YouTubed at this link, for both of you who have been following along.

Reuters:

Tests have confirmed that eight New York City schoolchildren had a type A influenza virus, likely swine flu, city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said on Saturday.

BBC:

A new flu virus suspected of killing at least 60 people in Mexico has the potential to become a pandemic, the World Health Organization’s chief says.

On the ground:

I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from ’under control’… two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200…

The whole thing aired last night in Canada on Teletoon, and airs late tonight in the USA on Adult Swim. Check your listings.

FAQ: a lot of people seemed to think that the "satellites" were in "space," despite the contrary being stated on two or three separate occasions in the series itself. This had led to people calling me names for sending people into space via balloon. I would direct you to Project Manhigh, which was mentioned in the show. Also, the stratosphere — I used the word several times in the show — is not space. And the "satellites" were Stratellites or Stratospheric Airships, a concept I encountered many years ago, one of which has already been successfully flown at an altitude of 74000 feet, or 22 miles. Which puts it well inside the stratosphere, which starts 6 miles up and transitions to the mesosphere at 31 miles up.

See? Isn’t paying attention science fun?

Comics retailers! Please to order the first issue of ANNA MERCURY 2: ULTRASPACIAL DREADNOUGHT VANAHEIM next week or I’ll have mind-controlled slaves burn down your shops!

Of course, if YOU, gentle reader, would like to secure a copy of this work, you can grab the order codes from the ANNA MERCURY microsite and communicate them to your retailer.

A citystate from the strange superdimensional space of The Constellation sends a probe to Earth. To decide whether or not to make contact, the London office of the Constellation Project must send an agent through the fabric of the universe itself to the city of Three Souls Town, apparently populated by an oppressive society made of kidnapped humans. But that’s not how it starts. It starts with Anna Mercury, Earth’s top transuniversal explorer, UNDER RAY-GUN ATTACK IN A CITY BEYOND SPACE ITSELF!

G’night.

"The Dying Fall."

Three years have passed since the collapse of the Tower of Pisa, but only now can I accept the crucial role that I played in the destruction of this unique landmark. ..

Thanks, Jhayne, for letting me know that 16 people and counting in Mexico City have died from mutated swine flu:

…the virus had mutated from pigs and had at some point been transmitted to humans.

• Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: An Open Source Counter-insurgency for Pakistan?
  "Pakistan is on its way to, if not already, a hollow state. In short, that's a nation-state that controls the capital and has international legitimacy, but has ceded control over much its territory to non-state groups." A hollow state. I like that term.
  (tags:pol war )
• Five Governments That Deserve to Fail

  (tags:pol )

• Fluorescent puppy is world’s first transgenic dog – life – 23 April 2009 – New Scientist
  glowing puppy can be seen in dark, easier to shoot – technological advance ++++
  (tags:sci med kill dogs hahaha )

Behold and stuff.  I’m off to the pub for wake-up drinks.

Unbelievable. I missed a few Closedowns and people actually started missing them and complaining. So here’s Katie West.

My day has mostly been eaten by phone calls, work crap and people walking in and out of my bloody office like it’s Victoria fucking Station outside.

In related news, I need a Tactical Defense Pen.

Goodnight internet.

.

The next two episodes are up on Adult Swim as high-quality flv, and have been YouTubed at (nine) and (ten).

FAQ: why do so many “important” GI JOE characters have little or no dialogue? Simple. Budget. Voice actors cost money. I originally wrote WAY too many speaking roles, and had to remove a bunch of them in the second draft of RESOLUTE, move some dialogue from excised characters to remaining characters, and so on. We could only support so many speaking roles. So some of your favourites didn’t get a line.

The Incidental is a daily newspaper being published by and for a design event in Milan. This is a wonderful idea that could be transposed to other events.

Matt Jones on the genesis of the thing:

…we came up with the idea of a system for collecting the thoughts, recommendations, pirate maps and sketches of the attendees to republish and redistribute the next day in a printed, pocketable pamphlet, which, would build up over the four days of the event to be a unique palimpsest of the place and people’s interactions with it, in it.

One thing that’s very interesting to me is using this rapidly-produced thing then becomes a ’social object’: creating conversations, collecting scribbles, instigating adventures – which then get collected and redistributed. A feedback loop made out of paper, in a place.

I’m jotting down stuff very fast today — you can tell when I’ve got something close to a fully-formed thought lately by whether or not it’s under the category "shivering sands," as a rough rule of thumb — but I think there are Implications to this.

I swear, Jess Nevins is currently using his Twitter account to give a SMS-ized lecture on “The Evolution of the Concept of the Superhuman.”  And it’s just wonderful.  Go and read it.  Right now. 

Ellen Rogers’ recent work has been remarkable, haunted and timelost. Flickrstream, pro site, blog.

Art by Raulo Caseres. Forthcoming via Avatar Press.

• Walking Boudica’s Way in East Anglia | Travel | guardian.co.uk
  "Our favourite line was, "Neptune, if you would like them, you can keep the pair of leggings.""
  (tags:history local )

The next two episodes are up in high quality at Adult Swim, for my American readers. For the rest of the world, I note they’ve already been YouTubed at (seven) and (eight).

GI JOE fans should be aware there is much death in these episodes.

Oh, and a FAQ: the Dial Tone character. Originally, she was just Lead Tech or similar. The producers said that, since she was getting so much dialogue, she should be a Joe, with attendant codename. They gave me several to choose from, and I chose Dial Tone, because it amused me. I may drop some more notes after the whole thing’s aired on TV, so’s not to spoil.

• R.I.P. JGB: Tributes from the Ballardosphere, part 2
  Mike Moorcock on JG Ballard: "At one time his back garden served as a pit in which he burned review copies (I remember him phoning me to complain bitterly that Fahrenheit 451 was NOT the temperature at which book paper burned)…"
  (tags:obituary )
• Couples to test ‘intimacy’ device
  "The device allows couples, who are separated by distance, to draw in light on each other's bodies or beds."
  (tags:tech sex comms )
• Manga Alliance || Moving Forward Together
  "Only by all fans and industry professionals working together can we defeat the credit-crunch and avoid anime & manga going backward in this country!" Read this and tell me it's not a legal boobytrap. Or about five legal boobytraps, in fact. Or just devised by zoo animals.
  (tags:comics stupid )
• Station Rose on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
  Currently on the page's player: Atom? & Station Rose's "Interstellar Overdrive"
  (tags:music )
• Sibling worlds may be wettest and lightest known – space – 21 April 2009 – New Scientist
  "A planet orbiting a red dwarf star 20 light years away could be the first known water world, entirely covered by a deep ocean."
  (tags:space )
• Andart: A *really* green and sustainable humanity
  "Maybe the most sustainable thing we could do would be to aim at a future ensconced in cold datacenters under the subtropical deserts of Earth. Humanity would largely look like a forest of quiet semiconductor trees. We would indeed have become plants."
  (tags:future mad )
• What is a Singleton?
  "the term refers to a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level.[1] Among its powers would be (1) the ability to prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy, and (2) the ability to exert effective control over major features of its domain"
  (tags:pol future )

Image by Richard Kadrey.

G’night.

I had a slight sort of terrible brain seizure one day, and when I came out of it I found I had written this:

I apologise in advance.

Episodes 5 and 6 are up at Adult Swim, for the Americans.

Episode 6 is on the You Tubes for the geographically disadvantaged, Episode 5 having been uploaded there yesterday.