Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a single photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.

(Yeah.)

Good news to wake up to: I know Brian, I know Javi, it all sounds good:

Rogue Pictures and Intrepid Pictures have picked up the movie rights to “Couriers,” a series of action graphic novels, and have set writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach to adapt.

Written by Brian Wood and illustrated by Rob G, the series follows the adventures of two gun-toting mercenary couriers named Moustafa and Special who take on jobs other couriers do not, such as intelligence, large cash transfers, protection, assassinations and blockade-running.

(Japanese winter)

• dollmusic
  (tags: music)
• Neural ‘extension cord’ developed for brain implants
  A “data cable” made from stretched nerve cells could someday help connect computers to the human nervous system.
  (tags: tech med)
• Subterranean Press » Blog Archive » A Sale for Sam Jones
  Subterranean Press is holding a sale to benefit a little boy who has a brain tumor. Click the link, read to get the whole story, and then go shopping — because every in-print title is 25% off if you buy it today or tomorrow only.
  (tags: blog)
• Suprastate
  (tags: music)

Iran announced new tests of short-range missiles Sunday.

U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran’s nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

Poland said on Sunday it was still in talks with the United States about the possibility of allowing it to base an anti-missile system on its soil. Moscow has warned it will take unspecified measures against Poland if it accepts the defense system.

(Captain Applejack Ponders the Snow)

(xian040028)

Dave Walsh, Greenpeace webguy in the field, will be blogging the Esperanza’s latest voyage at this URL. From email:

Well, we’re going to head down to annoy the hell of the Japanese whaling fleet, which is in the process of killing 935 minke whales and another 10 endangered Fin whales. We reckon that industrial whaling is an archaic and unnecessary practice in the 21st century – and what’s happening in the southern ocean is commercial whaling under the guise of “science”.

We leave port on Thursday, and will be at sea for several weeks…

•   .:::. zeebeemusic.com .:::.
  zeebee updates website/breaks radio silence/cuts hair
  (tags: music people)
• Richard Dawkins – The Root of All Evil « smashingtelly – the best full length free tv programs on the web, updated every day
  links to Google Video captures of Dawkins’ two-part documentary on religion, including, of course, the wonderful encounter with Pastor Ted Haggard previous to his rentboy/meth fall from grace.
  (tags: video religion)
• Largehearted Boy: Book Notes – Derek McCulloch
  a comprehensive survey of the 36 different versions of Stagger Lee that Derek listened to while writing the graphic novel of the same name.
  (tags: music comics)
• twenty1f: fashion for the 21st century
  The fabric is knitted from a clear polymer – polyvinyl alcohol – of the kind used in sachets that release detergent in washing machines. The dresses will dissolve and turn into a form that can be recycled as a bottle.
  (tags: fashion design tech eco)

We are about to see a live political evisceration like no other — Hillary Clinton, in full knowledge that there are bastards out there who have been waiting for her for years, is going to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination:

Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton has taken the first step towards running for the US presidency in 2008.
Ms Clinton, 59, wife of former president Bill, announced her move on her website, saying “I’m in to win”.

Ms Clinton said she planned to answer questions in web chats on three consecutive nights, starting on Monday.

Her announcement brings to five the number of Democratic presidential hopefuls.

• Scientists develop atom-scale switch
  U.S. Energy Department scientists performing basic research have discovered a carbon nanotube-based system that functions as an atom-scale switch.
  (tags: sci)
• Walking molecule now carries packages
  A research team, led by UC Riverside’s Ludwig Bartels, was the first to design a molecule that can move in a straight line on a flat surface. Now this team has found a way to attach cargo: two CO2 molecules, making the nano-walker a molecule carrier.
  (tags: sci)
• Kanardo Blog
  (tags: design art)
• Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers -
  The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

  (tags: med)

Received in email:

Dear Valued Bitpass Buyer,

We want to thank you for your past business, however due to circumstances beyond our control, we are discontinuing our operations.

We have partnered with Digital River to provide operational support during the period prior to shut down. As of today, January 19, 2007, all Bitpass Buyers with US dollar denominated accounts are being notified that they will have seven (7) days to spend any amounts that currently exist in their Bitpass Account.

During this seven day period, US Buyers will not be able to further fund their account.

On January 26, all US Bitpass Buyer accounts will be closed and Digital River will begin the process of refunding all unspent monies to the accountholder.

All account records and materials will be retained for 60 days and available upon request.

Again we would like to thank you for your business and support.

Matthew Graves

“I am, however, still holding out for a vast parcel where I can build my own fortified compound with dedicated temple and start a cult. Let’s see Anshe Chung top that.”

Mr Silla & Mongoose

Enrico Fermi asked that if the universe is teeming with life, why can’t we see or hear it? That’s the Fermi Paradox. Now, there may be a solution:

Extra-terrestrials have yet to find us because they haven’t had enough time to look.

Using a computer simulation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, Rasmus Bjork, a physicist at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen, proposed that a single civilisation might build eight intergalactic probes and launch them on missions to search for life. Once on their way each probe would send out eight more mini-probes, which would head for the nearest stars and look for habitable planets.

Mr Bjork confined the probes to search only solar systems in what is called the “galactic habitable zone” of the Milky Way, where solar systems are close enough to the centre to have the right elements necessary to form rocky, life-sustaining planets, but are far enough out to avoid being struck by asteroids, seared by stars or frazzled by bursts of radiation.

He found that even if the alien ships could hurtle through space at a tenth of the speed of light, or 30,000km a second, – Nasa’s current Cassini mission to Saturn is plodding along at 32km a second – it would take 10bn years, roughly half the age of the universe, to explore just 4% of the galaxy.

Note that it doesn’t answer the radiosphere question.

(Ascend)

(Rooftop Snow)

Everyone said I was a fool when I said John McCain was an unelectable Muppet. The simple fact is that people like talking about him right up to the point where their vote might make him President. And then they go, oops, no, I don’t think so somehow.

For seven years, conventional wisdom has said that (New Hampshire’s) pivotal independent voters would line up behind maverick Sen. John McCain, as they did so famously in the 2000 GOP primary. But new polling data, to be released later this week, will suggest that might no longer be the case.

Manchester, N.H.-based American Research Group finds that McCain’s popularity among New Hampshire’s independent voters has collapsed.

“John McCain is tanking,” says ARG president Dick Bennett. “That’s the big thing [we’re finding]. In New Hampshire a year ago he got 49 percent among independent voters. That number’s way down, to 29 percent now… We’re finding this everywhere…”

Chancellor Gordon Brown has spoken of the need for a “new world order” to deal with future security and environmental challenges.

You’d think there’d be something of a moratorium on people with the title Chancellor talking about new orders, really…

• Defense Tech: Electric Lasers Shoot Mortars, Gain Strength
  approaching the 100-kilowatt threshold for weapons-grade lasers
  (tags: tech war)
• SPACE.com — NASA’s Pluto Probe Prepares for Jupiter Flyby
  NASA’s fastest mission to date. The probe is set to make its closest pass by Jupiter on Feb. 28, just over one year after its Jan. 19, 2006 launch… hold on. Jupiter’s only a year away?
  (tags: space)
• The Seattle Times: Living: Will rare redheads be extinct by 2100?
  If predictions by the Oxford Hair Foundation come to pass, the number of natural redheads everywhere will continue to dwindle until there are none left by the year 2100.
  (tags: med weird)
• A missile punch at bullet prices
  8-megajoule electromagnetic rail gun. Holy fucking shit: force is compared to hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph. 200 to 250 nautical-mile range. Read elsewhere that, pointed straight up, it could chuck a payload 95 miles vertically, into sp
  (tags: war tech)

I swear to fucking God, Samuel L Jackson doing “Stagger Lee” (entitled “Stackolee” here).

A new short film by director Richard Stanley. Thanks to Adi Tantimedh for pointing me at it.

The Sea of Perdition

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