Remember when Genesis crashed to Earth? The first scientific samples of what at first appeared to be a total write-off have been shipped to researchers. Hoo-rah!

Do you think there are too many books being published? I do, when i look at this list of all the books being released in the U.S. on February 21–my own Lost in Translation amongst them. What were all those other publishers thinking? Didn’t they know MY book was coming out that day? Sheesh!

“Walter Twiddle” is, of course, an anagram of Edward Willett, courtesy of the Internet Anagram Server, which, by the way, is a place you do not wish to go unless you have time to waste. I did, obviously. Some additional anagrams for my name: A LEWD DIRT WELT – At least, that’s what my friends …

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Having thus looked to the past with a Rawhide reference (and pretty much established, should there be any doubt, that I’m no longer a spring chicken), I now look to the future with this cool account of a spherical security robot.

“Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy.” We’re talking human cells fused with rabbit eggs, pigs with human blood, and possibly mice with human brains…so far. Wolfman Jack was ahead of his time.

If this proposal for a handheld DNA scanner to instantly identify species doesn’t sound like a prototype tricorder to you, you’re not watching enough Star Trek.

This caught my eye because of the Herculaneum column I wrote this week: in Rome, they continue to excavateNero’s buried palace, with unknown treasures still awaiting them in debris-choked halls and grottoes.

On August 24, 79 AD, Italy’s Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii in ash and Herculaneum in super-hot mud. Among the buildings entombed in Herculaneum was a great villa, built more than a century earlier by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso. Under 30 metres of rock-hard mud, the villa was forgotten–until well-digging workmen rediscovered it …

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So there I am in Timothy’s on Scarth Street in Regina, getting my morning cinnamon bun. Each day this particular coffee shop asks a trivia question; if you’re one of the first 10 people to get the correct answer, you win a gift certificate for a free cup of coffee. The answer to the previous …

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So why not leave?

Anything that makes it more likely we can build lunar colonies is good news. I’m still hoping I might retire on the moon–1/6th gravity would be marvelous for old hearts, joints and bones, wouldn’t it? (Provided you never tried to return to Earth, of course…)

Army Prepares ‘Robo-Soldier’ for Iraq. (Registration required, I think…)