Video from remote control helicopter shows the extent of flooding in Frankwell, #Shrewsbury. http://t.co/R8UUl6HtSx pic.twitter.com/FcqHL3qfYV — Shropshire Star (@ShropshireStar) February 10, 2014 OK, so the weird weather and infrastructure crisis exacerbated by the Galbraithian combination of private affluence and public squalor is being monitored by the local newspaper using a web platform for 140-character snarkfarts…
Read More ProliferationThink Defence has been having a very good discussion (practically a CT-style blog seminar) about the Falklands. Which reminds me…I note that Bob Howard has yet to visit, despite the eldritch conjunction of an implausibly massive geostrategic commitment, the deep links between right-wing political Catholicism and the sinister occult, the Antarctic (and you know what…
Read More RecommendedWhile we’re on drugs, why not a look at China Miéville’s Embassytown, in which an unusual one plays a big role? This isn’t quite an AFOE “Premature Evaluation” as I’m actually reading it, I just haven’t finished it yet. A couple of points… Pass by reference, not by value This is the big-idea high concept…
Read More Embassytown: a partial reviewI want one of these. There’s more here; the sheer coolth of a USB-based PCR analyser is hard to beat. Even if the potential for Wakefield-scale contamination fuckups is not to be denied. In general, I’m trying to get up to speed on things biotech. it is true that, so far, cyberpunk has been a…
Read More peering over the bows…So you might remember that Thai demonstrators invaded the brand-new airport there a while ago, establishing a huge Ballardian protest-camp among the glass walls and retail space and soft-xray terrorist detectors. Their movement went on to spray the prime minister’s house with their own blood, collected in buckets by their medical wing. Clearly, they have…
Read More Further adventures in globalisationKursk was a bit of a disappointment. A submarine control room as the setting of a play isn’t a bad idea – the movies worked that out many years ago – and putting it on as promenade theatre through the simulated sub is a cracking one. But, not quite. It did remind me to check…
Read More KurskAh, the David Cameron poster machine is on line. And it’s gold dust. Somehow, that poster seems almost designed for satire. There are excellent reasons why it works so well; it’s possibly the most stylised example of a political advert I can think of. In a sense, it’s a movie – not at all original,…
Read More Cameron: Cinema: CameraCharlie Stross has done a short story that is set in an NHS facility. This done, I feel he needs to take his unique view of Britain’s national institutions to its logical, strategic target. The whole project of much of his work deals with the civil service; he’s had a go at the military, at…
Read More the untrue history of the Conservative PartyOK, back from eComm in Amsterdam; here’s something interesting. Besides all the stuff I was meant to be following for work, we had a presentation from a group of the sort of media-arts types who get a lot of coverage on Bruce Sterling’s blog; in fact the whole gig was faintly Beyond the Beyond-esque when…
Read More optimise your social isolation more efficientlyOther things I disagree quite strongly with Charlie Stross about. James Nicoll asks what happens if/when Moore’s Law is exhausted. Charlie has a well-known theory about this, based on the aerospace industry’s recession in the early 70s. The CE industry is inherently deflationary — Moore’s law conceals this because we double the number of transistors…
Read More no progress since 1970, except in minor fields such as cost, safety, reliability, capacity, efficiency…