The gallery of images at the Biomedical Image Awards 2006 site is well worth a look.

See, for example, this image of a stinging nettle. Remarkable.

[Via Apothecary's Drawer Weblog]

You have no idea how much time I wasted twenty or so years ago playing most of the games shown in this selection of screen shots from the top 100 games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

TLL! Every game Ultimate: Play the Game released. Ant Attack! Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy (obviously). Scrabble. The Way of the Exploding Fist. Match Point. Zzoom. Maziacs. You have no idea how impressive some of those games were back in 1983/4/5. The graphics might not have been the best – how we Spectrum owners envied the Commodore 64's sprites! – but the gameplay more than made up for it.

I feel a sudden desire to download a Spectrum emulator for OS X and blow my weekend in an epic nostalgia-fest.

[Via LinkMachineGo]

House of dominos is just plain fun to watch. (Hint: don't give up after seeing the first minute – there's a lot more to come.)

[Via The Obvious?]

Mac/PC slash fiction. Yes, really.

[Via Making Light Particles]

If you're a science fiction reader, you might be interested in completing this questionnaire by Farah Mendlesohn about your past and present reading habits.

[Via Amygdala]

This year's Bulwer-Lytton award winner is a cut above some of the winners from the last couple of years (IMHO, obviously):

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA

I haven't had the time to read all the dishonourable mentions and category-specific awards yet: here's hoping they live up to that high standard.

[Via Gordon McLean]

In the middle of a discussion about George W Bush's giving German chancellor Angela Merkel an unsolicited shoulder rub during the G8 summit, one MetaFilter poster came up with a really scary thought:

Has Bush ever met Prince Philip? THAT would be comedy.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:30 PM GMT on July 18

Comedy? I have a terrible feeling that if Dubya ever spent some quality time with Prince Philip it could kill off the 'special relationship' once and for all.

(Joking aside: in fairness to HRH, I'm pretty sure that a man who has spent more than half a century making state visits to foreign countries has coped with far worse than an overgrown frat boy who can't keep his hands to himself.)

Judging by Janet Maslin's review for the New York Times, Michael Bamberger's The Man Who Heard Voices, and extended profile of M Night Shyamalan is pure comedy gold:

Who is M. Night Shyamalan? The point is that you're supposed to know already. By some lights (namely his own and Mr. Bamberger's) he is an A-list Hollywood legend whose work is ablaze with beauty and wisdom. By others, he's the guy who made a mint with "The Sixth Sense," starred in an American Express ad and has now directed "Lady in the Water." The book makes landfall on July 20, a day before the movie does.

[In...] a story that will live in legend, Mr. Bamberger reveals how [M Night Shyamalan's assistant Paula] was not welcomed with sufficient deference at the home of the powerful Disney executive Nina Jacobson. Ms. Jacobson is blasted for having taken her son to a birthday party instead of dedicating her Sunday to Night's precise timetable for script-reading. "What could Nina be doing that's more important than getting Night's new script?" Mr. Bamberger asks. (The italics are his.) Then the coup de grâce: Paula was offered "low-carb soup from the refrigerator." The implications are clear: it may have come from a can.

The book describes Night's sustained petulance over this snubbing in terms that are, by any standards known on Planet Earth, astounding. [...]

[Via The Flick Filosopher]

Babycakes: words by Neil Gaiman, art by Jouni Koponen. Inspiration by Jonathan Swift?

[Via LinkMachineGo]

These coat hangers in the shape of world city skylines are very clever, but my eye can't help but be drawn to the price tag: £250.00 for a set of five.

I'm sure they're very well made and what have you – heck, they're "laser-cut, then hand finished and varnished" – but by and large the hangers would cost more than the clothes I'd be hanging on them, and that ain't right…

[Via web-goddess]

Coming soon to a TV or cinema screen near you:

The days of judging a book by its cover are drawing to a close. Publishers have finally tapped into the MTV generation, and now it is possible to make your literary choices in advance online by watching a sequence of rapid-fire images accompanied by a thumping score, big flashing words and, if you're lucky, a deep-voiced American talking about 'one man' and 'his quest to find meaning in a world gone mad'. Yes: there are now trailers for books and soon, according to Steve Osgoode, director of online marketing at HarperCollins Canada, they will be everywhere. [...]

My guess would be that this won't become the norm by any stretch of the imagination: TV and cinema advertising is awfully expensive. Furthermore, whereas it's (comparatively) easy to find 30 seconds of footage from a film that makes it look interesting/sexy/scary and incorporate them into a trailer, it's much trickier to put an ad together from scratch that'll sum up a book's appeal. Unless, that is, it's by an author whose name is a franchise already, in which case you probably don't need to spend that much money in the first place.

If this works at all, it'll be for pure genre works where you can signal what sort of story you're dealing with fairly easily. How you distinguish your brand of spy thriller from the competition's beyond repeating the author's name ad nauseam is a question I leave to the marketing experts…

Dorian Lynskey talks to the Pet Shop Boys about – among other things – their dedication to pop music:

Even in the year that finished off Smash Hits (where Tennant was once deputy editor) and Top of the Pops, the Pet Shop Boys are optimistic about pop. "When I see someone like Brandon Flowers who has the appetite, and possibly the talent and looks, to be a star, I find that enthralling," says Tennant. "I'm worried, though – and I hope he's reading this – that he's grown a beard. It means he's saying, 'I'm not pop. I mean more than that.'"

According to the Sunday Times, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers has spoken out in favour of implanting paedophiles with microchips so their movements can be monitored:

Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said the implants would be tracked by satellite, enabling authorities to set up "zones" from which sex offenders would be barred. These could include schools, playgrounds and former victims' homes. Any attempt by the offender to enter the zones would trigger alarms in a monitoring centre, enabling police to act.

John Lettice of The Register is not at all convinced that Mr Jones has thought this through:

Well Ken, where shall we begin? Should we explain that the chip you're talking about would have around about the same capabilities as the RFID chip that's going into ICAO standard passports? That this is the kind of technology you're probably going to insist can only be read in close proximity to a reading device? That if you tried really hard (and we're sure people will), you could read it at maybe 10, maybe 30 metres? That satellites are actually quite far away? Or that what GPS does is it tell a reading device on the ground where it is, which would only help paedophiles if they were lost – if it's going to help you then you need to insert another bit of technology (A mobile phone maybe? Where would you stick that?) that would pass the location over to you.

The thing is, if you ignore the blather about satellites and GPS you can imagine how such a system might work. Forget about expecting a satellite to track an RFID chip from miles overhead, or the use of GPS: just place a RFID reader unit at the school gates that will pick up details of any tagged paedophile's RFID chip that comes within range and transmit those details to the police. (If you like, combine the unit with a camera under the reader's control, so that it can collect photographic evidence of the transgression.) Of course, the reader unit will have to be reliable, and vandal-proof, and capable of measuring accurately the range of the RFID chip (unless, that is, it's taken as read that coming within range of the reader means that the RFID tag-wearer is already too close), but those are all (ahem) minor implementation details.

A couple of steps down the line and someone asks the obvious question: if we're going to have these tracking abilities in place on the streets of the nation's towns, why not use them to passively record the movements of any government-issued RFID chip that goes by? Like the ones they intend to add to passports and (should it actually be launched successfully) will very likely end up in the National Identity Register cards. After all, if you're innocent you've got nothing to hide, so why should you object to a reader noting that you walked past it?

If this sounds far-fetched – if you think that the general public might be happy to accept the tagging and tracking of convicted criminals, but wouldn't take to the tracking of innocent citizens going about their lawful business – ask yourself how likely you'd have thought it twenty years ago that the general public would be so relaxed about the proliferation of CCTV.

As conspiracy theories go, this one is a doozy:

Teri Smith TYLER, Plaintiff,

v.

James CARTER, William Clinton, Ross Perot, American Cyanamid, Iron Mountain Security Corporation, Defense Intelligence Agencty, IBM, David Rockerfeller [sic], Rockerfeller [sic] Fund, BCCI, NASA, Defendants.

No. 92 Civ. 8658 (CSH)
Nov. 5, 1993
BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Teri Smith Tyler, appearing pro se, filed a complaint in December 1992 alleging a bizarre conspiracy involving the defendants to enslave and oppress certain segments of our society. Plaintiff contends she is a cyborg, and that she received most of the information which forms the basis for her complaint, through "proteus," which I read to be come silent, telepathic form of communication. … She asserts that the defendants are involved in the "Iron Mountain Plan," which provides for the reinstitutionalization of slavery and "bloodsports" (which she identifies as death-hunting and witchhunting), and the oppression of political dissidents, herself included. Plaintiff's complaint alleged a number of personal indignities visited upon her by defendants: "strafing of my dormitory room by planes and helicopters, the electronic bugging of my student rooms and apartments, deliberate noise harassment, blasting of loud rock music with lyrics designed for witch-hunts (music about social pariahs) … students following me around to prevent me from studying, whispering campaigns and social ostrification …" … Plaintiff also makes the following allegations against the defendants. Former President Jimmy Carter was the secret head of the Ku Klux Klan; Bill Clinton is the biological son of Jimmy Carter; President Clinton and Ross Perot have made fortunes in the death-hunting industry, and are responsible for the murder of at least 10 million black women in concentration camps, their bodies sold for meat and their skin turned into leather products. The defendants are also responsible for breeding farms, which turn out 2,000 black girls a year, who are then sold for recreational murder or as human pets. Additionally, the defendants utilize weather control and earthquake technology to threaten other countries that object to the Iron Mountain Plan. [...]

[Via MetaFilter]

The trailer for Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of Christopher Priest's The Prestige is online now, and very good it looks.

A fine cast. A talented director. Out this November in the UK, I see: definitely one to watch out for.

[Via Ghost in the Machine]

Just a quick heads-up for any former uk-po5 list members who are reading this: ABC1 on Freeview are starting to run Party of Five daily on weekdays at 9.10am. According to Digiguide, they're starting with the pilot episode on Monday 24 July 2006.

(Digiguide's schedules don't extend beyond Friday 28th at the moment, so I can't say for certain whether the show will also be on at weekends, but I'd guess not. They're too busy filling their weekends with six consecutive episodes of Scrubs or 8 Simple Rules or Less Than Perfect.)

Now, if I can only persuade my (cheap & nasty) VCR to listen to my (cheap & cheerful) Freeview box I might be able to remind myself of why I liked the show so much. If I'm really fortunate, ABC1 might even persevere with the show long enough for me to finally see the last two seasons, the ones that Channel 4 decided not to broadcast.

Courtest of B3ta user Beau Bo d'Or, a preview of the government's terror threat level indicator.

[Posted with apologies to readers who are unfamiliar with the origins of the phrase "Don't tell him, Pike!"]

[Via The Friday Thing]

I rather like Mark Jenkins' Street Installations. The walking frame and the ghostly figures at the windows are my favourite pieces.

[Via Bifurcated Rivets]

The Sci-Fi Channel have produced a pilot episode for an adaptation of Mike Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head. It stars Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce and it's available to view in full online.

It looks perfect, just like a Mignola comic adaptation should, and it features Abraham Lincoln, lycanthropes, a ton of steampunk weaponry and a monkey with a machine gun: how could it fail to be a thing of beauty and a joy forever?

[Via MetaFilter]

Snopes assures us that the tale of the Tapioca Time Bomb is true:

In August 1972, stacked timber that the Swiss freighter Cassarate was carrying in its upper holds caught fire. The crew kept the situation under control by wetting down the smoldering wood for 25 days, until the blaze flared up and the ship was forced to dock at Cardiff, Wales. Unfortunately, the Cassarate was also carrying 1,500 tons of tapioca in its lower hold, and the heat from the timber fire, combined with the extinguishing water sprayed on it (which seeped down to the lower holds), proceeded to cook the tapioca. [...]