…could lead to self-cleaning windows, water-repellent windshield glass, and more.
Category: Blog
"A wonderful surprise"
That mysterious chunk of metal Opportunity ran across on Mars has been confirmed as a meteorite. Lead scientist Steve Squyres calls that finding a “wonderful surprise,” and I suppose it is, but wouldn’t it have been an even more wonderful surprise had things taken an SFnal turn and it had proven to be a chunk …
Seeking the secrets of spider silk
A few years ago I wrote a column to which, much to my delight, I was able to assign the rather B-movie-ish title “Spider-Goat Clones of Montreal.” The column described how a Montreal company called Nexia Technologies had cloned goats that had been genetically engineered to produce spider-silk proteins in their milk. Nexia retrieved the …
My fellow alumnus
Here’s a USA Today feature about Jerry “Boo” Mitchell, who, like me, holds a journalism degree from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. I don’t really remember him, even though we’re the same age–or, rather, because we’re the same age, because my own peculiar schooling history (skipped first grade, summer birthday, Grade 12 credits from Saskatchewan …
Quote of the morning…
From Terry Teachout’s About Last Night: “…the only way to stuff a human being into a pigeonhole is to cut off pieces until he fits.” And if I haven’t yet done so, allow me to recommend both the Arts Journal site in general and Terry Teachout’s blog in particular for arts-related stories and ideas.
The sounds of Titan…
…as recorded by microphones on the Huygens probe, are starting to show up here.
Huygens has landed!
And the data are starting to come in. I’m on pins and needles… UPDATE: And here‘s the first picture!
Hey, my daughter can colour inside the lines…most of the time
As the father of a 3 1/2-year-old, I have to say, don’t these people realize what kind of pressure they’re putting the rest of us under?
Portrait of a decomposing composer
Mozart was a very tired-looking 34-year-old, if this newly discovered portrait is any indication. I guess being a genius takes it out of you. In the (paraphrased) immortal words of Tom Lehrer, though, “It’s a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he’d been dead for 10 years…” UPDATE: Oops! Link was bad before, …
The Case of the Curious Object
Like the quick-growing sunspot I blogged about earlier, this curious object on Mars, apparently made of metal, could also be the beginning of an SF thriller–for those whose minds have been bent by years of reading the stuff.
If this goes on…
From SpaceWeather.com: BIG SUNSPOT: In less than 48 hours, sunspot 720 has blossomed from an almost invisible speck into a dark behemoth 5 times wider than Earth. You know, one of the hazards of reading science fiction is that one sees a probably innocuous item like this and starts conjuring up apocalyptic the-sun-is-going-to-explode (or worse, …
Coming soon to a comic book near you: Opera Man!
Check out this headline: “Opera is new weapon in fight against crime.” Am I the only one who sees a potential new caped (or, possibly, horned) crusader waiting to be brought to comic-book life? He doesn’t fight criminals: he drives them away with the power of his Puccini, the weight of his Wagner, the might …
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