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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.
Page of Gary Duschl of Virginia Beach (Virginia), current record holder of the world's longest gum wrapper chain. 1,031,426 wrappers; 44,223 feet.
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Ants avoid traffic jams: "Foraging workers push and shove to steer others around bottlenecks."
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Calvin & Hobbes Ultimate Strip Search: Wow. DaddyD sez: "Every strip has been indexed, crossreferenced and made searchable. To make it even better, the strips have been scanned, so you can see the strip online along with the references to the books that strip is available in."
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The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (by A. S. Ambulanzen)
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Safe For Work Porn: No problem, you can watch this in the office.
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The Worst Jobs in Science: From fart sniffer to postdoc, the most torturous ways to make a living in science.
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posted by johannes grenzfurthner at 10:26:04 AM | permalink
"Memor_eyes" is an art project by François Morel for the group exhibition untitled "Allotopie" which is taking part in "Les Mars de l'Art Contemporain (www.lesmars.net), in Clermont-Ferrand (France). Please participate.
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Our new monochrom print compendium is out now: 436 pages, 1300 grams, 15 euros. And as a German-only publication I think I just announce this in ... uhm ... German: Geschätzte Damen und Herren. Nach drei Jahren Arbeits- und Prekärbeschäftigungszeit ist nun die neue Ausgabe von monochrom erhältlich. Dieses Posting ist empathisch mit Stolz und/oder finanzieller Überlastung aufgeladen.
Also ... Inhaltsinfo hier.
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Drug Dealers? Software Developers?
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The League of Extraordinary Subtitles: Bad Translations Offer Meta Fun — "Got it into your head to stuff from the dark continent." Got it?
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Christian Paintball Players? Promised Land Sports Park!
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The Concise History of 4000 Years of Medicine?
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Conduct, Misconduct, and Cargo Cult Science: Scientific paper by James R. Wilson. Wilson is quoting Richard Feynman: "In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. [...]"
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Interview with Ian MacKaye: DaddyD recommends a Downhilllbattle feature: "[...] an interview with the man behind Minor Threat, Fugazi and Dischord Records. He speaks his mind on the music business, running a label, making money and music downloads (amongst other things). It's an enlightening look at the way things could be."
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Wow. I'm completely bedazzled. Now that's what I call an animated gif.
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Lost in Translation: "Lost in Racism"?
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Inside Art Zine: Jenzzz lives in the German city of Trier and is doing art. What kind of art? I don't know. Sometimes it's beautiful, sometimes it's brutal.
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From Vulnerability to Virtuosity: Buddhist Reflections on Responding to Terrorism and Tragedy.
Peter D. Hershock's article in the 'Jounal of Buddhist Ethics'.
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Popping perfect popcorn: Turkish scientists try to perfect the corn-popping recipe (Nature).
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The Connection Between Militarism and Violence Against Women: "With no end in sight to the horribly misguided and damaging 'War on Terrorism', it is increasingly urgent to recognize the effects of war on women. There can be no true peace while the pandemic of violence against women continues, a pandemic that is greatly exacerbated by militarism." (Marshall)
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Foucault In Cyberspace: Surveillance, Sovereignty, and Hard-Wired Censors. Written by James Boyle in 1997, and still a clever analysis.
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Bulk Mail: From December 1st through December 24th 2003 my pal Günther Friesinger and I collected all bulk mailings to a single Viennese household. Then we arranged them into a pile - and did some calculations.
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Copy Adorno, Go To Jail? Textz.com Doesn't Think So.
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The Conceptual Crisis of Private Property by Robert Luxemburg. Quote: "The Conceptual Crisis of Private Property as a Crisis in Practice is a piece of software that is not distributed in binary format, but as a screenshot that shows the complete source code and documentation. The program will transform the screenshot into the full text of the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. The program itself is free software and may be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The screenshot, as an artistic work, may be the "intellectual property" of Robert Luxemburg, but, as a part of the software, inherits the free software license of the php script. The screenshot is part of a series of circumvention devices (walser.php, DePNG) that exploit the structural flaws in the concept of "intellectual property". [...]"
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The City of Disney Book VII: Augustine of Epcot and his scribe. Article by Daniel White (Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities at the Honors College of Florida Atlantic University) on ctheory
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Cinema of Sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien and 'New Taiwanese Film'
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It hurts: Quote: "At first I thought I was going mad. Then I realised it. So I made this web page to store all my madness. It leaks."
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Misogynistic River: According to Amberlee Hong, the real victim is the feminist movement. "[...] Heralded as being one of the best films of 2003, Clint Eastwood’s latest directing effort, Mystic River, is a mixed bag of masculine passive-aggression disguised as a powerful drama. [...]"
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Preference, Satisfaction and the Good: Michael Philips (a professor of philosophy at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon) wonders what you really, really want.
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Memmings: Herbert Hrachovec's interesting review of Richard Dawkins' "meme" theory.
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A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism For the Net? Text by James Boyle.
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A New Approach For Calming Parkinson's Tremors (Physics News Update)
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posted by johannes grenzfurthner at 10:02:30 AM | permalink
Dog Water: That's the essence of capitalism. Selling water especially for dogs. Quote: "[...] The world’s first vitamin fortified bottled water specifically formulated to provide your dog with essential vitamins that contribute to overall good health and provide the hydration your dog needs. Our water can be enjoyed in four of the flavors dogs enjoy most: chicken, beef, liver and lamb. [...]"
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Network: This is an animated map of how long a "Ping" takes from Berlin to a number of cities. The globe is distorted according to the duration of the Ping. As you mouse-over a city-name the corresponding (sp)line is highlighted.
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posted by johannes grenzfurthner at 8:13:17 AM | permalink
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