Idag har min kompis och medredaktör Mikael Sol vernissage för sin utställning ”Birds & Bees” på ett galleri i Gamla Stan.

Därför har jag gjort lite fan art:

Today my friend and co-editor Mikael Sol opens his exhibition ”Birds & Bees”, which is why I made some fan art:

Beställ snygga t-shirts i vår butik babian.se/shop och stöd vår verksamhet samtidigt som du blir extra vacker.
Trycket är tecknat av Rebecka Lindberg och alla t-shirts är gjorda av ekologisk bomull.

Om du är det minsta nyfiken på hur fri mjukvara och öppen källkod fungerar så tycker jag att du ska lyssna på denna podcast. Den ger en mycket pedagogisk introduktion till FOSS (Free and open source software) och dess fördelar.
av Mathias Friman

PS. Det går bra att snabbspola genom musiken…

BitTorrent MP3 (192 Kbit/s – 79 Mbyte)

1. Det blir fler el-bilar.

2.

Ett japanskt konsultbolag har exempelvis tagit fram ett ljud som liknar ljudet från de flygande bilarna i science fiction-filmen Bladerunner

Elbilarna ska låta mer – di.se

(Fråga inte varför jag var på di.se…)

I recently found an ancient issue of Wired Magazine. Before sending it to be reincarnated as newspaper I reread the article on the Aum Shinrikyo cult and the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo.

Apparently the cult was strongly influenced by Isaac Asimovs science fiction classic, the Foundation series in its view of the world.

”The Empire will vanish and all its good with it. Its accumulated knowledge will decay and the order it has imposed will vanish.” It could be Shoko Asahara talking. But it is Hari Seldon, a science fiction figure 10,000 years in the future. Seldon is the key character in the Foundation series – Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi epic – and he would give Murai and Aum their high-tech blueprint for the millennium and beyond.

The Cult at the End of the World page 3

This kind of reminds me of the discussion about whether Al-Qaeda is inspired by the same series of books. The main reason for this claim seems to be the fact that the name of the organisation can be translated into ”basis” or ”foundation”.

A 2002 article in the Guardian sums up the debate well.

On the surface, the most improbable explanation of the name is that Bin Laden was somehow inspired by [ … ] the world’s most prolific sci-fi novelist [ … ] But the deeper you dig, the more plausible it seems that al-Qaida’s founders may have borrowed some rhetoric from Foundation [ … ]

War of the worlds

The article also discusses other SF and Fantasy influences on terrorist organisations, which makes me wonder why there aren’t more groups that are inspred by William Gibson’s Panter Moderns. I guess that’s a good thing…

Also see: immanentization of the eschaton

I ett pressmeddelande säger den Israeliska människorättsorganisationen B’Tselem:

In a press release the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem states:

Today (Wed. Sept 9th) Israeli human rights group B’Tselem published its findings on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. According to B’Tselem’s research, Israeli security forces killed 1,387 Palestinians during the course of the three-week operation. Of these, 773 did not take part in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over the age of 18.

…

Palestinians killed 9 Israelis during the operation: 3 civilians and one member of the security forces by rockets fired into southern Israel, and 5 soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Another 4 soldiers were killed by friendly fire.

B’Tselem’s figures, the result of months of meticulous investigation and cross-checks with numerous sources, sharply contradict those published by the Israeli military.

…

The extent of civilian fatalities does not, in itself, prove that Israeli violated the laws of war. However, the figures must be considered within the context of the numerous testimonies given by soldiers and Palestinians during and after the operation, which raise grave concerns that Israel breached fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and caused excessive harm to civilians.

9 Sept. 2009: B’Tselem publishes complete fatality figures from Operation Cast Lead