This week’s CBC web column… Download an audio version. **** The forecourt of the ancient Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription “Know thyself.” These days, we find out about ourselves the same way we find out about everything else: we go on the Internet. For example, in recent weeks I’ve learned where …
Category: Blog
"Most research findings are false"?
That’s what John P. A. Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Ioannina, Greece, and Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts University, believes, and has stated in an essay in PLoS Medicine: Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a …
A comic-book version of The War of the Worlds…
…is online at Darkhorse.com, free for the viewing! Much much better than that dreadful Spielberg/Cruise thing. (Via Drawn.)
Which gets tangled more: curly hair or straight hair?
Science at last has the answer: straight hair. To learn which kind of hair truly is the snarliest, biophysicist Jean-Baptiste Masson at the Ecole Polytechnique in France had hairdressers count tangles for a week in the hair of 212 people—123 with straight hair and 89 with curls. Counting was conducted between 4 p.m. and 7 …
Marseguro description in Publisher’s Weekly
Dug up on the Web: a description of Marseguro from the August 6 Publisher’s Weekly: Marseguro (Jan., $7.99) by Edward Willett. After a worldwide disaster, a fanatical religious theocracy takes over the planet.Well, yes, but that’s not really what the story is about. In fact, that’s really the backstory. What happens is… Well, you’ll see.
Google’s new X-prize: land a robot rover on the moon
There’s a new X-Prize. This one is funded by Google, so you know the money is good. It’s for $30 million. And the goal? To land a robot on the moon. Specifically, to land “a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface …
Looking ahead to 2008…
…it appears I will be writing two more books for Enslow‘s American Rebels series, for which I wrote the Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin biographies: one on Johnny Cash and one on Andy Warhol. Should be fun! Now I should really finish the two pending Enslow books I have to write…
A trip to Mars in a week?
That’s the tantalizing possibility of something called the Photonic Laser Thruster, which was first demonstrated back in February. I don’t understand the science well enough to tell if it’s a load of hooey or not, but wow, I hope not. Because that kind of propulsion system might finally give us the solar system of Golden …
The book to win all the awards in science fiction…
…has been conceived by Teresa Nielsen Hayden and colleagues: The book has to be a graphic novel which is the first novel published by the author, a person of color who is an active and well-liked member of SFWA. It must be initially published in Canada, in French, as a paperback original, with simultaneous British …
Faster-than-light communication a la Star Trek?
Maybe. Can’t be used for faster-than-light space travel, alas. On the other hand, the fact it involves “braneworld” scenarios makes me feel good about having my fictional FTL drive in my upcoming novel Marseguro operate in “branespace.” Speaking of which, I’ll probably post the opening chapter or two of Marseguro online in December or January, …
Break out the bubbly…the bubbly diet soda, that is
I was recently chided for drinking too much Diet Coke. “It may not have sugar, but it has aspertame, which is just as bad if not worse!” Well, “Pbbbbbbt!“: “A sweeping review of research studies of aspartame says there is no evidence that the non-nutritive sweetener causes cancer, neurological damage or other health problems in …
The political brain
Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. ***** I do hear tell that there may be an election or two in the offing in the next little while. There are those for whom such affairs are akin to blood sports. They identify so strongly with a particular party, or a particular …
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