Monthly Archives: October 2008

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Socialized banking: Modest proposals for the new economy

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Each U.S. taxpayer now owns a $1,785.71 ownership share in the banks of America, calculates New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman (check his math). So would it be too much to ask for an end to ATM (automatic teller machine) fees?  How about a moratorium on executive bonuses? A-and another thing:

Why not forbid any bank receiving taxpayer money to purchase naming rights to sports stadiums and arenas? Citigroup is handing the Mets something like $20 million a year to call their new stadium Citi Field. Surely, the Mets do not need Citigroup’s money — not to mention yours — to keep failing to make the playoffs.

(Corporations bought naming rights to days, months, and years in one of David Foster Wallace’s novels, if memory of the reviews serves.)

(My favorite proposal, from I forget which obviously unhinged left-wing blogger: Treat bank executives like customers who declare bankruptcy, and make them prove they’ve taken a basic course in finance.)

[Bank recruitment folder, Finsec]

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Friday Free Fiction for 31st October

Well, my guess is most of you are more focused on dressing up Halloween-style and hitting the town tonight than wondering where your next fix of free fiction is coming from. But no seasonal holiday can stand in the way of Futurismic‘s relentless cataloguing of free genre stuff to read on the intertubes, so you’ll at least have something with which to sooth away the hangovers tomorrow afternoon… 🙂

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Here’s a few from Feedbooks:

And another item from the Futurismic back-catalogue, the ultra-dark super-snark of Alex Wilson‘s “Dry Frugal with Death Rays“.

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News from John “Electric Velocipede” Klima:

In case you’re wondering about what the contents of the new issue are like, here’s a quick sampler:

There will more to come from the issue. You can check out the full table of contents, which has links to excerpts from all the fiction and poetry in the issue.

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Via a number of sources, both blogs and email (so blanket thanks to everyone!), Technology Review recently ran a short story called “Glass” by Daryl Gregory.

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Another rogue DVD extra just cropped up at Shadow Unit.

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Via the eternally vigilant SF Signal:

Afterburn SF has published “Vigilant” by Mike Rimar.

MindFlights has published “Good News from a Foreign Land” by Diane Gallant.

And there’s a selection of four from Aberrant Dreams:

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This week’s story at Strange Horizons is “Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman.

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Tor.com has a free story called “A Water Matter” by Futurismic alumnus (and all-round jolly nice chap) Jay Lake.

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Via Forbidden Planet International:

Dominic Green, an author some may remember from his appearances in the august pages of that pillar of the literary SF community, Interzone, is giving up on trying to get novels published. Despite his Interzone credentials and a Hugo nomination in 2006 he’s had no luck with most publishers (a plight I’m sure many writers will empathise with) and has decided to post them online, free, so at least perhaps some readers can have a look and hopefully enjoy them. There are two adult works – Abaddon and Smallworld – and a young adult work, Saucers and Gondoliers.

That’s presumably not the same Dominic Green who was my former landlord…

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This week’s new material at SpaceWesterns is suitably horrific for the season:

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More spookiness over at Subterranean Online:

… a vintage tale by SubPress favorite Norman Partridge […] “Apotropaics“, a very different, and very chilling take on vampires.

Good grief. Am I the only person in genre fiction who’s bored of hearing about vampires, zombies and other lesser-known strains of the undead? Just askin’.

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We’re up to iteration 28 of Jayme Lynn Blaschke‘s Memory.

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A last-minute arrival from Jake Freivald at Flash Fiction Online:

There’s a new story up for Halloween: “Ray the Vampire” by Mercedes M. Yardley. The rest of our November issue will be published next week.

Cheers, Jake! See? More vamps. Sheesh.

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Finally, a couple of non-fiction bonuses:

First of all, Robert J Sawyer recommends a free download of The Atlas of Cyberspace by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin. Looks like it covers both the real and fictional manifestations of cyberspace, too, so plenty of geek points there.

Secondly, Gary Gibson says:

If you either fancy yourself as a writer, or you’re shopping your first novel around, or even several books deep into a career, you could do a lot worse than reading The Career Novelist, by American super-agent Donald Maass…

Fortunately, you can now download that book entirely free in PDF format directly from the Maass agency.

It apparently (and synchronously) comes recommended by Robert Sawyer as an essential book for any aspiring writer, also.

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Well, that’s your lot, folks. Keep the plugs, tip-offs and recommendations coming in (deadline 1800 GMT every Friday!), and have yourselves a great Halloween, Samhain, or non-denominational two-days-off, which ever you prefer. Adios!

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Keys cloned from long-range photographs

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bunch of keysHere’s a neat but nasty little criminal hack that some smart folks at UC San Diego just released as a proof-of-concept: it’s possible for someone to clone your house keys from a photograph taken up to 200 feet away.

The keys used in the most common residential locks in the United States have a series of 5 or 6 cuts, spaced out at regular intervals. The computer scientists created a program in MatLab that can process photos of keys from nearly any angle and measure the depth of each cut. String together the depth of each cut and you have a key’s bitting code, which together with basic information on the brand and type of key you have, is what you need to make a duplicate key.

Crafty stuff, so much so that they suggest that blurring your key teeth on public photographs is probably as wise as blurring your credit card numbers – though it’s hard to imagine a criminal bothering to do this if they could just get their hands on the right sort of bump key.

But it’s a great example of the sort of minor science fiction plot point that would have sounded ridiculously futuristic just ten years ago… I guess maybe tagging yourself with an RFID chip to open your door has merits after all. [picture by Bohman]

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The common cold: The immune system overreacts

Infect a small study group with rhinovirus-16, the source of the common cold. Scrape cells from inside their noses; repeat for a control group that got a sham inoculation. Then use gene-chip technology to see how more than 6,000 of the symptom sufferers’ genes express themselves.

…[R]hinovirus infection triggered a massive immune response in the nasal mucosa. Because rhinovirus is not as destructive as other more serious viral infections, this response appears to be disproportionate to the threat…. “This study shows that after rhinovirus infection, cold symptoms develop because parts of our immune system are in overdrive,” said Lynn Jump, principal researcher at Procter & Gamble and study author. “The findings are important because they provide us a blueprint for developing the ideal cold treatment: one that maintains the body’s natural antiviral response while normalizing the inflammatory response.”

An antiviral compound called viperin, produced by the epithelial cells, seems to fight the influenza virus, too.

[Rhinovirus: actual microscopic image! by hey mr glen]

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…or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?

Researchers have discovered that the colour red enhances men’s attraction towards women:

the women shown framed by or wearing red were rated significantly more attractive and sexually desirable by men than the exact same women shown with other colors. When wearing red, the woman was also more likely to score an invitation to the prom and to be treated to a more expensive outing.

Apparently this will have implications for dating and product design, but I think that they’ve already been taken on board in these contexts.