It's Mad Decent!

La Roux, the British synth-pop duo, and Major Lazer, a hipster dancehall vanity project helmed by producer-DJs Diplo and Switch, don't share any obvious aesthetics. But their respective bodies of work -- just one 2009 LP, each -- are a jumping-off point for "Lazerproof," a mix tape as chaotic as it is cohesive. Like M.I.A.'s Diplo-helmed "Piracy Funds Terrorism, Volume 1" mix tape, it succeeds by acting more like a broad survey of emerging music trends than a compilation of remixes and mash-ups.

Download the new release for free.

Bill Gurley:

Customers seem to really like free as a price point.

Have you heard The Swinger?

The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this by taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect.

From last year, Sasha Frere-Jones:

According to Mad Decent, the record label, Major Lazer is a Jamaican commando who fought in the "secret Zombie War of 1984" and lost both arms in combat.

Then the US military equipped him with experimental lasers that double as prosthetic limbs.

George Romero:

How many zombies do you know?

Stuart Heritage:

We should probably tell you that the full title of this game is Zombies! Apocalypse - Massive Multiplayer Online Zombies Massacre, even though that's basically given away the point of it all.

Lily Allen:

Hi. Um, I'm just wondering, have you got any kind of like, sort of punky, electronica, kind of grime, kind of like, new wave grime, kind of maybe like more broken beats, like kinda dubby broken beats, but a little bit kind of soulful ...? but kinda drum and bassy, but kinda more broken drum and bass, like sort of broken beats, like break-beat broken kind of drum and bass ... do you know what I mean? No?

Lazerproof, by Major Lazer and La Roux

Stefan Geens in Stockholm, editor of the Ogle Earth blog, brings you news about virtual globes, with a special focus on Google Earth. Recently he showcased this video demonstration of Perceptive Pixel's display technology.

Perceptive Pixel, Inc. was founded by Jeff Han in 2006 as a spinoff of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences to develop and market the most advanced multi-touch system in the world.

There's a recent Fast Company article about Jeff Han, as well:

Han began his presentation. His fingertips splayed, he placed them on the cobalt blue 36-inch-wide display before him and traced playful, wavy lines that were projected onto a giant screen at his back. He conjured up a lava lamp and sculpted floating blobs that changed color and shape based on how hard he pressed. ("Google should have something like this in their lobby," he joked.) With the crowd beginning to stir, he called up some vacation photos, manipulating them on the monitor as if they were actual prints on a tabletop. He expanded and shrank each image by pulling his two index fingers apart or bringing them together. A few oohs and aahs bubbled up from the floor.

Suppressing a smile, Han told the assembled brain trust that he rejects the idea that "we are going to introduce a whole new generation of people to computing with the standard keyboard, mouse, and Windows pointer interface." Scattering and collecting photos like so many playing cards, he added, "This is really the way we should be interacting with the machines." Applause rippled through the room. Someone whistled. Han began to feel a little bigger.

But he was far from finished. Han pulled up a two-dimensional keyboard that floated slowly across the screen. "There is no reason in this day and age that we should be conforming to a physical device," he said. "These interfaces should start conforming to us." He tapped the screen to produce dozens of fuzzy white balls, which bounced around a playing field he defined with a wave of the hand. A flick of a finger pulled down a mountainous landscape derived from satellite data, and Han began flying through it, using his fingertips to swoop down from a global perspective to a continental one, until finally he was zipping through narrow slot canyons like someone on an Xbox. He rotated his hands like a clock's, tilting the entire field of view on its axis--an F16 in a barrel roll. He ended his nine-minute presentation by drawing a puppet, which he made dance with two fingers.

He basked in the rock-star applause. This is the best kind of affirmation, he thought. The moment you live for.

Can't touch this GUI: Jeff Han's Perceptive Pixel technology

"It looks like politicians are poised to dominate the political discourse of the country for years to come," said analyst Maria Lawson of the Free Enterprise Institute.

"While it's still too early to tell, after the success of this election, it might not be too long before we see another politician in the White House."

Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections

stare at this then stare at something else... trippy.

Magic Yo | Yoism

The CIA is divided between the Directorate of Intelligence, which houses the analysts, and the Directorate of Operations, which houses the spies and the paramilitary forces. The spies are, in general, divided into two groups. There are those with official cover and those with non-official cover. Official cover means that the agent is working at the U.S. embassy in some country, acting as a cultural, agricultural or some other type of attache, and is protected by diplomatic immunity. They carry out a variety of espionage functions, limited by the fact that most foreign intelligence services know who the CIA agents at the embassy are and, frankly, assume that everyone at the embassy is an agent. They are therefore followed, their home phones are tapped, and their maids deliver scraps of paper to the host government. This obviously limits the utility of these agents. Being seen with one of them automatically blows the cover of any potential recruits.

Then there are those with non-official cover, the NOCs. These agents are the backbone of the American espionage system. A NOC does not have diplomatic cover. If captured, he has no protection. Indeed, as the saying goes, if something goes wrong, the CIA will deny it has ever heard of him. A NOC is under constant pressure when he is needed by the government and is on his own when things go wrong. That is understood going in by all NOCs.

George Friedman of Stratfor on the way the CIA divides up its clandestine staff, and how it relates to the Plame situation.

Stratfor via DailyKos: The Importance of the Plame Affair

This is the web site for a trip that actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman took around the world on motorcycles. It's a documentary miniseries, airing on Bravo in the US. They have also published a travelogue of their trip, available in bookstores.

::..:. Long Way Round .:..::