Week 29

05.20.02

Hmmm. I wonder if it's really true that mob hackers "own" the switching stations for Sprint telephones in Las Vegas. If so, it's right out of the old "Legion of Doom" phone-phreak handbook.

http://online.securityfocus.com/news/355

05.21.02

Here are 56 Spaniards who play Quake. Instead of wiping each other out with nailguns and chainsaws, they've managed to stack their character into an awe-inspiring tower.

http://www.planetquake3.net/
pic.php3?c=./images/56players.jpg

Of course, even that remarkable feat scarcely compares to the crazed ingenuity of these "AIM Buddies."

http://www.chickenhead.com/stuff/aim/
index.html

05.22.02

Since the best astronomical data is all digitized now, why get out of your chair and look up at the sky? Sit down and log on to the good ol' "virtual observatory."

http://hubblesite.org/news_.and._views/
pr.cgi.2001+35

You don't have to sift through all those tiresome reams of Hubble data, either. It's a lot easier to simply concentrate on the weirdest stuff in the universe.

http://hubblesite.org/news_.and._views/
cat.cgi.Exotic_phenomena

05.23.02

The Very Large Telescope is not only very large, it's run by Europeans and located in Chile. If you can't afford a Hubble, better hook up a bunch of big ground instruments digitally — in South America, on a mountain, in the world's driest desert.

http://www.iap.fr/vlt/

http://www.meta-evolutions.de/pages/
science_corner_archiv_991023.html

http://www.eso.org/paranal/

Voici les nifty-keen commercial posters, und so weiter.

http://www.eso.org/outreach/info-events/
ut1fl/posters.html

05.24.02

These guys campaign in a quixotic effort to let human beings see the stars without cosmos-obscuring light pollution.

http://www.darksky.org/ida/index.html

Check out 24-hour America, glowing from coast to coast like an abyssal squid.

http://www.darksky.org/ida/darksky/
index.html

http://www.novaspace.com/POSTERS/
PHOTO/Nam-nite.html

Bruce Sterling knows more than is seemly about the ecological implications of mining lard from sewers and having the dead devoured by birds. If you go to Viridian Design, he'll share that knowledge with you. He also writes books.