Quartz City

• The Road to Clarity - New York Times
  The background on how Clearview is about to replace the old Highway Gothic as the standard font for highway signage
  (tags: highway fonts design)

I’ve been eyeballs deep in Daniel Yergin’s The Prize: The Epic Quest For Oil, Money, & Power (short review so far: unlike most corporations the oil industry operates on schedules of decades - they’re already way ahead of most critics, power groups, and governments) to pay much attention to recent national debates on men’s restroom symbolic interactions and whether or not the world is round or flat but the Peruvian “mystery illness” meteor is high weirdness chum in the water.

The first thing I thought was that it’s not a meteor or inquisitive Fungi from Yuggoth, but a deorbited spy satellite loaded with radioactive fuel. There’s evidence for this… In 1978, Cosmos 954 crashed into Canada, spewing radioactivity over 600km of the Northwest Territories. More recently there was the crash of Mars 96 which had 200g of plutonium pellets which may (or may not) have landed in Chile and Bolivia.

Then there’s this story from the Oberg article:

After the explosion of a rocket near the Baikonur cosmodrome in 1970, Soviet soldiers found a nuclear battery in the wreckage. Later, investigators looking for the battery discovered that the shivering soldiers had secretly kept it as a hand-warmer in their poorly heated guardhouse. In this case, the unit was spotted by one of the searchers and confiscated immediately.

At least the Peru meteor didn’t crash into anywhere in the Middle East. Cthulhu knows how the itchy trigger fingers would react there.

• The Dark Side: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  Light pollution, astronomy, & criminal activity
  (tags: astronomy crime security urbanism)
• Denver - News - DIA Conspiracies Take Off
  Field guide to the conspiracies surrounding Denver airport (DIA): the murals, the secret tunnels, the cost overruns, and just why is it way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. Be sure to book your 2012 connecting flight through here.
  (tags: conspiracy culture travel denver airport)

Last month I posted this photo of Fredo the Rat sitting on top of one of my amps when we were recording. Fredo’s been sitting on top of one amp or another since finding him at Ikea last year and so, yeah, he’s a cute stuffed rat.

I knew Fredo had some relatives out there in the world, but no clue that Fredo’s Russian brethern were so dang numerous. Ummm… Eeek?

• 2009 July 22 Total Solar Eclipse - Interactive Google Map (Full Screen)
  Google Map mashup for the solar eclipse of 22 Jul 2009. Looks like Iwo Jima will be the best viewing spot.
  (tags: astronomy eclipse)
• Bardo Pond Photography: Bardo Pond’s Pedals
  The effect pedals of Bardo Pond.
  (tags: music effects)

Time to fulfill one of the rules of having a blog: self-promotion!

It’s been awhile since I last played guitar in any kind of public context, but after seven months of work it’s time for this one particular Manhattan Project to finally make an appearance. More to the point we’ve put a hell of a lot of work into this and we’re terrifically happy with the album finally being able to play some shows: starting with our first show this Saturday night at the Echo Curio in Echo Park.

We’ll have some CD-R copies of the album (titled Airways. that’s the cover over there) to hand out to everyone (we don’t quite yet have real CDs done), but the entire album (it’s a full album too: 11 songs) will be available to download shortly. Until then, there’s four tracks up on our MySpace page.

If you’re in town, I hope to see you there!

• Azure (color) - Wikipedia
  Color specs for azure and the United Nations color azure
  (tags: wikipedia color)