Non-conformist aliens wanted
It occurred to me the other day that many fictional alien species conform to a small number of body plans: humanoid, insectoid, feline, robot, and reptilian. There’s a huge amount of creativity in appearances and cultures, admittedly, but most races out there fit one of those body plans. The Wikipedia list of fictional aliens is…
The annals of weather warfare
Did you know there was an abandoned Nazi weather station on the coast of present-day Canada? Until 1981, almost nobody did. My morning began with the fascinating story of Kurt, a forgotten Nazi weather station installed on the coast of Labrador during World War II that was only rediscovered in 1981. From a long article…
Would you eat a steak that came from a test tube?
Will your hamburgers soon be grown in a vat? In vitro meat could solve a lot of the world’s food problems, while helping the environment and reducing cruelty to animals. Blogher‘s Heather Clisby explains how. At first sniff, in vitro meat (IVM) might inspire the skeevies, but IVM may provide multiple solutions to the problems…
