Monthly Archives: August 2010

“How are you feeling?” her aunt Misti asked. “I feel like a rainbow is hugging me!” –my middle daughter, Toni, about a half hour after awakening from surgery on her ankle. Apparently they gave her some really good drugs.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome. –Isaac Asimov

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic.” That’s called Clarke’s Third Law. Gehm’s Corollary to Clarke’s Third Law is “Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.” I have a Nexus One Google … Continue reading →

We commonly hear that we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world five times over. Apparently, there are enough to only destroy a tiny fraction of it once, if these statistics are accurate: Check out How I Learnt To … Continue reading →

If it was easy, everyone would do it rather than going around telling you their ideas and saying how they could be a writer if they had the time. –Arthur M. Jolly, interview with Write On Online (2009)

An interesting and short review of the book, Why Beliefs Matter: Reflections on the nature of science by E. Brian Davies, Oxford University Press appears in New Scientist Magazine: CultureLab: The faith that underpins science The description of the book … Continue reading →

An article in New Scientist Magazine describes how artificial lifeforms evolve, and develop rudimentary intelligence:Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence – life – 04 August 2010 – New Scientist

On this day many will recall the fate of Hiroshima, when up to 140,000 were killed and 69 per cent of the city was destroyed. It may be useful to put Hiroshima’s destruction into its sad context. The Japanese Empire … Continue reading →

From Slashdot.org: The Google Books blog has an explanation of how they attempt to answer a difficult but commonly asked question: how many different books are there? Various cataloging systems are fraught with duplicates and input errors, and only encompass … Continue reading →

From Space.com: The International Space Station is the largest structure ever built in space. Its backbone-like main truss is as long as a football field and the station can clearly be seen from Earth by the naked eye, sometimes rivaling … Continue reading →