Philip M. Parker has written some sophisticated software for auto-assembling books about various technical subjects, and has "written" more than 200,000 of them. He claims he's going to do romance novels next:

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one. ..

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”

Perusing a work like the outlook for bathmat sales in India, a reader would be hard pressed to find an actual sentence that was “written” by the computer. If you were to open a book, you would find a title page, a detailed table of contents, and many, many pages of graphics with introductory boilerplate that is adjusted for the content and genre.

Link (Thanks, Laura!)

Neil Berkett, the new CEO of Virgin Media (my ISP at home in London, along with BT) has announced that he considers Net Neutrality to be "a load of bollocks" and he's promised to put any website or service that won't pay Virgin a premium to reach its customers into the "Internet bus lane."

As a Virgin customer, I'm not paying to see those services that bribe Virgin to reach me, I'm paying to reach the entire web, whichever bits I think are useful, as quickly as Virgin can deliver them.

Theoretically, I'm locked into a Virgin plan for another six months, but as far as I'm concerned, they've just announced that they're violating the agreement by announcing that the services I can reach will be systematically slowed down unless they pay Virgin extra. That means that we're now null and void. I'll be calling to cancel today.

Who's with me?

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media’s new incoming CEO Neil Berkett - who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago - has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality.

“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers.

Link

Update: Charlie Stross is pissed -- and he's convinced that Virgin drops packets if they detect a router on your network. This jibes with my experience too.

Shepard Fairey (OBEY) has designed a pair of covers for the new Penguin editions of Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. They're absolute knockouts, and just in time: these books need to be read today. Link (via MeFi)

See also: Jordan Crane's amazing cover for Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends
Design your own Penguin cover
Penguin Classics Library complete collection
Penguin Classics get new hipster covers
Remix Penguin audiobooks, win prizes

This inside-out staircase is part of a (way) avante-garde house in Didden Village, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Link (Czech), Link to architects' slideshow (English) (via Gizmodo)

Etsy seller Edmdesigns sells a wide variety of steampunky and clockpunky junque, from cufflinks to tie-tacks to rings to pendants, at reasonable prices Link

See also: Clockwork cufflinks, and their fantastic maker, Etsy seller Rivkasmom

UK bomb disposal experts detonated a huge, 1,500 pound WWII German mine at Bridgwater Bay, Somerset yesterday. The explosion was awesomely awesome, as can be seen here.

Remember, Hong Kong Disneyland is built on lots of unexploded WWII ordnance, left to marinate in salt water and slowly become inert. Let's hope that process is ticking along nicely. Tick tick tick. Link (via Gizmodo)

Mark Rayner's hosting a photoshopping contest wherein contestants are invited to shop science fiction products and services into vintage ads. A magical combination. Link