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Slime Eels and Shifting Baselines

It should be no surprise to readers that I'm a huge fan of marine scientist, scibling, and friend Jennifer Jacquet. In many ways, I consider her my scienceblogging counterpart on the west coast. Last Saturday, we shared the Framing Science panel with Chris and even managed to have some fun in Durham over the weekend too. So naturally I read Shifting Baselines and couldn't help but notice her post yesterday on the the slimy hagfishery off the coast of Maine. You see, the last talk I gave during graduate school was at an emerging fisheries meetup in Halifax, Nova Scotia where there were lots…

IEO2007 Report Released: Choose Your Own Adventure

The International Energy Outlook 2007 (IEO2007) was released yesterday with an assessment by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the projection for international energy markets through 2030. This includes the details on everyone's favorite element with 6 protons - the very topic keeping many of us blogging as we debate its significance with regard to global warming. In this most recent report, we learn that atmospheric concentrations of C have been increasing at about 0.5 percent annually. What's more.. well, check out these figures: World carbon dioxide emissions (let's just…

More Forecasts of an Active Atlantic Season

The 16 storm 2003 Atlantic hurricane season (click to enlarge) -- a possible analogue for 2007? As we get closer to hurricane season--and especially once the season starts--the forecasts become increasingly reliable. We're still a month away, though, so what follows should be taken, as always, with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, we now have two more forecasts predicting--as previous forecasts have consistently done--a quite active Atlantic hurricane season. One just released forecast comes from Tropical Storm Risk (PDF), a group whose methodology relies upon assessing sea-surface…

What the f&#* is wrong with Chris Hedges?

Hedges has been totally nuts for the last few years: he's got this crazy irrational hysteria about atheists that makes him utterly unhinged whenever he writes about us. His latest is of a piece with his mania: The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as…

FDA (finally) approves cloned food

The FDA -- after years of twiddling their thumbs because of the irrational fears of "consumer" groups -- has finally approved cloned food for human consumption: After years of delay, the Food and Drug Administration tentatively concluded yesterday that milk and meat from some cloned farm animals are safe to eat. That finding could make the United States the first country to allow products from cloned livestock to be sold in grocery stores. Even if the agency's assessment is formally approved next year, consumers will not see many steaks or pork chops from cloned animals because the technology…

A Web Experiment in Meme Speed

This is super interesting. Acephalous is trying to measure the speed of a meme -- an infectious idea -- as it spreads through the blogosphere. More importantly, he is trying to figure out whether they spread from the bottom up through low-traffic blogs or from the top-down through high traffic or both. Here is his description: What is the speed of meme? People write in general (typically truimphant) terms about how swiftly a single voice can travel from one side of the internet to the other and back again, but how often does that actually happen? Of those instances, how often is it…

Editorial in Today's NY Times on College Sports

One thing I never understood about US colleges is the amount of money pumped into their sports teams. It's an open invitation to wasted resources and (in worse case scenarios) corruption. From today's NY Times: College Sports Get a Warning The National Collegiate Athletic Association's enthusiasm for fighting corruption in college sports is partly driven by the fear of federal intervention. That fear came a step closer to being realized last month, when the House Ways and Means Committee fired off a tough-minded letter demanding that the N.C.A.A. explain how profit-seeking, win-at-all-cost…

Arrgh! Down to Davy Jones' Locker With You!

This is a notice that DSN has changed names to The Davy Jones News Report. Kidding...Because of the slowness of end-o-year, deep-sea related news, I decided to end the week with a discussion, with the thanks of Wikipedia, of the origins of Davy Jones and his deadly locker, Arrgh! NOUN: The bottom of the sea, especially as the grave of all who perish at sea. The phrase actually goes back at least two centuries, the first known reference comes from Tobias Smollett, author of The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in 1751: This same Davy Jones, according to the mythology of sailors, is the fiend…

Famous chemist trivia.

Greetings from the BCCE! Well, actually from a cafe down the street from the BCCE, since the wireless accounts that were supposed to be set up for conference goers are not currently functional. (The lengths to which I'm willing to go to satisfy my readers!) The immediate result of this situation is it will take comments a bit longer to go up. But, I have gathered (from the talks on how to convey the "nature of science" to students) some fun facts about famous chemists. Mendeleev (who came up with the periodic table) liked cowboy novels and hated Dostoyevsky. He never believed in electrons…

Environmentalism Run Amok

In the search for renewable energy, environmentalists are sometimes the bad guys. And no, I'm not talking about nuclear energy (although I'm in favor of building new nuclear plants). I'm talking about the new attempt to squeeze electricity from the perpetual swells of the ocean. In a rational world, environmentalists would champion such an energy source, since no greenhouse gases are produced and the earth provides it for free. Alas, that hasn't been the case: While such generators do not emit smoky pollutants or leave behind radioactive waste, the [wave] machines are not small or delicate,…

Saving the Red Breasted Goose

Branta ruficollis is endangered. The Red Breasted Goose International Working Group (RbGIWG, which is unpronounceable) has a new species action plan to save this critter. Here's some info from Redbrested Goose Central: Red-breasted Goose (Branta ruficollis) is a charismatic globally threatened species highly dependent on wetlands and farmed areas. In the last 50 years, the distribution of the breeding and wintering grounds of Red-breasted Goose has changed dramatically for unknown reasons. This species has a small wintering range with 80-90% of the population concentrated in just five…

Julian Simon's DDT deceit

Last year I posted about The Great DDT Hoax, the fake story of how DDT had all but eliminated malaria in Sri Lanka until evil enviros banned its use. Most of the people repeating this hoax were just part of the disinformation cycle and were merely guilty of lazy and sloppy research. But some of them had certainly read accurate accounts of what happened and were deliberately deceiving their readers. I can add Julian Simon to the list of dishonest ones. In the Ultimate Resource 2 Page 261 he writes about "environmental scares": DDT, sensationalized by Rachel Carson in 1962. Said to cause…

The Australian's War on Science XXVIII

Today's salvo in the Australian is a quote from Christopher "White asbestos is harmless" Booker. Booker writes: Last weekend, US meteorologist Anthony Watts noticed that something very odd had happened to the daily updated website that shows how much sea ice there is in the Arctic. Without explanation, a half million square kilometres of ice vanished overnight. This might have brought cheer to Al Gore and the BBC, who have been obsessively telling us that the Arctic ice will soon disappear altogether. They were dismayed enough last winter when, after reaching its lowest point in 30 years, the…

The Australian's War on Science 51: The Chris Mitchell effect

Crikey reports: A former senior News Limited journalist has described trying to write about human-induced climate change at The Australian newspaper as "torture" and has blamed the editor-in-chief for limiting coverage on the topic because he has "taken a political view". Asa Wahlquist mounted an off-the-cuff defence of environmental reporting on a panel at yesterday's journalism educators conference in Sydney, explaining the difficulties of having stories published about climate change because of the attitude of and pressure from senior editors at the paper. Chris Mitchell apparently felt…

O, Call Back Yesterday, Bid Time Return!

Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone…

Most credulous news report on an "alternative medicine" treatment ever?

Just as a quick followup to my post on Tong Ren, the quackery that combines acupuncture, "energy healing," and, in essence, the stereotype of voodoo dolls in a veritable potpourri of woo, take a look at this news report done by the FOX News affiliate in Boston: If you want horrible, credulous, idiotic reporting, the above segment has it all. Indeed, it doesn't even include the usual obligatory brief sound bite from a skeptic! True, it does mention that the Massachusetts State Board of Medicine's Committee on Acupuncture had received complaints about Tom Tam for his claiming to be a "master…

The Interesting History of Isle Royale

Island ecology may have been popularized by tropical climes, but it certainly isn't limited to them. Michigan's Isle Royale National Park, a chilly 50 mile by 8 mile island in the corner of Lake Superior an important benchmark in the island's important research history is being celebrated. For nearly 50 years scientists have been studying the interaction of wolves and moose on the island and their effects on the forest, the longest running predator-prey study in the world. Naturally, such a long term study has naturally opened up other, broader areas of research on the island. The wolves and…

Mud Volcano Tofu

There is a village in Taiwan trying to build a reputation for tofu flavored with the local mud volcano. On the face of it, this is a horrible idea - blecch, mud! - although there is probably some money to be made by importing the stuff to the U.S. and selling it to gullible New Agers who can be convinced of the spiritual healing properties of ancient Oriental geology. After thinking about it, though, I think mud volcano tofu might actually be pretty tasty. Mud volcanoes occur when sediment is (a) deposited very fast, so that there's no time for its water to gracefully ooze out while it…

More from Lott's wife

Lott's wife, Gertrud Fremling, has responded to a question I put to her about the similarity between Rosh's Amazon review and Lott's writings. Obviously " ...this is the review:" is a false statement by you. You should have said that "... this is part of the review:" Am I supposed to believe that this was a mere error? And I notice that you have selectively quoted from my website, too, without indicating that these were selected parts. If this is how you choose to deal with me, then I have no reason to continue any debate. I will answer the general query about the book…

Corpses, Drugs and a $1,000 Scotch

Wolfram Meier-Augenstein Tragic Trajectory Forensic researchers used this 14-cm lock of hair to map a dead man's route to the U.K. Measuring isotopes has come a long way. Recent reports describe an emerging field of environmental forensics. Where did those illegal drugs come from? Is that $1,000 bottle of scotch the real deal? According to Chemical & Engineering News: An analytical chemist at James Hutton Institute, in Dundee, Scotland, Meier-Augenstein has pioneered a way to help determine where unidentified victims like this one lived or traveled. To do so, he measures the stable…

NCSE News

Sorry, this is not as fresh and current as I would like, but you will still find it interesting. The National Center for Science Education has a news release covering a number of topics: DECISION ON ICR'S GRADUATE SCHOOL DEFERRED The Institute for Creation Research's quest for Texas certification of its graduate school, which would offer a master's degree in science education, is on hold, at the ICR's request. A preliminary assessment of the ICR's facilities described the educational program as "plausible," adding, "The proposed degree would be generally comparable to an initial master's…

End of the Week News

My week ends in about five minutes when I pack for imminent departure to California. I'm being whisked out there (pun intended) to prepare the Thanksgiving gravy for an eccentric couple living in a cabin in a remote mountain area on Thanksgiving. And these people are a bit strange. They recently sent me a picture of the turkey they plan on putting to death and eating. (His name is John Smith.) This should be interesting. But have no fear, the internet is everywhere. I shall continue to post more than enough for you to consume between courses of cranberry sauce and apple pie, leftovers,…

Judgment Day

It all comes down to this. Though they hail from countries scattered far and wide across the globe, though they come from myriad different cultures and backgrounds, ultimately every ISEF finalist's journey here has been the same. For each one, the path to this day, this moment, has been paved with sacrifice. For each one, time to be spent in sleepovers, sports, and other social activities has been instead surrendered to the pursuit of a single idea: scientific perfection. For each one, months, sometimes years, of hard work are on the line. Even at 7:30 a.m., the numbers of people gathered in…

Android Science

I'm sure someone has come up with an elaborate theory to explain why Blade Runner had such a profound impact on GenXers, but I've yet to read it. All I know is that ever since I watched Daryl Hannah doing somersaults in that black leotard, I've been obsessed with the idea of androids. The slow progress of robotics engineering has long been a source of frustration to me. Sure, Sony's Aibo robot dogs are cute, but they're hardly lifelike. I mean, come on--even Teddy Ruxpin had fur. Consequently, I was dubious about reports that Hiroshi Ishiguro, Director of Osaka University's Intelligent…

The Line

There has been much written about the doctor-patient relationship, and specifically how to best maintain a clinical distance while at the same time being empathic and compassionate. This is something individual doctors work on throughout their careers, but something else interests me here. Most physicians derive enjoyment from helping people. Altruism (a topic way too complex for me to pretend to understand in depth) feels good both from the act itself and from the response one gets from the object of the altruism. This last bit has comes with potential pitfalls. My job is to help people…

The Kansas Guild of Bloggers

The best of Kansas blogging returns this week to Thoughts from Kansas. We didn't get a lot of submissions this week, so I've picked some on my own. From Blog Meridian, we get a close reading of Hopper's Conference at Night. I've been a big fan of Hopper since I designed a set for Inge's Bus Stop to look like it was painted by Hopper. John captures the mystery of Hopper's figures; while you can tell a story about them, they will never tell you if you are right. At In This Moment, Nancy points out that Congress has the power to stop Bush's troop escalation: New Kansas Rep. Nancy Boyda and a…

Obama and Ethanol (His First Mistake)

Obama is coming to town! Since I live in New Hampshire, that also means that Obama is going to run for President. (I suppose Obama might also just have a soft spot for Manchester. . .) So what am I going to ask Obama about? I've already confessed to a serious man-crush, but I'm dismayed by Obama's position on the sugar ethanol tariff. For those who don't know, the U.S. government currently taxes the importation of ethanol produced from sugar. This tariff is supported by both the domestic sugar industry - our sugar prices are twice the international average - and Midwestern corn farmers, who…

Tuesday Tidbits: Eyjafjallajökull, Yasur, mud on Mars and more

Finally, a chance to catch up a bit ... ! Yasur erupting in May of 2010. Some news from the world of volcanoes: The BBC has a series of videos one the fallout from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption - including a look at the area around the volcano and how the economy has been affected by the eruption. However, things seem pretty quiet at the summit of the Eyjafjallajökull summit where snow can begun to settle without melting - and the Icelandic Met Office appears to think that the eruption is more or less (but not officially) over. And take this press release as you will, but a recent study…

Harrat Lunayyir and the Saudi Arabian earthquake swarm

I have finally gotten together enough to create a Google Earth image (below) of the location of the Saudi Arabian earthquakes and their depths/magnitudes. I only have the data from the USGS earthquake list, but it is very illuminating: Harrat Lunayyir volcano in western Saudi Arabia from Google Earth with the current earthquakes shown on the image. Image courtesy of Google, earthquake data from the USGS. Click here to see a larger version. The earthquakes look like this (all times are Universal Time): Date Time Mag. Depth 5/17 19:50 M4.6 10 km 5/19 06:38 M4.9 10 km 5/19 16:54 M4.9 10 km 5/19…

Rooster tails and new islands (and video, too)

Mixing volcanoes and oceans seem to always produce exciting results. Whether it is something as simple as the ocean entry of a lava to something as impressive as a new island emerging, formed by volcanic eruption. Back in the 1960s, a previous unknown undersea volcano off the coast of Iceland erupted to form the island of Surtsey. The signs of the impending eruption were captured from start to finish, with Icelandic fisherman noticing "boiling seas", then steam explosions, then ash eruptions and finally volcanic tephra that formed the island itself. This was followed by lava flows and…

Danger posed by Vesuvius downgraded from "Biblical" to "Monumental"

For those of us who track volcanoes and the hazards they present, the general consensus is that Mount Vesuvius in Italy is probably the most dangerous volcano in the world today. This is not because it is the biggest or most powerful, but because it is located on the outskirts of Naples, Italy, a city with over 2 million inhabitants (including the surrounding area). Evacuating such an area quickly and efficiently during a time of crisis might be, well, impossible. We know that Vesuvius can be destructive - just look at the fact that much of the Naples area is built on the deposits of the…

Who made the giant Jurassic sea-floor gutters?

I have to admit that I don't find trace fossils - the vast majority of which are footprints - that interesting. But some trace fossils are very neat and provide excellent information on behaviour and lifestyle. Examples include pterosaur take-off traces, the trackway of the little theropod that does an abrupt about-turn and runs back the way it came, and the Myotragus tracks that show how individuals had to stagger and battle through wet sediment in order to escape alive. Particularly fun are giant mystery traces: the ones made by large animals doing unusual things... yet what these large…

Birds Come First - oh no they don't!

In the previous article we looked at the Birds Come First, or BCF, hypothesis. It goes without saying that BCF has not won acceptance in the community, nor - in fact - is it even familiar to the majority of archosaur workers. Here, we take a critical view of BCF: does it stand up, or does it fail? To begin with, let me note that the underlying premise of BCF is fundamentally problematical: the idea that there is some sort of 'central trunk' (Olshevsky 1994, p. 42) or single, unbroken lineage that extended from the first stem-archosaur to the most recently evolved, modern bird. Old 'family…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

There are new articles published tonight in PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine, PLoS ONE and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases - here are my picks: A Social Amoeba Discriminates in Favor of Kin: Though seemingly simple life forms, microorganisms can display surprisingly complex behaviors, such as altruism and cheating, that are more often associated with "higher" organisms. This paradox makes microorganisms--which are more amenable to laboratory investigations than, say, dolphins or elephants--ideal for investigating social evolution. Take the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. When food is…

Lennart Bengtsson Joins, Quits Denialist Think Tank, Cries McCarthyism UPDATED

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is an organization of mainly economists dedicated to mucking up the development and advancement of good science-based policy related to climate change. It is a denialist "think" tank. A couple of weeks ago, Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson joined the GWPF. This was a little surprising, but not totally surprising. It was surprising because Bengtsson is scientist and the foundation is anti-science and, as I noted, mostly economists. (Well, they are sort of like scientists too, but a different kind of science.) It was not surprising because…

Comments of the Week #83: From galaxy death to the stability of matter

"As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d stay away." -Hughes Mearns Although every week at Starts With A Bang is special, there's something extra special brewing here. Sure, we've got the "normal stuff" of the articles we've written: Do galaxies die? (for Ask Ethan), Spook-tacular science pumpkins (for our Weekend Diversion), Lifting the cosmic veil (for Mostly Mute Monday), Was Earth born with life on it?, and How stable is matter? (for Throwback Thursday). Including two bonus ones over at Forbes: The Largest Cosmic…

Comments of the Week #67: from Dark Matter to the Planets

“If somebody's going to pay money to come see you perform, then it should be something to see.” -Michael Trent The past two weeks at Starts With A Bang have been awesome for all we've covered, even with a (brief) vacation on my part thrown in there. (Don't worry, you'll get the best of it this weekend!) Here's what we've looked at, in case you've missed anything: Could dark matter not exist? (for Ask Ethan), Epic stop-motion karate duel (for our Weekend Diversion), Underneath your clouds (for Mostly Mute Monday), How does gravity escape from a black hole? (for Jillian Scudder's…

Did Grandma Have A Pouch? (And Other Thoughts on the Opossum's Genome)

There was a time when the publication of the entire sequence of a genome--any genome--was exciting news. I don't have any particular passion about Haemophilus influenzae, a microbe that can cause the flu various infections. But in 1997 it was the first species to have its genome sequenced. It became immensely fascinating, simply because we could now, for the first time, scan all of its genes. Now the global genome factory is cranking away so quickly--with over five hundred sequences published and over two thousand in the pipeline--that a new genome is not necessarily news. There has to be…

Quoth Sayer Ji: Modern medicine is "cannibalism"

Over the years, I've not infrequently noted that there is a serious disconnect between what most people would think of as "natural" and what is considered "natural" in the world of "complementary and alternative medicine," or, as I like to call it, CAMworld. I started thinking about this again after yesterday's post about Jessica Ainscough's decision to treat her rare sarcoma with the quackery that is the Gerson therapy and how her mother's decision to use the same quackery, instead of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, resulted in her untimely demise. Reading over Jessica Ainscough's blog…

Music Mondays: Five songs I really love

It's been a very long time since I did a Music Monday of any variety, never mind of the Five songs I really love variety. So it's fun to check in again and share what I've been obsessing over on my iPod and on Youtube lately. And oddly, some of these are repeats from earlier lists, probably indicating that my music tastes are pretty consistent. Anyways, these are all on the blues rock spectrum and every one supremely awesome. These are five songs I just never get tired of. Enjoy! Midnight in Harlem by The Tedeschi Trucks Band. This is absolutely my favourite song from the last few years. We…

Quick Picks on ScienceBlogs, August 21

Read 'em while they're hot! "A question for neuroscientists: getting nowhere fast" Kevin Beck at Doc Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge has a question for the neurologically informed: why does running on a treadmill immediately before running outdoors, make Kevin feel like he's "running on the moon (at least in terms of how I imagine this would feel), with the ground seeming to scroll beneath me at a rate discordant with my actual forward speed." "The Synapse #5" From Retrospectacle: "Welcome to the 5th edition of The Synapse, ScienceBlog's home-grown carnival on all things Neuro! Glad to see…

Best Science Books 2013: Washington Post

Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets. From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here. This time it's Washington Post Notable nonfiction of 2013. Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare by Stephen Budiansky Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding…

Best Science Books 2013: Science for the People!

Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets. From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here. This time it's Science for the People Science Up Your Holidays. Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas by Jim Ottaviani, illustrated by Maris Wicks Mountainfit by Meera Lee Seth Speaking to My Madness: How I Searched for Myself in Schizophrenia by…

Building Space With Words

Last Wednesday I took a voyage into the blogosphere. Upon entering this physical manifestation of the place I spend most of my time, a mix of words and light swirled around me, illuminating my field of vision from every angle as thoughts, desires and observations rushed forward from the trenches of hyperspace and darted out of view again. Through my fingertips, my thoughts were instantaneously transfered to the space around me for everyone in the room to see. No, I wasn't on drugs and it wasn't a dream—I was at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University art exhibit, "…

Politics and Medicine & Health Weekly Update

Next up—the full-sized pictures featured this week on the Politics and Medicine & Health channels and some note-worthy posts. Politics. Sarah Palin using technology. From Flickr, by asecondhandconjecture Here we have Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin seated at a flight simulator. Palin also demonstrated her technological skills when she used eBay to put her luxury jet up for sale for $2.7 million. The jet reportedly sold for $2.1 million. Palin also supports using the Internet to promote transparency in government, although when hackers recently exposed Palin's personal email…

Technology Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large version of the Technology channel photo, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week! Edison mimeograph and electric pen. From the Edison National Historic Site, courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Interior Reader comment of the week: In Supercomputer breaks performancing record running model of the human visual system, the Neurophilosopher (of Neurophilosophy) introduces the new IBM supercomputer Roadrunner, which takes up 6,000 square feet of room at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The computer recently broke a performance record when it…

Our Darlin' Clementine

This week, in the Mexican oil city of Tampico, an orb-like, robotic submarine begins its 1,000-foot plunge to the bottom of an underwater cavern, the largest sinkhole in the world. As part of the NASA-sponsored DEPTHX project, the autonomous robot, endearingly called "Clementine," will probe exotic rocks and microbes that may be the key to finding life on Europa, Jupiter's largest moon. Last Saturday, ranch hands of Rancho la Azufrosa helped get Clementine out of storage. According to NASA's current plans, it'll be at least 30 years before robots get to airless, ice-crusted Europa. Despite…

"Rabies", the novel

One of the most gripping novels in the "Hot Zone" style I have ever read is "Rabies" (Besnilo) by Borislav Pekic. The genetically engineered Rabies virus with a double protein envelope becomes extremely easy to transmit (biting is not neccessary any more) and spreads from one victim to another extremely fast. The virus gets turned loose at the London's Heathrow Airport. Soon, the airport is closed and quarantined and the (thick long) novel tracks a number of characters stranded at the airport, from scientists trying to figure out what is happening, and physicians trying to help the victims,…

Happy birthday, Sinclair Lewis

From today's Quotes Of The Day Sinclair Lewis was born at Sauk Centre, Minnesota on this day in 1885. He was an avid and somewhat romantic reader as a boy, he attempted to run away from home at age thirteen to be a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. He graduated from Yale in 1908 and set to work writing romantic poems and stories. He was awarded, but refused, a Pulitzer in 1926. He was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, a prize he accepted. The Nobel Committee praised "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour,…

He's Making Me Look Bad

I was planning to whine a little. You see I got back from Maryland and I was really, really tired. Got up at 4am after a late night to get to the train the first night. Four hours sleep the second night, because I was (you pity me, right?) drinking wine with Dmitry Orlov, Megan Bachman, John Michael Greer and other cool people until the wee hours. Then my train pulled into NYC close to midnight and I didn't get to bed at the Hotel In-Law until the wee hours again. Up at dawn to catch the next leg of the train up to home, with guests coming a couple hours later. So I was most definitely…