"Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin…"

…goes an old hymn I remember well. But we do yield to temptation, as every dieter knows. It’s such a human trait that it’s the whole basis for the Bible–Adam yielded to temptation, and God had to send his Son to die for all our sins as a result. (That’s the short version, there’s lots …

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There’s a storm a-comin’…

…from the sun. The next Solar Maximum is expected to be a doozy, the biggest since we entered a fully electronic age and ringed our world with satellites. It will be… interesting…to see what effect it has on modern technology.

Student evaluations of Socrates

Very funny. A taste: Socrates is a real drag, I don’t know how in hell he ever got tenure. He makes students feel bad by criticizing them all the time. He pretends like he’s teaching them, but he’s really ramming his ideas down student’s throtes. He’s always taking over the conversation and hardly lets anyone …

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The latest additions to my oeuvre…

…arrived this week, to whit my thrill-a-minute educational books Neon and Magnesium, both published by Rosen Publishing. The books are part of Rosen’s series “Understanding the Elements of the Periodic Table.” It looks like I’ll soon be working on another Rosen book plus two more for the other educational publisher I do quite a bit …

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A rat-tickling good time!

Last week’s column on laughter, inspired by John Tierney’s column in the New York Times, mentioned that rats make a high-pitched squeak when tickled. Tierney’s blog has had several laughter-related posts since his column appeared. Here’s another one, specifically about rat-tickling–complete with a link to a rat-tickling video! (And how often can one say that?)

Tanning junkies

Everyone has heard by now that too much sun is bad for your skin, yet you still see normally pale-skinned people who stay nut-brown all year long—even in the depths of winter. In the summer, they lie in the sun. In the winter, they lie in a padded coffin and have themselves irradiated. The danger …

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"Firefighter Rescue Robot Eats Human Bodies"

That’s Technovelgy.com‘s headline, not mine…but I had the same idea the first time I saw the picture.

Talk about your low-emission automobiles…

…this one runs on compressed air. Not only that, it’s on the verge of production.

Vast caverns on Mars…

…if they exist, would be a great place to look for life and water. Now some researchers think they may have spotted them.

But did it contain a miniature Racquel Welch?

News item: Some 40 years after the release of the classic science fiction movie Fantastic Voyage, researchers in the NanoRobotics Laboratory of École Polytechnique de Montréal’s Department of Computer Engineering and Institute of Biomedical Engineering have achieved a major technological breakthrough in the field of medical robotics. They have succeeded for the first time in …

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Just to balance things out…

…David Louis Edelman now offers Five Things That Do Happen When You Become A Published Author. These also ring true with me.

Derryl Murphy throws hat in ring for SFWA VP

Further to the previous post about John Scalzi running for president of SFWA, Derrly Murphy, former Canadian regional director, has put his name forward for vice-president. I’m leaning his way, too.