hall was drawn to South America by tales of a fantastic mythical gold and crystal library, said to be hidden in subterranean tunnels somewhere in Ecuador. In 1976 he organised an expedition to try and locate the position of these extraordinary caves – even managing to entice the astronaut Neil Armstrong into coming along for the ride.

During his time there he failed to find the library. Instead he is convinced that he has located the lost city of Atlantis: “The word comes from Atal and antis. Antis is the name for the Andes and Atal means old, or of the time of the mother waters – or deluge.”

“I recognised that on the Newton Stone it shows two planets breaking away from each other…The double disc and z-rod pictographs…record for posterity the actual birth of Jupiter from Saturn.”

Hall believes that this break-up of Saturn – which must have been an extraordinary cosmic moment – has been recorded in the myths of all ancient people…

• Gingrich raises alarm at event honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech – Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006
  speaking at Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people & organizations that stand up for freedom of speech, Newt said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.
  (tags: pol 2008)
• Defense Tech: The “Deadlies”: Atomic Automobile
  So when the Atomic Age really got under way in 1958 it was no surprise when the Ford Nucleon concept car was rolled out. This had the pasenger compartment placed well forward to keep away from the nuclear plant at the back.
  (tags: mad paleo-future)
• Professor Devises New Form of Solar Cell
  Shapiro said that the quantum dots would be embedded between layers of a solar cell and would absorb energy that is otherwise wasted due to overheating
  (tags: eco sci tech)
• Humpback whales have “human” brain cells
  the brains of humpback whales have a type of cell called a spindle neuron in the cortex, in areas comparable to where they are seen in humans and great apes
  (tags: weird)
• Man kills transexual deer
  “It’s got no male utilities,” said Erickson, who lives in Minot. “It has teats … it was pretty unusual.”
  (tags: weird)
• The United States v. George W. Bush
  “What would the case against George Bush for intelligence fraud in the leadup to the war in Iraq look like?”
  (tags: pol)
• Why Trust Robert Gates on Iraq?
  Two decades ago, Robert Gates wanted to bomb Nicaragua, considered too extreme even by the Reagan administration
  (tags: pol)
• Astronomers Discuss Moon Opportunities
  At least half of the dust is crushed glass formed by meteorite strikes that melted the surface. Much of the dust contains iron, which has led some to suggest using microwaves to melt the surface and form a roadway of sorts to keep the dust down, he said.
  (tags: space)

Also known as ferroelectric ice. From Physorg:

Various forms of ice have been found in many locations within the frigid reaches of our galaxy, from interstellar clouds to comets, moons, and planets. But a particularly intriguing and rare type, “ferroelectric” ice – ice crystallized so perfectly that it can sustain a giant electric field – has never been detected by astronomers.

A recent study, however, has produced evidence that ferroelectric ice, also known as ice XI, likely does exist out there. Performed by a team of scientists from the U.S. and Japan, the study revealed a very narrow range of temperatures in which “normal” ice can transform into ice XI in nature. The research was led by Hiroshi Fukazawa, a scientist at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

Normal ice, which forms all natural snow and ice on Earth, is known to scientists as “ice Ih,” where the ‘h’ stands for hexagonal, the shape of the molecular crystal. In ice Ih, the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are oriented randomly, resulting in a crystal that looks fairly messy. At very low temperatures, however, the bonds begin to line up and point in the same direction; high pressure enhances this ordering effect. As a result, the tiny electric fields naturally carried by each water molecule add up to produce one large field…

Got an email in to Garth to confirm, but SCI FI Wire says:

HBO is developing a one-hour series based on the popular 1990s Vertigo comic series Preacher, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Mark Steven Johnson, who directed the comic-book adaptations Daredevil and the upcoming Ghost Rider for the big screen, is writing the pilot. Howard Deutch (The Whole Ten Yards) is set to direct. Johnson and Deutch will executive produce along with Michael De Luca, George Agusto, Chris Bender and J.C. Spink. Ennis and Dillon will serve as co-executive producers of the HBO series.

EDIT: I’m not going to reprint what Garth just said.

• INTEL DUMP – Winning hearts and minds
  Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Fartoosi has been a militiaman with the Shiite Muslim Mahdi Army of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Last week, he also served as a relief worker, a policeman, a traffic controller and a guard…
  (tags: pol war)
• Online Generators | Smashing Magazine
  “We’ve taken a look at the most useful online-generators for web-development and listed them below.”
  (tags: web)
• Autonomous reconnaissance sonde
  saucer shaped reconnaissance; at least one environmental sensor and communication device into a robust, aerodynamically efficient casing; spinning & shooting into a region of interest
  (tags: spy tech)
• Space elevators: ‘First floor, deadly radiation!’
  humans might not survive space-elevator travel thanks to the whopping dose of ionising radiation they would receive travelling through the core of the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth.
  (tags: space)
• Ice-age genome project faces cold storage
  After a tantalisingly successful run at sequencing parts of the extinct woolly mammoth’s genome, the project is now stalled for lack of funds.
  (tags: sci)
• Astronauts to pitch unwanted gear off space station
  The International Space Station may soon have its first policy allowing crew members to intentionally pitch unneeded gear overboard. (Tiny flecks of paint have cracked the windows of the space shuttle orbiter because they travel at 1000s of km/h)
  (tags: space astro-flytipping)
• No Bra
  EVIL evil electropop. Listen to the lyrics on “Munchausen.”
  (tags: music)

Swan Lake is a band made up of Spencer Krug from Wolf Parade, Dan Bejar from The New Pornographers and Carey Mercer from Frog Eyes. Their CD is called BEAST MOANS. Right now, I have nothing more coherent than fucking hell to say about it. It manages to be postrock, progrock, prerock, poprock, psychrock, cockrock and fuckrock all at the same time.

Obviously, I’m talking complete shit. Listen to this:

“City Calls” – Swan Lake

(all mp3s deleted after seven days, review purposes only, write if you need them taken down etc etc)

Photo by Enemy Combatant (details):

“Magic Trick” – M Ward

(all mp3s deleted after seven days, review purposes only, write if you need them taken down etc etc)

In Hong Kong:

“Ghost Boy” by Ruby Throat (Katiejane Garside)

Tristan hasn’t updated his blog in forfuckingever, so I’m linking you to his Flickr page instead. Go and look.

Are you reading Sexerati?

playing with, heat

Originally uploaded by roseandolive.

Yeah, I’m catching up on a lot of the research material and what-my-friends-are-doing stuff today.

I’m not sure what I like more about this story: that the mobile-phone-serial-novel format stuck in Japan, that the winning work has an incredibly sleazy logline, or that The Japan Mobile Phone Novel Awards received 2,375 entries:

An Osaka woman who wrote of a pure love story between a schoolgirl prostitute and a host club gigolo was Tuesday awarded the grand prize in the first Japan Mobile Phone Novel Awards at a ceremony in the Mainichi’s Tokyo headquarters.

Towa, the pen name of the author, received 1 million yen and the right to publish “Kurianesu,” her story about unlikely love.

Mobile phone novels are written to be read over mobile phones. Towa said she writes on a computer if one is around, but will also make additions to her mobile phone novels on her mobile phone itself.

“Your thumb ends up hurting, though,” she told reporters a news conference following the awards ceremony.

NGC 1999, a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion:

NGC 1999 shows a remarkable jet-black cloud near its center, located just to the right and lower right of the bright star. This dark cloud is an example of a “Bok globule,” named after the late University of Arizona astronomer Bart Bok. The globule is a cold cloud of gas, molecules and cosmic dust, which is so dense it blocks all of the light behind it. The globule is seen silhouetted against the reflection nebula illuminated by V380 Orionis. Astronomers believe that new stars may be forming inside Bok globules, through the contraction of the dust and molecular gas under their own gravity.

“I just saved you either eight bucks, a slot in your Netflix queue, or at least 90 minutes of your life that you could spend punching yourself in the junk.”

My friend, comics writer Matt Fraction (CASANOVA, FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE, IRON FIST, PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL) is appearing at the comics specialty store Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find in Charlotte NC this coming Saturday.

Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find is located at 1957 E. 7th St, the corner of 7th and Pecan Avenue, and you can call them at 704 375 7462. This event coincides with the store’s Dec 2-3 grand annual sale.

Dan Hipp (AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS) brings the sword rockopera for his new book at Tokyopop. Beautiful 15-page preview in this link.

According to Clickable Culture, people are dropping “dead” avatars in online worlds like Warcrack:

I regularly spotted a corpse named Jeff Buckley floating face-down in a pool of water… Corpse graffiti, a form of emergence, is created by building a character with a clever name… and dropping dead in a contextually-appropriate location… The primary use seems to be humour, but some players have used corpse graffiti to criticize the game design of World of Warcraft.