At least the industry is beginning to think so. We’re talking here diamonds that are fake only in that they’re manufactured rather than found: they’re the same substance as real diamond. And now they’re being graded using the same scale as found diamonds.

I know it’s not cool to admire Second Life any more, but this column from Warren Ellis illustrates so clearly what’s completely new and weird about a world infested by content freed from real-world constraints. [tomorrow elephant]

The Bacterial Orchestra is an art installation consisting of microphones, processors and speakers. The installation is divided up into cells, and each cell has a specific program for responding to sound picked up by its microphone and transforming it into sound it emits from its speakers. Cells that aren’t successful “die off” and are replaced by cells with a different program. Sounds really interesting: I’d particularly like to see what happens when you try to use it as an instrument. [wmmna]

There’s something fascinating and inherently futurismic about man made environments that subsume the ground on which they were once built. Valletta, Malta is a little like this, and Gunkanjima Island in Japan seems the archetype.

Israeli scientists have created a molecule that glows either blue or green given exposure to a specific sequence of chemicals and light. Moderately interesting, yes, although describing it as a lock seems a bit premature. [kurzweil]