In a discussion of music recommendation sites (like Last.fm and Pandora) over at jwz‘s livejournal, someone mentioned UpTo11.net, which builds its recommendations by looking at what stuff people are sharing over P2P networks. Seems to work pretty well.
Also in that thread, a link to a blog that seems devoted to music search and recommendation technology.
A French scientist suggests that maybe viruses are the origin of DNA (yes, viruses, not virii). That is, that the whole DNA->RNA thing (and the RNA->DNA thing that viruses do so well) started in part as a way to evade early cells’ anti-viral defenses. This could explain why DNA replication enzymes are different between bacteria, archea and eukaryotes.
Here’s a terribly depressing article about the war in Congo, and how all this genocidal horror is driven by the west’s lust for cheap electronics. Via one of shiffer’s friends.
Said friend is hosting this Lexicon game that Shiffer is on about. I plan to play in it – now I just need to come up with an alternate history based on Albert Hoffman leaving his problem child on the shelf.
(This is clearly better than my first plan, which was to write each entry as part of the quest of a cross-world hopping food critic, searching among the myriad alternate earths for the best humous.)
Speaking of games, here’s a really cool setting idea thread from rpg.net: [D&Dish] The city built around the tarrasque. After a dozen responses saying “that’s so cool!”, people start building on the initial idea, and it keeps getting more and more interesting.
Finally, a spam mail from Delphi forums told me that all the cool forums they once hosted are escaping in droves to their own sites. One of those is a comic geek forum with a British orientation called The V, where I found this list of 50 Best Marvel Characters:
46. Swarm, Fritz von Meyer – Created by Bill Mantlo and John Byrne.
Swarm has appeared in comics only a scant handful of times, yet he has massive cult appeal. To understand why, there’s just one thing you need to know about Swarm: He’s a Nazi made of radioactive bees. Shakespeare only wishes he’d come up with stuff this good.
Big sweaty men! Big noisy guns! Dozens of people getting beaten and slaughtered–per scene! Entire cities razed to the ground! Liberal wimps beware as simple handguns become judge, jury and executioner!
And the only repercussion is that the Stupid Chief takes your badge and gun for the weekend…
— The Ruthless Guide To 80s Action
… Scroll to the bottom of that page and read the anecdote about Ingmar Bergman meeting Charles Bronson.
Two freaky tech stories I ran across: I posted a link to a story about a neural interface located on the tongue back in 2002; I found it interesting because in this embarassing Cyberpunk story I wrote eons ago, I’d figured this was a pretty kinky place to put a neural interface. But it turns out it’s not kinky, it’s very practical: according to a CNN story linked to by jwz, this device, called a Brain Port, is going to hit the market pretty soon, both to help people with disabilities get around and to enhance the sensory capabilities of divers and soliders in the battlefield.
What is kinky is this other story he links to, a Guardian article about PT-141, a fast-acting, odorless drug delivered by nasal inhaler that induces measurable sexual arousal within 15 minutes, by directly affecting the brain. Very creepy stuff.
15 Best Skylines in the World. Pretty.