morphizm

From Madonna to Mogwai, Swervedriver’s Resurgent Sonics Achieve Escape Velocity

From My Bloody Valentine’s recently announced reissues and rarities to the April release of Spiritualized’s new sonic spacewalk Sweet Heart Sweet Light, synesthetic rock is returning from orbit. But its best-kept secret still remains Swervedriver, whose muscular guitar atmospherics are also thankfully back in action, starting Monday night on Fallon.

After that, Swervedriver embarks on a [...]

Michael Bloomberg May Have His Own Army, But Has He Already Lost the War?

(Image courtesy Hrag Vartanian/Enzio & Nio)

[UPDATE: My pals at HuffPo have syndicated this article there.]

Elected mayor of New York City two months after 9/11, Michael Bloomberg has changed political affiliations three times in the last decade, made exponential billions by digitizing our lightspeed information economy, evolved beyond a person into an elite corporate personhood, and, [...]

Nuclear Cinema: 10 Prescient Meltdowns

A year ago, the geothermal-rich Japan suffered an utterly predictable earthquake, tsunami and nuclear nightmare that is still currently unfurling in terrible ways. The more we know about what happened, one pattern becomes utterly clear: We should have known more about what was happening, as it happened, but were prevented by those whose culpability in [...]

Sorry, But Bird Flu Bioterrorism Is Much Harder Than It Sounds

Image courtesy Cybercobra/Wikipedia

Information wants to be free, the aphorism goes, especially when it comes to science. But when it comes to explaining how a lethally airborne avian influenza pandemic transmits among humans, freed information evidently crosses over into terrorism. Despite the fact that when it comes to the evidence that science demands daily, the [...]

Alan Moore Joins Occupy’s Populist Fight

There are few things I love more than comics and social justice. One is the scoop, and another is a scoop about comics and social justice, starring one of the most insightful minds of this century and last. In the latter department, I recently posted an article at Wired on Alan Moore’s addition to Halo-8’s [...]

10 Things For Progressives to Be Thankful For

It’s been an insane year for progressives, who have seized the international spotlight thanks to populist uprisings in politics, economics, media and elsewhere. I shared my list on Thanksgiving at AlterNet.

Yes, it was slightly partial to my alma mater UC Berkeley’s brainiac economist Robert Reich, seen below delivering a moving speech to Occupy Cal [...]

Occupy Hip Hop, Starting With Jay-Z, Kanye

I grew up on hip hop in Long Beach during the ’70s and ’80s, and in Berkeley during the ’90s. Throughout that time, it was packed with party jams but also resolutely intent on speaking truth to power. Sure, it was shot through here and there with knuckleheads just trying to get ahead, but it [...]

An Open Love Letter to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless

It’s hard to believe that My Bloody Valentine’s epochal Loveless debuted 20 years ago today. It’s an unhappy birthday, however. Let’s be honest: There hasn’t been a single album released since Loveless that has been as singular, riveting or identifiable. Disagree? Bring it. Please.

Kevin Shields’ obsessive ingenuity has mythically grown ever since, as those influenced [...]

Welcome to Population Overload

Aptly on Halloween, Earth welcomed its seven-billionth soul. You’d think that it would be hard to spin this alarming factoid into a positive, what with all the resource wars, class divides and occupation insurgencies raging across our singular planet. But you’d be wrong: Some eggheads have pointed to the benchmark as a triumph of science [...]

Greatest Supervillain? No Joke, It’s the Joker

Happy Halloween! Looking for a nicely timed freakout? Check out my Wired gallery featuring the original gangsta of graphic violence. He was born a nefarious comics murderer, but has since starred as everything from a camp mascara champ to a straitjacketed dreadlock devil to, most recently, a tragically hyperreal Oscar winner. Let’s drink some serum [...]