…so I enjoyed this article from the Globe and Mail. I hadn’t heard the acronym TPUG in years. It brought back a lot of memories. Through the 1980s I had two C64s, then a C128 (which lasted me until I bought my first PC in 1993), and the only formal computer course I ever took …
Your Vocabulary Score: A+ Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!You must be quite an erudite person. How’s Your Vocabulary? (Via Books, Words, and Writing.)
It used to be a staple of B-movie science fiction involving travel in outer space or landing on another planet: the meteor shower, rocks flying through space and threatening our heroes with explosive decompression (see yesterday’s post!) or worse. Turns out, they may have been on to something. A recent episode of The Backyardigans (our …
More photos here.
It may not be a question you’ve ever asked yourself, but it’s certainly germane to any number of science fiction writers. Turns out you’ve got about 10 seconds of consciousness, and if air pressure and oxygen are restored within a minute and a half, you can be revived without serious consequences. Beyond that, what with …
At least, I think this is a Buddha riding a lion, mainly because when I Googled “Buddha riding a lion” I ended up here, which explains that “the mystical lion…symbolizes the guardian of Buddhist doctrines.” In any event, a very nice hand-carved piece, part of the “things I found in my mother-in-law’s house” series. More …
“Animal intelligence” continues to lead the pack of search terms bringing people to my main site, and you could lump that together with “animal emotions” for a truly commanding lead. Making a first appearance is a seasonal favorite, “flying reindeer.” Good old “spider goat” is still on the list, and other old favorites. Here are …
The mystery of a Stradivarius’s extraordinary sound has been solved, and it all comes down to the chemicals used to treat the wood, probably to ward off worms. The unique acoustical results were most likely a happy accident.
…I finished my Janis Joplin biography for Enslow Publishers Monday and emailed it in the same day. Yesterday was mostly a science column-and-revising-Untitled Science Fiction Novel day. More revising today (I’m up to about page 80 of almost 500–still a long way to go–and I’ve already added 3,000 words. Gulp.). Boring stuff like cleaning my …
Scientists have successfully levitated small animals using sound waves.
More photos here.
It’s the strangest mental phenomena most of us ever experience: the feeling that we’ve already done or seen something that we’re really doing or seeing for the first time. This week an interesting new aspect of the phenomenon came to light: for the first time, researchers have reported a case of a blind person experiencing …
