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Blog Details for "KuiperCliff"
KuiperCliffKuiperClifftechnology, culture, ethics, surveillance 
Articles
Farewell, and thanks
2008-05-21 01:25:00 I hate this kinda shit but the time has come for me to end KuiperCliff as a going concern. I can honestly say I’ve learned more since I started this thing than since I began to read. About blogging, about the internet, about me, about you, about architecture (of all things), and fruit (thanks, T). ... More About: Farewell
Al-Qaeda - the new Luther Blissett?
2008-04-22 20:57:00 (Cross-posted from Ubiwar) “You are a member of ?al-Qaeda ? if you say you are” - Jason Burke (2007), Al-Qaeda : The True Story of Radical Islam The franchise analogy has occasionally been applied to the decentralised nature of al-Qaeda-inspired activities and the above quote from Jason Burke neatly sums up the idea that al-Qaeda as an idea, nay, ... More About: Al Qaeda , Luther
Launch of Ubiwar new blog
2008-04-20 16:00:00 Posting has been sporadic (again) of late, due to the coupling of the setting up of my new blog Ubiwar with a holiday in Barcelona. The mission statement of the new venture is as follows: Ubiwar posits that as technology becomes ubiquitous, the means available to people - which may eventually include all of us - ... More About: Blog , Launch
Blogroll: neWMW and reBang
2008-04-13 07:27:00 Two blogs I’ve been following for a long time: neW Media Wanderings by Twan Eikelenboom: blogging thoughts on New Media perception, alternatives and everything related. My current research focuses on incompatibility between spaces in locative media, more specifically in navigation systems. And reBang by C. Sven Johnson, one of the hardest-corest blogs out there; a man who simply ... More About: Blogroll
Ray Bradbury: The Toynbee Convector
2008-04-13 02:03:00 Hot on the heels of having added The Toynbee Convector to my blogroll, I find that it’s a play on the title of a 1984 short story by Ray Bradbury , also called The Toynbee Convector. I’ve not read this particular Bradbury and the plot synopsis c/o Wikipedia is intriguing: … the protagonist is Craig Bennett Stiles, ...
Blogroll: The Toynbee Covector
2008-04-12 23:22:00 I’ve been meaning to sort this one out for while, but I’m not still not sure quite what to make of it. The Toynbee Convector uses the words of the great British historian, Arnold Toynbee, to illustrate, er … stuff that interests the writer of the blog, David Derrick. Perhaps. I haven’t picked out the ... More About: Blogroll
Blogroll: Mick Farren, aka Doc 40
2008-04-12 22:56:00 Woah, this is a turn up for the books. Mick Farren of the almighty Deviants is alive and well and blogging as Doc 40. As the band page at Alive Records says, The Deviants were winding up the hippy establishment a decade before punk. Kafka, Burroughs, Quatermass movies, Maxfield Parrish, LSD 25, riots and amphetamines were ... More About: Blogroll
Photographic history of computer memory
2008-04-09 13:47:00 Royal Pingdom has a great post laying out the history of data storage in photographs. The comments are well worth reading too. Ah, the sound of a ZX Spectrum loading … Above left: The magnetic Drum Memory of the UNIVAC computer. Above right: A 16-inch-long drum from the IBM 650 computer. It had 40 tracks, 10 ... More About: History , Computer
Demise of civilisation inevitable?
2008-04-09 11:46:00 From New Scientist: DOOMSDAY. The end of civilisation. Literature and film abound with tales of plague, famine and wars which ravage the planet, leaving a few survivors scratching out a primitive existence amid the ruins. Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different? Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow: a ...
Smart Google Reader Subscribe Button
2008-04-04 13:53:00 Jayzuz. Wish I’d found this before. A Greasemonkey script that puts a small feed icon in the upper-right corner of an open window. One click and it gives you the subscribe to feed/comments option; two clicks and you’re subscribed in Google Reader . Additionally, it has a checkmark overlay if you’re already subscribed to the feed ... More About: Smart , Google Reader , Button
Reading: China?s Progress in Space Technology
2008-04-04 12:39:00 Published recently by the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College: Kevin Pollpeter, Building for the Future: China ’s Progress in Space Technology during the Tenth 5-Year Plan and the U.S. Response: The Chinese government is using space power to increase its influence at home and abroad and hopes to leverage the ... More About: Reading
Flying Cities and Mobile Micronations
2008-04-04 12:19:00 A lazy post this, but also an experiment, for unspecified nefarious purposes: republishing an old post from a year ago, very lightly edited … (apologies to all those who’ve seen it before) BLDGBLOG posted on the Helicopter Archipelago a couple of times, based on the work of Geoff Manaugh himself and Leah Beeferman at inkbox.org (who ... More About: Mobile , Cities , Flying
Conference: Imaging War: Intergenerational Perspectives
2008-04-03 20:13:00 European Science Foundation conference, ‘Imaging War: Intergenerational Perspectives ’, Vadstena, Sweden, 3-7 September 2008: We have entered a time of highly technological warfare, where over half of the world?s research and development is now military and an ongoing revolution in military affairs (RMA) is changing the rules and weapons that will be used to define our common ... More About: Conference
Research: Humans in Outer Space”
2008-04-03 20:08:00 Now this looks interesting: Call for Expressions of Interest from the ESF Standing Committee for the Humanities (SCH) and the ESF Expert Committee European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) The deadline for online submission of Humans in Outer Space Call for Expressions of Interest is Saturday 31 May 2008. Space age has reached its 50th anniversary. Development of robotic ... More About: Research
More Acoustic Locators
2008-04-03 18:05:00 I was trying to put together a post about the Hythe sound mirrors, which I visited a short while ago, and stumbled across a plethora of photographs of various weird and wonderful acoustic listening devices. Like the ‘war tubas‘ I posted before, these presumably represented cutting-edge military technology before radar rapidly took over in efficacy ... More About: Acoustic
Miguel Monroy: Whisper
2008-04-03 16:50:00 I like this artistic use of feedback by Miguel Monroy (via Architectradure). As Cati describes it: The pistol grip megaphones are usually qualified by their “power”. Loud and noisy, they are a sign of emergency. Here, Miguel Monroy renders them soft, almost whispering. They are located carefully, adjacent to one another so that the feedback of ... More About: Whisper
Off-world Origami
2008-04-03 11:16:00 An unexpected juxtaposition here. Japanese scientists are teaming up with origami experts to launch a paper airplane from orbit. Tests have gone well: In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about 7 centimeters (2.8 inches) long and 5 centimeters (2 inches) wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 230 Celsius ... More About: World , Origami
Lurking danger on the Underground
2008-04-03 09:10:00 Given that one-third of London Underground passengers “often experience an exaggerated sense of persecution or threat” whilst riding the rails of our glorious network, I wonder if this guy, spotted on the Northern Line on Tuesday night, is arming himself against potential (vampire?) attacks: (Ignore the date, this story broke before April Fool’s in that esteemed ... More About: Danger
COIN in the Colonies
2008-03-31 19:23:00 Andrew Exum has an article, ‘1776 and all that‘ on Guardian Unlimited today. “Could Britain have won the American war of independence if it had used contemporary counterinsurgency techniques to crush George Washington?” The premise: The past few days have witnessed horrific fighting in Basra, where the British army turned over the province to the control of ... More About: Coin
Large Hadron Collider - apocalypse unlikely
2008-03-31 17:47:00 So concerned are some that the high-energy experiments at the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world that a lawsuit has been filed in Hawaii to prevent the LHC from cranking up later this year. Seems rather pointless - much as I’d quite like to live out my natural time here on Earth, if the ... More About: Apocalypse
Maria Echenique: Dreams in a Grain of Sand
2008-03-31 16:18:00 Yesterday, we drove up to the Stables Gallery and Arts Centre in Dollis Hill to see a friend’s exhibition of new work. Maria Alvarez Echenique works in ceramics and her new series of sculpted heads is influenced by the poetry of Gilgamesh, Blake, Dante and Neruda. This highly imaginative work explores the notion of nature ... More About: Dreams , Sand , Grain
Jihad Fever Pitch
2008-03-31 15:33:00 . He’s hiding near Kabul He loves the Arsenal Osama Oh oh oh oh! So (allegedly) went the chant at the Highbury Library a few years back. Abu ... More About: Jihad , Pitch , Fever
Google Maps of Sci-Fi
2008-03-31 13:16:00 Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG moonlights over at IO9 and his latest instalment of Entropist is titled ‘Google Maps of Sci-Fi‘ in which he suggests overlaying Google Maps with events from science-fiction, as well as songs, lyrics, artwork, etc. Manaugh is chiefly concerned with remapping cities according “to the science fiction that takes place within”: You could ...
P.Z. Myers Trojan Horse for Godless Dawkins
2008-03-31 10:21:00 I just saw this on Coming Anarchy and I laughed so hard it deserves to be passed on. We all know who P.Z. Myers is, as did those responsible for the screening of anti-Darwinist propaganda screed Expelled who, c/o the police, booted him out of a recent showing. You’d think his far more famous atheist ... More About: Trojan , Dawkins , Horse , Godless
Insurgencies or no?
2008-03-31 09:15:00 “The Taliban are increasingly using these insurgent-style tactics [IEDs] in Helmand” - so Radio 4’s Today programme reported this morning, regarding the deaths of two U.K. Marines in Afghanistan. Do the Taliban not already represent an insurgency? I think what they meant to say was “The Taliban are increasingly using Iraqi insurgent-style tactics in Helmand”, ...
Alexandria for the information era
2008-03-30 15:01:00 Long Views has a story by John La Grou about the: National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) of the National Library of Congress ? the world?s largest and most comprehensive collection of films, television programs, radio broadcasts, sound recordings, and media collateral.With stunning architecture both inside and out, the NAVCC becomes the world?s most advanced A/V archiving ... More About: Information , Alexandria
Wikidemia
2008-03-30 14:07:00 As defined by Urban Dictionary, and a warning to any lazy academics out there, or perhaps an encouragement?: wikidemia, n. An academic work passed off as scholarly yet researched entirely on Wikipedia. “An A on my English paper? That’s a fine piece of Wikidemia!’
Post-binary bits
2008-03-30 14:01:00 I don’t claim to understand the science behind this story but the implications are fascinating. New Scientist reports that researchers have found a way, using ‘quantum dense coding’ to allow a single photon to carry more than one bit of information: How much can you say with a single photon? Classically, the limit has been one ... More About: Post , Bits
Blogroll: Ghosts of Alexander
More articles from this author:2008-03-29 18:53:00 I’ve added the Ghosts of Alexander blog to my links. It’s subtitled ‘The Afghan Campaign, 2001 to Whenever’, which is pretty self-explanatory, and the most recent post is a decent review of Antonio Giustozzi’s Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. I’ve seen Giustozzi speak a couple of times and although not the ... More About: Blogroll 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
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