Mozart was a very tired-looking 34-year-old, if this newly discovered portrait is any indication. I guess being a genius takes it out of you. In the (paraphrased) immortal words of Tom Lehrer, though, “It’s a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he’d been dead for 10 years…” UPDATE: Oops! Link was bad before, …
Like the quick-growing sunspot I blogged about earlier, this curious object on Mars, apparently made of metal, could also be the beginning of an SF thriller–for those whose minds have been bent by years of reading the stuff.
From SpaceWeather.com: BIG SUNSPOT: In less than 48 hours, sunspot 720 has blossomed from an almost invisible speck into a dark behemoth 5 times wider than Earth. You know, one of the hazards of reading science fiction is that one sees a probably innocuous item like this and starts conjuring up apocalyptic the-sun-is-going-to-explode (or worse, …
Check out this headline: “Opera is new weapon in fight against crime.” Am I the only one who sees a potential new caped (or, possibly, horned) crusader waiting to be brought to comic-book life? He doesn’t fight criminals: he drives them away with the power of his Puccini, the weight of his Wagner, the might …
Deep Impact successfully launched yesterday, and is en route to a great coming together with a comet in six months’ time.
The pineapple has always been one of my favorite fruits. Apparently I’m not alone: a recent e-mail from a listener to the CBC Radio version of this column noted, “There is a new pineapple on the market that is very sweet, has extra vitamin C, (is) much less acidic and is ready to eat when …
Astronomers have identified what may be the three biggest stars ever spotted–big enough that, if they were located where the sun is, their outer layers would extend to somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn.
Tsunamis are not a natural hazard we have to worry about here in extremely landlocked Saskatchewan (if a wave makes it this far, it’s pretty much goodbye humanity, I’d have to think) but should they or volcanic eruptions be something that keeps you up nights, you might want to investigate this inexpensive personal earthquake detector.
It’s the most powerful eruption in the universe (that we’ve observed, anyway)–and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has taken its picture.
Also a bit of a writing diary. I reached “The End” of Excalibur Reforged again yesterday, and today I’ve been doing some final touching up and giving some though to the story arc for the rest of the putative series of books. I’m uncertain how detailed I need to make the outlines for future books, …
Ursula K. LeGuin writes more about the TV adapation of Earthsea. She was, um, unimpressed–to put it mildly.
I just hope someday my books are in enough demand that I’ll have occasion to use something like this. It sounds like something out of science fiction–which, of course, Margaret Atwood does not write.
