No love for steady-state, eh?

Far future astronomers could still deduce the Big Bang through dark matter.

I'll have what they're having

Alan Moore, Michael Moorcock, and Iain Sinclair walk into a pub...

"I created the multiverse to save my loved ones from the heatdeath of the universe."

Down Home Gonzo Storytellin'

Keith Rawson interviewed Joe Lansdale at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scotsdale, Arizona. They talk about the upcoming Hap and Leonard novel, novellas and short stories, and why Joe likes to write fiction set during the Great Depression.

Wanted to read Wilson's Natural Law for a long time now.

Found it here.

"It would appear more in keeping with honesty, I think, to recognize, as analogous to Murphy's Law, the unscientific but useful generalization I call the Cosmic Schmuck Principle. The Cosmic Schmuck Principle holds that if you don't wake up, once a month at least, and realize that you have recently been acting like a Cosmic Schmuck again then you will probably go on acting like a Cosmic Schmuck forever; but if you do, occasionally, recognize your Cosmic Schmuckiness, you might begin to become a little less Schmucky that the general human average at this primitive stage of terrestrial evolution."

Two From CBR

1) An interview with Michael Kaluta for Starstruck. 

2) An interview with Mike Mignola on Hellboy.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer will launch on the next space shuttle mission. It's purpose is to search out cosmic rays, potentially finding dark matter and antimatter galaxies. It will part of the ISS.

"We Love You!"

The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car is up at ebay. Current bid is $1m and at that the reserve has not been met. Anyone have a spare $2m I can borrow?

Spin-Off

Anti-gravity treadmill, reverse engineered from NASA tecnology, used to treat sports injuries.

Anti-legalization lawmaker gets busted with marijuana.

Scientists create stable, self-renewing narural stem cells.

"The shock of the possible"

Who Didn't See This Coming?

IMF declares Age of America over in five years.

No Advance Warning On Galactus or Unicron Then?

SETI's Allen Telescope Array will be mothballed due to budget cuts. Other means of funding ATA is being searched for.

Mars Orbiter finds massive stores of dry ice buried under Mars' South Pole.

A Kiss Isn't Just a Kiss?

20 things you probably didn't know about kissing.

Susie Has Two Mommies and One Daddy

The technology is now in place for the first child to be born with three parents, the "extra" providing mitochondrial DNA.

Mad, Is She?

Jess Nevins gives us a short history of the female mad scientist.

Tofu Drove Him To Murder

The MC at the first Earth Day event in 1970 killed and composted his girlfriend seven years later.

Kinda Knew This

Secret memos expose the link between oil firms and the invasion of Iraq.

Shell and BP wanted to grab hold of some lovely oil wells and to be paid for the privilege by Blair.

Show him the prototype!

I haven't listened to this yet, but I have been awaiting it with glee. SFSignal interviews Dr Michio Kaku on their podcast.

She Notes a Resemblance

An exgirlfriend introduced me to the stories of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, a sin for which she needs to be punished. (I'm a book behind.) Here's a Cabal short fiction at Fantasy Magazine and an interview with the writer, Jonathan Howard. 

Superposition, Superinsane

Brad Deutsch explains the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics over at Lightspeed Magazine.

I can write unless the muse strikes!

...and these days, she packs a gun!

Bernie Madoff UNSUB

BUA works on a profile for white collar criminals like Bernie Madoff.

Why would anyone want to mod their own body to appear nonhuman, I mean, wouldn't that count against them in the job market? Well, for one, why should anyone care what a corporation thinks when CEO's have no problem laying off employees just to make the bottom line look better and get themselves a bigger bonus from the Board.

Played Poker With a Tarot Deck

Take a look at Bethalynne Bajema's Black Ibis Tarot deck over on Coilhouse.

K-9 & Company

Sarah Jane Adventures isn't the first time Auntie Beeb tried to give Elisabeth Sladen her own show.

Coffee & Philosophy is Like Foreplay & Sex

In praise of coffee! Wait. Coffee, destroyer of virtue. No that's not it either. Well, maybe both?

Homo Cocteau Twinensis

Goths breed successfully in the wild.

via Elizabeth Bear

Breathe For Health

A breath test to sniff out cancer is a step closer to reality.

Largest Spider Found

A fossilized spider found at the Inner Mongolian region of China is the largest on record. The spider hails from 165 years ago and has a legspan of 15cm.

Chuck Can't Do Lines Like He Used To

UK gets viagra laced beer.

Texas. Yippee-ki-yay!

6 year old Houston kid injures 3 after a gun he took to school acciently discharges.

"Did I Err?"

Conan the Barbarian vs Groo the Wanderer.

I still want Arnold Schwarzenegger to play Groo in the movie.

Cats and dogs living together!

Lisa Spindler prepares us for the Galactic Alignment of December 21, 2012. Be warned! Beware! Do what you did in 1998, last time it happened!

Baker Street Very Irregular

CBR has a piece on Daniel Corey's and Anthony Diecidue's Moriarty: The Dark Chamber.

Most Holy Strongly Disapproves of F-Stop

Land's End, the "Gatsby House" of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, is torn down.

We beat our employees and pass the savings on to you!

China's inflation goes global.

To be repeated thousands of years later with buffalo

Mysterious walls built on the arid lands of the Middle East seem to have played a role in the slaughter of whole herds of wild gazelles by prehistoric tribes of herder-farmers, possibly leading to the animal's extinction in those herders' areas.

Gigantic new superorganism with "Social Intelligence" is eating the Titanic.

Turned down to buy a Ford Pinto

Standard & Poor's lists the US credit status as "poor".

(Really need to come up with a better name for the blog. I feel like I'm ripping off Will Shetterly. I mean, it fits, but...)

Time for elevensies?

Part one of a 1968 BBC documentary on JRR Tolkien. He seems to me to be a very archtypical Oxford don, though it may be that I only think that through having encountered him through his fiction and the odd interview or two at an early age, and have no good basis for comparison.

Shocked

After taking the US to task for renditions and secret prisons, Putin is revealed to pactice the exact same thing. An ex-KGB agent that doesn't support civil rights? Hard to believe, eh?

RAW Quotes

"Evil refers to acts which definitely, measureably, harm others, physically or psychically. It doesn't matter what kind of orgies they're having down the street, what blends of dope they're using, what entities they're invoking with their chants or ceremonies. If they're not hurting anybody, they're not evil, just different." - Robert A Wilson

In such a bad mood right now, I need some Bob Wilson to cheer myself up. Unfortunately, all my Wilson is in storage.

Surf's Up! says Dr Rucker

Physicists discover new ways to visualize warped space and time.

Again I ask, is it kosher?

Arizona birther bill will permit a circumcision certificate in the place of a birth certificate.

So, let me get this straight. Proof that a doctor took a tip instead of you giving him one is a sign of US citizenship?

Once a Frank, Always a Frank! (But is he kosher?)

Fluidity of ethnic identity in the early Middle Ages via Jess Nevins (actually The Old Bastard who led me to Jess Nevins, but...)

Space Admiral? Grey Lensman? What's an appropriate title?

Retired U.S. Navy Adm. Craig Steidle is taking the helm of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), becoming the 5-year-old organization’s first full-time president, effective May 15. An announcement is planned for April 13 at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"Only little people pay taxes"

Think the rich pay more taxes than the poor? Heh. Check again.

And if we were to start requiring corporations to pay taxes, the national debt might just start to shrink.

Get those reindeer off my roof!

Tom Waits performs in a short animated Terry Gilliam film. The Residents provide the soundtrack.

Who woulda thunk it?

IMF analysis determines that economic growth spells last longer in areas with less income inequality.

Senator Fights COICA-heads

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has vowed to fight the COICA bill.

I think it's important to make a distinction between counterfeit goods and copyright infringement. This is right at the heart of the debate. With respect to counterfeits, the bad guys are warehousing, advertising, they're directly selling illicit merchandise, often to unsuspecting consumers. With respect to copyrights, what constitutes willful distribution or even infringement is still unsettled law.

Interview with Elaine Lee

Over at Suicide Girls:

So... my friends and I formed Wild Hair Productions and produced three plays. Starstruck was the third of these plays and it was written for the actors in that company. The idea was to do something really wild, so that we could all show off and do parts we would normally never be cast for. I was five feet tall and weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet, but I wanted to be an amazon starship captain, so Galatia 9 was the part I came up with for myself. Being completely flat-chested, it was easy for me to build a fake breast into one side of my costume and look like I only had one. Some of the other characters were a telepathic space nun who got knocked around by psychic vibrations, a sexy pleasure droid reprogrammed to be a brainy science officer, a vain villain with a split personality, and an evil seductress traveling in a ship made of the living flesh of millions of Galactic Girl Guides. The play was really a humorous take on all the sci-fi movies and TV shows I saw as a kid, with a generous helping of Heavy Metal thrown into the mix. Boy, was it fun to do!

Hey hey, my my, publishing will never die.

Layoffs hit Dark Horse.

"and woe to Loki it should be so!"

Many people have pissed and moaned that the trailers for Thor appear to just give the Norse gods lip service. That is the usual state for the Marvel comic, so why should the movie be any different? Walt Simonson is the exception to that. He steeped his run on Thor in the Norse mythos and still played the "gods in space" that followed the book.

Comics Alliance gives us their top ten list of moments from Simonson's run on Thor. 

I Think I Need More Coffee

John Barrowman camps it up, outs himself as a possibly straight man.

Biased Politicians. Film at 11

Former GOP Senator Alan Simpson notes the obvious. He also shows more sense than many of those currently active in his own party.

California Dreamin'

Someone in San Francisco (the police? city council member? San Francisco Entertainment Commission?) has decided they need to know who goes where when you go out for a drink in public. There will be a public meeting tonight where the EFF will make a very reasoned response explaining why this is a bad idea that will, I fear, be ignored by those in power.

When those who go out are treated like terrorists, terrorists will get my vodka and whisky, damn your eyes!

And he bravely ran away

Daily Beast asks George R R Martin for his list of top ten favorite fantasy movies, which makes more sense than the previous favorite science fiction movies, what with Game of Thrones and all.

Yes, I'm only now having my first cup of coffee. I'll get my sleep cycle back to "normal" just in time to mess it up again.

We Could Use a Man Like Teddy Again

So I need a place to leave links so that I can find them later. Tracking things down on Facebook is a pain in the ass, and Livejournal goes down with increasing regularity, so I think it'll go here. "All Under One Tent". Says it all, really.

I'll set things up to get more personable. Simple and spartan will work until I take the chance to set things up to suit me.

I plan to post politics, science, pop culture, geekery, what-have-you, My political leanings, just so you've been warned is quixotic. I could be called a Robert A Wilson liberal libertarian, a contrary socialist, when I'm cranky enough, I'd say I'm in the Bull Moose Party.

Speaking of Teddy Roosevelt, that leads me to this: If You're Just Joining Us interviews Alan Dean Foster about his new book, Predators I Have Known.