Category: Uncategorized
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It’s inspiring to hear of a conservation program that’s actually working. Rainwater harvesting addresses a dire problem in India and other countries around the globe. For years, India’s water has been sucked dry by irrigation-intensive agriculture and soft-drink companies. But now, villages in India are replanting trees and building tanks to catch rainwater. Amazingly, the…
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Adam had’em–and so apparently did the dinosaurs. Fossils of giant fleas and flea-like parasites dating to the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods in China are reported by George Poinar, long-time paleoentomologist and fossil DNA researcher; and by Tai-Ping Gao in Beijing. Poinar popularized the idea that fossil insects trapped in amber might have sucked dinosaur blood…
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Back in 1999, when I first started teaching Biology in Science Fiction, the Weekly World News reported that fully 20% of Americans have been abducted by aliens. (And returned, more or less intact.) So where have all the aliens gone? Why are alien abductions falling off lately? And when they do show up, look who…
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We hear so much about government waste–it’s good now and then to see a place where American tax dollars are well spent. An undeniably great place is NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information. All the publically known gene sequences–every published gene defect–lots of free books–DNA mining tools. And all of this information is free.…
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If you get to New York this year, don’t miss the Natural History museum exhibit, Creatures of Light. A fantastic collection of modeled creatures showing bioluminescence; that is they light up like in Avatar. What’s remarkable is the wide range of reasons why creatures light up. This Science article explains a few: An octopus’s suckers…
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Day 29 at Supreme Court Today marks the 29th day the Supreme Court has started deliberating whether to total the most important US health care legislation since FDR. Actually, they may have decided already, but leave the rest of us wondering till June. Sometime in June we’ll find out whether Scalia really meant what he…
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As announced today, Tor Books will go DRM free. This means all eBooks available from Tor will be convertible among formats. How far that goes, and how significant it will be, is unclear to me since my books (and most others) end up on Torrents anyhow, but it’s a symbolic step in the direction of…
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Pamela Sargent just won the Pilgrim award for lifetime contributions to science fiction scholarship. Known for pioneering work in SF, her novels such as Earthseed and Shore of Women promote women protagonists and explore gender. Serendipitously, I received a set of “research questions” recently from an Iranian scholar writing about women in SF. Which lead…
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And now for something completely different–the (supposedly) Singing Snails of Hawaii. The singing of these snails may be stuff of legend, but Hawaiians sing songs about them. They do have gorgeous shells, and they give live birth (instead of eggs, like normal snails.) These snails climb trees and supposedly help keep the leaves clean. The…
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Amazon wars have inspired much excellent discussion of late. Is Amazon our next Great Satan, the media Walmart? Is there a “right” or “good” way to offer and consume literature? The idea of media monopoly interests me. I grew up in an IBM family, alongside their rival Ma Bell, and my children grew up on…
Joan Slonczewski 