Wes Phillips

Cory Doctorow has a new column in The Guardian Unlimited, which in itself is great news. Even better, he hits one out of the park first time out, with a comparison of DRM and ideologically comforting junk science.

I already thought aerogel was amazing, but now it appears that it can clean heavy metals and organic pollutants. I knew I should have bought stock.

Born in poverty on the outskirts of Barquisimeto in the Venezuelan interior, Gustavo Dudamel has become what Simon Rattle calls "the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across."

Good news for those of us on deadline.

"my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai"

It's always right.

Taylor Dinerman offers an appreciation of Heinlein on the occasion of his centenary. Of course, he conveniently skips over that embarrassing incest novel Time Enough for Love, but I've always marveled that that one raised eyebrows at all. After all, the heroes of "All You Zombies" (considered by some to be the best time travel story ever—although I confess to being thoroughly creeped out by it) and "By His Bootstraps" go considerably further than traveling back in time to seduce their mothers.