Rudy Rucker
Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel. Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.
Accidental Art Via Bizarre Online Auctions
This web site showcases bizarre items found for sale on internet auction sites. "Not the obviously fake auctions, like the infamous human kidney, but truly tacky stuff that people really, honestly, believed that someone would (and in some cases did) buy." Pictured above, black velvet painting God Bless Our Truckers. Scroll through titles of kitsch-art for more found poetry, or at least some killer ideas for band names.
The "Check Out My Ass!" Clown
Postcard of Goat Nursing a Baby posted by Xeni Jardin at 9:49:40 AM | permalink
From Web Server Logfiles, Found Poetry
Last night I was scrolling through search query reports in the server log files for xeni.net--for non-propellerheads, this means a report of the word strings people have recently typed into search engines, causing them to land on my web site. Following are random excerpts from that list. For a few of these, I can sort of figure out some oblique connection, but most are a total mystery.
Search Query Report
posted by Xeni Jardin at 9:45:40 AM | permalink
Honey, Continued--
Continuing on the bee tip, story today about the ability of trained honeybees to sniff out land mines. Researchers hope this may be a new way to locate the estimated >110MM unexploded land mines around the world.
Visit the researchers' web site here for more info, and for live bee-cams (snapshot shown above) and flight data. Bee-cams! Love it!
"Jerry Bromenshenk has studied bees as pollution sensors and environmental sensors for the past 30 years. He said honeybees have proven themselves to be easier to train, harder working and more accurate than bomb-sniffing dogs. Honeybees have a very refined sense of smell, live in packs of thousands, cover ground more quickly than dogs, and learn a new task in a matter of days, he said." Link. Thanks, kenny!
posted by Xeni Jardin at 1:50:30 PM | permalink
Extreme Urban Farming: Hollywood Honey Excavation
If this were a $19.99 video, they'd call it "Bees Gone Wild."
This was flat-out one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. Or tasted. This weekend, Steve Lassovszky--who builds rockets with an aerospace company and explodes robots with SRL--removed about 50 pounds of live bees from Coco's house in the Hollywood hills. The amazing, one-man task took about two grueling days, involved thousands of live, pissed-off honeybees, over-100-degree temperatures, 50 pounds of honeycombs packed with the most awesome honey you've ever tasted -- and incredibly, not a single sting.
Coco writes: "The smoke causes the bees to gorge on their own honey. As a result they stumble around on the combs not able to fly; making it easier to capture them and work on the removal process. The bees weren't aggressive at all. At one point, Steve found the eggs, and could see bees hatching. The queen was about 1-1/2" long, very black, and bald... This photo shows the tube with about 15,000 bees. After gently vacuming the bees into a large cardboard/mesh tube, [Steve removed the tube] it from its outer shell and [you could] see the bees through the mesh. They need the air during transport."
After removing all of the bees, Steve sliced, tiled and carefully tied down the excavated honeycombs into two new hive-boxes he'd built. He then transported both live bees and hives to a rural beekeeping preserve, where they are presumably living happily ever after.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:57:30 AM | permalink
Bummer: Alleged "Bumfights" Producers Behind Bars
Reuters reports that two men believed to be producers of the controversial online video phenomenon "Bumfights" were arrested today in San Diego on charges of conspiracy, solicitation of a felony crime and illegally paying people to fight. Bumfights.com spokespersons claim to have sold over 300,000 copies of the extreme exploitation vids online for $19.99 each. The shows are sort of like Jackass meets WWF Smackdown meets a homeless shelter surveillance cam. The web site's format blends streaming softporn vignettes (these feature naked women, not homeless men) with "bumfight" clips of street people engaging in graphic violence--fistfights, gross stunts, crack-smoking, poop and blood and loose teeth and stuff.
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Update: Zachary Bubeck, 24; Daniel J. Tanner, 21; and Michael J. Slyman, 21; were charged 09-23-02 with conspiracy to solicit an assault with deadly force, a charge that carries a maximum of three years imprisonment. Ryan E. McPherson, 19, was charged earlier in September with conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:07:59 AM | permalink
Kmart launches new website for props and shout-outs
only, playa haters left speechless.
Overwhelmed by a flood of anti-Kmart web sites and hella bad press, the beleaguered
retailer launched a web site at www.kmartforever.com,
billed as a "gathering place for all those interested in supporting Kmart."
The discount chain store, which is presently trying to work its way out of Chapter
11 bankruptcy, debuted the site in August with minimal hoo-ha. "We all
want to do what we can to make sure Kmart is with us well into the future,"
reads a blurb on the home page. From a Reuters story
today:
--------<snip> Negative posts about Kmart may be filtered out, but Wal-Mart and Target-dissing
is in full effect. Posts on the message board include subject lines like
"Kmart RULES!", "Whoo Hoo Go KMART!!!" and "My son
said his first words at Kmart", as well as the following (yes, I really did cut-and-paste these from the actual web site):
--------<snip> posted by Xeni Jardin at 5:40:33 PM | permalink
French Online Audio Art Competition Winners Announced
Villette Numerique, a first biennial digital art festival taking place this month in Paris, has just released the list of winners in a juried online audio art competition. You can check out the winning works for yourself here, and read more about the festival in my story for Wired News here.
Above, snapshot from the Internet audio artwork Infrasonic Soundscape by Minami Hidekazu, who writes:
"My goal is to articulate an idea that New York City becomes an instrument and a sonic geographical browser by mapping the hidden ambient sounds of the city in order to indicate the significance of our soundscape in everyday life." posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:31:48 PM | permalink
John Perry Barlow on America's Broken Intelligence Systems
Interesting piece by EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow in the current issue of Forbes ASAP on systemic decay and failure in America's intelligence institutions. Excerpt:
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I'm astonished that anyone's astonished.
The visual impairment of our multitudinous spookhouses has long been the least secret of their secrets. Their shortcomings go back 50 years, when they were still presumably efficient but somehow failed to detect several million Chinese military "volunteers" heading south into Korea. The surprise attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were only the most recent oversight disasters. And for service like this we are paying between $30 billion and $50 billion a year. Talk about a faith-based initiative.
After a decade of both fighting with and consulting to the intelligence community, I've concluded that the American intelligence system is broken beyond repair, self-protective beyond reform, and permanently fixated on a world that no longer exists." posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:21:48 PM | permalink
Arthur C. Clarke and Dennis Tito on future space tourism: $200 for moontrip tickets?
Sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001, A Space Odyssey) participated in an event this week in honor of the 40th anniversary of JFK's speech at Rice University, in which JPF stated his goal of a US moon landing. Clarke believes space exploration should be a global--not just national--enterprise, and that the day when consumer space travel becomes affordable is closer than we think.
"We're lucky to get to Mars in 2020...the end of the Cold War removed one of the main motivations for the space race. We've reached the stage where not one nation, not even the United States can do it alone.... the cost of taking human beings to the space station in orbit could be $200."
Dennis Tito, California businessman and famed space tourist, lamented the cancellation of 'N Sync singer Lance Bass' planned Russian space junket.
"I think we will see more citizens flying. The public can identify more with private citizens flying... [If the cost drops,] we will see space flight become more a part of our culture." posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:13:55 PM | permalink
Golfing Dead Frog
Daytrading Gorilla
Stinky the Conch Shell Pelican
Moose Cream Jug
Deer Butt
Ghost Poop
Disembodied Farrah Fawcett Heads
Debutante-Ball Alligator Carcass
Bees: New Mine-sniffing Technology?
Link. Photos: XJ.
"Police say the 'Bumfights' producers persuaded street people to fight for the camera in exchange for cash payments, food, liquor and hotel rooms but warned the participants not to tell authorities about the remuneration. One person broke his leg during a taping session in La Mesa, and producers threatened another witness in the case, police said."
- - - - - - - - - -(/snip)
[kmartforever.com] boasts
300 subscribers and 7,000 visitors so far...[messages] are filtered for profanity
or mean-spiritedness, Kmart spokesman Dave Karraker said. So far, a few dozen
messages have been posted, a far cry from the more than 7,000 postings -- many
of them negative -- on some non-company boards. "There are a lot of bashers
out there," Karraker said, referring to the proliferation of anti-Kmart web
postings. "We're quite frank with the idea that this is a positive site. This
is for people who truly want to see the company succeed."
--------</snip>
"When I least expected it, my water broke right there in checkout 19."
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"Kmart, for the people, forever."
-------------
"Ohh do I remember the good ol' days of my youth...Kmart was my everything.
During those long summer days, I would beg and plead with my mother, day after
day, to take me to the local Kmart. As my mom would wheel me in through those
inviting doors, my eyes would light up with excitement. I would always hope
that my good friend Jackson was working (although he told me to call him "Nutzter",
because he was always munchin on cashews and walnuts, bless his heart...)...
I called those few years my "Kmart Summers."
-------------
"Whenever I have had a bad day, I just look for the Big Red K and everything
is ALLRIGHT!!! Some of my fondest memories with my grandpaw were spend debating
East German sewing patterns over a couple o' corn dogs and Grape Icee's in your
snack bar."
-------------
"Loving K-Mart!!! I will make K-Mart my first choice when I buy stocks."
--------</snip>
Link to kmartforever.com | Link
to Reuters story
"For more than a year now, there has been a deluge of stories and op-ed pieces about the failure of the American intelligence community to detect or prevent the September 11, 2001, massacre. Nearly all of these accounts have expressed astonishment at the apparent incompetence of America's watchdogs.
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Link