This book reminded me how much I love science fiction. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (which, per Cory Doctorow's tradition, you can download for free) takes place in a transhuman future. Poverty, scarcity, and sickness have been pretty much eliminated. Our hapless narrator-hero, Julius, has been killed (again) and his rivals are trying to take over one of his pet projects where he works at Disneyland. He fights back with the help of tenuous friendships and ill-formed plans, and it's pretty much wonderful the whole way through. One of the best parts about great science fiction (and I think this one counts) is just taking a few ideas and seeing where they lead, a sort of narrative thought experiment. Luckily Doctorow doesn't get too explicitly philisophical, but there is some great hypothesis-spinning daydream material here. What if we were all networked, able to be really, individually connected to each and every other person? How does society recalibrate value where material scarcity no longer exists? If you could freeze your life for 500 or 10,000 years and wake up later, well... what would that be like? What's the effect on human relationships? All this, and more. Go read it.

Mr. Deity is a bi-monthly video series that looks at God and the Universe with a smile (and sometimes, a wink). In the first film about Creation God decides which evils to nix and which to keep. Great soundtrack, too.

I like Cameron Marlow's idea for city guides, identifying socio-cultural twins in different cities across the nation: "I’m an Atlantan in Chicago. Where’s Little Five Points?" Sounds like a good crowd-sourcing project.

Steve Jobs suggests that there is an alternative to DRM for music, called... no DRM for music. Brilliant! Glad to see someone with some real clout advocating what millions of consumers have been cranky about for years.

Bruce Schneier has written a long draft on the psychology of security.

Go grab a Useless Account. Act quick, you'll want to get one before it goes all mainstream and gets clogged up with the masses. [via the daigle coblog]

A collection of old-school circus posters. Keep your hand on the volume as you enter, there's also an old-school barker announcing all the goods. I like how the colors can be so clean and vibrant, despite what seems like a universal beige wash.

A pretty cool video demo for a multi-touch computer interface. Gotta love the chill, new age, destiny music. Let's hope they make a drafting table version so I don't have to stand up all day.

These three photos for the Wonderbra campaign over in Europe earned the top Epica Awards for fashion print materials. And rightly so. The lighting alone is amazing. Great expressions. [via... somewhere i can't recall...]

I wish I knew about the Hype Machine 10 years ago. Not that I care about hot new music that much, but it's made it much easier to stumble across some old and rare recordings.

Interview with comics genius Alan Moore on the BBC.

Pretty cool to see that Lasse Gjertsen was featured in the Wall Street Journal back in December for his music videos on YouTube, Amateur and the earlier Hyperactive.

Dalai Lama (dot) Emory (dot) edu. Awesome. The Dalai Lama is going to be a Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory University. He'll be doing some lectures and stuff later on this year. This is kind of huge, so big thanks to all those at Emory who worked their ass off to make this happen. (thanks, Rebekah)

How to work better.

I'm slightly entranced by Joshua Petker's paintings. I'd say this portrait or this one is my favorite. Makes me think of Dave McKean and Dan Brereton, but lighter. Cool stuff, anyway.

New techniques in astronomy have allowed us to create multi-dimensional maps of dark matter. This is huge, we still just need to figure out what the stuff is. [via justin blanton]

Awwww. Joshua Blankenship got engaged.

Truth in Advertising, a 12-minute film about the dysfunctional, corrupt world of corporate advertising, though the parable could really cut across any kind of office or industry. (nsfw)

If you're a Steve Reich fan and you've heard tunes like Come Out, It's Gonna Rain, Piano Phase, and those other early works, you might like Pez Phase.

Rob Styles got tagged in the 5 Things meme, and was a wee obsessive about following the trail backwards. I love it.