A brief, totally context-free excerpt from “Hive Minds and Mind Hives”, the talk I’ll be presenting this Sunday at the SpecFic Colloquium. I’m told that as of several days ago only four tickets remained unsold, so anyone who hasn’t already signed up is probably SOL: Mirror neurons think outside the skull by definition. They’re a […]
A Goddamned Happy Ending.
Category: On the Road, public interfaceI haven’t been opinionating much these days because I’ve been opinionating too much: on the malleability of public opinion (for Nowa Fantastyka), on whether science fiction should be a happy place (for the CBC), on the use of science fiction as a Trojan horse for interdisciplinary communication between the sciences (for the University of Bergen). […]
Chugging from a Human Heart: a Scandinavian Interlude.
Category: On the Road, public interfaceTurns out I have too much to do, and too many images to share; so I’m going to stretch what was originally intended to be a two-parter into a trilogy. Call it the Jackson Maneuver. There were lectures in Bergen. There was a con in Uppsala. But in between, there was a flight across the […]
A Land Where Even the Vomit Is Courteous
Category: On the Road, public interfaceSo, Phase 1 complete. The talks seemed to go over pretty well (and ten minutes afterwards, in deepest Norway, Caitlin was talking in Spanish to a Peruvian grad student about his own writing, because that is just the kind of thing the BUG does). We had beers with an author of a recent paper in […]
Black Metal, Deep Vents, Unicorns.
Category: On the Road, public interfaceDateline Pearson International Airport: if you’re the kind of person who reads the fine print on blog sidebars, you might know that a week from now Caitlin and I are going to be in Upsalla for Kontrast; I’m looking forward to it, and the BUG will doubtless also be looking forward to it once our […]
If you meet Neil Degrasse Tyson on the Road, Hug Him.
Category: ink on artColbert shut down The Bump yesterday. I assume you can see the clip here if you live in the US; for the rest of us, this1 will have to do: What I said before? I take it all back. 1Grabbed from fuckyeahstevejonandsteven
If You Meet Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the Road, Kill Him.
Category: sciliticsAn excerpt from a talk I’m working on, to be delivered a month and an ocean away: Two thirds of North America believes in Angels ; only half accept the reality of global warming. 78% believe that human beings were created by an invisible sky fairy, and 46% believe that this fairy created them in […]
Fruit Flies, Freeloaders, free will.
Category: neuro, sentience/cognitionFor the past few months an image has been itching at the back of my mind, like a piece of grit waiting for a story to accrete around it: a neuron culture in a petri dish, like a rifters head cheese but without any inputs to keep it sparking. We presume that all internal feedback […]
A Nose of Dinaricized Atlantid Configuration.
Category: miscI’m not quite sure what to make of this. Apparently I don’t fit in with the Brits or the Irish, on account of my nose. Although someone who whose avatar looks like Trinity describes me as North Atlantid, which sounds pretty close.
Lateral Transfers
Category: biology, biotech, evolution, fibletThe whitecap’s skin glows with a golden tan of cultured xanthophylls. Joel’s smile grows a little more brittle. He’s heard all about the benefits, of course. UV protection, higher blood oxygen, more energy — they say it even cuts down on your food requirements, not that any of these people have to worry about grocery […]