It’s been pretty definitively proven that particular pesticides are decimating the world’s bees – threatening farmers and our food supply as well as wildflowers and wildlife. Definitively enough that the European Union has just moved to ban them. So the question remains – when will the US act? Neonicotinoid pesticides are a new class of […]
By David Brin A few bits of cool science for your weekend: Bright idea … I first saw glimmers of this some years ago. What if every light bulb in the world could also transmit data? At TED Global, Harald Haas demonstrates a device that flickering the light from a single LED too quickly for the human eye to […]
By David Brin Straight from the pages of Existence… though sooner than I expected… researchers now claim to have the entire Neanderthal genome in published form, as clear as that of “any person on the street.” Okay, start your countdown till someone announces she is pregnant with… That will be a real boat-rocker… …but there are other events on […]
By David Brin (Continuing this compilation of questions that I’m frequently asked by interviewers. This time about…) Q: Your writing touches on the impact of technology upon humanity, and its power to change our daily lives. Can you expand upon that? Let me ask you (and the reader) this: have you ever flown through the sky? Or walked into a […]
By James Howard Kunstler If you’ve never had major surgery before – there’s this cool part after they’ve got you all scrubbed and prepped in pre-op, and inserted IVs in your veins, and you’re ready to rock and roll with whatever’s on the program. I’m familiar with this routine. It’s the only part of the […]
By David Brin Citizens can fight back without waiting for courts or politicians Yes I am talking about you. And you don’t have to agitate or march or petition or write your Congress-critter. Here’s my one final point about gerrymandering and all of that. As I have said repeatedly, there is a way that citizens can rebel against […]
(Climate scientist James Hansen delivered these remarks today at the White House.) By James Hansen Let us return for a moment to election night 2008. As I sat in our farm house in Pennsylvania, watching Barack Obama’s victory speech, I turned my head aside so my wife would not see the tears in my eyes. […]
By David Brin Lead has long been rumored as a major culprit of individual and societal downfall – even in the collapse of the Roman Empire. Starting in the 1960s we found that remediation of houses that had lead-based paint correlated with improved IQ tests for children in poor neighborhoods. A connection with violent crime now seems to be […]
By David Brin James Lawrence Powell did the math. Out of 13,950 peer-reviewed climate articles over 11 years, a mere 24 rejected global warming: The gold standard of science is the peer-reviewed literature. If there is disagreement among scientists, based not on opinion but on hard evidence, it will be found in the peer-reviewed literature. I searched […]
By David Brin NASA is apparently thinking seriously about launching astronauts to Earth-moon L2, a spot in space beyond the moon’s far side. EML-2 is a so-called libration point where the gravitational pulls of the moon and Earth roughly balance out, allowing spacecraft to essentially park there. Astronauts would ride to EML-2 aboard NASA’s Orion capsule, which […]
By David Brin Every decade since 1900 — except one — has seen some fantastic U.S. originated technologies burst forth, creating so much new wealth and ability that American consumers could afford the prodigious trade deficits that have uplifted half of the world’s population into the middle class. Jets, rockets, computers, pharmaceuticals, satellites, telecom, lasers, […]