From: Bruce Sterling [bruces@well.com]

Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 1:52 PM
Subject: Viridian Note 00315: Cloud Bugs? Me, Too!

Key concepts: Hybrid Vigor, microbes, weather patterns, fossil fuels, Big Mike the Viridian Bug, science fiction writers

Attention Conservation Notice: A follow-up to Note 00314 on the subject of the role of microbes in climate and fossil fuels.

Links:

SpamAssassin. Dave Farber uses it. Simson Garfinkel uses it. The Viridian Pope-Emperor uses it. It rocks. http://spamassassin.taint.org/

Cool, weird stuff Sanyo is up to with solar cells. http://www.solar-ark.com/english/index.html

The new Los Alamos breed of high-performing, low-cost computers, named "Green Destiny." http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/releases/archive/02-058.shtml

Source: Denise Caruso, Hybrid Vigor Institute http://hybridvigor.org

Subject: HVNEWS: Hybrid Vigor Journal scoops CNN on
clouds and climate change

Date: Friday, May 31, 2002 5:51 PM
From: Denise Caruso <caruso*hybridvigor.org>

Some of you may have seen the recent CNN.com piece, "Bugs may control weather: study," about a study underway assessing the biological components which may affect climate change.

As you may know, in April the Hybrid Vigor Journal published a comprehensive monograph on the role of clouds in climate change, written by the award-winning science writer Oliver Morton. It includes a discussion of the research by Bruce Moffett, the microbiologist from the University of East London who is in charge of the project that CNN reports in its piece, as well as much more on this fascinating and important topic.

Called "The Living Skies: Cloud Behaviour and Its Role In Climate Change," it's posted on the Hybridvigor.net website, in the Earth Systems program area:

http://hybridvigor.net/earth/pubs/index.html

The CNN story is at:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WEATHER/05/27/bugs.weather/index.html

Denise Caruso Founder & Executive Director The Hybrid Vigor Institute +1 415.543.8113 vox/fax http://hybridvigor.org http://hybridvigor.net

Re the recent cloud-bug story: This pisses me off.

I wrote a tale back in the early nineties about microbes in the clouds, changing the weather as a form of pest control. We were the pests. It was the second story I ever got published, if "published" is the word == it appeared in a little magazine out of Edmonton, Alberta.

There was no hint of prescience in this story. I know squat about meteorology. My formal background is in marine biology, and all the SF I've published along those lines is stale-dating before my eyes. And then I throw a dart over my shoulder as a fantasy one-off and hit the bullseye. Damn I wish you could copyright ideas like this.

I'm starting to think that scientific expertise is seriously overrated in this business.

Cheers, Peter Watts http://www.rifters.com/

Source: Paul Di Filippo

Steamengine time

Paul Di Filippo <pgdf*earthlink.net>
Thursday, June 13, 2002 10:26 AM

Bruce: in light of the article about aerial ecologies, here's a story I wrote a few months ago, all unwitting. It will appear in an anthology titled LIVE WITHOUT A NET, about alternate internets.

CLOUDS AND COLD FIRES
by Paul Di Filippo

"Out of a clear sky on a fine summer morning, a buckshot rattle of hailstones across the living pangolin plates of Pertinax's rooftop announced the arrival of some mail." (((etc etc holy cow etc)))