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I love NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, but today's image of a planetary nebula is spectacular even by APOD's standards.
Yup, but this five book list of technological books that matter from the WSJ is a corker. The only book on it that I've read in Dava Sobel's superb Longitude, but if the others match it for page-turning readability, I'll hoover 'em all up.
And who knew that Herbert Hoover translated ?
Feel confused by the pace of scientific progress? Ah grasshopper, that is but the first step on the path to enlightenment.
Just prior to the morning hour at which most liquor stores open, Don Byron and I are sitting outdoors at a sidewalk cafe on a steamy Park Avenue South (Technology Gulch)when a scene breaks out on the sidewalk.
Byron (head turns and he murmurs): "Oh my god."
A stringy–haired, smelly, obviously intoxicated woman staggers after a younger, taller man who's also worse for wear, and hollers in a drunken growl: "I got my own phone now. Yes it is. It works you used it."
Byron (laughing): "It's the metropolitan wino scene. You know what I mean? You know the scene in Firenze, now here it…
Has Toxoplasma gondii affected human culture? Maybe so, claims Kevin Lafferty. Toxoplasma guru Karl Zimmer points us toward Lafferty's just published paper and tells us what to look for.
Bad Astronomy (gotta love that name) hosts a video animation of what would happen if a 500-mile wide asteroid hit the Earth. Yes, I could have embedded the YouTube video here, but I found BA's comments worthwhile.
Empty Houses Are Lonely
FatCat Records
FatCat Records
A wonderful introduction to the exquisite melancholy of Tom Brosseau, Empty Houses are Lonely is a collection of this crooner's finest work to date.
There's something so special about Brosseau's voice. In one moment, this shimmering, plaintive, and wavering cry is his and his alone. It is otherworldly. You've never heard anything quite like it. In the next, it belongs to everyone — a child searching for comfort and home. It is universal. You could sing these songs yourself.
Brosseau is an American poet and…
French researchers have constructed "supercapacitors" from burnt-to-a-crisp seaweed.
Ayre's Charlie Hansen prefers "organic" components whenever possible. Wonder if Ayre will be the first high-end manufacturer to give them a go?
Huckleberry continues his lie-down strike, protesting his exclusion from the air-conditioned bedroom.