The wealthy scientist Dan Sylveste believes he has discovered evidence that the Amarantin, an intelligent alien species, went extinct in a single cataclysmic event almost a million years prior to his archeological excavation on the planet of Resurgam. With a violent dust storm approaching, Sylveste is racing to uncover why the Amarantin civilisation ceased to exist so abruptly.

Light-years away, the crew of the spaceship Nostalgia for Infinity are on the heels of Sylveste. Nostalgia for Infinity’s captain is slowly merging with the ship itself, a nasty symptom the Melding Plague, and Sylveste might be the only person who can slow the progression of the disease. At Yellowstone, the crew picks up a new member by the name of Ana Khouri, an ex-soldier secretly hired to retrieve the stolen weapons of mass destruction the Nostalgia for Infinity is carrying.

With all paths merging on and around Resurgam, the future of humanity as a whole is at stake.

Just like the following two books set in the same universe, Revelation Space is quite a depressing read. The morally ambiguous protagonists have to take solace in Pyrrhic victories, while their universe slowly and quite literally comes undone. But while the odds are stacked against our failed heroes, between the lines Alastair Reynolds does maintain a glimmer of hope. The plot development in the second half of the book relies a bit much on a deus ex machina in the form of alien technologies and exotic theories of physics, but as a whole, Revelation Space is a bleak, tense and well-written start of an epic trilogy.

Audio Book:
The audio book version (Audible) is expertly narrated by John Lee. Unfortunately, no distinct pauses have been edited in between the chapters, which can be very confusing at times.

Preceded by:
Chasm City

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.

To make things worse, Tanner, infected by a manmade “indoctrinal” virus, is suffering from delusions concerning the life of Sky Haussman, the religiously revered and reviled first settler of Sky’s Edge. Although these hallucinations first occur only as dreams, slowly Tanner starts to experience the hallucinatory episodes during waking hours too. While his mind is slowly unravelling, Tanner needs to stay sane long enough to end the hunt he started light-years ago.

Although Tanner is a morally ambiguous, even contemptible, character, he remains a likeable, though a very unreliable narrator of the story. It is the unreliability of Tanner Mirabel’s narration that truly propels the story forward, and Alastair Reynold’s playful use of narrative modes is expertly executed.

The world-building in Chasm City is superb, striking a fine balance between believable futuristic technology and outlandish concepts. Chasm City has its flaws, though. While multiple major story lines satisfyingly merge, some loose threads remain hanging in thin air… or the empty vacuum of space. Still, Chasm City is a terrific combination of action, adventure, and deeper themes of identity, revenge and redemption.

Audio Book:
The audio book version (Audible) is expertly narrated by John Lee.

Followed by:
Revelation Space

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.

Oh, we’re heading for Venus [...] With so many light-years to go

Light years? As in ‘the distance light travels in a year? Well, we can be certain that Venus is not light years away from our planet earth. Distances within the solar system are too small to measure in light years, but still too great to measure in miles or the international standard units of kilometres. As a shorthand the astronomical unit, or AU, is used.

An AU is approximately the mean distance between the Earth and our sun, or to be more precise, “the radius of an unperturbed circular orbit a massless body would revolve about the sun in 2·π/k days (i.e., 365.2568983…. days), where k is defined as the Gaussian constant exactly equal to 0.01720209895″ (from NASA). That is a lot of words to say that 1 AU equals 149,597,870.691 kilometres, or nearly 93 million miles.

According to my trusty Star Chart iPhone app (iTunes alert!), the distance from the sun to Venus is, on average, 0.72 AU. The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s, so a few button presses on a calculator will tell us that the distance from the sun to venus is slightly over 359 light-seconds (or about 6 light-minutes), and thus not “many light-years”. True, the song details a trip from earth to Venus, but to calculate the distance between our planet and Venus is a bit more difficult since, because of the different orbits around the sun, the planets can be relatively close together, or very far apart. Still, the Star Chart app gives an average of 1.20 AU, which would place Venus nearly 10 light-minutes away from us. But it is still measured in AU, and not easily in light-years. Although a vast distance, light emitted by the sun only takes hours to reach Neptune.

If Europe’s spaceship would really travel for light-years, it could very well end up in one of the nearby planetary systems, such as Proxima Centauri (about 4.4 light-years). Taking such a long detour to Venus would be just as crazy as rockstars sporting “big hair” and wearing spandex tights… oh, wait…

Set in a late 19^th 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.

The inventor Leviticus Blue accidentally destroyed most of the developing town of Seattle when his gargantuan drilling machine, the boneshaker, went haywire and tore the city centre up. A thick gas permeated through the large crack in the earth that the boneshaker left behind and as a thick fog it quickly blanketed the street, turning everyone exposed to the gas for too long into the living dead. A wall was erected around the city in an attempt to keep the zombies and the causative agent from spreading further.

Fifteen years later, Blue’s son Zeke Wilkes ventures into Seattle to still his curiosity and to prove that his father was an innocent man. Trapped within the confines of Seattle, it is up to Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes, to find and rescue her son.

With such an interesting backstory and the prospect of a rich alternate history filled with swashbuckling air-pirates and rotting zombies (zombies!), Boneshaker‘s failure to deliver is surprising. But not much of the frontier steampunk zeitgeist pervades the pages of Priest’s fine prose, nor do the characters show serious depth.

Secondary characters come and go on a whim, guided only by what the plot requires, and the main protagonists randomly move from location to other seemingly plot-driven location, but a true sense of perilous urgency — which is expected when the protagonists are racing against time… and the living dead — is lacking. Major events and chance meetings just come across as contrived, a necessity to bridge the gap between beginning and the sudden conclusion. Even worse, although the reason why she puts herself in danger is obvious and even continuously mentioned in word, Briar’s motivation is strangely absent in spirit.

For a work of fiction that has received so much critical acclaim (Locus, Hugo and Nebula Award nominee!), the book is just immensely underwhelming. There’s no doubt that Priest has talent, but in Boneshaker, this talent is masked by a mediocre plot and superficial characters. What’s left is nothing but a straightforward adventure story with loads of untapped potential. Hopefully, in Clementine, her upcoming book set in the same universe, Cherie Priest is able to use this potential to power the steampunk beast that remained slumbering in Boneshaker.

Audio Book:
The audio version is narrated by Kate Reading and geek-icon Wil Wheaton. Whereas Wheaton is infusing his narration of Zeke’s storyline with an almost teenage enthusiasm befitting the character, Reading’s passages, though expertly narrated, just sound uninspired.

Today, the 20th of May 2010, is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. My drawing skills are terrible, so I decided to upload an old picture I photoshopped during the Danish cartoon riots. So, is this offensive? Perhaps. Blasphemous? Arguably so. A worthy cause for violence? Never!

People might argue that you should show respect for someone else’s beliefs, but that respect has its limits. Yes, I understand that if I would walk into a Mosque I would have to take my shoes off or that I should not disrupt a church service… things by which I would otherwise prevent people from exercising their freedom of religion. But in the public domain, I should not have to respect inane beliefs based upon century old superstitions. Through the ages, societies progressed because people pushed the religious envelope in place to contain those who do not share the most extreme, fundamentalistic beliefs, within the folds of dogma. Spinoza, Erasmus, Samuel Clemens and others we remember as either great thinkers and/or satirists; they were all considered blasphemers by others.

Satire is a tool of criticism that any modern, civilised society should freely apply to question strongly held beliefs. Yes, I understand that some might feel that showing Mohammed carrying a case of delicious and haram beer is offensive, but there are others who already find it offensive to question the morality of the religious (the Catholic church harbouring child molesters, etc.) or if you don’t adhere to their rituals, too (Muslims being angry because I eat during Ramadan, etc.). Someone will always be offended. A world where we do not offend anyone will stagnate, and will never progress to be more humane and inclusive of all, as individuals.

Incidentally, I stumbled upon the original print of Mohammed on a website displaying multiple depictions of the Islamic prophet, some of which (including this one) made by Muslims in Islamic countries. So not only am I saying “I’m not a Muslim so these edicts don’t apply to me” and “maybe Mohammed could use a nice cool beer to relax a little” (i.e. alcohol abstinence or any other restriction based solely on religious grounds is just insane), I am also pointing out the hypocrisy behind the cartoon riots!

To the people who initiated this all but tried to rescind Everybody Draw Mohammed Day: fuck you! Of course people will be offended. People are always offended! You have given in to the same fear and asinine, unwarranted “respectfulness” (read: compliance) that you initially protested against.

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.

All about physics?
Electromagnetic radiation is carried by photons and thus this form of radiation also includes visible light, among other wavelengths such as ultraviolet light, radio waves, microwaves, and X-rays. Indeed, some of these wavelengths, such as UV and X-rays, are known to cause damage, even cancer, when exposed to high doses of the radiation. However, just because some wavelengths can potentially be dangerous we cannot conclude that this is the case for Wi-Fi, too.

As mentioned earlier, Wireless LAN operates at a frequency of 2.4 GHz (2,400,000,000 Hertz) which seems to be a lot, but the frequency of visible light is about a million times higher. Might it be that this wavelength is just higher in energy? Well, no. A photon at shorter wavelengths, thus higher frequencies, has more energy then photons at a larger wavelength. Unleash some simple physics calculations and we can conclude that a single photon at the 2.4 GHz frequency gives about 9.9×10⁻⁶ eV/s (0.00000993 electron volts per second) while blue light averages around 2.6 electron volts per second. Even if you don’t know what this all means it should be clear that, by itself, Wireless LAN is not more powerful. However, might it be that we’re just emitting huge amounts of photons, like in a microwave oven?

An average wireless router antenna outputs about 30 to 100 milliwatt, while a microwave oven outputs many times that. While the Wi-Fi signal is scattered the microwave’s radiation is focussed in a small area and allowed to bounce back and forth within the microwave oven. More importantly, the electromagnetic radiation in the microwave oven changes direction continuously. It is thus highly unlikely that wireless signals can actually cause any similar effects as a microwave oven would do, i.e. noticeably heating up materials.

We have been surrounded by electromagnetic radiation of the same spectrum as the wireless signals (micro and radio waves) since we first walked the earth. The radiation comes from outer space, including our own sun. And since the advent of radio broadcasts we have increased the amount of radio waves bouncing around tremendously. The 2.4 GHz Wireless LAN frequency is just outside that of FM radio, so why would this particular frequency be the culprit of vague symptoms? It might be remotely possible that specifically this frequency happens to stimulate something in the human body causing the vague symptoms, but is it plausible? The answer to that is unequivocally “No”.

But there’s not really any doubt that people who allegedly suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity indeed feel adverse effects. So what else might be going on?

Medicine and skepticism
The scientific research into electromagnetic hypersensitivity is far from conclusive, but a convincing trend is emerging among the performed studies. Although immunological effects have been found at related frequencies in laboratory animals, the studies used electromagnetic radiation at a very high output and the source focussed on the animals. To juxtapose these findings, population studies have not revealed any convincing evidence that electromagnetic radiation has an adverse effect on human health (see, for example, Valberg et al. 2007).

Moreover, several studies revealed that self-proclaimed sufferers of electromagnetic hypersensitivity were unable to detect electromagnetic radiation in double-blind studies (Rubin et al. 2005; Nieto-Hernandez et al. 2008). In a study in which subjects were stimulated with electromagnetic radiation that is actually known to elicit a response, the hypersensitive group was less capable to differentiate between sham and real exposure (Landgrebe et al. 2008).

True, the conducted studies mainly focus on UMTS/GSM signals, which spans from 300 MHz to about 3 Ghz (thus covering a wider range than WiFi), but this is still strong evidence against the existence of electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Allegedly and in accordance with the scientific findings, residents near a WiFi tower owned by iBurst, a South African wireless internet provider, complained of vague symptoms even though the company had already switched off the tower itself.

The symptoms, ranging from mild fatigue to severe bouts of nausea, are, to say the least, vague. Some symptoms are more indicative of psychosomatic disorders and stress, while others might be related to often un- and misdiagnosed disorders unrelated to the perceived cause (see Dahmen et al. 2009; Landgrebe et al. 2009). Combine vague symptoms with some confirmation bias and a placebo effect, and you have a recipe for self-perceived electromagnetic hypersensitivity. The inability of patients to discern a real from a sham exposure is a good indicator of confirmation bias. It is very likely that people experience relieve from their vague symptoms after switching off their wireless routers or after turning off their cell phones. However, the act off switching off the device might be the treatment, but this does not mean the device was the cause. The “treatment” might have been just a placebo all along.

References
Dahmen, N., Ghezel-Ahmadi, D. and Engel, A., 2009, Blood laboratory findings in patients suffering from self-perceived electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), Bioelectromagnetics, 30(4), pp. 299-306.

Landgrebe, M., Frick, U., Hauser, S., Langguth, B., Rosner, R., Hajak, G., et al. (2008). Cognitive and neurobiological alterations in electromagnetic hypersensitive patients: Results of a case-control study. Psychological Medicine, 38(12), 1781-91.

Landgrebe, M., Frick, U., Hauser, S., Hajak, G., and Langguth, B. (2009). Association of tinnitus and electromagnetic hypersensitivity: Hints for a shared pathophysiology? PLOS One, 4(3), e5026.

Nieto-Hernandez, R., Rubin, G. J., Cleare, A. J., Weinman, J. A., and Wessely, S. (2008). Can evidence change belief? Reported mobile phone sensitivity following individual feedback of an inability to discriminate active from sham signals. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 65(5), 453-60.

Rubin, G. J., Das Munshi, J., and Wessely, S. (2005). Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: A systematic review of provocation studies. Psychosomatic Medicine, 67(2), 224-32.

Rubin, G. J., Hahn, G., Everitt, B. S., Cleare, A. J., and Wessely, S. (2006). Are some people sensitive to mobile phone signals? Within participants double blind randomised provocation study. British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Ed.), 332(7546), 886-91.

Valberg PA, van Deventer TE, and Repacholi MH. 2007. Workgroup report: base stations and wireless networks-radiofrequency (RF) exposures and health consequences. Environmental Health Perspective 115(3), pp. 416-24.

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.

And again, we give up even more of the little privacy we have left, all for a false sense of security.

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.