Gravity Lens Weblog

Archive: December 18 2006 - December 29 2006

Friday, December 29

Currently making the rounds: I am mesmerized by this website promoting the idea of placing a giant geostationary banana over Texas.

Thursday, December 28

Wired has a roll-over interactive feature on How to Build a Better Body.

While we're upgrading ourselves, let's revisit Ray Kurzweil's Human 2.0 and Natasha Vita-More's Primo Posthuman.

Meanwhile, David Brin has written a piece on the extremes of optimismism and pessimism of the human future at the Lifeboat Foundation. (via The Speculist)

Mr. Bali Hai at Eye of the Goof nails my blogging style down pat on his very funny (to those who read such things) list of Quintessential Blog Posts of the Not-so Rich and Famous.

Wednesday, December 27

It is with heavy heart, dear reader, that I inform you that I have been diagnosed with Adultitis.

I'm apparently in the advanced stages, but will be partaking of many advanced treatments to remedy it.

Tuesday, December 26

Post-Christmas Swag Brag: I got the big Conan guide by Roy Thomas, a flash drive, the DVD of the Filmation Flash Gordon cartoon, some Scottish ales, an extendable back scratcher, a sweet piece of Tony de Zuniga original Jonah Hex art, and, of course, slippers, among many other things from family and friends.

Adrian Brown at Space.com ponders SETI's need for robots.

My favorite quote of the weekend, from an article on atheism by Sam Harris: "There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable."

Sunday, December 24

Thanks to my friend Mark, the book on sale on the right, this year's Holiday Card, and this blog have been Boing-Boinged. Last time this happened (the Comic Book Motivational page, for those keeping track) my bandwidth got burned off in two days. Here's hoping the holidays keep the traffic reasonable.

For those joining from Boing Boing, welcome.

Friday, December 22

As this is the start of a prolonged holiday weekend, I want to once again wish everyone good tidings. It's been a hectic, emotionally draining year. I've had deaths among my family and friends, and several friends have had tragic losses in their families, Despite all that, I still get a large case of the warm fuzzies during the holidays. Maybe I'm just getting older.

Nah, that can't be it.

LiveScience gives us the weirdest science stories of 2006.

Thursday, December 21

It's the Winter Solstice. As has become tradition, today I give you the online version of this year's Bad Day Studio Holiday Card. And I sincerely hope you all have happy holidays, whichever ones you might celebrate.

Salamander Davoudi of Financial Times looks ahead to the day robots have rights.

Wednesday, December 20

Popular Science looks at the concept of deploying Marines via a sub-orbital transport, and also gives us a list of their all-time favorite on-screen nerds.

Wizard gives us a list of the top five (fictional) civil wars of all time. It's a pretty bad list, which somehow manages to leave out seasons three and four of Babylon 5, the Unification War from Firefly, and the Klingon civil war.

Tuesday, December 19

Recommended Readin': Anthony Young at The Space Review compares the realities of building a moonbase against what movies have shown us.

At Futurismic, the Armchair Anarchist makes the case for colonizing Earth orbit before heading to the moon.

Michael Cassutt explores the difficulties of establishing a canon of science fiction in the first of a multi-part column at SciFi Weekly.

Monday, December 18

Bill Gates gives us his forecast for the robotics industry in Scientific American, while Sara Goudarzi of LiveScience informs us that scientists have created a way to control a robot with signals from a human brain.