HUPOMNEMATA

Instead of worrying about Ohio, I try to convince myself that there are worse things happening in the world. As it is difficult to conceive, I have to look a little bit.

And find this :
“Global warming in the Arctic is happening now, warns the most comprehensive scientific report to date. The reports concludes that the northern ice cap is warming at twice the global rate and that this will lead to serious consequences for the planet.”

and down the same page :
“The Arctic will lose 50% to 60% of its ice distribution by 2100, according to the average of five climate models run by the scientists. One of the five models predicts that by 2070, the Artic will be so warm it will no longer have any ice in the summer.”

The article notes that the oil industry may find some positive aspects in the situation as it shall be easier to tap the arctic reserves… so it seems they have now one more reason to NOT reduce CO2 emissions.

OK, Ohio now…

link to New Scientist article

“Bow, nigger.” he typed.
I kind of hunched uncomfortably over the keyboard at that point. Not that I should’ve taken offence, really. For one thing, my screen name has nothing to do with my ethnicity and for another, it’s only a game and the fascist doing the typing is probably hundreds of miles away and far beyond anything you could call an actual influence on my life.

It’ the beginning of a brilliant text about the videogame JKII: Jedi Outcast . It reads like an excellent science-fiction short story.

From the Wired news :
“At first glance, Les Seules might look like an all-girl rock band — complete with sassy attitudes and fawning male groupies — but the Swedish septuplet doesn’t play instruments. They play competitive video games. “We want to show the rest of the world that guys and girls can play on the same level,” team member Louise Thomsen (code name: AurorA) said from the the geeky flurry on the floor of DigitalLife, a four-day technology and entertainment convention. In French, their name means The Outsiders. But in the world of competitive Counterstrike, a first-person shooter PC game, Les Seules have moved to the forefront, thanks to their virtual machine gun and grenade wielding techniques and, well, their good looks. ”
The Wired understanding of French is as imperfect as my English writing. Depending on the context, Les Seules could mean the only ones or the lonely ones, not the outsiders. Anyway, the article present them as popstars for the future.

“Cosmetic surgery is on the rise in China and the country is soon to hold a “Miss Plastic Surgery” beauty contest. ” (from the BBC)

No relation whatsoever, I finished the OGG and MP3 archiving of the second part of Stitch and Split so it should soon be available on the website (feat. a.o. Catherine Ramirez on Octavia Butler and Ken Macleod on identity politics). I was sick with a cold, so I spend a few days archiving minidiscs (when you have a slight fever, there is nothing like watching a very slow progression bar). Even managed to archive the Cybercommunism evening which was a kind of mini Stitch and Split the Third. So the nice voices of Stross and Barbrook will be there too.

Kengo Miyazaki is running a nice weblog where he posts links to the new releases from netlabels that he likes (most releases under explicit creative commons licenses). He “picked the labels that are dealing with minimal, techno, abstract, experimental, ambient, noise and stuff like that.” There is also an RSS feed so you can be kept posted. New stuff added everyday.

(update : and here is the linko to acowo that i forgot to put yesterday… how stupid can you get?)

Comicsworthreading is a great ressource for those who don’t feel like reading thousands of pages of bad american comics but are interested nonetheless in the rare hidden gems. It looks like Johanna over there reads everything, from small independent to superheroes.
To give you an idea of the kind of reviews you can find there, here is a short extract :
“I wish there was a way to ban Chuck Austen from writing female characters. (I wish there was a way to ban him from writing comics, but one step at a time.) In Action Comics #819, Superman is hurt and Lois is missing, so Lana takes the opportunity to hit on Clark and talk down Lois while wearing short cutoffs and a tight belly shirt. (The artist apparently doesn’t know what a laundry basket looks like, either, drawing something that looks like a serving platter full of clothes.) ”
As an extra, each and everyweek you can find over there a chick check of DC comics and Marvel comics, i.e. a rundown of female creators credited during the week (usual week : not a lot, some writers, no penciller, no inker, a lot more assistant editors…)

Rumour is one of the characters in the brand new Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell: Innocence is named after Donna Haraway. (haven’t seen it yet)

Tuesday, from my appartment.

Saturday, we tried Singstar. It’s a Playstation game, looking at first like a simple karaoke. Except here you have to hit (and hold) the right note if you want to win (you can also score with an approximation of the right note). So it looks also a bit like an horizontal shooter where you aim with your voice. It could be great, it has the potential to build a new link between your body and the game but there is not really anything more than what I just said. After two hours of really great fun, you come to realise that it would require a good deal of other wild ideas to be more than a gimmick. So now the technique is there, maybe it’s time to find a game designer?

Luc is very good at singing “Take on me”. The worst score of the evening was me and Jean-Michel singing “YMCA” (and it’s only because of me, Jean-Michel is a very good singer)

It’s been a long time without a robot in this blog, but this one deserves all the attention it gets :
“To survive without human help, a robot needs to be able to generate its own energy. So Chris Melhuish and his team of robotics experts at the University of the West of England in Bristol are developing a robot that catches flies and digests them in a special reactor cell that generates electricity. ”
article from New Scientist.