A recent update by John Robb on his Resiliant Communities website regarding the Greek state's destitution and looming 35% budget expenditure cuts reminded me of the a recent email report I received from my Member of the European Parliament which included the following quote, which I think highlights the state of current thinking in the European Parliament towards Greece's predicament:

"A Greek general election which will show whether the Greek voters accept the austerity or they coose to because (sic) a broken third-world country."

So is he suggesting that somehow cutting expenditure by near 40% will result in Greece *not* becoming a broken state, and that to 'accept austerity' that conditions will improve for the Greek populace? Surely the only winners here will be the banks and investment funds that EU/IMF bail-outs will be repaying.

Robb's answer to impending Greek-style state bankruptcy is for communities & individuals to become more 'resilient' and less reliant on ever-shrinking state support. While I am in no way a supporter of small-state or libertarian solutions, I do feel that it is only sensible to do as much as you can for yourself and your community, if only to lesson the burdon on stretched resources and leave as much in the system for those that need extra support.

Cisco drives epic Chinese surveillance network, says report

Boffins fix dead satellite using 'dirty hack' in space

"Engineers and ground controllers at the European Space Agency are overjoyed to announce that they have managed to bring an unexpectedly defunct, critical science satellite orbiting the Earth back to life – by hacking it."

MI5 accidentally spied on 134 people they didn't mean to

You can blather on about mobile communications and other technological advances such a miniaturisation and future NBIC tech all you like but I still think that this a sad tale about human acheivement in the last half of the twentieth century and first decade of the 21st. When did we get so paralised by fear (fear itself, and the fear of failure)?

Ok, I accept that spaceflight is risky and expensive, but part of me thinks that This Is what Makes It Worth Doing. But even if you take manned spaceflight out of the equation we are still suffering from a poverty of ideas and imagination when it comes to grand-scale engineering.

Where are the gigantic capital schemes for building the new infrastructures of the next 150 years? Why are we not being pushed to test what we can achieve,  instead of patching and repairing the legacy left to us by the Victorian Philanthropists? I'm talking here about smart/decentralised energy grids, networked & integrated transport systems, even fucking clean water supplies capable of meeting demand where needed etc etc.

</rant>

Following on from Warren Ellis and Will Ellwood I thought a list of what's new media has been listened to, watched, read and played over the last month would be a useful exercise for me, mainly because I have a terrible short term memory. So here goes.

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 - X-Box: You bog standard FPS in which your squad of valiant military-spec stereotypes race around the globe (well South Amercia so far..) shooting at terrorist types in order to prevent an possible world war III. Now  I'm not an FPS expert by any means, but I'd imagine this is pretty run-of-the mill stuff:  Graphicly OK, the obligatory winter/snow/mountain levels that all FPS games come with nowadays and lots of vehicles to pilot/drive/crash into scenery.  On the downside the AI isn't groundbreaking so the enemies are a little predictable. I've not played either COD or Medal of Honour so I can't tell if they are any better or worse than Bad Company, but I can tell you it's still great fun when I've done a long day in the office and want to blast some mo-fo's in the face with a 20mm grenade or .50cal sniper rifle. I'm told the co-operative team-based multi-player is a lot of fun.

• The Endangered Species mixtape by Peterbororough's DJ Slademan - available as a free download from the one-stop shop for UK Hip-Hop, Suspect-Packages. Featuring some of Slademan's personal favourites of the previous year, it also contains some of his own productions. Look out for the exclusives by Jeye Severe and Daim Ruff, and a particluar treat for a Notts boy (me) was the crew cut 'Eagles', that features serious Nottingham Heayweight MCs Cappo and Scorzayzee.

• Started  to re-read Virtual Light by William Gibson, the first in the 'Bridge' Trilogy. My personal favourite of the trilogy, which is completed by 'Idoru' and 'All Tomorrow's Parties', without going into too much detail this is fundamentally a story about the class-conflict between the elite and the street but I think its lasting effects on me was first a desire to say 'fuck-it', drop out and become a bicylce messenger. The second lasting effect on me is a long term hankering for a armoured snatch Land-rover in the style of Rydell's 'Gunhead'.

• HBO's Boardwalk Empire ticked all the boxes for me. Steve Buscemi plays Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, a corrupt official in Prohibition era Atlantic City, where he tries to stay one step ahead of the Feds, while flirting with gangsters and high society. I'm not sure which episode I was watching as it was late on a Saturday and things are a little hazy now (on further investigation it turns out to be the first episode). Gangsters, gambling, Whiskey heists, dangerous women and gratuitous on-screen violence are all pieces to a puzzle, that when completed will ensure that I will be returning to the rest of the series with gusto.

I've not mentioned any of the comic books, or various other bits and pieces I've consumed in the last month - but honourable mentions deserve to go to Alan Moore's Neonomicon, The Battery Apple Trees for their works in progress updates on soundcloud and last, but by no means least, everyone at Weaponizer for smashing open 2011 with lots of new comics, short SF and flash fiction.

FedFlix is making US Government films available to the public on Archive.org. There are a wealth of movies available but this one caught my attention:

KGB CONNECTIONS (PARTS 1 & 2)

"A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE HISTORY, ORGANIZATION, AND RECENT OPERATIONS OF THE KGB. PRIMARY FOCUS IS ON NORTH AMERICA, BUT HAS APPLICABILITY AND INTEREST TO ANY GEOGRAPHICAL AREA. GENERATES A CONSIDERABLE DEGREE OF CREDIBILITY. LEAVES LITTLE DOUBT THAT THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THE SOVIET UNION WAS AND REMAINS THE CALCULATED, CONTINUING, COMPLETELY CYNICAL EXTENSION OF SOVIET POWER OVER THE ENTIRE GLOBE."

• Did a U.S. Government Lab Help Israel Develop Stuxnet?

"Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy, may have passed critical information to Israel about vulnerabilities in a system that controls Iran’s enrichment plant at Natanz. That information was then used to create and test the so-called Stuxnet worm that was unleashed in a joint cyberattack on Natanz, according to The New York Times."

• Two Fisted Tuesdays with Philip Marlowe - Hiding Place

"Welcome to Two Fisted Tuesdays, Dieselpunks weekly beat on the mean streets.

Starring Gerald Mohr and starting with the famous lines, "Get this and get it straight! Crime is a sucker's road and those who travel it wind up in the gutter, the prison or the grave." The Adventures of Philip Marlowe runs about 25 minutes without commercials. You can listen to this blast from the past in MP3 format for free at the link below.

Download The Adventures of Philip Marlowe - Hiding Place

• Brisbane floods: before and after

"High-resolution aerial photos taken over Brisbane last week have revealed the scale of devastation across dozens of suburbs and tens of thousands of homes and businesses."

• Sahara desert project aims to power half the world by 2050

"(PhysOrg.com) -- A joint project by universities in Algeria and Japan is planning to turn the Sahara desert, the largest desert in the world, into a breeding ground for solar power plants that could supply half the world’s electrical energy requirements by 2050."

Live indoor projection mapping using a Kinect, a 3D camera and a projector:

Kinect Hadouken from Elliot Woods on Vimeo.

Via Bruce Sterling  on Beyond the Beyond.

"The city will be divided into seven distinct sectors: a Lifescape, an Eco-Valley, a Solarscape, an Urbanscape, a Windscape, an Earthscape and Eco-Corridors. Surrounded by greenery, the Lifescape will consist of a series of soil-topped mounds that will counteract the towering apartment buildings of the other communities. To the north of the Lifescape, the Solarscape will act as the administrative and civic center of the Eco-City. Demonstrating the concept of a compact, multilayered city, the Urbanscape will be the core of the Eco-City, featuring stacked programs interconnected by sky-bridges at multiple levels to make efficient use of vertical space. In contrast to the Urbanscape, the Earthscape will act as a sort of suburb of the city, with stepped architecture that will maximize public green space. Last but not least, the Windscape will transform Qingtuozi, a century-old village surrounded by a small lake, into a venue for citizens to relax and recreate."

Tianjin Eco-City is due for completion in 2020. One step nearer the Olympus Arcologies of Appleseed?

via digitalyn:

Tianjin Eco City is a Futuristic Green Landscape for 350,000 Residents Tianjin Eco City – Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World (via Liam)