Note to self. must buy this from Khepri soon. Probably so should you.

(If you own any issue or collection of GLOBAL FREQUENCY, you own Brian Wood design work. And you will understand that you need this book.)

This amuses me no end.

John’s Phone is the most simple mobile phone. Just call and hang up. John’s Phone is easy for anywhere, anytime. Finally a separate unit with no frills and conditions. A simlock free phone with large keys, an address book, a pen and over three weeks of standby time.

The phone equivalent of, say, the Muji bag. Or, perhaps, this:

Plus, you know, Lego.

• Scientists discover nanodiamonds in Greenland ice
  "University of Maine volcanologist Andrei Kurbatov and glaciologist Paul Mayewski, along with 21 other scientists, coauthored a scientific paper released late last month that details the discovery of a layer of nanodiamonds in the Greenland ice sheet, which has added to a controversy in the scientific community about a possible extraterrestrial impact event that could shed light on why some types of large mammals disappeared around 12,900 years ago."
  (tags:history geo NANODIAMONDS! )

This, on the face of it, is pleasingly crazy. Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are to adapt Stephen King’s DARK TOWER sequence (which I’ve never read) for film and tv:

The plan is to start with the feature film, and then create a bridge to the second feature with a season of TV episodes. That means the feature cast – and the big star who’ll play Deschain – also has to appear in the TV series before returning to the second film. After that sequel is done, the TV series picks up again, this time focusing on Deschain as a young gunslinger. Those storylines will be informed by a prequel comic book series that King was heavily involved in plotting. The third film would pick up the mature Deshain as he completes his journey.

I’m betting there’ll also be an online element, for the full "transmedia" buzzword-fulfilling effect.

This is big old-media old-school popcultural stars stepping up out of their trenches with atomic bazookas, saying "this here might be the old stuff, and it might not be your magic digital smart dust, but we can still make a pretty big hole in shit with these things." In a way, I wonder if the question is not whether or not there’s been anything like this before, but whether there’ll ever again be anything like this afterwards.

§ – TIMES 3 feat.??† ? from § on Vimeo.

Chairman Bruce in full-on Future Machete Guru mode:

Next Nature is an investigative enterprise by a set of mostly Dutch researchers. Next Nature is haunted by Previous Nature, or rather, by the ghostly Gothic absences of a vanished Natural world. Next Nature also bears many premonitions about the seething, favela-like, feverish state of our planet tomorrow. Next Nature offers us few reassurances. It refuses to view Nature as a given, solid, static entity to be discovered, dissected and destroyed by human agency. Instead, Next Nature is a dynamic entity that is fated to change right along with us.

There is an ontological crisis involved in our ignorance of what the Earth was like before we humans altered it. It’s hard for us to establish a comfortable sense of our place in the world when the world itself is so outworn and bedraggled by so many previous human efforts. It’s degrading to work creatively on hand-me-downs: the writer whose page is a scraped-down palmpsest, the artist whose canvas is torn and worn, the architect engaged in endless renovations, the actress in thrift-shop clothes. That’s what it’s like for a civilization existing in a natural milieu that has been irretrievably damaged. And yes, that is our future.

If you’re in or around Brighton tonight, go to THE OUTER CHURCH, held upstairs at The Freebutt, for an indoctrination into the kosmiche, the hauntological, the confusing and the electronic as prepared by Joseph Stannard, writer for THE WIRE magazine and The Quietus. I would be there if I could, and, in fact, in the near future, I might be.

Good morning. If the embed works, this should be a little bit of RED.

• The brain speaks: Scientists decode words from brain signals
  In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.
  (tags:neuro blacklight )
• Canadian authorities to try 3D image of child to slow drivers
  An optical illusion is about to be trialed in West Vancouver, Canada, starting September 7, to try to jolt reckless drivers into slowing down.
  (tags:tech crime psych )
• Scientists examine possibility of a phonon laser, or ‘phaser’
  Scientists theorize that phonons, which are the smallest discrete unit of vibrational energy, can be amplified by a phonon laser to generate a highly coherent beam of sound (particularly, high-frequency ultrasound), similar to how an optical laser generates a highly coherent beam of light.
  (tags:sci tech war )
• Who do our genes belong to?
  Investors in pharmaceutical, medical and biotechnological industries should not be able to patent genes that are identical to naturally occurring sequences, according to an Australian National University biotechnology patent expert.
  (tags:med crime )
• Study examines association between urban living and psychotic disorders
  ""There is a substantial worldwide variation in incidence rates of schizophrenia," the authors write as background in the article. "The clearest geographic pattern within this distribution of rates is that urban areas have a higher incidence of schizophrenia than rural areas." Characteristics of neighborhoods that have been associated with an increased risk of developing psychosis include population and ethnic density, deprivation and social fragmentation or reduced social capital and cohesion…"
  (tags:psych )
• Book Covers – Penguin Classics: (Red) Series

  (tags:design books )

• AfroCyberPunk : Blog Archive : Tomorrow is Today
  "…the largest movie industry in Africa has joined in on the action with the July 2010 release of the sci-fi movie Kajola by Nigerian director Niyi Akinmolayan. "Kajola is the Yoruba word for commonwealth. In the year 2059, Nigeria becomes a totalitarian state. After a second civil war, the rich relocate to the Island areas of Lagos state and turn it into an ultra modern city. The war torn mainland of lagos state is disconnected and abandoned. A rebel leader, Allen learns of a plot codenamed Kajola to build cities on the mainland and eliminate the remaining survivors…""
  (tags:film )
• BLDGBLOG: Hydromania
  "Set in a drought-stricken world "several decades into the future," run by "water corporations from China, Japan and the Ukraine," it follows the science fictionalized path of a "maverick water engineer"…"
  (tags:books )
• Holding Tide: The Connectome and Data-Driven Biology
  "Sebastian Seung at MIT is one of the foremost researchers in the field of connectomics– the branch of neuroscience dedicated to reconstructing the complete circuit diagram of the human brain…"
  (tags:sci neuro med )
• Hallucinogen can safely ease anxiety in advanced-stage cancer patients: study
  "In the first human study of its kind to be published in more than 35 years, researchers found psilocybin, an hallucinogen which occurs naturally in "magic mushrooms," can safely improve the moods of patients with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety, according to an article published online today in the Archives of General Psychiatry."
  (tags:drugs neuro med )

This design has always been peculiarly popular.

Click through to buy a download of the whole thing for a miserly 5 euros.

Just read about this in an interview somewhere this afternoon. Magazero is an internet shop for independent magazines. Not quite in the same space as Stack.

I love Magazero because they told me something I didn’t know — there’s a new issue of the excellent "speculative architecture" magazine P.E.A.R. Magazero is slowly expanding its stock, according to the interview I read on the phone at the pub… ah, here it is.

I believe that it is the richness and variety of the magazines that I stock that will bring success. My aim is to find magazines that are not really known or widely available, and to stock them. Then I have to bring them to the attention of potential buyers – that’s marketing. I take the view that there is a huge untapped market for magazines, and that work I undertake to bring mags to the attention of new buyers will be repaid.

I have an initial target of stocking 300 mags, which I think I’ll hit by the end of next year. It’s a slow business, but at the moment I am in the very early stages of building a system, a brand, customers, the lot. It can’t be done overnight – largely as each magazine has to be sourced separately.

If you decide to spend some money there, this coupon gets you 25% off until the end of September.

I suspect they will have some of my money this week.

I don’t know how I’ve never heard this before, or how I’ve never heard of them. I mean, don’t look too closely, because the band looks like it escaped from a skin-testing lab and the lead guy dances worse than the Jozin z Bazin guy. But the lead guy has a brilliant shouty voice. The music seriously sounds like it was nicked from gorgeously bad postpunk who in turn nicked their act from 1970s electronic library music.

And yet I’ve listened to it five times in a row.

“Follow You,” Future Islands, 2007. Odd thing, it is.

Artist/writer Katelan Foisy says: "I’ll be on the H2O Network Friday Sept 17th at 6 p.m. talking about my book Blood and Pudding and self transformation. For more info on the H2O network and a call in number click here."

MATER SUSPIRIA VISION feat. HOW I QUIT CRACK – Boadicea (2010) from Mater Suspiria Vision on Vimeo.

• Upside to global warming: ‘New North’ will thrive
  "As worldwide population increases by 40 percent over the next 40 years, sparsely populated Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets, Laurence C. Smith writes in "The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future" (Dutton Books), scheduled for publication Sept. 23." Possible tie-in here with InfraNet Lab's "Next North" project
  (tags:geo pol viridian )
• B.A.S.A.A.P. ? Blog ? BERG
  "B.A.S.A.A.P. is short for Be As Smart As A Puppy, which is my short-hand for a bunch of things I?ve been thinking about? Ooh? Since 2002 or so I think, and a conversation in a california car-park with Matt Webb. It was my term for a bunch of things that encompass some 3rd rail issues for UI designers like proactive personalisation and interaction, examined in the work of Byron and Nass, exemplified by (and forever-after-vilified-as) Microsoft?s Bob and Clippy (RIP). A bunch of things about bots and daemons, conversational interface. And lately, a bunch of things about machine learning ? and for want of a better term, consumer-grade artificial intelligence."
  (tags:tech design future BERG )
• Global Qi standard powers up wireless charging
  "The Wireless Power Consortium today launched the Qi 1.0 standard which enables consumer electronic brands and device manufacturers to bring interoperable wireless inductive charging devices to market. The Consortium also announced today the first products certified with Qi."
  (tags:tech )
• The Associated Press: AP IMPACT: Before the CIA, there was the Pond
  "Created during World War II as a purely U.S. operation free of the perceived taint of European allies, the Pond existed for 13 years and was shrouded in secrecy for more than 50 years. It used sources that ranged from Nazi officials to Stalinists and, at one point, a French serial killer"
  (tags:pol war spy )

“Blind,” Blackbird Blackbird.

BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD / BLIND from Alan Jensen on Vimeo.

Yes. Am here. But mostly just on email, with half an eye on Twitter some of the time. Busy day. Need to feed Paul more FREAKANGELS pages, among many other things. I don’t even dare switch on Google Reader right now. Bad enough I checked my "public" email account (warrenellis@gmail.com) and found a bunch of new music by RxRy waiting for me.

Negat-ve Patterns by RxRy

I looked at Flickr earlier, just to get my eyes out of OpenOffice for a minute, and um well yes why don’t you see for yourself:

Thank you Lenora Claire.

Things I am thinking about besides where the cartoon arserape ghost version of Lenora Claire is going to stick her fingernails in my forthcoming hellish nightmares: wondering if Katie and Jack are moving copies of NANOKA, and wondering if a one-man magazine counts as a magazine.

“Open/Avocado” by Kim Boekbinder, directed by BriAnna Olson. I previously made you listen to The Impossible Girl. You liked it. You want to go back and listen to it again. You want to give her money. Or, at the very least, spread the disease around. Well done.

(We’ll ignore the fact that I tried to have her cursed by a gypsy on Twitter earlier today, yes? Yes.)

A video preview for Dustin Wong’s album INFINITE LOVE.

Dustin Wong – Infinite Love preview from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Photographers Katie West and Jack Scoresby running loose in Japan with cameras for a week, resulting in an 88-page magazine called NANOKA. What is not to love? Nothing.

The PAR AVION split CD by The Ithaca Trio and Machinefabriek is a rather lovely thing, too. Atmosphere, classical instruments, ambience, things heard from another room.

And oh my god there’s a new Philip Jeck album out today and Secretly Canadian just sent me a new album from a new band Warren is happy this afternoon oh yes

This is a rather magnificent hauntological/retrotronic artifact by Jon Brooks, who records on the Ghost Box label as The Advisory Circle.

I’ve gone on at length in the past about the traditions of Confusing English Electronic Music. I realise it’s an acquired taste, and possibly only appeals to someone with certain life experiences, but nonetheless I love it. The tracks are short – if one experiment annoys you, click on to the next. And if you like it, click through and buy it for a very reasonable seven British quid.

It will be a good month for the Confusing English Electronic Music, as Ghost Box release the next two pieces in their Study Series on the 10th.

And we’re back again.

Random catch-up on stuff and things, from this slowly dying Thinkpad X61 that buzzes more loudly and moves more slowly every day. Definitely need to order another Thinkpad next week, now, even though I’m dreading having to deal with a new OS and replace all my programs. I wish I could be zen about it, like Ben Hammersley, and live in Zumodrive and Google Docs. But I need OpenOffice and Final Draft. (And a dozen other things.) (And don’t talk to me about Celtx, I’ve never met a production company with Celtx in their workflow.)

Been an insane work week, in which I have so far produced 2000 words of a booklet, about 20 pages of comics, 3000 words of a novel, and a requested tv series pitch that I can’t even face doing a work count on. 800 words of a WIRED UK column. And I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten something.

(Said booklet should be, with luck, an actual Thing In The World by the end of the month.)

Project Blacklight got confirmed today. Details will happen down the road, but it’s a very unusual one-shot comics project, working with an old friend, that is experimental in lots of ways. A small thing, that won’t be available in comics shops. I like experiments.

Terribly amused by Zo’s story of how she met her husband, and my complicity therein. I saw her a couple of days before she was due to meet him in Paris, and she was all "aah, nothing’s going to happen." While grinding her thighs together like a cricket. Heh.

Shit, this post’s been in the emblogeniser for two hours, waiting for me to finish and send it because I ended up doing five other things. I press Publish now.

Found this in the unplumbed depths of my external drive last night. Had forgotten all about it. H Stewart, from her 2009 collection LOST. “Sunrise Revival.” Playing it for the end of summer here.