• LiveScience.com – Towering Ancient Tsunami Devastated the Mediterranean
  A volcano avalanche in Sicily 8,000 years ago triggered a devastating tsunami taller than a 10-story building that spread across the entire Mediterranean Sea
  (tags: history)

The BBC have even come up with a title: “Satan Squad”:

Italian police want to set up a special unit to tackle the growth of new religious sects, particularly a violent new breed of home-grown Satanists.

The new police squad would include psychologists, as well as a priest who is an expert on the occult. It would co-ordinate – nationwide – investigations into potentially dangerous religious movements…

Okay, there’s not actually a “Combat Jesus” in the videogame that’s at the center of this particular Christian effort to clean store shelves. But it’s interesting to see “liberal” Christians make the same mistakes as their anti-culture conservative counterparts:

Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, two online political groups, plan to demand today that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a PC game inspired by a series of fictional Christian novels that are hugely popular, especially with teens.

The series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is based on their interpretation of the Bible’s Book of Revelation and takes place after the Rapture, when Jesus has taken his people to heaven and left nonbelievers behind to face the Antichrist.

Left Behind Games’ president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose “spirit points” every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.

“One of the evil characters is a rock musician. … If you get too close to him your spirit is lowered…”

I personally think he’s on fucking Ibogaine with some of these, but, as ever, it’s interesting and funny reading. Plus, he makes a GLASS TEAT gag.

• Book Collection – a photoset on Flickr
  These are some of the rare (and not so rare) books that Joe Kral have collected over the past 11 years.
  (tags: design covers)
• Results of Identity: Best of the Best 2006 contest
  The results of the international contest of logos, trademarks and corporate identity Identity: Best of The Best 2006
  (tags: design)
• Horse that launched animal-mutilation UFO lore lands on eBay
  Snippy, a horse that died mysteriously in an Alamosa field in 1967, is back in the news thanks to eBay…. The Appaloosa mare’s death drew international media attention when her owner, Nellie Lewis, said the 3-year-old was mutilated by space aliens.
  (tags: weird)
• Japanese Researchers Extract Vanilla From Cow Dung
  Japanese researchers have succeeded in making the sweet smell of vanilla come out of the last thing people could imagine — cow dung.
  (tags: food sci)
• FCC Responds to Fox on Profanity Rulings
  the FCC called the V-chip device “ineffective” as a means of shielding children from explicit language, and that broadcasters have only “limited First Amendment protection.”
  (tags: culture pol tv)
• NBA Player Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanor in Porn-Related Car Crash
  Minnesota Timberwolves forward Eddie Griffin pleaded guilty on Monday to inattentive driving in connection with an accident in which he crashed into a parked SUV while watching porn and masturbating behind the wheel
  (tags: crime sex)

Looks like Josh and Kody are building netcentric “street teams” for their excellent hopefully-soon-to-be-published black comedy comic PUNKS. (Hopefully, that link will work.)

Whatever happened to Leik Myrabo? I can’t find any sign of increment in his work that’s later than 2002.

(I saw him on a plane to Auckland once. He was wearing a windbreaker with PROF L N MYRABO carefully embroidered on the breast.)

And “slow spacelaunch” generates no Google hits. Which I find odd, because it’s really the Holy Grail of spacelaunch.

We only have “fast” spacelaunch. We burn an incredible volume of chemicals to chuck a payload up at extremely high velocity to attain low earth orbit in some seven minutes — because it’s the only way we know how to do it. It puts strain on the ship’s frame, on the passengers in crewed spaceflight, and on the environment. We can only do it quick and dirty because we can only do it through runaway chemical reaction and, you know, fire.

(Don’t talk to me about Rutan/Virgin “Galactic”. That’s suborbital lobbing, which is not the same thing.)

Slow spacelaunch is the thing. That’s why Myrabo’s laser-struck “lightships” were so interesting — a continuous-pressure spacelaunch technology rather than a missile technology. (“Slow return” is also desirable — there’s got to be a better way to come back from space than ballistically.)

If anyone knows what stage Myrabo’s research is at, send me a note…

Via AVN:

Mainstream actor Jackie Chan recently said recently that he’s not ashamed of starring in a porn film when he was a struggling actor.

Chan… appeared in a Hong Kong made X-rated movie entitled All In The Family when he was an unknown 21-year-old.

Chan revealed to Britain’s Daily Express newspaper: “I had to do anything I could to make a living but I don’t think it’s a big deal – even Marlon Brando used to be exposed in some of his movies.”

ADDITIONAL: now Fraction and I are wondering if his porn film had a blooper reel where his cock gets broken in eight places and the production has to airlift him to hospital.

(black_red)

(Who’s that bird on the telly?)

(labyrinth)

Brubaker and Fraction’s IMMORTAL IRON FIST, which is not a porn movie, has sold out its print run.

Natasha Strange has posted her traditional dirty Xmas photos.

Rogers has seen APOCALYPTO and pronounces it masterful.

Paul Pope is in general simply improving the internet every time he gets near the keyboard.

Jhayne Holmes writes:

We raised just over half in the last two days, enough for me to swing a personal loan (that I can’t actually quite afford), at the last minute to cover the rest.

The 48,000 has happened. I’ve delivered it today.

Now, to get to work on the rest. We have until Jan 15th.

More news at http://www.foxtongue.com/

The Duke Spirit: reminiscent to me of The Cowboy Junkies, Galaxie 500 and early Jesus And Mary Chain. Gorgeous. Play “007″ first, then “A Message To A Pretty.”

imbreakingupwithyou.ca – the art of Brendan Burke, including clothing designs:

Clean George IV

Been out of town. Massive Sunday night catch-up session follows:

Newly launched: ComicSpace – “MySpace for comics people.”

For reasons that will become clear in a few weeks, this will be the last Second Life Sketch on warrenellis.com. Which means most of you can breathe a sigh of relief that I’m not wasting any more of your precious brainspace and can go back to thinking about Britney Spears’ Cheetos-dusted vagina.

Inworld, I can still be found at Integral Bay, at Gibbosa (152, 35, 29), which will remain my public space in SL for some time to come. I’m continuing to write inworld-only notes there — look for the SECOND SIGNAL machine on the Bay. (I do have a private space gifted to me by the good people of Nexus Prime, the cyberpunk sim in Gibson, which I am going to be using for professional matters soon to be revealed.)

I have decided that it is simply too traumatic to look for mainland parcels to buy. This is what was in front of me when I teleported into land-for-sale yesterday:

• Stripping is art, Norway decides
  A Norwegian appeals court has ruled that striptease is an art form and should therefore be exempt from value-added tax (VAT).
  (tags: sex art pol)