I’m not a member of SFWA, neither being American nor recognised as a science fiction writer by its membership requirements. Nor, I think, would I want to be. The calibre of its executive officers has been questioned before, when an ex-VP called those who put their work on the internet scabs. The current VP appears to have outdone that, according to Cory:

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.

Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher’s bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my own Creative Commons-licensed novel, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.”

Ironically, by sending a DMCA notice to Scribd, SFWA has perjured itself by swearing that every work on that list infringed a copyright that it represented. Since this is not the case, SFWA has exposed itself to tremendous legal liability…

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

If you happen to stay in the Drake
Hotel in Toronto during the month
of September, you will be presented
with a copy of CROOKED LITTLE
VEIN.  All month.  Anyone who checks
in.  Whether you want it or not.
And, when you retire to your room,
you will find on your phone there
a recorded message.  From me.
Talking about CROOKED LITTLE 
VEIN.

How bizarre is that?

Of all the promotional stunts I've
been involved with, this one is by
far the oddest.

*   *   *   *   *

In other news: THE ENGINE closes
around midnight UK time tonight.

Now, I did say that I had other plans
for online stuff following the closure
of The Engine.   They go like this:

*  I'm being poked and prodded by
a few people about maybe starting
(again) a private community space
for friends and fellow travellers,
but I don't know about that.

* However, when FREAKANGELS
starts later this year, it will come
with its own state-of-the-art(ish)
community space, built on the very
accessible Vanilla system.  It will
be unlike the Engine in almost every
way, and very much a fresh start.
Like FREAKANGELS the comic, the
community will be funded and
hosted by Avatar Press.

Obviously, we'll do the major
announcement when the comic
itself launches in a couple of months
or so.  But I said I'd mention what
was next before the Engine closes,
and so I have.

iForward!


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• New Scientist Invention Blog: The hibernation diet
  Could inducing hibernation in humans also change our metabolism from glucose burning to fat burning? And if so, would this be an effective treatment for obesity?
  (tags: med)

First someone torches the big faux-Wicker Man ahead of schedule, which reportedly led to hippies wailing “but it’s not his time!” And now, I’ve got to say, they’re not having a good time, out there in the arseweevil-riddled sands of Black Rock City:

A Burning Man participant was found dead this morning, hanging from the inside of a two-story high tent, according to Mark Pirtle, special agent in charge for the Bureau of Land Management.

The apparent suicide would be the festival’s first in its 21 year history, Pirtle said.

And did you want a reason why Black Rock City should be perhaps nuked from orbit with all hands attending?

Pirtle said the man was hanging for two hours before anyone in the large tent thought to bring him down. “His friends thought he was doing an art piece,” Pirtle said.

Christopher Hitchens is wanking over her bones as we speak:

“Where is my faith?” she wrote. “Even deep down? there is nothing but emptiness and darkness… If there be God ? please forgive me.”

Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith.

“Such deep longing for God? Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal,” she said.

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask. “What do I labor for?” she asked in one letter. “If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.”

According to her letters, Mother Teresa died with her doubts. She had even stopped praying, she once said. The church decided to keep her letters, even though one of her dying wishes was that they be destroyed. Perhaps now we know why.

An eBay page, so it won’t last long:

Up for bidding is a very fine example of a victorian home medical device that was used for electro therapy, over 100 years ago. This is a J. H. Bunnel & Co, No. 4 D. D. Back in those days electro therapy was used on everything from cold sores to cancer. This one, as you can see, is in beautiful shape cosmetically. It comes with a full assortment of attachments. It has the electrodes, the foot pad, (the shiny metal piece), body pads, handles, everything you see pictured, including the original instructions! The dry cell battery has long lost its charge, but in the metal case, it makes for a beautiful complete display.

Does it work? It works as good as the day it was made! All you need to do….is hook up a 9 volt transistor battery to the electrodes and you’ll become an official Quack Medical Practitioner! It is interesting to note, that you can vary the type of current as well as the intensity with just the turn of a knob. It’s a very simple unit to operate. I’ve had several of these over the years, and this is by far, the nicest and most complete one I’ve ever seen!

Talking with Matt Fraction about the possibly apocryphal story that the coffin Tony Wilson was buried in was given a Factory catalogue number (FAC 501):

ME: I've been resisting the urge to give everything catalogue numbers for a few weeks now.

MF: See? This is why I say maybe, just maybe, it should TOTALLY BE FUCKING DONE.

IRAN – Muslimgauze

(now available at eMusic, I note)

warrenellis: I must be mad, I’m looking at POD book services…

Want to get angry?

Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing ?Blackwater? badges: ?Try to go into your home and we?ll arrest you.?

bad signal
WARREN 

I just found out, through a letter
from my half-sister, that my
stepfather died a couple of weeks
ago.  Never got on with the bastard
particularly well; one of those people
where it was hard to tell if he was
massively bipolar or just an arsehole.
He got run over some years ago,
to the laughter of many, and had
a morphine pump installed in the
leg that got wrecked.  It seems that
mistakes were made during a 
recent surgical overhaul of the pump,
and he died at home of deep vein
thrombosis a week later.  Evidently
my brother found him.  He'd been
dead a few days, I gather.

Hadn't spoken to him since my mum's
funeral.  His funeral's today, and,
as I say, I just found out.  The date
stamp on the envelope suggest our
local postal service has worked its
usual magic, and smoke signals would
have been a better option.  So, no,
I'm not there, though it might have
been worth popping along just to
make sure he's dead.

Still, I learned a lot from the man,
stupid evil old shitbag that he was.
Including, I think, looking at his
behavior over the years and deciding
that that's not what a man is.  That
said, he gave me the first job I
ever had --  a Saturday milkman
at age 16, one of the worst jobs
you can conceive of, and hugely
instructive.

We came to an understanding, over
the years, and I know he had a
certain respect for me, for doing
things my own way.  And, he once
told me, for moving out at 18,
which he said he couldn't have done.
Of course, at the time he told me
that, I didn't know he'd destroyed in
a fit of anger a box of books I'd left
at the house.

Still and all...not going to be a very
productive day, I think.  That's no
way to go.

Goodbye, you spiteful old bastard.
Sleep well.

-- W

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• ‘Spider-man’ suit secret revealed
  A “Spider-man” suit that enables its wearer to scale vertical walls like the comic and movie superhero could one day be a reality, according to a study.
  (tags: sci)

Uncov brings the kicking:

Let’s look at the search space in terms of a seventh grade classroom. Google is the good looking boy with all the self-confidence. All the girls want to be his girlfriend, and he is dating a different one every week. Yahoo is the joker who is actually pretty entertaining if you watch him, but his jokes get annoying when you’re trying to get some work done. In the back of the class is Ask.com, the kid who tortures cats with kebab skewers, acting out to get attention because his father never showed him any affection. Mahalo, therefore, is one of the seat-warmers who adds nothing to the conversation. He gets shot down by Google’s ex-girlfriends, and he cries while he masturbates because he will never be as good looking or as successful as Google.

This analogy ends with Ask.com showing up one day with a duffel bag full of guns and shooting the place up. Powerset emerges as the victor, because he has been out sick with mono since school started.

Greg Palast:

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistle-blower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina…

(electrobrain)

(P8270293
)

Warren Ellis: “The (Jack) Kirby tradition is to create a new comic.”

• Modernity Defined on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  “A Hezbollah branded mobile phone strappu. Welcome to the modern world, everyone: hold tight.”
  (tags: photo)
• Buena Park pastor asks followers to pray for the death of his critics – Los Angeles Times
  Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
  (tags: religion mad crime fuck+you+godboy)

For “thermobaric,” read “fuel-air bomb,” basically. The fuels in question are often highly toxic. They’re vacuum weapons — it’s the structure of the blast itself that destroys so effectively. And also turns human beings inside out.

British soldiers in Afghanistan are being supplied with a new “super weapon” to attack Taliban fighters more effectively…

The “enhanced blast” weapon is based on thermobaric technology used in the powerful bombs dropped by the Russians to obliterate Grozny, the Chechen capital, and in US “bunker busters”. Defence officials insisted yesterday that the British bombs were different. “They are optimised to create blast [rather than heat]“, one said, adding that it would be misleading to call them “thermobaric”.

So-called thermobaric weapons have been used by the US against suspected al-Qaida and Taliban underground bases. Combined heat and pressure kill people over a wide area by sucking the air out of lungs and destroying internal organs.

Defence officials described the new weapon as a shoulder-launched “light anti-structure munition”.

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

Just found  this out: if you order the Sub Press limited edition
of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN  by the end of Tuesday, they'll
knock $15 off the cover  price.

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/2007/08/27/announcing-crooked-little-ve

in-by-warren-ellis/

--  W  




   

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