Trailer for the “motion comic” project written by Leah Moore & John Reppion and designed by Emma Vieceli for Windflower Studio.  It arrives in October via Hat Trick and Channel 4.  Find out a bit more about this scientific romance from the age of Morse here.  And now watch this, even just for the moment when the big room seems to tip back into three dimensions and the flow of information, 19th Century style, starts to stream…

I was reading about this muck on DoseNation the other week, and now there’s a larger feature at the Guardian. 

Oxi is essentially cocaine and petrol.  That’s gasoline for our language-challenged cousins over the water.  Lots of things are being said about it right now: that it emerged in the 80s, that regular use of it gives you a life expectancy of about a year, that oxi users can be spotted by the fact that they’re apparently passing you on a tidal wave of their own diarrhoea.  But what struck me was this:

Despite growing concern, authorities admit the exact nature of oxi is a mystery. "Oxi’s existence has only come to our attention very recently," said Elenice Frez, the police chief in Assis Brasil, a tiny town on the border between Brazil and Peru that is a notorious route for traffickers. "It is a new thing and we don’t yet have all the technical details of what oxi really is and the damage it can cause to someone who becomes addicted and uses it constantly."

As in the fake Chinese revolution, we seem to be hitting interesting points of informational failure.

• Copenhagen suborbitals upcoming launch attempt in June
  Copenhagen Suborbitals hopes to launch the world’s first amateur-built rocket for human space travel and have announced an upcoming launch window for their Tycho Brahe capsule.
  (tags:space )
• BBC News – Food prices ‘will double by 2030′, Oxfam warns
  "The prices of staple foods will more than double in 20 years unless world leaders take action to reform the global food system, Oxfam has warned."
  (tags:eco dooooom money )
• Why Instagram Can Become The Mobile Social Hub Tech News and Analysis
  "100 Cameras in 1 iPhone/iPad photo app can now export photos manipulated by his app directly to Instagram. 100 Cameras and 1 is a photo filter software that allows you to add more effects to your photos. This makes 100 Cameras in 1 the first app ever to be integrated with Instagram."
  (tags:phone apps )
• Tunnel found under temple in Mexico
  "Researchers found a tunnel under the Temple of the Snake in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan, about 28 miles northeast of Mexico City."
  (tags:history )
• Terrorist ‘pre-crime’ detector field tested in United States : Nature News
  "Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned."
  (tags:tech war )

Thwipster appears to be selling the FELL: FERAL CITY book on the cheap for the next 13 hours or so (it’s 4pm UK time as  I write this.  There’s also a very brief interview with me there.

This looks like an interesting way to do a collaborative fiction:

Red Phone Box (the English name for phone booth) is a collaborative writing project. The inaugural story, written by Salome Jones,  was published here on Saturday, 28 March, 2011. Each Saturday, another story will be published, written by a contributing author.

Each writer will read what’s come before and try to come up with something that adds to, builds on, builds up, or changes what has already happened…

Steed Of The Water-Bear

Simon Roy

(Heli Ervasti)

Anna Young made this. The fraggle had it coming.

(She makes all kinds of weird stuff. Crucified fairies and things.)

Almost a year later, this still has me completely earwormed:

Saying hello to Kim, who’s in NYC right now, scheming with Molly Crabapple.

Good morning, sinners.

(lifted shamelessly from the Instagram stream of Jock.)

Home from Expo.  Picking at the FELL #11 script before dinner.  Woolgathering.

You know how FELL happened?  I had an email newsletter thing, years ago, and I’d been talking about what became the FELL format (later called Slimline Format by Image Comics.)  And I said, what I really need to make this work is a brilliant artist who can do 16 pages a month and hates money.

And Ben Templesmith emailed me an hour later and said “Me"!”

So I wrote FELL for him.

(He’s drawing #10 right now.)

Not a very interesting story, I know, but that confluence will never happen again.  It still makes me smile.  One of my best days in comics, that was.  Days like that haven’t come often enough since.  Hell, imagine me throwing that question out into the void today…

Wil Wheaton, Cherie Priest and Si Spurrier at Phoenix Comicon.  The photo came from Si, who entitled it “Beneath The Master’s Sigil.”

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can someone else confirm that I’m seeing this please

Where I’m signing, at Comics Village, between 2pm and 3pm.

Lots to do until then, so it’s reduced broadcasting between now and Sunday night.

This is what MCM Expo looks like.

(image: Bleeding Cool)

Little comic by Stuart Immonen.

• Scientists turn human skin cells directly into neurons, skipping IPS stage
  "Human skin cells can be converted directly into functional neurons in a period of four to five weeks with the addition of just four proteins, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is significant because it bypasses the need to first create induced pluripotent stem cells, and may make it much easier to generate patient- or disease-specific neurons for study in a laboratory dish."
  (tags:med )

British Summer Time

Simon Crubellier

There weren’t any rubber suits.

THE UNITED MONSTER TALENT AGENCY – Greg Nicotero by davehouseofhorrors

(Via Ed Brubaker)

Veronica Ibarra

Dartmoor Forest
print

It’s a slate-dark late afternoon shot through with icechip rain.  On a day like today, what I really want to listen to is some overcast, disorienting space drone coming from the inside of a broken DEFENDER arcade machine.

And l found it, too. Lovely.

Jess Nevins found something wonderfully mad:

During the early days of space flight it wasn’t just the Soviet Union and the USA breaking new ground.

The Welsh Space programme scored some remarkable firsts including the first monkey in space – a Mwncinaut called Major Tom…

Somewhere, Matt Jones of BERG is smiling.  Welshly.

• UK and European space agencies give a go for Skylon spaceplane
  AFTER THIRTY YEARS! "The Skylon, which is being developed at the Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines in the UK, is an unpiloted and reusable spacecraft that can launch into Low Earth Orbit after taking off from a conventional runway."
  (tags:space )
• New biomaterial more closely mimics human tissue
  A new biomaterial designed for repairing damaged human tissue doesn’t wrinkle up when it is stretched. The invention from nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego marks a significant breakthrough in tissue engineering because it more closely mimics the properties of native human tissue.
  (tags:med tech )
• Europe honours Einstein with space freighter
  "The fourth of Europe's robot freighters, due to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in early 2013, has been named after Albert Einstein, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday."
  (tags:space )

Available today for USD 4.99 at Thwipster.

Molly’s work reminds us of the dream we had after drinking large amounts of mushroom-infused tea, falling down some steep European stairs and winding up in an Amsterdam hospital. Anthropomorphized pigs in bowler hats, Dorian Gray, half-naked women, Victorian carnival performers, suave Octopi…