Wednesday Zeitgeist

Another stupid Wednesday Zeitgeist. Lots of crappy links. Usual life stuff in the last week, you know. Work, words, music, eating, drinking. Not so much on the angst (thank fuck). Everything is coming up Millhouse!

• How to bury Nuclear Waste for 10,00. years
• Uber-scientists sequence Neandertahal DNA.
• Humans and Chimps interbred much more recently than you might have thought.
• Need Help? Dear NSA has the answers.
• As indicated earlier, Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith is fantastic.
  
• Speaking of books, this guy I introduced to Olaf Stapledon is coming down this weekend ... I have a total man crush. He is a friend of this girl I was briefly seeing and a friend of other members of my Melbourne 'posse', but we bonded over First and Last Men and Star Maker .- I bought them for the girl, who stopped having to pretend to be interested when we broke up and she gave them to him. Stapledon was a visionary.
  
• Create your own motivational posters with The Motivator.
• I haven't listened to it for ages but Kicking a Dead Pig by Mogwai is a rather good album. Perhaps their best, which is ironic because it's a remix album.
  
• I paid off my credit card ... it grew a little when I scammed a trip to Europe through uni several years ago ... and I have been really slack about paying it off.
• Political Polemic for the Week:

  If you get a headache from the incessant screaming of your victims, you can always relax to the calming murmurs of White House disapproval. It's like the smooth jazz of genocide response. From: Get Your War On. Warning: Will offend just about everyone.
  

• I spent too much time reading Get Your War On yesterday. It is evil in such a good way.
• Web Comics: Stray and seamonster. Seamonster is particuarly good.
  
• Life is incredibly resilient: Extreme Life.
  
• Nerdy, but I laughed: I thought my Dark Lord of the Sith could protect a small exhaust port that's only 2 metres wide ... that thing wasn't even fully paid off yet.
  
• I love a good conspiracy.
  
• Do we need sleep?:
  

  Tests conducted on rhesus monkeys last year suggest that CX717 can wire users to remain awake for 36 hours without the jitters, euphoria and eventual crash that come after mega-doses of caffeine or amphetamines. Further down the line are even more radical compounds—stimulants that can wipe out sleep for several days at a stretch, and pills that deliver a whole night’s shut-eye in two hours

  That's awesome news. I know my rhesus monky is and incredibly lazy bastard. I know my great novel would develop that much faster if the monkey at the typewriter didn't have to sleep. Of course, i should have 1000 monkies at 1000 typewriters, but do I look like I'm made of money?
  
• Due to popular demand, I have listened to The Arcade Fire more and it definitely has grown on me.
• But The Arcade Fire is still no A Silver Mt Zion.
• Speaking of which, I have made an excellent compilation of deliciously 'post-rock' music. A 'sampler', if you will. Drop me a line and I can get one to you somehow. If you're local, we could even meet in a bizarre RL crossover event. In my mind it would be like one of those episodes of Star Trek where a Temporal Dilation in the Space Time Continuum creates a Fissure in Subspace and the characters are dragged into an Alternate Universe where everyone is the same but different. Or, of course, I can just post it.
  
• When the Arockalypse comes, will you have enough tight leather pants and hairspray?

Oh, and one last thought. My friend Coxy pointed out last night that my new tattoo looks like the letter 'A', which may be the first initial of She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Now I've seen it, I can't stop seeing it. I am not sure that I like it anymore. Fucking funny though. And this is a design I had in mind before I even met her. Coincidence or conspiracy?