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Randomness

Although I've gotten to the point where I'm getting tired of the too-cute 'Gen-X' writers, this guy really does seem funny. Thanks to memepool for the pointer.

Will reckless scientists end the world? A webzine that is normally nominally a humor page tackles the issue of the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in New York. Apparently some people believe that it could trigger a strange chain-reaction that could destroy the earth — or the whole universe.

Cool, eh? The first article is here, the second here and the third is here.

Updates

Well, its Wednesday again. As promised there is a new moon and a new Packet, although I'm keeping the Page Two pictures link for a while.

The Watchmen

At midnight, all the agents
and superhuman crew,
go out and round up everyone
who knows more than they do.
— Bob Dylan

Ah yes, I happened on the Watchmen, the 'graphic novel' by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Very cool book. There are quite a few web sites that anaylize this complex work, the sites range from collected reader comment to what amount to annotated walk-thoughs. Here are three of the better sites:

Watching the Detectives

Ralf Hildebrandt's Watchmen page

Steven Blatt's Watchmen Observations

Randomness

Finally got the cam in — but I haven't got any software for it yet, aside from what came with the camera. But right now you can look at the sample cam page as well as a picture looking back at the camera. Scary, isn't it?

Oh yeah — BANG! —and here is a good article from the lads at Salon, Why does the left ignore Waco? How about a teaser quote:

"Liberalism today is a bunch of Starbucks Coffee type of people," says Reavis. "Guns and religion are blue-collar issues. My peers on the left aren't interested, but the average truck driver thinks the government murdered those people."

Randomness

Yahoo is still number one right? Best name recognition, greatest profits, most hits, all of the above? But I never go. Between the search-em-all function of Sherlock and the sleek minimalism of Google I just never Yahoo any more. Hmm, growing trend or oddball Rouseism?

I hate to keep plugging for Salon, and I particularly hate plugging their sex section — they just ought not to be encouraged — but the story about Flora, an 83-year-old porn star is pretty cute.

Big Band(width) Week

Okay ... yeah I've been a bit busy and the updates haven't been flying in — but this week I've got a plan! This past weekend I spent my time mp3-ing CDs and reading Zavtone, this Japan-California rave rag (cool photos by the way). So, MP3s and Zav became my inspiration for this week's theme — Big Band(width) Week.

All this week RouseWorld will be featuring swoony bandwidth-heavy sites on the cutting edge of Music and Technology with a few side trips into Tall Dollars and Cthulhu. The obvious starting point for this adventure, Zavtone, is unfortunate — as it sucks. I mean I don't really mind a content-free Flash-heavy site, but Zav is just lame. But the stuff I have planned for tomorrow is cool.

Big Band(width) Week

And, hey, its day two of Big Band(width) Week. Did you know there is a www.ambient.fm? Feeling like a sonic attack from the planet of robot love violins? Just go to that address, it will hook you up. But that music-type-plus-dot-fm thing got me thinking ... and yes it turns out that there is a www.funk.fm on the weird wacked web as well. But .fm? I mean, The Federated States of Micronesia, right? Maybe not.

Further down the 'dial' is www.noise.fm, an on-line music store "coming soon." Okay, and www.trance.fm is taken, but no content — then I trip over to www.rock.fm. Yep, that domain and a bunch others in the .fm series are all for sale. It doesn't take me to long to find www.radio.fm, a portal for these sites and www.dot.fm, home of BRS Media, the guys behind the music.

You see there really is a collection of tiny islands called the Federated States of Micronesia and their country code really is .fm. What BRS Media has done is struck a deal with those guys to market the .fm county code to radio stations. Hopefully FSM gets a big pile of money, but I couldn't find any links that mentioned the Tall Dollars going down for that deal.

We should note that the .fm domain isn't FSM's only claim to fame. This young nation is also home to the fabulous ruins of Nan Madol, which some figure is the basis of Lovecraft's R'lyeh. Cool, uh?

Big Band(width) Week

Updating a little late tonight, so this will be a little rough. Day Three's theme is alternative music portals, especially ones with huge Flash opening screens. Oh my!

• Piratetv.net — Supposedly some live stuff, just not while I was there.
  
• Ceibarec.com — San Francisco trance music. If you are in the mood for a big-assed Flash intro - this site is pretty cool. No music to listen to, but you can order the CDs.
  
• X-radio.com — DJ Music and Culture, damn. Well, actually it's a music store, but it does have streaming mp3 and RA previews of the stuff on sale. That's kinda cool.
  
• Edgecore — Music label from Byron Bay, Australia. Electronica. Some music clips.
  
• 10khz — Art, Music, Fashion - and trans mutant humans and deep space time. And Flash, lots of it. Yahhh!
  

Big Band(width) Week

Again, I'm up a bit late, so I'll make it quick:

www.minipod.com — Music related, but not music. The minipod is a speaker, very organic looking, like a mutant electric shellfish. Then site leaves me wondering about the future. Will there be bunches of small design companies all with these flash-heavy web sites? The company is Blueroom Loudspeakers, Ltd., a small company heavy on philosophy and manifesto. The site reads more like a small software firm. Packaging is 'totally reusable and useful every day.' They might be right, the packaging is a travel case. But a set of speakers costs £269. Yes, they are British, but the speakers are painted in Denmark. Apparently they make other stuff, but this one product has its own website. Reading between the lines, some of the staff seems to have been involved with the UK Rave scene. Very odd looking site navigation, but very nice looking speakers.