Here’s a fascinating collection of colour photos of the First World War. Makes it all seem much more recent, doesn’t it?
WWTT? (What Would Tolkien Think?)
Analysis of the cranium of the tiny human fossils recently found in Indonesia confirms that their brains had avanced features–and that Homo floresiensis was indeed a distinct species. Which is all very interesting, but what strikes me is that every news story about Homo floesiensis refers to them as “hobbits” or “hobbit-like.” I wonder what …
Forget about gray goo…do you know where your printer is?
No need to worry about nanobots running wild and reducing the world to a pile of gray goo, says the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. Well, that’s a relief. But when they say molecular manufacturing systems will be no more autonomous than inkjets, and “No one worries about an inkjet printer crawling off the desk and …
Simple high-rise life saver
An Israeli anti-terror veteran has come up with a relatively simple device that could allow people to escape high-rise buildings from any floor up to 1,155 feet.
Burp!
Is the unusual, powerful burst of intermittent radio waves astronomers have detected coming from the direction of the galaxy’s center the burp of a dying pulsar–or something completely unknown to science?
Finger finding
Apparently, the length of a man’s index finger relative to his ring finger can predict how physically aggressive that man is likely to be all his life. Women do not show a similar effect. Getting out a ruler now…
Magnificent mummy
One of the best-preserved mummies ever found has been uncovered behind a secret door hidden in a much older tomb.
Is this a playscript that I see before me?
Forsooth! By phone I have just been invited By the director of our theatre, Globe, To join withal the cast of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, For which I shall receive a modest sum. ‘Tis true that all three parts that she will give me Are small–but actors oft are heard to say, No role’s too small …
They’re here!
My new novel Lost in Translation(Cover art by Jill Bauman) Just got my authors’ copies of Lost in Translation–nice hardcovers, complete with dust jackets. I’m actually surprised by how short the book seems, even though it’s more than 300 pages. It seemed long enough when I was writing it… I do like the artwork better …
The tower of power
With Kyoto in the news and the search for non-polluting forms of energy intensifying, the time may be ripe for a whole new technology–and as it happens, there’s a company in Australia that’s got one all lined up. It’s called the Solar Tower, and I confess that the real reason I wanted to write about …
Star Trek (and Harry Potter) headline of the day…
From Nature:Engineers devise invisibility shield. OK, it won’t let you hide something the size of a human (or a starship) from visible light–but it might make some things invisible to long-range sensors–er, I mean, radar. And it involves a “plasmonic cover.” If that isn’t Star Trekish, I don’t know what is…
Genesis update
No, not Genesis as in “the creation of everything,” but Genesis as in the solar-wind probe that crashed into the Utah mud when its parachutes failed to open back in September. Scientists are successfully extracting samples of the solar wind from the damaged spacecraft–good news!
My latest live walk and vlog
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