The Miss Rockaway Armada, the Long Tail of search, XP tune-ups, reduced Star Wars…

• 1 – Barbarians at Gate 8
  Bruce Sterling on nets and jets, and their potential for disruption weighed against their force for change.
  (tags: progress change technology menace war ideologies fuel planes aircraft computers internet terrorism politics)
• 2 – The State of Science Fiction, Part III
  Lou Anders just won’t let it lie…and good on him, too. Don’t agree with it all, but the man talks sense.
  (tags: marketing opinion discussion politics culture sf scifi fiction science writing books literature)
• 3 – The Tragedy of Orthodoxy
  Scalzi laments the prejudgement of an artist’s work by their politics. Good thinking. Though I still feel Heinlein was a w*nker, despite his skill with the written word.
  (tags: politics prejudgement writing sf scifi fiction science literature books)
• 4 – Miss Rockaway Armada Builds a Flotilla
  “And what, you ask, is the Miss Rockaway Armada? A group of 25 performers, artists and change-makers…currently congregating in Minneapolis to construct a flotilla of rafts and sail down the Mississippi…” Sounds interesting. And itching to be put into
  (tags: project radical collective activism green ecology rafts flotilla Armada Rockaway Miss)
• 5 – Japanese project promises blue-collar bots for aging society
  If there aren’t enough young people to look after the elderly, who the hell is going to build these robots, exactly?
  (tags: futurism population ageing society technology transportation elderly care labour menial workforce robotic Japan)
• 6 – Small sites boosted by search engines too
  Good news – it’s the Long Tail of search! If you build it, they will come…
  (tags: Tail Long traffic sites smaller names big favour results engine search Googlearchy Google)
• 7 – Deep sea graveyard for CO2
  Yet another ‘out of sight, out of mind’ answer to greenhouse gases – let’s hide them under the floor of the ocean! Idiots.
  (tags: environment ecology change climate warming global sediments sea deep sequestration gas greenhouse dioxide carbon)
• 8 – DOE raises the bar on supercomputing
  America wants its supercomputer speed record back the Energy Department is teaming up with Cray to break the petaflop barrier.
  (tags: speed performance power simulations science computing construction petaflop development supercomputer Cray DOE US)
• 9 – Killer Swarms: The New Generation
  What’s better than flying robots? Swarms of flying robots, that’s what.
  (tags: technology stigmergy robots flying behaviour swarmbots swarms UAV vehicles air unmanned)
• 10 – Genesis-2: Launching in Late January 2007
  The second Bigelow module heads for orbit early next year.
  (tags: announcement 2007 date launch habitat inflatable Genesis Bigelow space)
• 11 – Windows XP 15 Minute Tune-Up
  XP PC tweakage. Something for everyone in here – apart from smug-arsed Mac users, of course. Link via Lifehacker.
  (tags: tweaks tools system operating software computer tuning XP Windows)
• 12 – 10 Mile Spiral
  File under ‘bizarre architectural concepts’; a ten-mile long freeway spiral outside Las Vegas, which is basically a drive-thru version of the city, complete with casinos, hotels and all the rest. Mad as a bag of spanners. Go lookee.
  (tags: architecture gambling hotels casino drivethru coil freeway spiral Vegas Las)
• 13 – Viridian Note 00471: More Clutching at Straw
  Bruce Sterling has more on the potential ethanol-fuel economy in the US.
  (tags: US dependence oil economy biofuel fuel ethanol Viridian Sterling Bruce)
• 14 – Open The Future audio
  Jamais Cascio podcasts the Futurismic column as an experiment.
  (tags: culture technology gadgets futurism audio essay podcast column Futurismic Cascio Jamais)
• 15 – British Theater Company Promises Shortened ‘Star Wars’ Epic
  The UK’s ‘Reduced Shakespeare Company’, famous for their hilarious but spot-on condensed versions of the works of the Bard, are given permission to work their magic on the entire Star Wars catalogue. I must book tickets immediately!
  (tags: version condensed theatre preformance permission Lucas George Wars Star Company Shakespeare Reduced)