Radiohead Finish Recording New Songs

Looks like a new Radiohead record is on the way! Bassist Colin Greenwood has offered an update on the band’s recording status. “[We’ve] just finished another group of songs and have begun to wonder how to release them in a digital landscape that’s changed again,” he wrote in an essay for the U.K. organization Index on Censorship.

While Greenwood didn’t offer any details about how or when the album will be released — “We have yet to decide how to release our next record,” he writes — he does go in depth about the band’s decision to release 2007’s In Rainbows without a label’s help and why he thinks discussion and distribution of music on the Internet is finally moving out of its “adolescence.”

By Kevin O’Donnell on September 17, 2010 3:29 PM Source: http://www.spin.com/articles/radiohead-finish-recording-new-songs?utm_source=newsletter092110&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter092110

Why Science Fiction Is So Appealing in Hard Times

Reposted from the Being Ruth website: http://beingruth.com/why-science-fiction-is-so-appealing-in-hard-times/

Sci-Fi Pulls Us Outside Ourselves

One reason I mostly use pictures of the universe as my wallpaper is that whenever I look at it, I find myself doing my own mini-sci-fi. I wonder whether or not there’s any life or consciousness that we’d recognize in any of them.

As a rule, science fiction pulls us outside of our own worlds and concerns. Whether it takes us to another galaxy, to another solar system, to another planet on our solar system, or even to an alternate/future version of our own Earth, it makes us think about a different kind of life and society. And it helps us realize that our way of doing things may not be the only way they could be done.

Not only is it a good mental and emotional stretch to consider what life might be like outside our bubbles or our Earth, it’s great escapism when the rest of life is getting hard. Would it be healthy to respond to life’s problems by spending most of our mental time in a dream world? (*cough* freakiest Buffy episode ever *cough*) No, of course not. But a short mental break can actually help spark our own creativity and improve our outlook on life.

If it’s uplifting, things can be better. If it’s dystopian, things could be worse.

Discovery Of Habitable Earth-Like Planet ‘To Be Announced In May 2011’

The first Earth-like planet orbiting another star will be announced in May next year, if the discovery of extrasolar planets continues at its present rate, say researchers.

The rate of scientific progress is often hard to measure. But in certain circumstances, the data is unambiguous and easy to measure, creating a trend. And when that happens, the futurologists aren’t far behind, extrapolating and predicting the way things will be.

The most famous example is Moore’s Law, which predicts that the density of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every two years or so. This trend has continued for more 40 years and looks set fair for at least another 10.

Today, we’re introduced to another data set that makes possible a bold prediction about the future. Samuel Arbesman from Harvard Medical School in Boston and Gregory Laughlin at the University of California, Santa Cruz, point out that astronomers have been discovering extrasolar planets at an increasing rate since 1995.

Hood Takes ENDER’S GAME to the movies

 Could Ender’s Game finally be coming to the silver screen? Old school Maniacs (Cinescapers) will testify that they heard rumors of an adaptation of the Orson Scott Card book dating back to the website’s early days in the mid ’90s. We flash forward a dozen opportunities later to the present day and the Los Angeles Times’ 24 Frames reports the latest charge to bring the character to light is coming to fruition, with Odd Lot Entertainment tapping director Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) to rewrite the screenplay and possibly direct the feature.