A bit of place-holding pimpage, which is all I have time for while I beaver away on things I cannot talk about. On behalf of folks doing things they can talk about.. Do It Yourself Moviemaking One of them is Jim Munro, Maestro of the Microbudget, who originally made a name for himself by […]
Sealing Fate
Category: biology, marine, sciliticsI’ve got a soft spot for seals. Back in the day I built a fair bit of my truncated biology career on the little beach maggots; Pacific harbor seals formed the very heart of my doctoral thesis, in fact (Attila, Thalidomide, and Strangway: I salute you, wherever you ended up). They even netted me a […]
Coincidence? You Decide!
Category: blindsight, evolutionNew York Times (NYT), LaChance et al1(L) Blindsight endnotes (BSE), “Vampire Domestication: Taming Yesterday’s Nightmares for a Better Tomorrow” (VD) Dr. Tishkoff’s team interprets these divergent DNA sequences as genetic remnants of an interbreeding with an archaic species of human … the geneticists estimate that the archaic species split from the ancestors of […]
Bullets and Binary
Category: On the Road, public interface, writing newsI’m in the middle of one of those extended island writing retreats I’ve mentioned in the past: they didn’t stick me in the women’s washroom this time, but they did stick us in a room with a binary shower. Turn it left, you freeze: turn it right, you scald. Turn the tap in between those […]
Last Rites, Lost Rights
Category: biology, In praise of biocide, marine, sciliticsTake Roger Bradbury very seriously. He’s no crank: coral reef specialist, heavy background in mathematical ecology, published repeatedly in Science. Chief and director of more scientific panels than you could roll a raccoon over. So when he says the coral reef ecosystem is already effectively extinct — not the Florida Keys, not the Great Barrier […]
Fruit Flies, Forest Fires, and the Ecstasy of Being Wrong.
Category: biology, scilitics, sociobiologyI’ve got this friend, known her since we were both grad students back in the eighties: well-regarded in her profession, well-published, even coauthored a few texts on evolutionary ecology. Keeps getting best-teacher awards for her work in the classroom. Occasionally she appears as the resident expert at the local Café Scientifique‘s Valentine’s Day edition, where […]
Prometheus: The Men Behind the Mask.
Category: ink on artWe start with spoilers, right off the top: Back in 1979’s Alien, Lambert, Kane, and Dallas passed through a big spooky chamber— the Devil’s own rib cage — en route to cinematic immortality. The fossilized remains of an alien creature rested at its center like a great stone heart, embedded in organic machinery: mysterious, vaguely […]
In Defense of Religious Belief.
Category: ass-hamstersSo this paper sprouts online a couple of weeks back: “My Brother’s Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals”. It appears in the July issue of Social Psychology and Personality Science (which yes, is in the future but don’t worry you can get a preprint here); the list of authors is about as […]
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall
Category: eulogy, fellow liars, ink on artI admit to being both gratified and surprised by the impact that Ray Bradbury’s death is having on the cultural landscape. It’s not that his legacy doesn’t deserve the attention; I simply didn’t expect society to give a shit. He was, after all, a writer in a culture where a quarter of the population doesn’t […]
Award, Artefact, Apparition
Category: miscTwo things on the agenda today, the first being a brief announcement: apparently Crysis: Legion has made the finals for some kind of award called the Scribe. It’s handed out by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, in categories that include original works and adaptations, general fiction and speculative. Legion‘s been nominated under the […]