Wes Phillips

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Rubber Soul. Looks better than the usual tribute record—especially Ben Harper's "Michelle."

I'm addicted to science news, in case you haven't noticed, so one of the best discoveries I've made recently is Seed Media's ScienceBlogs, which is billed as "the web's largest conversation about science. It features blogs from a wide array of scientific disciplines, with new voices coming on board regularly. It is a global, digital science salon."

That's what a newly discovered 1763 copy of an earlier map is said to "prove." Has anybody else out there read Kim Stanley Robinson's alternative history The Years of Rice and Salt? It's a good 'un.

Evidence that a Black Hole leaves a dent in space-time "just like a dimple in one's favorite spot on the sofa."Right, that's precisely the homey metaphor that immediately occurred to me. Isn't anybody else alarmed by alterations in reality as we perceive it? i mean, it is all about me, isn't it?

Sleep inertia is a wonderful phrase, one I'm sure to add to my personal lexicon. "We found the cognitive skills of [some] test subjects were worse upon awakening than after extended sleep deprivation," researcher Kenneth Wright said. That's because in some of us, the cortical areas responsible for problem-solving take longer to wake up than other parts of the brain—as much as 12 hours, in my case.

Jon Iverson got the following email from one of our heroes, the Electronic Freedom Foundation's (EFF) Fred von Lohman.