Today, I came across a report in New Scientist called “Neanderthals Speak Out After 30,000 years“. Based on a talk called “Voices out of the past: synthesizing Neanderthal speech” given by Robert McCarthy on research done by himself and F. Yates, P. Lieberman at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting this year. As I […]
A new study found that pollution in the air changes the scent of flowers, either masking it or shortening the distance over which bees (and others) can smell them. I came across the report and all of a sudden realized that this means big trouble for all of us. “The scent molecules produced by flowers […]
Charlton Heston died. I got to thinking about him as the obituaries were rolling out in the news. I think have to thank him for spurring me to read. I remember seeing The Ten Commandments at the drive in. My mother and her friend and all us kids would go. We get in our pjs […]
Last night was the 1st Friday WSFA meeting in Virginia. It was the usual business meeting followed by some socializing. Charles Stross was in DC and came to the meeting. His book, Halting State, is a 2008 Hugo Nominee. If you enjoy hard science, science fiction take a minute to read the review on the […]
Finally, took a picture of my April coffee cup. I’m back to a big cup. This one holds about 14 oz. My March cup was smaller about 6 oz. which meant making far more frequent trips to the coffee pot. So, I decided to find another big cup. Of course, I’d cut down from a […]
Got to thinking again… In some correspondence with one of our reviewers, she wrote, “I guess I’ll work on reading that book–as if that’s really working.” Just the other day another person said, “I have a hard time sitting and reading a book for review because I feel like I’m not working.” Over the last […]
For me, thinking can be a pretty exciting trip through my brain which tends to be filled with lots of bit and pieces of fluff I’ve collected over the years. Today, I was doing something — can’t remember what just now, probably thinking about eating a breakfast cupcake (I had cereal instead) — but as […]
Yesterday, I got an ad for the Gattaca (Special Edition) DVD. I watched the trailers and spots and got to thinking about the movie and what it says about potential. Originally released on DVD in 1998, the film is about genetic engineering and its effects on society. Once people can have their children engineered to […]