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Making Florida highways that much more scenic

Aren't you looking forward to seeing a tortured corpse adorning cars in your neighborhood? That hideous plate is one of the options railroaded through the Florida legislature. Religious specialty plates offered by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, made it onto a bill Friday even though many members had not seen images of those plates and none was produced for the debate. Siplin didn't mince words when asked what his "Trinity" plate looks like, saying, "It has a picture of my Lord and savior Jesus Christ." It, along with a "Preserving the Past" plate offered by…

2008 Edublog Awards - time to vote

Nomination for 2008 Edublog Awards is now closed and you can now go and vote. Go and check them all out - there are some great edublogs there I was not aware of from before. This is how I voted: 1. Best individual blog Using Blogs in Science Education 2. Best group blog 360 3. Best new blog Teaching in Second Life 4. Best resource sharing blog Discovering Biology in a Digital World 5. Most influential blog post THE MACGYVER PROJECT 6. Best teacher blog Endless Forms Most Beautiful 7. Best librarian / library blog Blue Skunk Blog 8. Best educational tech support blog JoeWoodOnline 9. Best…

Annals of the Texas Board of Education

The NCSE has been posting videos of events at the Texas Board of Education — they are very informative and well worth spending some time watching. Here's an example of the bad guys: Don Patton preening smarmily and accusing Darwinism of failing because a 'prediction' had failed. The 'prediction', as he presents it, is that the fossil record would disgorge a complete accounting of all of evolution…and he can quote biologists from Darwin to Eldredge saying that such a complete series has not been found. He ignores the fact that the actual scientific prediction that the fossil record would…

The MIST facility

First Line of Defense: A new facility at North Carolina State University will help provide increased protection to first responders by testing their turnout gear against potentially harmful chemical and biological threats. The Man-in-Simulant Test (MIST) laboratory, located in NC State's College of Textiles, will allow researchers to evaluate the capabilities of protective garments against non-toxic vapors that resemble chemical and biological agents. The new facility will give researchers the necessary technological advances to provide test results and analysis faster than similar facilities…

Hitchens among the benighted

I'm dumber for even listening to this: Christopher Hitchens in a debate with FIVE blithering theologians (one of them was the so-called moderator). Hitchens was excellent, but the four other guys…Jebus. They all trot out these ridiculous arguments about a first cause and fine tuning and oooh, the historical evidence for Jesus is so good. Lee Strobel, in particular, is a flaming fraud and liar. William Lane Craig was interesting, but stupid. His argument was that people couldn't have a debate if they were the mere product of chemical reactions, because chemical reactions just fizz, they don't…

NYC SciBlings MeetUp

Remember last summer when a bunch of sciencebloggers all snuck into NYC under the cover of the night for a weekend of frolicking and karaoke? We kept it too secret last time, so very few of our readers had enough time to show up and meet us at short notice. This time we are meeting again in NYC, a couple of weeks from now. But we want to give you more of a heads-up so you can plan. We will do other stuff in secret, but we want to meet our readers on Saturday, August 9th, around 3pm. Where? Depends on how many of you say you will come for sure (it will be indoors, in an air-conditioned…

Harvard Summer Course on Circadian Biology

Came to my e-mail inbox: The Harvard Summer School is pleased to announce the addition of a three-day special seminar for teachers in the sciences. Based on the well-known "Chautauqua Seminars" model, there is no cost to participants other than a $50 registration fee. The course is taught by distinguished Harvard faculty and provides an opportunity for invited scholars to share new knowledge, concepts, and techniques directly with teachers in ways which are immediately beneficial to their teaching. The primary aim of this rejuvenating session is to enable teachers to keep their teaching…

The Week in Review, and an open thread

Flitting about as I have lately means I've been missing this, that and the other thing. So here's a quick summary. Tuesday night I was at the Café Scientifique in Minneapolis, where UMM's Timna Wyckoff gave a talk on antibiotic resistance. It was terrific! Lots of good questions throughout, and a mob of conversation afterwards. This is exactly how these events are supposed to go. I missed Michael Ruse's talk at the UM on Wednesday—I was somewhere in Wisconsin, with a dorm room packed into a car—but I have one email report that he was entertaining but extremely aggravating. Anyone else care…

So many things to do, if I only knew how to get there!

This Tuesday at 7pm, you can come with me and learn everything you want to know about sea urchins at the Ask a Scientist event. Then, next Friday or two, altough it is in the middle of the workday, I'd still like to go and see the Iron Science Teacher. Jennifer siad that it was great last Friday. The PEZ museum is supposedly just a small room full of every single PEZ dispenser ever made, but it may be interesting to see if it is not too out of the way. And I'd love to see the Festival of Fire. Who wants to go with me? I'd like to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute, the…

Good News about the Bosnian "Pyramid"

It's been a while since I last blogged about the Bosnian Pyramid (I did follow the story superficially, though, but was sick of trolls attracted to the topic), but I have to break the silence for this piece of good news: The Culture Ministry found the "research" conducted by Osmanagic's team to be questionable and the collaborators of Osmanagic to lack the credibility needed to allow for continued funding of their "project." Also criticized by the Bosnian government, according to Javno, is the methods by which Osmanagic et al presented their findings, particularly the fact that they routinely…

Interviews

How do you like the daily interviews? I thought that would be great PR for the Conference - both with the interviewees saying nice things about it, and just showcasing what a nice bunch of people showed up this time around. Perhaps this will make more people think seriously about coming next year. And I thought it would be nice when some of the people say nice things about science blogs, scienceblogs.com, Seed, PLoS, Open Access, me, etc. And I thought that would be an easy way for me to get 40-something days worth of interesting posts without too much work. But I never expected that I would…

Like Ships in the Night

They come and go. The good blogs. Kate has decided to stop posting (but not delete) her magnificient Anterior Commissure. Perhaps it's because the topic is of interest to me: hormones and behavior, or because the topic is of universal interest - sex, or because of her personality shining through in each post, but this was one of my favourite blogs over the past several months. So, I am sad to see it closed. Perhaps one of her posts will make it into the Open Laboratory 2007 - that would be nice. I understand she needs to wrap up her studies and get a postdoc. And she is busy with the…

When Good Things Happen to SciBlings!

Tetrapod Zoology With all the media circus surrounding Nigersaurus, not enough publicity was given to another cool sauropod described on Thursday - the Xenoposeidon. It is quite amazing what a few years of painstaking study, comparative anatomy and head-scratching can do - reconstruct a large dinosaur from a single remnant: half a vertebra. My SciBling Darren Naish, co-author on the paper, describes it in great detail. I've been waiting for it for about a year or so, since Darren first mentioned it on his old blog in a four-part post about "Angloposeidon". The other co-author, Mike…

Faith of plagiarism

The other day, I briefly mentioned this ridiculous "Faith of Britain" site that was full of woo-woo nonsense. Well, unsurprisingly, it turns out they're also cheap and unoriginal. Alongside a section that says this: Faith of Britain Day will help us all overcome whatever obstacles and difficulties we may face as a country, an economy and as individuals. With over 80 million people concentrating their mental energies at the same time on the same day, we will unleash an irresistible psychic force that will, quite literally, make our dreams come true. Faith of Britain recognizes that Britain is…

Ken Ham Carnival!

You may have heard that Ken Ham is opening his freak show circus Museum of Creation "Science" in Cincinnati on May 28th. There will be protesters picketing. Hopefully there will also be people who will come in and laugh out loud at each exhibited piece. I also hope that the media coverage will be funny - and that is where we in the blogosphere can help. Archy has all the information about it and has suggested a one-day carnival (an apt name for the thing, for once) of sorts which will appear on May 27th on Pharyngula. So, write something and send the Permalink to PZ or blogswarm it by…

Mantis

Orthodera ministralis; Australian Green Mantis (Mantidae). Melbourne, Australia A young mantis cleans pollen grains from her foreleg by running the leg through her mouthparts. Photographer: Alexander Wild. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either…

Blood Red Moon

Tomorrow (Saturday) night, there will be a lunar eclipse which is promised to be one of the best in years. The eclipse begins at 2018 GMT, and the Moon will be totally immersed in the shadow of the Earth between 2244 and 2358 GMT. The lunar eclipse will be visible throughout Europe, Africa, South America, and the eastern parts of the US and Canada. During "totality" (see figure below), the only light that will reach the Moon's surface will have been filtered through the Earth's atmosphere, making the moon appear reddish in color. "If the clouds stay away, it will be fascinating to watch…

Human Pheromone Discovered

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found that women who sniffed androstadienone (pictured, left), a chemical found in male sweat, experienced elevated levels of cortisol, an important hormone, along with higher sexual arousal, faster heart rate and other effects. Androstadienone is a metabolite of testosterone that is found in male sweat as well as in saliva and semen. It smells somewhat musky. This study compared the responses of 48 heterosexual women, with an average age of 21, to baking yeast, but found that yeast did not trigger any effects. They took approximately…

Expelled redux

They're doing it again. There's a new movie being released, The Voyage That Shook the World, that you can tell from the tagline — "One man, one voyage, one book ignited a controversy that still rages today" — is creationist trash (hint: there is no scientific controversy anymore on this matter). Look a little further, and you'll find it's produce by Creation Ministries International, which tells you right there what their agenda is: to tell lies for Jesus. Here's where the parallel to Expelled lies…in the lies. They got several Darwin experts (Peter Bowler, Sandra Herbert, and Janet Browne)…

Wild "Jungle Girl" Found in Cambodia

tags: Cambodia, wild girl,jungle girl A Cambodian girl who disappeared while tending buffalo when she was eight years old has apparently been found after living in the wild for 19 years. A man identified himself as her father after recognizing a scar on her right arm, and plans to have DNA tests done to prove his paternity. However, it is possible that this woman could instead be lost from one of the Vietnamese tribes that often cross through the jungles into this same region of Cambodia to avoid religious persecution. Local police said the woman was "half-human and half-animal" and…

Yeah? Well, Who Wants to Marry a Bush Supporter?

The NY Times poll found that, for the first time in American history, more women are single than married, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000. Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits. Several factors are driving the statistical shift. At one end of the age spectrum, women are marrying later or living with unmarried partners more often and for longer periods. At the other end,…

Carnival of the Liberals Available

The newest edition of the Carnival of the Liberals is now available for your reading pleasure. I should mention that this is the first year anniversary of this blog carnival, and the editor chose the best ten essays from the past year, so this edition is full of high quality material for you to read. I should also mention that I am hosting the next edition of this blog carnival on 20 December. This means that I have to think of a theme for the carnival and of course, I must choose the most appropriate essays that fit the theme as well. Since I am still a little unsteady on my blog-feet, I am…

Veracity of Carter's New Book Attacked by Former Carter Aid

Former President, Jimmy Carter, wrote a book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, that was recently released. Unfortunately, a long-time aid of Carter's, Kenneth Stein, resigned because of the publication of this book, claiming it was one-sided and filled with factual errors, material copied from other sources and "simply invented segments," according to an excerpt of the letter published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Deanna Congileo, Carter's spokeswoman, said the former president stands by the book. Carter issued a brief statement saying that Stein had not been actively involved with…

Crypsis

Unknown moth species. Houston Heights, Texas. 27 October 2006, The photographer writes; This green moth visits my breezeway at night in response to the lights. To get this flash shot I had to stand back and use the macro-zoom feature on the Fuji Finepix 5200. Presumably the green wing color allows the moth to safely roost on green tree leaves in the daytime with the white markings likely helping to blend with leaf veination. The moth is about 3/4 inch wide along the rear wing margins. This species shows up with some frequency. I think it is beautiful and mysterious. Image: Biosparite. Can…

Mad Meth Scientist Captured in NYC

Crystal Methamphetamines compared to a dime. Image: www.streetdrugs.org. Hey! These guys stole my money-making idea! Seriously, though .. now I am worried about what my neighbors might be brewing in their apartments, considering that I live half a block away from an infamous "drug alley" where I can purchase nearly any illegal drug or gun or who knows what else in less than 24 hours' time. A Citigroup executive turned his fancy 38th-floor penthouse apartment overlooking the United Nations into a crystal meth lab, one of nine secret dope factories shut down by drug agents, federal…

Unacceptable Losses, Part 2

Speaking of unacceptable losses, this cited story (below the fold) describes how Bush and his squadron of flying monkeys blatantly betrayed our nation and our military by not sending enough troops to Iraq to do the job properly. Further, this cited story continues on to reveal that there was little chance that a replacement government could be successful in Iraq, especially if it is perceived by the Iraqi peoples as weak, a puppet, or out-of-step with prevailing regional governments. The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq…

Koufax Awards: Most Deserving of Wider Recognition

I am pleased to see some people visiting this site because Scientific Life was listed as a finalist in the Koufax Awards' "Most Deserving of Wider Recognition" category. Even though I put a notification on my original site regarding my relocation, it is gratifying to see that a few of you are actually trickling in here to see part 2 of this particular story. There are almost 300 nominees listed in this one Koufax Award category, and since the nominees are listed alphabetically, this baby blog is found nearly at the bottom of the sixth screen out of twelve total -- smack-dab in the middle of…

Our health care opponents are shamelessly stupid

Right now, the US is in a political struggle to get better national health care. One of the chief tactics of the opposition is, in addition to simply lying and pretending it would be horrible for poor children to get medical treatment, is to tell us horror stories about all those wicked socialist countries and their miserable health care, without the wondrous benefits of raging capitalism. Investor's Business Daily, for instance, ran this interesting example of how bad the British health services are (it has since been corrected, with some acute embarrassment, I hope): "The controlling of…

Ctenuchidae

These beautiful creatures are day-flying moths from the family Ctenuchidae, in the process of mating. This picture was taken in Kerala, southern India by a reader, Basia. You can read more about these insects at India Ink. Image: Basia Kruszewska. . "Insects commonly remain together for hours when mating. However, the actual sperm transfer occurs quickly," says Phil Nixon, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "In many insects, the female's eggs are fertilized by the sperm of the last male to mate with her before the eggs are laid. It is thought that the male…

Star Trek: The Voyage Continues

Are you a fan of the original television series, Star Trek? If so, then you'll remember that the series was canceled after its third year, even though voyage of the USS Enterprise's crew was supposed to last five years. But some fans of the series have gotten together, rebuilt the set and they are busily filming more episodes in the series. Their goal? To complete the USS Enterprise's five year voyage. This project is the brain-child of James Crawley, whose talents as an Elvis impersonator provides the financial support. So far, Crawley and other volunteers have finished three episodes,…

Global Warming: Will Ferrel as Bush

I want to share this amusing video with all of you, particularly with one very special reader, Joe [surname elided to protect him from his stupidity], who was so moved by this piece that I wrote that he has been emailing repeatedly to let me know that I am a poorly-educated liar. In fact, Joe was so inspired by my writing that he ignored my request to stop filling my email box with his offensive, narrow-minded tripe by responding with this erudite and truly revealing message; You are presumptuous. Stop trying to enlighten the world with your parroting of evolutionary dogma. I am not going to…

open skies and academia

The EU and US signed an "open skies" agreement earlier this week. The primary purpose of the agreement is to relax landing right restrictions and open internal flights to international competition, but I hear anecdotally that there will be an added benefit. Currently, in the US, federal workers and academic taking international flights paid for by federal grants must fly out of the US on a US flag carrier. They also should take US carriers as far as possible to their final destination. This can make it interestingly tricky to find reasonably priced international flights on some routes. It is…

NASA: Alpha to Omega

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a billion++ $ experiment designed to look at cosmic rays (and to have the absolutely worst set of project web pages yet discovered). In particular it will look at the anti-matter content of cosmic rays, and angle to see if it can detect some signature of dark matter. It is almost ready to be delivered, and will almost certainly never fly... as reported in Science ...see, it turns out that the remaining Shuttle schedule, which is dedicated to deliveries to the International Space Station, except for the one Hubble refurbishment flight, does not actually…

Liquid Water on Mars

As I suspected today's announcement from NASA is on evidence for current liquid water flowing on Mars Nice result, hopefully to be confirmed soon. Increases imperative to get more wheel on the ground at Mars, and hopefully some boots in the finite future, if properly funded. Click for high-res image Here is the full press release and images There are a lot of other images showing surface transformations and localised patches of something volatile and flowing appearing within the mission lifetime; very suggestive of subsurface ice becoming fluid and bursting onto the surface (where it has…

Fomalhaut b

More reports from the IAU meeting at Torino, this time on surprises with the putative planet around Fomalhaut. The IAU Symposium 276 comes to a close in Torino with a late surprise. Ray Jay reports again, using the fanciest of modern technology, that something may be awry with the planet around Fomalhaut. Fomalhaut b is the direct imagined planet with the dust ring: two epoch imaging showed a small dot which moved in a manner consistent with an orbit out at that radius. The dot was a bit too bright, which led to speculation that it might be a ringed planet, like Saturn. Well, Ray Jay reports…

Kepler Live Pool

NASA's planet hunter mission ought to be announcing something at the American Astronomical Society in january, 2010. But what? Ah, well, I don't know, and if I knew I wouldn't be telling. We have some idea of what Kepler could do, based on the cleanliness of the early release result photometry. But, we don't know what they actually found, or how fast and thorough the followup confirmations might have been. There is a definite buzz in the air though, a sense of anticipation that the Kepler team will deliver big at the AAS. So, shamelessly stealing a good idea from a good graduate student,…

What is Investment Banking most like?

Is it like standing unarmed in front of a column of tanks? Or is it more like following someone blindly off a cliff into a pool whose depth you do not know? Iceland knows. Kaupþing was the largest of the Icelandic Investment Banks. It grew by 500% in years, on paper at least. They were inspired. By the Spruce Goose, apparently. Though I have to admit, the use of The Agent from the Matrix as a metaphor has some accuracy, despite the apparent lack of irony. The Space Science/Cure Cancer metaphors are cute. Inaccurate, but cute. Hoocoodanode it'd all come to a bad end. I don't think the…

iPod iChing - them's the breaks

snow, we didn't order snow on a friday, did we? Ok, friday, in a rush... we ask the iPod - anything else interesting going to break this week? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Betri Tíð - Stuðmenn The Crossing: Fantaisie de Concert: II - Perlman The Crown: King of the Wild Frontier - Adam and the Ants The Root: Lullaby of London - Pogues The Past: Blindfullur - Stuðmenn The Future: Ontario Quebec and Me - Billy Bragg The Questioner: Firebird: Four Studied The House: First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey The Inside: Lark Descending - Half Man Half Biscuit The Outcome:…

Another poll for your Monday morning... Canadian style

Canoe's recent poll asks: Do you believe physicians should have the right to refuse medical treatment if it is against their beliefs? Scroll down to the bottom of the right hand side of the page to find the poll. To clarify, as it's been brought up that this is a poorly worded poll: based on the story behind it, it is referring to doctors who refuse their patients medical treatment that will help them based on their religious beliefs. But nevermind anyways. Apparently this poll was closed just after I posted it. So ignore the link, but feel free to comment on the topic if you like. Now…

"Box on the Euphrates"?

the mystery of the "Syrian box" continues as you know, Bob, the Israelis bombed a big box in eastern Syria a few weeks ago (or, did they? - there's a bizarro story in the j-post source to al-Jazeera that the US did the bombing - don't believe it - but there may be more to the story, like maybe the Israeli planes had US special forces guidance or elint support, or they came from the east, staging out of Iraqi bases - since apparently Syrian AA cover is anisotropic... - that would explain the Syrian strange rant about Israeli aircraft circling over the Med west of Syria - they could have been…

PN 13 - and perturbed economists

Philosophia Naturalis 13 is up at the Cocktail Party, which makes me think about economists again... A lot has been said about the dismal science, both its applications, and the inapplicability of its grander theorizing. Which is actually rather unfair, economics is, in parts, well founded quantitative and based on well defined assumptions that are tested both by observational data and microeconomic experiments. I conjecture that much of the problems of economics may come from the fact that most of the people who "do" economics - whether by trying to apply academic economic theory, or by…

More interesting planets

High mass planets around metal poor red dwarfs, may put small crack in big theory New planets just put up on exoplanet.eu - from JJ of the California-Carnegie-AAT group. These were mentioned at Santorini, but I don't think I talked specifically about them at the time, not sure if I failed to note the detailed parameters or because they were just "talked about" rather than formally announced. Outer planet solution does not seem to have fully converged yet, but if I recall the discussion something about a Jupiter mass must be out there - it may move a little bit as more data comes in. GJ317b…

what is planet

Oh man, Heathrow is not exactly the easiest of airports at the best of times, but landing an hour after the UK went to "critical" security status is not a good time. In the rain. Oh, and I understand about the whole bus thing, that you don't want large vehicles driven up to the terminal right now - but someone needs to tell people when they do this. Lot of people queued up for a long time waiting, in the rain. Much more cheerful than Athens though. Mustn't grumble, eh? Ok, so from the comments at the Extreme Solar Systems conference, and here, I infer we will have some energetic "what is a…

Happy Times Are Here Again

US banks setting aside $70 billion for year end bonuses. We conclude Bank of America is overgenerous and JP Morgan are cheap bastards. from Grauniad: "...Citigroup, [...], accrued $25.9bn for salaries and bonuses, an increase on the previous year of 4%. Earlier this week the bank accepted a $25bn investment by the US government as part of its bail-out plan. At Goldman Sachs the figure was $11.4bn, Morgan Stanley $10.73bn, JP Morgan $6.53bn and Merrill Lynch $11.7bn." It was just a week ago that we got the following: Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were told they would each get $25 billion; Bank…

iPod iChing - heat of space

Hot and humid friday as we seek clear crisp coolness. So we skip to the mighty iPod and ask: will we get us some decent near infra red imaging from space again in the near future? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Tom the Peeper - Act 1.1 The Crossing: Kings of the Wild Frontier - Adam and the Ants The Crown: Ræningjasöngur The Root: Reason to Believe - Aimee Mann and Michael Penn The Past: Christmas in Dixie - Alabama The Future: Sur Le Pont d'Avignon The Questioner: Animal Alphabet Song The House: School's Out - Alice Cooper The Inside: Falling - Alison Moyet The Outcome…

anthrax: driving in my car...

The Mad Scientist, in The Car, with the Flask. emptywheel has an interesting post on whether Dr Ivins, of anthrax mailer fame, could actually have mailed the anthrax letters from Princeton, and had the correct frank, given his known whereabouts in the morning and afternoon of that day. Answer is, maybe, if he drove fast, missed traffic, and there was no 5 pm pickup that day at that mailbox... But, he is a bioweapons scientist, who knows exactly what is involved and has presumably read the report on mailing anthrax spores for maximum disruption. He has envelopes with 2 gm of anthrax spores…

Friday Fun: New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It!

Funniest. Onion. Article. Ever. New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It: Let Someone Else Report On This Bullshit Virtually every line is laugh-out-loud funny. According to sources we feel really, really sorry for, Foursquare works by allowing users to "check in" from their present location, whether it be a bar, restaurant, nearby magazine stand, or man, this piece would be perfect to hand over to that schmuck Dan Fletcher at Time magazine right about now. By "checking in," users can earn tangible, real-world rewards. For instance, the Foursquare user with the most…

Music Mondays: BraveWords.com top 30 hard rock & heavy metal albums of 2009

Bravewords.com is featuring their annual top 30 hard rock & heavy metal albums of the year. It's a pretty good list from a very good year. I like their list because it mixes mainstream and extreme very nicely, with Cheap Trick & Kiss on the same list as Immortal and Napalm Death. It was a pretty good year for me as I have 5 of the 30 albums listed (Chickenfoot, Mastodon, Heaven and Hell, Slayer and #1 Megadeth with Heaven and Hell as my favourite of the bunch) and I'll probably end up getting a few more as well. Let's take a look at the top 10, in descending order to #1: VOIVOD…

Best Science Books 2009: Scientific American

Nice list of coffee table books, biographies and other books from Scientific American. Galápagos: Preserving Darwin's Legacy edited by Tui de Roy Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle by Michael Benson The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton, and Antarctic Photography by David Hempleman-Adams, Emma Stuart and Sophie Gordon No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale by Felice C. Frankel and George M. Whitesides Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century by Masha Gessen. (A biography of Grigory Perelman) The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the…

The Information Revolution is not bloodless

From the most recent issue of Locus magazine, November 2009, talking about his most recent novel Makers: The people in Makers experience a world in which technology giveth and taketh away. They live through the fallacy of the record and movie industries: the idea that technology will go just far enough to help them and then stop. That's totally not what happens. technology joes that far and them keeps on going. It's a cycle of booms and busts. There are some lovely things about when you're riding the wave and some scary things. The Information Revolution is not bloodless. There's plenty…