Have you ever wished you could pick up the fossils in a museum and turn them this way and that to get a better look? Now you can.

No, that’s not a typo; this new Dutch invention amplifies sounds for wearers coming from the direction they are looking, while suppressing other background sounds, allowing people with hearing difficulties to single out the voice of another person in a crowd, for example. An excellent idea! (Via Medgadget.)

“But the Lesser Barrier goes deep underground, as well as making a complete dome,” Karl said, remembering lessons with Tagaza. Bonus SF&F writing note: the above is a small example of an infodump. For completeness’s sake, here is the first sentence I wrote Saturday (no writing Sunday, thanks to high school reunioning and Candide rehearsing): …

Continue reading

More photos here.

This weekend my high school class (Western Christian College, class of 1976) is one of the honored classes at Homecoming–in other words, it’s our 30th reunion. Tonight Homecoming kicked off with an alumni concert. I sang “Me” from Beauty and the Beast and “Old Man River” from Showboat, and then Jim Mann, now an architect …

Continue reading

“How would you help, Your Highness, and why should we trust you to do so?”

Sodic bentonite is a type of clay that swells to many times its dry volume when wet. However, the first sentence of fiction I wrote today was…Karl rolled out of bed and pressed his naked back against the wall.

More photos here.

Artificial retinas that could restore the vision of millions of people suffering from retinal disorders like age-related macular degeneration could reach the market in just a few years. We may all be bionic before long.

An over-reliance on computer design software is weakening drawing skills among art students–and resulting in uninteresting and uninspired work, according to college art professors.

Mostly the book contained pictures of battles, of vast armored and mounted armies clashing in valleys and mountain passes, in forests or on great open plains.

More photos here.