'whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, the new film by Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation... is, as the title promises, algorithmic. The film has no beginning, middle, or end. At each screening, a computer program live-edits a movie out of more than three thousand film clips, eighty voice-overs, and 150 pieces of music. Each of these movable parts is marked with loosely content-related tags (“horizon,” “anxiety,” “white”), and the computer fits the pieces together according to an algorithm that matches tags.'

Raina Lipsitz: [[ "This movie would never get made today," sighed one of the panelists, and the audience members murmured their assent. It's shocking enough that it was distributed in 1991, but at least back then American women were experiencing something like momentum ]]

The BBC, starting from a false premise (that pylons aren't pretty already) and going down a complete blind alley (some unbuilt, anthropomorphic, and awful designs) before revealing a couple of interesting nuggets (like the name of the chap who designed the UK's current pylons). Still, overall worth a read.

a chess champion calculates twenty moves forward in her game.

"Why are trains in south London more affected by snow than those elsewhere?" Short answer: the third rail ices over, which makes it stop working. Overhead cables (used north of the river) aren't affected, while the DLR's third rail connects underneath (not above) the rail, so that's OK too. It's good to see the article note that the old Southern Railway actually converted away from overhead to third rail in the 1920s.

"notably 1912 when, without the benefit of global warming, 192.9mm of rain fell ... 21 times the year's April total ... the wettest, coldest and dullest of the 20th century. The average temperature was a mere 12.9C" Just in case anyone thought that this August had been particularly bad.

candace's pocket review of The Red Men, a sci-fi novel set in Hackney that she just finished. I suspect I'll borrow this and finish it off; sounds good (if badly proof-read).

Whiteboards are taking over everywhere else, but blackboards cling on in academia. Here's a US particle physics magazine on the subject.

Great adverts from an old science magazine in the states. Makes me wish I'd done a better job on my photographs of The Consulting Engineer a month or so ago.

"Splatter is a small Perl application that allows you to simultaneously update accounts on Twitter and LiveJournal." A hack, and not useful to me, but I thought I'd give it some link love.

Article in SFGate about the tower crane operator at the Rincon Hill site. Now, if any SF dotcommies fancy posting photos to the Flickr Craneporn group...

Covers a bunch of stuff I've seen candace mention (the two body problem, mentoring, etc), but still nice to see in the mainstream press.

"What other charity believes shopping is the best way to make a contribution?" Oh, I can think of one...

Would anyone give this the time of day if the title was ""Britain has at last escaped the illusion that salvation lies in mass literacy"? Two cultures indeed.

Of all the military capabilities the US has, this is one of the least controversial, and yet it's looking like it's in danger. Sigh.

On Phyllis Pearsall, born 100 years ago on Monday

The cost of free newspapers

Very nicely designed brochures looking at quantum physics, and trying to gain support for US funding for fundamental research. Hurrah.

I'm not sure whether it's terrifying or great that the war on science is getting into women's glossies. Probably both, really.

Scrabble, Thailand and Mattel- together at last! Wonderfully amusing article about the game and the World Championships

bike messenger thing to read if I have time