by Terry Lile Over the past decade, weight loss solutions have been on the tip of everyones tongues. No longer just a dead end, many obese individuals now have the opportunity to save their lives. Thanks to surgeries such as gastric bypass and lap ...

If you think that the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope is going to be boring, you haven't seen this video yet. Not only the astronauts will be risking their lives as usual at 366 miles above the Earth, but the sheer amount and the difficulty of the tasks—from repairing components to replacing them to installing new gadgets—makes the mission an almost-impossible one, with soundtrack to match. I never imagined this was going to be such an ambitious and daunting work.

First, there's the pressure the astronauts are going to be facing. In addition to the stress of the spacewalks and the manual work in a weightless environment, they know this is not only the final mission, but also a single shot to service the mighty telescope. If some of the tasks are not completed, there's no way to return back another time and fix whatever is broken. The mission crew knows that Hubble is a vital instrument to science—one that keeps expanding our knowledge of the Universe, helping to answer the most crucial question Humanity has ever faced: where the hell do we come from?—and that the astronauts are men and women of science. And they are going to be the ones responsible for giving science this amazing tool for ten more years.

Then there's the time constrain: just eleven days. As John Grunsfeld—one of the mission astronauts with Andrew Feustel, Gregory Johnson, Megan McCarthur, Michael Good, Scott Altman, and Michael Massimino—puts it: "We got a lot of things we want to repair in Hubble and upgrade in Hubble, and not a lot of time to do it." During that short time, this is all the things they have to do:

Repairs

· Repair two failed instruments in space, which is the first time such a task is going to be attempted. This will be a test to see if Nasa can do this kind of tasks in future missions to the Moon and Mars. The repairs will require removing 110 (yes, a hundred and ten) little screws. While this seems easy, not only it will take a lot of time in zero gravity, but the screws, like any other floating debris, may become a big problem for the security of the astronauts up there.

· The first instrument to be repaired is the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). It was installed in 2002, and then died after being the most used instrument in Hubble for years.

· Then they have to fix the Space Telescope Imagine Spectrograph (STIS). This is a black hole hunter which also did the first detection and chemical analysis of a planet orbiting another star.

New instruments

· They will install the fanciest, most advanced spectrograph in space: the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph.

· In addition to the COS, they are also going to install the Wield Field Camera 3. This new camera is ten times better than the current instrument, and will let us see into the past of the Universe deeper and farther than ever before.

Spacecraft service

· In addition to the pure science aspect of the mission, Nasa also wants to upgrade and fix the spacecraft itself, starting with the gyroscopes, which will be upgraded.

· They also are going to install a refurbished fine guidance sensor.

· The batteries are going to be replaced for the first time since Hubble went into space.

· A new outer blanket layer, this time a solid shield, will be put on top of the current blanket.

· Thermal insulation will be replaced on several bays of the telescope.

· A new capture instrument will be installed to recover the Hubble at the end of its life.

Seems like a lot to me, but maybe is the Jerry Bruckheimerish soundtrack that makes it all more exciting. The really exciting part however, if the mission is completely successful, is that Hubble will be better than ever, ready for action for the next ten years. What does this really mean? Awesome eye candy for the next decade. And maybe showing to us that the origin of the Big Bang is really a huge bowl full of Fruit Loops that went horribly wrong during one of God's breakfast.

80smusicvids.com - Like totally bodacious collection of over 1000 music videos from like the raddest decade. Choice.
Bonus, dude! Retro video games like flashacized.

I've really been enjoying the posts over at the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection blog, even though it has one of the worst titles I've ever seen. Up recently was a look back at some of the licensed goods in the collection, including this box of the 'Nintendo Cereal System.' And yes, they tried some of the 20 year old cereal before gutting the box to save it for posterity. Eric Kaltman mentions some of the challenges that come along with attempting to preserve these bits of game culture:Working through the collections provides some rather weird challenges to the discipline of library science. An entire segment of the collection is devoted to items termed as realia, basically commercial products tied to video game concepts or characters. They don't fit on shelves very well, and the exact means of how to preserve these detritus of commercial culture are fraught with an internal debate about their validity to humanity. I think everything should be remembered or recorded fastidiously, but then again I get a thrill out of looking at old Nintendo marketing crud, and I work in a library. That said, these items make my inner child awaken anew and crave some tasty morsels of the past.
I hope we can expect to see more of this sort of stuff — it's fun seeing what librarians at Stanford have decided to add to the collection. Though I would be curious to learn the acquisition backstory — was the cereal just hanging out in someone's personal collection? Two decade old overstock at Ralston Purina?
Errant Nintendo Licensing: Parties, Cereal, and School [How They Got Game]

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Washington Post gets it best,

In other ways, though, both conventions disappointed. We will spare the reader, at least for today, a lengthy exposition of our usual quadrennial grumpiness about the failure of either candidate to level with voters. “The challenges we face require tough choices,” Mr. Obama said in accepting his party’s nomination in Denver, but he didn’t bother to mention any of them, let alone take a stand on them. Both candidates promised grand energy initiatives without disclosing that higher fuel prices will be essential to stemming climate change. Both spelled out the details of trillions of dollars in tax cuts, matched only by the gauziest of pledges to reduce spending, or in Mr. Obama’s case, raise taxes on the rich. Neither detailed the changes that will be needed in Social Security and Medicare if the next generation is to be spared a stifling burden of debt.[link]

Barack Obama has no plan–except giving grand speeches. And as it turns out, neither does John McCain. And he can’t even give grand speeches!

The most irritating thing at the convention was the ”drill baby drill” routine. Now, I am ambivalent about off shore drilling. The technology has improved drastically in the last decade or so and it appears–though I am not certain–that it is possible to do offshore drilling without a heavy environmental cost. But, what is absolutely clear is that drilling will not have any effect on American energy security for at least the next decade. The Republican attempts to portray it as an immediate solution, especially for ”high” gas prices is just nonsense. Of course, what both the candidates will never tell the American people that the current gas prices–supposedly high–are absolutely essential if investment in non-conventional sources of energy has to make economic sense.

Moving on to GOP convention it self, a couple of points.

Sarah Palin: Well, if your idea of confidence is being shrill, nasty, and downright disrespectful towards your opponents, then she rocked. But it isn’t mine. I found her very disappointing. It probably signifies the transformation of American politics in to a rock concert where a democratic rock star will take on the republican rockstar. Who the hell would want to watch the old boys?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am all for taking potshots at your opponents. And Palin’s speech had some great lines! (The one about mayor being a community organizer with actual responsibilities was a killer.) But what really counts here is body language–how do you deliver the lines. Palin’s body language wasn’t combative–it was snarky. And too arrogant. And too disrespectful. Obama has no experience. And no record. But neither does she! The Republicans would like us to believe that being the commander of Alaskan National Guard signifies foreign policy experience. That is about as idiotic as the other side claiming that Obama actually has a record of accomplishment. That’s why I said, its a rock concert. (More on Palin in a later post.)

And what about John McCain’s speech. Now, I have some sympathy for McCain here. For one, he is up against a rockstar who is perhaps the best political speech maker of his generation. For another, McCain’s greatest accomplishments–campaign reforms, immigration bills e.t.c–hold no interest for the Republicans. In fact, most of them are actively opposed to them. So, McCain had to skirt around his own record and was reduced to promising bipartisanship and change. Well, that doesn’t sound very different from Obama’s promises! So where’s the difference?

Finally, its getting to a point where McCain’s recital of his POW story is getting repetitive, irritating and even exploitative. Now, its a great story of character and moral strength. And McCain did tell it in a self-effacing way. But his cronies have over-exploited it and someone needs to tell McCain that we get it. Now, can you move on please?

p.s I should be back to a more regular blogging schedule But expect the next couple of months to be spend on American politics.

Workers at Boeing walked off the job on Saturday after nearly two days of around-the-clock talks failed to avert what could one of the nation's most disruptive strikes in more than a decade.

Workers at Boeing walked off the job on Saturday after nearly two days of around-the-clock talks failed to avert what could one of the nation's most disruptive strikes in more than a decade.

This was the week Google surprised the world with Chrome, its own open source web browser. Just imagine the deadly effect that had on a dozen or more browser-specific start-ups in Silicon Valley. Lots of readers are wondering what I think of Chrome, like my opinion really matters. Chrome is okay -- faster, but not faster enough to make me change for that reason alone. It's better than IE and almost better than Firefox except there are no plug-ins to speak of. What I really wonder, though, is why Google bothered to do a browser at all? Now I know.

It's not like there aren't enough web browsers in the world. There are plenty. And though Internet Explorer still dominates the Windows market, Firefox (not to mention Opera, Safari, etc.) is there to keep Microsoft honest,. So why did Google even bother? There are two general opinions on this and they are not mutually exclusive. Naturally one opinion is widely held and the other is held mainly by me.

The first reason why Google had to do its own browser comes courtesy of my friend Dave:

"People are looking at Google Chrome and actually think Google is competing in the so-called Browser Wars," said Dave. "This is not the case at all. Google doesn't care what happens to Chrome. And, in fact would be absolutely thrilled if Firefox and Opera enhanced their browsers to the point where they trounce Chrome into extinction. Google doesn't make a dime off of Chrome. Its money comes from people using the web browser -- any browser.

"What Google does not want is Microsoft creating a browser that sucks. Actually, Google doesn't mind if Microsoft's browser sucks. What they really don't want is Microsoft to make a browser that sucks and everyone ends up using it. And, if the IE8 beta shows us anything, making a really sucky web browser is Microsoft's true ambition.

"Google's main concern is quite simple: Browsers should render pages accurately, and the JavaScript engine in the browser should be fast, efficient, and bug free. On both counts, IE8 is an abomination. JScript just doesn't behave very well and is buggy. And, IE's page-rendering engine simply does not follow the standard. Because of this, Google has to keep development on their Google Applications quite generic and simply cannot implement the features they want. You'll also notice that Microsoft recently has been putting on some very compelling web content that is only available if you use Windows and IE."

Now back to Bob. Everything Dave says makes sense and I agree with it, but it doesn't answer my real question, which is not "Why did Google have to do a browser?" but rather, "What made it impossible for Google NOT to do a browser?"

The answer to this latter question begins with Dave noticing Microsoft's recent IE- and Windows-specific web content, which cracks open the door on Google's greatest fear -- that Microsoft will turn off ads in IE.

Microsoft can't do that, can they?

Microsoft can do pretty much whatever it wants in this area. There is plenty of browser competition. They can hobble their own product if they like, though it would drive users away from IE -- from a product that brings Microsoft no direct revenue anyway -- so what's the risk?

Microsoft turns off the ads in IE and what happens? Google takes a huge revenue hit, is knocked down three pegs in the eyes of Wall Street, while pretty much nothing happens to Microsoft, which would have just shown the world who is still the sheriff.

I am not saying this is going to happen, but I AM saying that it COULD happen -- and that very remote possibility is, by itself, enough to make Google have to produce its own browser.

Let me be clear that there doesn't have to be any subterfuge here on Microsoft's part. They can simply turn off the ads in IE, declaring it a non-commercial product. If you don't like it, get another browser -- there are plenty to choose from. Microsoft's revenue would go almost unchanged while Google's would plummet, if only for a few weeks or months -- just long enough for Microsoft to come through with a second punch, that is if they have thought that far ahead.

If you are wondering whether people really sit around Google asking if Microsoft would actually do something like this, well they do.

So to avoid that eventuality (and to do all the other things that Dave said, above) here we have Chrome, Google's attempt to direct the future of browser development and take some momentum away from IE.

Chrome promotes WebKit rendering, which is also done in Safari. It would not surprise me if WebKit didn't make some inroads shortly with Firefox and Opera, helping somewhat to turn the tide away from IE. Yet WebKit will change, too, by adopting Google's V8 JavaScript engine, replacing JavaScriptCore in both WebKit and Safari. Thus all the open source browsers (and Safari) become better and more alike, which helps them against IE.

A rising tide floats all (open source) ships. Google needs open source browsers to become even more competitive with IE, hence Chrome is a reference design that Google knows will work brilliantly with all Google Apps.

So much for Chrome: Now for something REALLY scary. I've been hearing that peer-to-peer file sharing has declined a bit. Actually, it's the rate of growth that has declined, but in a market where volume is always rising and prices always falling, even a decline in growth can be significant. This is happening for lots of reasons (market saturation, summer vacation, etc.) but the effect appears to be real, much to the relief of the RIAA and MPAA, which hate people sharing music, TV shows, and movies that they see as violating the intellectual property rights of their members.

But I think something else is actually happening. People are just finding new ways to share files -- ways that are harder to detect and even more chilling for society to prohibit.

Look at where P2P came from in the first place. The idea behind BitTorrent and similar programs was that many people wanted the same content and few users could afford the bandwidth to run their own dedicated servers, so sharing files by caching and re-serving small pieces of files was very efficient, especially with flat-rate bandwidth. Depending on your point of view, P2P has been a huge success or a huge pain in the ass.

But all the while, the cost of Internet bandwidth has come down A LOT. Remember P2P was born in the 1990s when most users still had dial-up connections. With the cost of Internet backbone bandwidth dropping 50 percent per year for the last decade or more, the economics have changed dramatically and it has become reasonable to effectively have your own server. No, I'm not talking about YouTube, I'm talking about dedicated servers used in large part to distribute movies and music. I'm talking about any of a number of Internet backup services.

The poster child for this new kind of service is RapidShare, a German file-sharing service that will let you distribute files up to 200 megs each for free and up to two gigs for not much money -- 55 Euros per year -- with no limit on the total number of files, total storage, total downloads or even total simultaneous downloads. Rip your copy of The Dark Knight, store it on RapidShare, then send the download URL to anyone you like or simply post it somewhere on the web. It's not as efficient as P2P, but it sure is easier AND harder to detect since nothing but http is used.

Can you see where I am going with this? How are the MPAA and the RIAA likely to respond if this technique becomes really popular? They are going to want to spy on us more, even to the point of auditing (or attempting to audit) our network backups. More lawsuits, more grandmothers and little kids being sued, less privacy.

I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA will fail in the long run. Once custom protocols and ports are dropped and you can't tell the difference between a spreadsheet and I Am Curious (Yellow) the game is up. But we're still years -- and a lot of pain -- away from that.

Publication Date: 2008 Sep 4 PMID: 18769445Authors: Cohen, E. - Dillin, A.Journal: Nat Rev NeurosciDistinct human neurodegenerative diseases share remarkably similar temporal emergence patterns, even though different toxic proteins are involved in their onset. Typically, familial neurodegenerative diseases emerge during the fifth decade of life, whereas sporadic cases do not exhibit symptoms earlier than the seventh decade. Recently, mechanistic links between the aging process and toxic protein aggregation, a common hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases, have been revealed. The insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) signalling pathway - a lifespan, metabolism and stress-resistance regulator - links neurodegeneration to the aging process. Thus, although a reduction of insulin signalling can result in diabetes, its reduction can also increase longevity and delay the onset of protein-aggregation-mediated toxicity. Here we review this apparent paradox and delineate the therapeutic potential of manipulating the insulin/IGF1 signalling pathway for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.post to: CiteULike

if you're still preoccupied with aligning IT and business and operating, maintaining, and deploying systems, you're a decade behind the curve.

Nearly two days of round-the-clock talks aimed at averting a strike at aircraft maker Boeing broke down Friday evening, setting the stage for what could be one of the nation's most disruptive strikes in more than a decade.

Publication Date: 2008 Sep 4 PMID: 18769444Authors: Brundin, P. - Li, J. Y. - Holton, J. L. - Lindvall, O. - Revesz, T.Journal: Nat Rev NeurosciNeuropathological changes in Parkinson's disease progress slowly and spread according to a characteristic pattern. Recent papers have shed light on this progression of pathology by examining the fate of neurons grafted into the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease. Two of these studies demonstrate that grafted healthy neurons can gradually develop the same pathology as host neurons in the diseased brains. According to these studies, implanted neurons developed alpha-synuclein- and ubiquitin-positive Lewy bodies more than a decade after transplantation. We discuss the possible underlying mechanisms and their implications for how pathology spreads in Parkinson's disease.post to: CiteULike

A test for the media

On MSNBC on Thursday, Time's Jay Carney offered an assessment of the McCain campaign's most recent assault on the media: "Clearly, the campaign has decided that one way to win is to attack the media. Now, that could work. It does not have a great history of working. 'Annoy the Media: Re-Elect George Bush,' 1992 -- Bush got, I think, 39 percent of the vote or 37 percent of the vote."

Carney didn't explicitly say it, but he seems to be under the impression that the point of the McCain campaign's attacks on the media is to win support from voters who dislike the media. And he seems to think the Republicans only occasionally wage a war on his profession.

In fact, it is a constant war, the point of which is not to merely win a few votes from people who dislike the media. The point is to make voters distrust the media, to make them believe the media are out to get conservatives and thus cause them to discount news reports that are unfavorable to conservatives, and to cow the media themselves into running fewer such reports. (It serves another purpose, too: It helps a nominee whose heiress wife shows up at the convention in an outfit estimated to cost $300,000 pretend to be a man of the people raging against the "elites." But that's a story better told elsewhere.)

And it does indeed have a great history of working. No, it has a spectacularly successful history of working -- of helping conservatives win both short-term and long-term victories. Don't take my word for it: Longtime Washington Post reporter Tom Edsall, now of The Huffington Post, has explained:

The conservative movement has been very effective attacking the media (broadcast and print) for its liberal biases. The refusal of the media to disclose and discuss the ideological leanings of reporters and editors, and the broader claim of objectivity, has made the press overly anxious, and inclined to lean over backwards not to offend critics from the right. In many respects, the campaign against the media has been more than a victory: it has turned the press into an unwilling, and often unknowing, ally of the right.

Take one example of right-wing media bashing contributing to short-term electoral success: Under fire from the White House and conservative activists, CBS News spiked a report questioning the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war that was supposed to air shortly before the 2004 election.

During that year's presidential debates, Bush told Americans, "I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations" -- a direct assault on the media from the president of the United States in the biggest forum he had. But that was only a small drop in the steady stream of media criticism that came from Bush and his allies during the 2004 election.

If Jay Carney is going to point to election results to assess the success of the GOP's assault on the media, he can't simply cherry-pick the elections the Republicans lost; they've been doing this every election cycle for 40 years.

But the conservatives' attacks on the media aren't simply about the next election. They recognize that each such criticism makes voters and the media more likely to believe the next -- so even if the 2004 attacks hadn't worked, they still would have been successful.

And there would be nothing wrong with any of that -- if the Republicans' complaints had significant merit. But they frequently do not -- and they often don't even pretend that they do.

A few weeks ago, for example, there was a frenzy of conservative whining that Barack Obama had gotten more media coverage than John McCain. Now, the amount of coverage each candidate has gotten, by itself, tells us virtually nothing. What was the content of the coverage? Was it positive? Negative? True? False? Fair? Balanced? The conservative complainers made no attempt to assess this -- they just yelled that Obama was getting more coverage. Well, O.J. Simpson got considerably more coverage than Mother Teresa in 1994 -- anyone want to argue he got more favorable coverage? Anyone want to argue that, by covering Simpson too much, the media were demonstrating that they were in the tank for him?

Still, despite glaring flaws with the Republicans' criticism, the media took them seriously, and many journalists adopted the complaints as their own.

The past week provides a useful case study of how the Republicans' assault on the media works.

Last Friday, John McCain announced that he had chosen Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The media had a few questions -- basically, who is she, and is she ready to be president? So the McCain campaign threw a tantrum, insisting the media were being unfair. As usual, the complaints were short on details and merit -- but the media still took the complaints seriously, treating them as one of the most important topics of the past few week.

Perhaps the best example of how phony the GOP's complaints were: the McCain campaign's cancellation of an appearance by McCain on Larry King Live because, they said, CNN anchor Campbell Brown had behaved improperly in interviewing campaign spokesperson Tucker Bounds the night before. They didn't really say what Brown had done wrong -- probably because all she had done was ask simple questions that Bounds couldn't answer. After Bounds said that as governor of Alaska, Palin leads the state's National Guard, Brown asked him for an example of a decision she had made in that capacity. He didn't answer. So she asked him again. That isn't inappropriate; that's exactly what she should have done -- that's journalism.

And that drove the McCain campaign crazy.

So, did all the complaints work?

Consider this: Wednesday night, Sarah Palin falsely claimed she had told Congress she did not want funding for the "bridge to nowhere." She didn't; that was a lie. Congress had said a year before Palin became governor that Alaska need not spend the federal funds on the bridge. And Palin had initially supported the bridge, not opposed it. And once she became governor, Palin kept the money. Palin's false claims Wednesday night were not new: She had said the same thing in previous campaign appearances since McCain picked her -- and several media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times had debunked the boast. But when Palin told the lie during her convention speech -- after days of McCain complaints that the media had been too hard on Palin -- those newspapers ignored the lie.

That wasn't the only false claim in Palin's speech that went un-debunked by the media. She falsely attacked Barack Obama's legislative record -- and media uncritically quoted the false claims. She lied about Obama's tax plans -- she said he "wants to raise" them, even though John McCain's own economic adviser has admitted that is false -- and, again, the media repeated her claim without debunking it.

Instead, much of the media gushed over her speech. If you watched MSNBC yesterday, you would have seen reporter after reporter talk about the McCain complaints that the media were too hard on Palin. And you would have seen reporter after reporter lavish praise on Palin's speech. But you wouldn't have seen them say much about the actual content of Palin's speech -- certainly not about whether she told the truth in it. At one point, Andrea Mitchell declared that "what came through" in Palin's address was "the authenticity."

Nonsense. "Authenticity" doesn't consist of doing a good job of delivering a speech -- not if the speech is riddled with falsehoods. But most of the media didn't tell you about the falsehoods, they just fell all over themselves praising the speech -- even praising the "authenticity" of someone who stood before the nation and repeated lies she had already been caught telling.

So, did the McCain attacks on the media work? They certainly didn't hurt.

And this isn't the first time a McCain assault on the media has appeared to pay off. He and his campaign have spent much of the year attacking the press.

And it seems to have worked: McCain still hasn't faced the media scrutiny reporters kept insisting would come eventually.

The media have told us a lot about Barack Obama and Tony Rezko, for example -- but kept key details about John McCain's relationship with Charles Keating a secret. Did you know that Cindy McCain was business partners with Keating around the time John McCain was meeting with regulators on Keating's behalf? Probably not: The Washington Post hasn't told readers that fact during this campaign; The New York Times has made only brief mention of it. ABC, CBS, NBC -- nothing.

Or how about the fact that John and Cindy McCain would save nearly $400,000 a year under John McCain's tax plan -- a tax plan that includes the extension of Bush tax cuts McCain once bashed as unfairly skewed towards the wealthy? Have you seen any media mention to that lately? It wasn't long ago that news organizations thought John Edwards' wealth was important to keep in mind in assessing his policy proposals -- but that apparently doesn't apply to John McCain.

The McCain campaign's war against the media shouldn't be surprising; this is what conservatives do. The only real question is what reporters are going to do about it. Are they going to fall for the absurd argument that John McCain -- arguably the national politician who has received the most favorable media coverage over the past decade, if not longer -- is being unfairly treated by reporters who still haven't given him any serious scrutiny? Are they going to cower in the face of right-wing bullying as they have so many times in the past?

It's hard to imagine that they won't. But there have been some encouraging signs this week. Time's Carney seems legitimately irritated that the Republican vice-presidential nominee refuses to face reporters. And colleague Joe Klein -- who has, in the past, been awfully kind to McCain -- urged fellow reporters not to back down in the face of the barrage of criticism from the right:

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

The next two months will constitute a test for reporters: If they fall for the idea that they're treating unfairly a candidate who has long referred to them as his "base," what won't they fall for? If they won't stand up to these attacks, what will they stand up to?

phanboy_iv writes "Fans of both of the Raven classics, Heretic and Hexen, have been trying for almost a decade to convince Raven Software to release engine source code for the games under the GPL, much like the DOOM engine on which both of them are based. Well, they finally did it! Source code is available at Sourceforge. Both of these games have had the source available for a while, but under a restrictive license that hindered ports and modifications. Now, thanks to dedicated fans, that's no longer a problem."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is the year 2008 a Bristol revival? First there’s a new Portishead recording (Third), their first in over a decade, then Massive Attack finishes a new album (Weather Underground) and curates the Meltdown festival, and now, Tricky’s released his finest record since Pre-Millennium Tension. Knowle West Boy is named for the Council Estates housing project neighborhood Tricky grew up in. This set is not shrouded in mystery: it’s autobiographical. It’s the first album of well-crafted songs he’s come up with since Maxinquaye (but doesn’t sound a thing like it). As has been his wont since early on, Tricky also employs a host of other vocalists here for the sake of expressing more complex emotions, and also toward spinning a more complete — if sometimes complex — narrative. Rage and paranoia haven’t been replaced so much as they’ve been extrapolated upon and expanded by humor, joy, bravado, and an authentic vulnerability and sense that the personal is political, as this set deals straight on with issues of race and class without even remotely preaching. That said, it’s a down and dirty musical beat collision that combines punk, reggae, funk, pop, and hip-hop and hard rock in a wicked brew that is focused and in your face.

The set begins with a lounge-blues soundscape that evokes the late-night feel of Barry Adamson at his sleaziest. It explodes about a minute in, strutting its scrappy big band against Fripp-ian guitars, a cracking distorted snare, and cymbal thuggery. The cool thing is in its humor. Tricky plays a lounge lizard boasting about himself to a young woman (Alex Mills) who hands it back to him on a funhouse mirror. The first single, “Council Estate,” is a furious punk anthem created as a football-style chant set to a post-punk bassline, with big menacing kick drums, staggered reverb vocals, and Tricky letting the pride in his upbringing come to the fore. It’s a breathless two-and-a-half minutes, but it’s the best thing here. “Past Mistake” is reminiscent of the torch song duet balladry of Nearly God’s “Poems,” a tune Tricky performed with Alison Moyet. “Bacative” employs a ragged punk-charged ragga, and features toaster Rodigan (a New Yorker of West Indian origin). He begins his toast to a plucked cello, drum loops, snares, tambourines, and a set of hi-hat cymbals that shimmer above the bassline. “Joseph” is titled for a young man who does the vocals. The use of harp, hand drums, vibes, and a synthed bassline is strangely atmospheric and haunting. “Veronika” features vocals by French-Moroccan vocalist Lubua; it commences with a slew of distorted beats and tom-tom loops that feel like a military march; her voice is anything but, however. She expresses hurt, heartbreak, and anger brought about by the absent subject. She is also present on the haunting ballad “School Gates” that closes the set; a haunting ballad about a teen pregnancy told from both male and female points of view. “C’Mon Baby” is a thumper that evokes AC/DC with beats! There is also a cover here of Kylie Minogue’s “Slow.” Whereas the original is all sleek, sensual, and inviting, Tricky inverts the song’s meaning by becoming a sleazy, macho Lothario narrating.

Knowle West Boy is not another Maxinquaye (it doesn’t try, either) but it is a very strong, accessible set that puts his renewed creativity on display in a blur of sound and color. It not only re-establishes him as a pioneer, but as an engaging personae who isn’t hiding behind his sonic palette anymore; his music is all the better for it.

A double Academy Award winner is going back to the future. Denzel Washington will star in the post-apocalyptic drama Book of Eli, to be directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, according to Variety. He will play "a lone hero in a not-too-distant apocalyptic future who must fight across America to bring society the knowledge that could be the key to its redemption." Sounds like the best of all possible worlds, doesn't it? Denzel as an intellectual action hero of the future.

Denzel has been resolutely dealing with modern-day problems for the last decade, so maybe he felt like a change of pace. As far as I can tell, the only time that Denzel's tipped his toe into future waters was back in 1995 with Brett Leonard's Virtuosity. In that movie, set just four years into the future, he faced off against a virtual reality Russell Crowe. How far into the future will Book of Eli be set? Who gets the blame for the apocalypse? Will this be a tale of weary, wary survivors or vengeful warriors? And what's in that book, anyway?

Amazingly, this will be the first feature from The Hughes Brothers since 2001's graphic novel adapatation From Hell. They'll be working from a script originally written by Gary Whitta (the two new Akira films) and re-written by Anthony Peckham (Clint Eastwood's upcoming The Human Factor and Sherlock Holmes for Warner Bros). Joel Silver is on board as one of the producers. Filming begins in January.

Filed under: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Casting, Deals, Warner Brothers

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William Drenttel opines on the all-white-male jury of an Adbusters design competition:

Nearly a decade into a new century, I believe it is unacceptable for a design organization, foundation, board of directors, magazine or other enterprise, to mount an initiative with an all male panel of judges -- or, put another way, "white, native English-speaking men from the U.S., British Isles or Australia." Such behavior is no longer acceptable and should not be tolerated by a community of designers (or any other community). Designers around the world should just say no. (link)