Category: Blog

Every once in a while a science story comes along that absolutely astonishes me. Sometimes it astonishes me because it represents a giant advancement in human knowledge. And sometimes it astonishes me because it represents a giant gap in human knowledge…specifically, mine. Such a story is one I stumbled on this week, concerning Venetia Phair …

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More photos here.

…over breakfast with her Grandad, is still with us at age 87. I’ve never heard of her until now. Astonishing. (Via Normblog.)

From a CBC story about a new line of Jimi Hendrix-branded fashion accessories: “Hendrix died in his sleep on Sept. 18, 1970, in London, England.” Well, that’s one way to put it. It’s not precisely inaccurate, but it’s a bit misleading. Still, I supposed “Choked to death on his own vomit while unconscious due to …

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The Apostrophe Protection Society. (Via Books, Words, And Writing.)

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Fabulous news, if it works. (Via Transterrestrial Musings.)

…over at Alan Boyle’s (highly recommended) Cosmic Log.

Someone turns five years old…but apparently isn’t very happy about it. (Hint: it’s not Petrarch.)

Amy Nelson-Mile notes at Books, Words, And Writing that Petrarch was born on this day. By amazing coincidence, just 655 years later, so was I.

More photos here.

I didn’t mention this in my column about Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis-1, but it’s worth noting that one of the things aboard it is a shoebox-sized laboratory designed by NASA called Genebox, which on this and future Bigelow missions will test “how the near weightlessness of space affects genes in microscopic cells and other small life …

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