The main trilogy forming the Revelation Space universe (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap) are Alastair Reynolds’ fictional answer to the Fermi Paradox: if, as predicted, the emergence of intelligent life in the universe is very likely, then why are we unable to find any evidence of the existence of these alien civilisations? E.T. read more?»
Chasm City, Alastair Reynold’s stand alone “Revelation Space” novel, is a tense, interstellar roller coaster.
Tanner Mirabel is a man with a mission: the assassination of Argent Reivich, the aristocrat responsible for the murder of both Tanner’s boss, the arms dealer Cauhella, and his boss’ innocent wife. Obsessively, Tanner follows Reivich across light-years of empty space, from the planet Sky’s Edge orbiting 61 Cygni to Yellowstone, in the Epsilon Eridani system. What once was the greatest, most technologically advanced city in settled space, Yellowstone’s Chasm City is, by the time our villain and antihero arrive, reduced to a sickly impoverished shadow of its former glory. The Melding Plague, an alien nano-machine based disease, has corrupted the advanced technology of the city’s buildings and the inhabitants’ implants alike. Up, up, and away!»
How a terrible 80s pop-rock hit forces me to rant about the speed of light.
As a skeptic I believe that our obsession with 80s music is a prime example of confirmation bias: we tend to remember the few songs that were actually good and forget how utterly crap all the rest of the music was. But for some arcane reason the radio in the laboratory was tuned to an all 80s station today. My poor ears caught parts of the lyrics of Europe’s The Final Countdown and something just didn’t make sense… besides the über-cheesy synthesizer melody. Prepare for a jump to hyperspace»
In which my steam-powered opener opens a can of worms and I disagree with nearly the entire steampunk-loving world.
Set in a late 19th century America where, due to increased advances of technology, the civil war is still raging, Boneshaker paints a contrasting steampunk world removed from the Victorian frills of other novels in the same genre. Dirigibles away! »
An open letter from the Boomers to their children: “…We realized like no other generation that the purpose of politics is to line our own pockets. Yes, most of that has been at your expense, kids. Sorry about that…”
According to this latest journalistic masterpiece of the intellectually outstanding newspaper The Sun, an English DJ named Steve Miller is allergic to electromagnetic radiation. He’s not allergic to just any frequency, but to signals at 2.4 Gigahertz. In other words, Steve gets nauseous because you just happen to surf the intertubes using Wireless LAN. You are polluting his aether!
Click here to see a simple animation explaining the principles of frequency and wavelength.
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity, as this form of allergy is called, is a known phenomena in the medical literature. However, evidence that this is actually a real condition is lacking. Still, people who have vague symptoms claim it is caused by all the electromagnetic radiation around us, and in certain cases they are even trying to ban Wi-Fi (and other electromagnetic signals) in public buildings and private dwellings. Beam me to the rest of this article»
A Creationist commenter on the Unicorn Museum website regurgitated a huge section of an old Michael Behe article. For those “not in the know”, Behe is an intelligent design proponent from the Discovery Institute who coined the principle of “irreducible complexity”. In a nutshell, irreducible complexity means that if some biological structure or function seems so complex that the observed cannot think of a way to explain the entire evolutionary process in detail, then the answer automatically is “God did it”. Although this is a clear example of Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, it still remains a powerful argument aimed to win over laymen to the evolution deniers camp.
In the article Behe wrote:
Each of the anatomical steps and structures [with regards to vision] that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with rhetoric. Darwin’s simple steps are now revealed to be huge leaps between carefully tailored machines. Thus biochemistry offers a Lilliputian challenge to Darwin. Now the black box of the cell has been opened and a Lilliputian world of staggering complexity stands revealed. It must be explained.
This argument makes two false assumptions: first, that the entire biochemical cascade evolved as is, and second, that all the proteins involved evolved dependently of each other. This is far removed from the biological reality: life uses, re-uses, recycles and remixes common “motifs”! Therefore, the proteins and their functional subsections called domains, in the vision pathway and in other complex pathways, can evolve independently of all the other proteins.
I will address this failure in logic once I have more time. For now, a good break-down of the fallacies in Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box can be found at the wonderful Talk Origins website.
After a deluded idiot, following an ancient desert-ideology we are not allowed to criticise because we labelled it religion, tried to detonate his Calvin Klein boxers (or, more likely, his long-johns), the West is busily installing bodyscanners at airports. Although the bodyscanners are a clear violation of privacy and the integrity of the individual, the only temporary setback to implementation seems to be UK child pornography laws. But I wonder: how are countries going to deal with supposed breaches of religious freedom once these scanners are commonplace? Most countries already allow people to be photographed with headscarfs and other forms of concealing headdress on their passport pictures, all in the name of religious freedom. What if someone wearing traditional Islamic garb claims that the bodyscanner is a violation of his, or more likely her religious freedom? Will we allow them to just walk on? Be patted down? A pat down reveals pretty much nothing the likes of the device used by our latest terrorist nimrod, unless the security officer really grabs you in your privates. I estimate that the chance are quite in favour of a religious exemption regulation, leading me to wonder how long it will take before a woman will try to detonate her Victoria’s Secrets.
And again, we give up even more of the little privacy we have left, all for a false sense of security.
A special TWiSmas story I stumbled upon on the fantastic podcast/radioshow This Week in Science, sent in by TWiS-minion Jason Quade, and read by the always charming Dr. Kirsten Sanford. Enjoy… A Visit From James Cameron
Please note: all rights reserved by original author/producers. I am just hosting this little snippet because I love it, and also because I want more people to listen to This Week in Science.
