(That is what hydrogen atoms are capable of when you give them 15 billion years to evolve.)


We could have called our blog something else, for example 'Sir, I never promised you a Roswell Report, Sir!' or 'New Austrian Dark Wavers, We're On Our Way!' or 'Hunger Is The Best Cook' or 'Psychoanalysis Is Only A Shabby Generative Tool!' or 'Jesus Loves You More Than You Will Know (Wo Wo Wo)!' or 'Aestheticize What's Trying To Break You!'. No! No! No! We just call it [The Blog].

Active bloggers and informants:
Johannes Grenzfurthner (Vienna)
Rose White (Brooklyn)
Simone Davalos (SF)
David Fine (SF)
Jens Ohlig (Bonn)
Dominik Unger (Vienna/London)
Roland Gratzer (Vienna)
Aileen Derieg (Linz)
Sharon Bradley (Vancouver)
Franky Ablinger (Vienna)
Daniel Eberharter (Vienna/Glasgow)
Georg Cracked (Vienna)

 




















[The Blog]
 




monochrom's "Could It Be" on blip.tv 
monochrom content info
The story of two gay subroutines... now on blip.tv



"Could It Be" by monochrom. From the Semi-Best-Of album "Carefully Selected Moments", available on iTunes.

Link (hi-res video)



Nonine recordings 



Nonine recordings is a nice label from Berlin releasing wonderful deep albums. Enjoy.

Link



10 years of The Big Lebowski 



Next month this great movie will celebrate the 1oth anniversary of its cinema release. Therefore we conjured up a little article about the "seven deadly sins and their representation in The Big Lebowski". Because, in the parlance of our times, this a movie about religions, like buddhism, judaism and bowling.

Feedback welcome.
Link



Venezuela seizes Mexican owned cement plants 
"Now the cement we produce will not make millionaires of some far-away men, it will be used for our houses, our infrastructure, our national development plan," said Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, charged with overseeing the takeover, before dancing workers clad in red shirts.


Link



monochrom's "Could It Be": The story of two gay subroutines 
monochrom content info
This is the story of two gay subroutines...

File under: monochrom musical song duet gay subroutine love schmaltz 8bit ascii romantic liebeslied folder clarinet.



"Could It Be" by monochrom. From the Semi-Best-Of album "Carefully Selected Moments", available on iTunes.

Link (hi-res video)



"Fertilizing" parts of the ocean? 
Last year, a private company proposed "fertilizing" parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton. Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet.
Link



Hello, 2006 SQ372! 
A "minor planet" with the prosaic name 2006 SQ372 is just over two billion miles from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune. But this lump of ice and rock is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II).
Link



Beloved sci-fi memories ruined: Orson Scott Card of "Ender's Game" 
Can an author's opinion ruin the fiction he produced? For Wired's GeekDad blog, it can. Especially if the author has outed himself as a disgusting homophobe of the worst kind:
Now it's two decades later, and Orson Scott Card has written a strongly anti-gay screed that goes so far as to propose active rebellion to ensure that marriage is legally defined to his liking. Like many others who have read his diatribe, I am utterly repulsed by his words, to the point that they have drastically altered my perception of him as a person, and yes, to some extent, as an author.

So now what do I do with the copies of Card's books: Should I get rid of them?  Should I encourage my kids to read them?  Essentially, does the fact that I find his opinions utterly repugnant invalidate his work somehow?  (We can debate endlessly whether Ender's Game is really a good book, or if it's an apologia for Hitler, or whatever.  I liked it when I was a teenager, and haven't read it since; I don't know if I would like it now.)
Link



Hack A Day recommends Arse Elektronika and Roboexotica 
monochrom content info
Nice. Hack A Day recommends two of our festivals: Arse Elektronika 2008 (San Francisco) and Roboexotica 2008 (Vienna).

Link



Jesse Darlin': interview with our monochrom artist-in-residence 
monochrom content info
Jesse Darlin' -- our artist-in-residence -- has been interviewed by Vice Austria. (Stupidly sexist German intro, by the way.)



Link



Hoffspace 



"In my travels round the world I have always been surprised that no matter where I go people recognize and know me, from Europe, Australia and India to the Philippines and the Zulu Nation in South Africa. This got me thinking... I realized that while two people from two entirely different countries and backgrounds may seem to have nothing in common, the only thing they might have in common is me... So I decided to start a network where people from across the world might come together and get a conversation started over me. Where it will lead, I don't know but the world would be a better place if everyone talked a little more to each other..."

Voila, Hoffspace - The David Hasselhoff Social Community

Link



Will The Semantic Web Have a Gender? 
As machines learn to understand what the web means, what perspective will they understand it from? Who is teaching them? "Objective" descriptions of the world and the relationships in it can cause real problems, particularly for people with little power in those relationships. How will the emerging Semantic Web understand relationships and what will that mean for us as human users?
Link



The floating ecopolis 
The concept may be radical, but it might just have to be if the worst predictions of climate change are realized. The Lilypad, a floating ecopolis for climatic refugees, is the creation of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut."It is" he says, "a true amphibian, half aquatic and half terrestrial city, able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting biodiversity".
Link
(via Weblogsky)



Carl Sagan is Agent Smith 

Sheep's testicles and strychnine: The history of performance-enhancing substances in sport 
Cathal Sheerin reports:
Athletes have always sought to gain an edge on their fellow competitors by the use of dietary supplements and other methods. At the first Olympics in 776 BC, the ancient Greeks used oral supplements made from cola plants and hashish, as well as cactus-based stimulants. They also ate sheep's testicles as an early form of testosterone supplementation. Later, Roman athletes opted for sexual abstinence and a more masochistic method of performance-enhancement – they had their servants whip them with rhododendron branches until they bled, thereby preparing them for the pain of competition.

During the 17th century, methods of performance-enhancement were equally bloody, but more invasive, as runners had their spleens removed in the belief that it would increase their speed: the operation sped a fifth of them to early graves. In the late 1800s, athletes experimented with ether-coated sugar cubes and wine laced with cocaine to offset the pain and fatigue of competition.

The growth of international competition gave extra impetus to those seeking an advantage over their fellow athletes. Most famously, America's Thomas Hicks won the 1904 Olympic marathon dosed with raw egg, strychnine and brandy, all administered to him during the race. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he collapsed on crossing the finish line and remained unconscious for several hours - but he still got his gold medal.
Link



South Africa: not yet post-colonial 
Recent violence between the poor and the poorer in South Africa was the by-product of the country's stagnation – it has achieved what it set out to do racially, but not economically or socially. The old colonial model of modernity is still the basis for power.
Link



Military penguin becomes a 'Sir' 
A penguin who was previously made a Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army has been knighted at Edinburgh Zoo.
Link (via DNL)



monochrom's "Bye Bye" on BBtv 
monochrom content info
Boing Boing TV is showing our short film "Bye Bye".



Link BBtv (without copyright infringement)
Link monochrom (with copyright infringement)



Torvalds: Fed up with the 'security circus' 
Creator of Linux kernel prefers model where bugs are fixed as early as possible without a lot of hype instead of current situation. He says he is fed up with what he sees as a "security circus" surrounding software vulnerabilities and how they're hyped by security people.
Link (thanx, Franky Ablinger)



Science as Narrative: The story of the discovery of penicillin 
This theoretical paper explores the use of narrative as a captivating vehicle for representing and communicating scientific information. It does so with the use of a narrative-based exhibit found at the Alexander Fleming Museum in London. Built upon theoretical underpinnings that point to the value of narrative for learning, we examine the necessary components, if any, of narrative alongside with excerpts and images from the exhibit describing the discovery of penicillin. We wander through this specific example about what it would mean to narrativize science, as an attempt to make it meaningful to and accessible by the public.

By Lucy Avraamidou (University of Nicosia) and Jonathan Osborne (King's College London).

Link



How DNA Repairs Can Reshape Genome, Spawn New Species 
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) have shown how broken sections of chromosomes can recombine to change genomes and spawn new species.
Link



The Cobalt Bomb: Dr Strangelove and the real Doomsday machine 
Review of P. D. Smith's "Doomsday Men: The real Dr Strangelove and the dream of the superweapon"
Smith's study is the gripping, untold story of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, which first came to public attention in 1950 when the Hungarian-born scientist Leo Szilard made a dramatic announcement on radio: science was on the verge of creating a Doomsday Bomb. For the first time in history, mankind would soon have the ability to destroy all life on the planet. The shockwave from this statement reverberated across the following decade and beyond.

What Szilard had in mind was the third of the "alphabet bombs" that came to characterize an entire age. The first, the A-bomb, had been used to incinerate two Japanese cities. Teller's H-bomb blasted its way into public consciousness a few years later. Finally, there was the ultimate weapon: the C-bomb, a hydrogen bomb that could "transmute" an element such as cobalt into a radioactive element about 320 times as powerful as radium. A deadly radioactive cloud could be released into the atmosphere and carried by the westerly winds across the surface of the earth. Every living thing inhaling it, or even touched by it, would be doomed to certain death. In the autumn of 1950, Szilard's fears were given independent validation by Dr James R. Arnold of the Institute for Nuclear Studies in Chicago. Arnold, slide-rule in hand, had started out to debunk Szilard's arguments. He finished by publishing a set of calculations that showed that a Doomsday device, perhaps two-and-a-half times as heavy as the battleship Missouri, could indeed be built.
Link



Don't try to tell me inaction is not a crime 
The New York Times reports the sad and revolting story of a man whose life in New York City diverged from "probable green card" to "detainee treated worse than convicted felon". In 2007, "Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons." When he went for a green card hearing, he was detained for an immigration violation and taken to jail.
In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.
Link: New York Times article about Hiu Lui Ng

Link: New York Times' In-Custody Deaths Topic Page -- The page collects NY Times articles and outside links to related material on the problem of detainee deaths in the United States. As they say on the front page of the section: "On any given day, about 31,000 people who are not American citizens are held in detention in a patchwork of county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities while the government decides whether to deport them. Getting details about those who die in custody is a difficult undertaking left to family members, advocacy groups and lawyers."



Software lego bricks = services? 
Our Franky Ablinger writes:
When IT was starting to compose software from components 20 years ago, nobody thought that in the future the component lego bricks will be known as services... And: I must confess that I only knew a handful of the services listed here...
Link



Prixxx Arse Elektronika: Update 
monochrom content info
Check out our human and non-human participants and contestants of Prixxx Arse Elektronika!



(Bios and descriptions.)



Blogging merit badge (at last) 
The Boy Scouts of America online store has an entire section devoted to humorous "spoof" merit badges. If you think you've earned it, you can purchase badges for such things as "Blogging", "UFO sighting", and "Lighting Farts".
Link



Unabomber objects to display of his cabin at crime museum 
Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wrote a letter to a federal appeals court complaining about a museum exhibit of the tiny cabin where he plotted an 18-year bombing spree.
Link



Rainbows, the next government conspiracy 



The combination of missing science classes and having access to tools for publishing theories on rainbows online seems problematic.



When filtering for obscenity, please use common sense 
Otherwise, searching for the Consbreastution of the United States will expose a clbuttic mistake.
Link



Uwe Boll to make a movie on Dafur massacres 
Dr. Uwe Boll, director of various movie adaptions of video games, often harshly critizised for his overall skills (one review called on of his movies "so poorly built, so horribly acted and so sloppily stitched together that it's not even at the straight-to-DVD level."), announced a surprising new project: before he goes on to shoot a third movie based on the BloodRayne franchise, the German director, producer, and screenwriter will start with Janjaweed, a movie about the genocidal armed mercenaries in Darfur:
"I will also do it in the style of Mel Gibson' Apocalypto... You do it almost like a documentary, but it's a fictional movie, and it will be very brutal." "I enjoyed shooting [Tunnel Rats] in South Africa, so I will shoot there again," he continues, in reference to his most recently completed film about the special U.S. combat unit that was sent into Vietnam to kill the subterranean elements of the enemy. "The title will be Janjaweed, just like the name of the Arab hordes who drive in on horsebacks and camels and kill everyone, raping the women and hacking the babies in pieces." 
Link



Rune Grammofon 



DNL recieved postage from Norway, from the fine music label Rune Grammofon. He calls it a pearl and tells us about the beauty of its latest three releases.
Link



The Big Lebowski and the Seven Mortal Sins 



It is never wrong to do an in-depth text even on a very minor or far-fetched issue of this great movie. The seven deadly sins are in fact represented in the movie "The Big Lebowski" in the divine duality. Check it out.
Link



Hugh Laurie casting for House MD 

Islam, Animation and Money: the Reception of Disney's Aladdin in Southeast Asia 
By Timothy R. White and J. E. Winn.
Much has been said about the reception of Walt Disney Incorporated's 1993 film Aladdin by Arab-American groups in the United States. However, little has been written concerning the reception of the film in other parts of the world, especially in those nations with significant Muslim populations. Although an investigation into the reception of the film in the Islamic nations of the Middle East seems obvious and appropriate, there are other parts of the world with significant Muslim populations that deserve our attention. This paper, then, is a study of the controversy surrounding the distribution and exhibition of Aladdin in the nations of Southeast Asia with large Muslim populations. These nations include Indonesia (with the largest Muslim population in the world), Brunei, and Malaysia, all of which are predominantly Muslim, and Singapore, in which Muslims constitute a significant minority. Although in the United States the issue may be regarded as primarily one concerning freedom of expression, in other parts of the world the issue is not seen as quite so simple.
Link (thanx, Bene)



Arse Elektronika 2008: Call for Outfit 
monochrom content info
Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2008 will be a dignified occasion -- and so we invite you to dress up properly. Surprise us with sex and science fiction related costumes... and maybe win a Prixxx Arse trophy yourself!



Spread the word!

Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2008, Sept 25 @ CELLspace (San Francisco).

Link



Some eyes are more equal than others 



The New York Times has reported that the United States Army has issued a textbook for war surgeons, War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq, that details the battlefield techniques doctors have developed in response to the new kinds of trauma wounds they are seeing in the current war.
Paradoxically, the book is being issued as news photographers complain that they are being ejected from combat areas for depicting dead and wounded Americans.

But efforts to censor the book were overruled by successive Army surgeons general. It can be ordered from the Government Printing Office for $71; Amazon.com lists it as out of stock, but the Borden Institute, the Army medical office that published it, said thousands more copies would be printed.
"I'm ashamed to say that there were folks even in the medical department who said, Over my dead body will American civilians see this," said Dr. David E. Lounsbury, one of the book's three authors. Dr. Lounsbury, 58, an internist and retired colonel, took part in the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq and was the editor of military medicine textbooks at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Amazon link: War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq



Finally on US iTunes / monochrom's "Carefully Selected Moments" 
monochrom content info
Tatatataaaa! Our CD "Carefully Selected Moments" can now be found on iTunes US...
You can listen to the full versions of all tracks.



Link / iTunes Store



Guess who's building nuclear power plants? 

"Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan" on blip.tv 
monochrom content info
Kiki and Bubu get invited to a fancy cocktail party. But the hosts seem to be rather strange...



Link / blip.tv
Link / Kiki and Bubu main page



Jupiter And Saturn Full Of Liquid Metal Helium 
Cool stuff.
A strange, metal brew lies buried deep within Jupiter and Saturn, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and in London.

The study, just published the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that metallic helium is less rare than was previously thought and is produced under the kinds of conditions present at the centers of giant, gaseous planets, mixing with metal hydrogen and forming a liquid metal alloy.
Link



Struck By Lightning: nice collection of stories and facts 
It's random and electric, and we are forever drawn to its deadly charm.
Floyd Woods, a retired truck driver from Ardbeg, Ontario, was twelve years old in 1943 when his house was hit. The strike shot through the radio antenna, exploded in the living room intoa blue fireball that roared down the hall, lifting up the linoleum runner by the tacks, ripping the nails out of the floor, splintering the house walls as fine as kindling before it ran off over the bedrock outside and died. Woods’ guitar was hanging on the wall over his bed. Sixty-five years later, he still shakes his head: "That strike burned the guitar strings off, bing, bing, bing, threw me right out of bed and across the room so I ached for a month. Nothin’ will move you faster than lightning. Nothin'."
Link



"project vy2ms" aims to keep Department of Homeland Security busy 
Joerg Piringer's "project vy2ms" is a site that generates bizarre documents with graphics. Joerg goal is to keep the Department of Homeland Security busy.
the project vy2ms gives customs officers, agencies and police forces new labor. it generates documents that can be read, searched and deciphered by otherwise underemployed personal. it challenges them with enigmatic language and mysterious images and diagrams.

each document is unique and has it's own serial number. however you may rest assured that NO access data associated with your download will be stored.
you can print the document or store it on your laptop, mp3-player, digital camera, usb-stick, arduino...

beware: vy2ms might also provoke interesting discussions with officials about artificial linguistics, art and language in general
Link



Packin' the K: Pwnie-awarded corporate anthem 
Black Hat Briefings, the conference before Las Vegas based hacker con Defcon, saw the first ever Pwnie Award Ceremony. The awards reward achievements in security and horrible failures in categories such as Best Server-Side Bug, Best Client-Side Bug, Mass 0wnage, Most Innovative Research, Lamest Vendor Response, Most Overhyped Bug, Most Epic FAIL, and Lifetime Achievement Award.

Oh, and there's an award for "Best Song", which went to antivirus company Kapersky Labs for keepin' it real with "Packin' the K":





Waterboarding an attraction at New York amusement park 
New York's Coney Island amusement park re-enacts the controversial interrogation practice from the Guantanamo Bay naval base for fun, using robots:
The scene using robotic dolls is an installation built by artist Steve Powers to criticize waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique the United States has admitted using on terrorism suspects, but that rights group say is torture.
"Waterboard Thrill Ride" beckons a sign along with cartoon character "SpongeBob SquarePants" who appears tied down and exclaiming: "It don't Gitmo better!"
Link



"Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan" on YouTube 
monochrom content info
Kiki and Bubu get invited to a fancy cocktail party. But the hosts seem to be rather strange...



Link / YouTube
Link / Kiki and Bubu main page



BBtv features "Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan" 
monochrom content info
Kiki and Bubu get invited to a fancy cocktail party. But the hosts seem to be rather strange...
Featured on Boing Boing TV, in a shortened version.



Link BBtv
Link Uncut Version



monochrom's "Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan" 
monochrom content info
Kiki and Bubu get invited to a fancy cocktail party. But the hosts seem to be rather strange...



Link to Director's Uncut



Yet they keep cranking it out. 

The Future of Sunglasses 


Behold the Uber Shades, the Swiss Army Knife of sunglasses, which are clearly the future.



12 LEGO Models Recreated in Cake 

There are basically two things in life which are simply wonderful and never fail to produce a happy smile on everyone's face: LEGO and cake. Which is why there is probably nothing that compares to the awesomeness of LEGO models recrecated in cake.

Link



Hacking personal genetics 
The study of the human genome is slowly moving from the area of professionals to a point where it's available to amateurs. 23andMe offers a commericial service to compare your genes with friends, family and the world and decipher the history written in your genes (starting at 999 US$). You can also try out a free demo that includes an example family, the Mendels.

MyDaughtersDNA.org takes a different approach in their community focused on aiding those with challenging genetic conditions. Non-commericial in nature, it is a forum dedicated to expanding the understanding of genetics conditions and variations in the human genome, motivated by a personal cause:
The inspiration for this site comes from the unusual coincidence that I was trained as a clinical geneticist and I have a daughter with an unknown genetic syndrome. The community of clinical geneticists have been diligent and helpful but a definitive diagnosis remains elusive. It is very possible she has a new syndrome but despite my efforts, the molecular (or DNA) variant causing the syndrome is not known with certainty though I have identified a candidate. Were I not a physician trained as a geneticist,  it is likely my daughter’s condition would be lumped together with other patients in a category of heterogeneous but similar clinical conditions. This is the standard and respectable way that physicians deal with novelty.  It is a way station on the path to some greater understanding of human biology.  It takes the trained eye to spot the uniqueness of a case, sometimes a lucky scientific insight, or simply the tincture of time for science to catch up with the human condition.  In all cases, the question at hand -- what does she have --  has to be asked and re-asked and that is best done of everyone. This site allows that open question to hang out in the public begging unapologetically for an answer.



Hulk: "Well, down to business... what a lovely macaroon!" 

Atomic Bomb Go Game 
Today marks the anniversary of the first atomic bomb drop on a city. The nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945 and interrupted a celebrated Go game between Hashimoto Utaro, who was the Honinbo title holder, and Iwamoto Kaoru, who was the challenge:
The blast from the atomic bomb detonation above Hiroshima interrupted the game in its third day. It came at 8.15 am and at a point where the players had replayed the position - but had not yet started the game again. There were injuries to some of those there caused by flying glass, and damage to the building. Segoe was blown off his feet. The game wasn't resumed until after lunch. The game was then played to a conclusion, Hashimoto winning by five points with White (there was no komi). This tied the match 1-1.
Link



Hybrid Cars? Too Quiet? 
Scientific American suggests:
Pedestrians, used to loud engine noise, have less warning when a car powered by a hybrid or electric motor approaches.
Well, let's get used to it.
Link



Aurora: future user experience for the web? 
Aurora is a concept video exploring one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept series.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

But will it really happen?
Link (via Manfred Wuits)



The Future of Playgrounds? 
The latest jungle gym talks to you, and connects to the web.



Link



China's Olympic Trials 
"Go Red for China!" was the slogan unveiled on the Chinese mainland by Pepsi-Cola, whose ubiquitous blue can will, "for a limited time," be red. Pepsi is just one of many companies advertising at the Olympics, at a cost of up to $6 billion, in an attempt to tap a largely untouched market of more than 1 billion. "You've never seen the Olympics in a market that has such domestic commercial scale," Michael Wood, chief executive for greater China at advertising firm Leo Burnett, told the New York Times. "When the Olympics were in Los Angeles and Atlanta, the U.S. market was already fully developed."

This is the Olympics the West wanted: games where the grandest prize is not a gold medal but a glittering entree to China's seemingly endless army of potential consumers. This is the reason that George W. Bush will attend the opening ceremonies, the first U.S. President to do so on foreign soil, and that in March, mere days before the crackdown in Tibet, Condoleezza Rice, laughably, took China off the State Department's list of nations that abuse human rights.
Link



Teaching at Harvard: Narcosis 
The banality and sense of entitlement of rich students at Harvard left John H. Summers feeling his teaching had been degraded to little more than a service to prepare clients for monied careers.
Teaching on the part-time staff at Harvard is a little like visiting Disney World. The magic dust induces a light narcosis.
Link



monochrom's "Carefully Selected Moments" on last.fm 
monochrom content info
Our CD "Carefully Selected Moments" can now be found on last.fm...
You can listen to the full versions of all tracks.



Link / last.fm



Christopher Bickerton on Europe and its discontents 
"Le Monde diplomatique" starts a new series of podcasts. And in the second part, Christopher Bickerton talks to George Miller about the many different groups who all voted no in the Irish referendum, and what this means for Europe.
Link



Mao, a pop art phenomenon? 
By Holland Cotter.
"I went to see the Great Wall. You know, you read about it for years. And actually, it was really great. It was really, really, really great."

That was Andy Warhol after his only visit to China, in 1982.

He loved what he saw. He loved, he said, that everyone here dressed alike. He loved that the Great Wall, the world's biggest Private Property: Do Not Enter sign, was in a Communist country. He loved that Mao Zedong, whose face he had painted because Life magazine called Mao the most famous man in the world, was still a superstar even though he had been dead for six years.

China was Pop. It still is. It's still a nation of uniforms, but of more and more kinds of uniforms. I saw outfits with matching corsages on department store salesgirls, the slate-gray shirts of guards stationed at luxury high-rises and the Chloë Sevigny T-shirts that teenagers wear on Beijing streets.

Mao's image is less conspicuous here than it once was. His status took a dip when the savageries of the Cultural Revolution began to be told. His face doesn’t appear on a new 10-yuan bank note issued for the Olympics, but it's on all other currency above the small-change level. He remains omnipresent, like some Warholian multiple. Look and you'll find him. His star power holds. [...]
Link



Large Hadron Collider: The Rap 

You know a science experiment has arrived when a rap song extolling its virtues just hit YouTube. After 14 years, CERN, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, is getting ready to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to seek out new particles including the long-awaited Higgs boson and the possible source of dark matter as well as study the differences between matter and antimatter. The lab says it plans to send the first particles through the LHC's 17-mile- (27-kilometer-) diameter ring in early September and gradually bring it up to full speed over two months. In honor of the impending start-up, Alpinekat, aka Kate McAlpine, a science writer for CERN, has produced a five-minute rap video starring herself and friends dancing in the bowels of the machine. McAlpine's rap, written during her 40-minute bus commute from Geneva to CERN, gives a rhythmic tour of the mysteries of modern physics and the workings of the LHC, noting that "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head." It even has a good hook.
Link (via SciAm)



Creating first nerve cells from reprogrammed stem cells 
After nearly a decade of setbacks and false starts, stem-cell science finally seems to be hitting its stride. Just a year after Japanese scientists first reported that they had generated stem cells by reprogramming adult skin cells — without using embryos — American researchers have managed to use that groundbreaking technique to achieve another scientific milestone. They created the first nerve cells from reprogrammed stem cells — an important demonstration of the potential power of stem-cell-based treatments to cure disease.
Link



Could China lead the green revolution? 
China, pilloried as the world's biggest polluter, has quietly taken a lead in moving to a low-carbon economy, according to a report by an independent climate advisory group.
Link



BlogWarBot 
Resource Allocation recommends the BlogWarBot.
If you have ever had a frustrating political discussion with someone, where you just can't see eye to eye because you have completely different preconceptions, then you will know how these discussions can degenerate.

Sick and tired of getting involved in these sorts of discussions on blogs Chris Clarke developed the BlogWarBot an automated opponent to carry on these discussions for him. You can check out some of the resulting discussions here: Blogwars reconsideredAnd engage in battle yourself here: BlogWarBot.




[The Archives]

03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004   04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004   05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004   06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004   07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004   08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004   09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004   10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004   11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004   12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005   01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005   02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005   03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005   04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005   05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005   06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005   07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005   08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005   09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005   10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005   11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005   12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006   01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006   02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006   03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006   04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006   05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006   06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006   07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006   08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006   09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006   10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006   11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006   12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007   01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007   02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007   03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007   04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007   05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007   06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007   07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007   08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007   09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007   10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007   11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007   12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008   01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008   02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008   03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008   04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008   05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008   06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008   07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008   08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008  



 

monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]

[monochrom Wikipedia]
[monochrom Flickr]
[monochrom blip.tv]
[monochrom GV]
[monochrom Youtube]
[monochrom Twitter]
[monochrom Soup]



[mono Projects]
So far we have translated 41% of all our projects to English.

Carefully Selected Moments / CD, LP

International Year of Polytheism 2007

Could It Be (Video clip)

Kiki and Bubu and The Shift / Short film

Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege / Short film

Kiki and Bubu and The Self / Short film

Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan / Short film

Sculpture Mobs

Nazi Petting Zoo / Short film

The Great Firewall of China

KPMG / Short film

The BRAICIN / Short film

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 1 / The Adventure Game

I was a copyright infringement in a previous life (T-Shirt)

Brave New Pong

Firing Squad Euro2008 Intervention

RFID Song

A tribute to Honzo

Lessig ist lässig

I can count every star in the heavens above -- The image of computers in popular music

All Tomorrow's Condensations / Puppet show

Bye Bye / Short film

Revaluation

PC/DC patch

Proto-Melodic Comment Squad

myfacespace.com

The Redro Loitzl Story / Short film

Hax0rcise SCO

Law and Second Order (T-Shirt)

They really kicked you out of the Situationist International?

Death Special: Falco

Applicant Fisch / Short film

When I was asked to write about new economy

Taugshow #6

Taugshow #7

Taugshow #9

Taugshow #10

Taugshow #11

Taugshow #14

Taugshow #15

Campfire at Will

Arse Elektronika 2007 and 2008

The Void's Foaming Ebb / Short film

Remoting Future

When you / Short film

Elf

Free Bariumnitrate

Toyps / Typing Errors

ARAD-II Miami Beach Crisis

The Charcoal Burner / Short film

Digital Culture In Brazil

Hegemonchhichi

Nation of Zombia

Lonely Planet Guide action

CSI Oven Cloth

Dept. of Applied Office Arts

Farewell to Overhead

Google Buttplug

Fieldrecording in Sankt Wechselberg / Short film

Dark Dune Spots

Campaign For The Abolition Of Personal Pronouns

Zeigerpointer

Space Tourism

In the Head of the Gardener

Entertainment (Unterhaltung) / Short film

Cthulhu Goatse

Nicholas Negroponte Memorial Cable

Coke Light Art Edition 06

Experience the Experience! (West Coast USA/Canada Tour 2005)

April 23

Overhead Cumshot

Irark / Short film

Wart

Instant Blitz Copy Fight

A Patriotic Fireman