Friday, September 03, 2004

we now have a true international working Grid




...sez The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC):
This week, UK particle physicists will demonstrate the world's largest, working computing Grid. With over 6,000 computers at 78 sites internationally, the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (LCG) is the first permanent, worldwide Grid for doing real science.... Professor Tony Doyle, leader of GridPP, explained, "This is a great achievement for particle physics and for e-Science. We now have a true international working Grid, running more than 5,000 computing jobs at a time. Our next aim is to scale up the computing power available by a factor of ten, so that we'll have 10,000 computers in the UK alone, ready for the Large Hadron Collider in 2007"

Gravity's Rainbow, pp. 648-649:
He has passed the time hatching some really insane grandiose plans--he's gonna organize all the Bulbs, see, get him a power base in Berlin, he's already hep to the Strobing Tactic, all you do is develop the knack (Yogic, almost) of shutting off and on at a rate close to the human brain's alpha rhythm, and you can actually trigger an epileptic fit! True. Byron has had a vision against the rafters of his ward, of 20 million Bulbs, all over euyrope, at a given synchronizing pulse arranged by one of his many agents in the Grid, all these Bulbs beginning to strobe together, humans thrashing around the 20 million rooms like fish on the beaches of Perfect Energy--Attention, humans, this has been a warning to you. Next time, a few of us will explode.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

the Perpetual War Portfolio

For investors in the War that Never Ends: The Perpetual War Portfolio

Miss Bomarc




Miss Bomarc celebrates the missile Mr. Pynchon wrote about while at Boeing, in a 1960 article for Aerospace Safety called Togetherness. (Thanks to Dave Monroe for the link, Miss Bomarc of Utah.) An interesting article in the current issue (#46-49) of Pynchon Notes, Bomarc Service News Rediscovered by Adrian Wisnick, is worth the price of admission. Pynchon must have been quite a guy to have in the cubicle next door.