A pilot (with a great sense of humour) gets his first chance to fly a DC3, more than 70 years after the famous aircraft first took to the skies. Today, decades later, scores are still in operation. My favorite line: I was much taken by the crew escape hatch on the left-hand fuselage side, just …
It’s being seriously considered. There’s interest in asteroids for a range of reasons…for exploration, for pure science, resource utilization, as well as learning how to mitigate the threat from a sniping space rock that has its crosshairs on Earth. Neither Bruce Willis nor Clint Eastwood, I hasten to add, will be involved in any putative …
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, when a columnist can fill his allotted space simply by looking back on everything he wrote about in the previous 365 (give or take) days. However, it would be too easy to simply look back at the columns that appeared in the newspaper. Instead, here is “the …
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No one knows. But science fiction writer David Brin does an excellent job of summing up the possibilities in “Singularities and Nightmares: Extremes of Optimism and Pessimism about the Human Future.” It’s a long read, but well worth it. (Via Instapundit.)
Few people appreciate that medicine has advanced more since World War II than in all of earlier history. Read the whole New York Times article. Now, what was that about the “good old days”?
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Quite Impressionistic, isn’t it? More photos here.
…atop this week’s list of search terms bringing people to edwardwillett.com, a.k.a. Edward Willett’s Intergalactic Library. Here are the top 15, with links to where they take you on the site: 63 flying reindeer 54 christmas chemistry 31 animal intelligence 29 chemistry christmas 28 collosal squid 25 christmas physics 24 let it snow 20 hygiene …
…my transistors are transparent: Imagine a car windshield that displays a map to your destination, military goggles with targets and instructions displayed right before a soldier’s eyes or a billboard that doubles as a window. Only in science fiction you say? Northwestern University researchers report that by combining organic and inorganic materials they have produced …
Philip Pullman explictly says his fantasy trilogy (I seem to remember reading somewhere that he doesn’t like it to be called “fantasy,” but fantasy it is, however he feels about it) is an atheistic answer to Lewis’s allegorical and Christian Narnia series. I enjoyed His Dark Materials for the most part, but I think Catherine …
Concentrate. For instance, if there is a misbehaving macaw on your shoulder, ignore it. Avoid unusual swords, such as curved sabers. Don’t try to swallow multiple swords at a time. Safety tips you can use, courtesy of the British Medical Journal.
