Adam Roberts’ Salami Award-winning review of Brasyl, DIY solar furnace, online musical collaboration, smart ravens, simulated mice…

• 1 – Brasyl by Ian McDonald, reviewed by Adam Roberts

  “Brasyl’s 2006, 2032, and 1732 are not, it turns out, part of the same timeline, but salami slices from different places on the sausage of the multiverse.” Best. Sentence. Ever.

  (tags: Brasyl McDonald Ian sf scifi fiction science review novel book)

• 2 – Solar heating, DIY style

  “I decided instead to take advantage of the south-facing side of the garage and build a solar furnace to collect some of that sunshine just bouncing straight off my garage.” Smart thinking, great lo-fi hack.

  (tags: technology green energy invention hack furnace heating solar DIY)

• 3 – Finally, the On-Demand, Online Garage Band Gets Real

  “Until recently, there was no easy way for the amateur musician to collaborate cheaply, easily and in an open online environment. However, a new crop of startups (from Indaba to Splice) are changing that…”

  (tags: web2.0 technology studio software online recording music collaboration audio)

• 4 – Clever raven proves that it’s no birdbrain

  “Nevertheless, it is now clear the raven is one of the very smartest creatures we know about.” Just bigging up the family, y’know.

  (tags: raven logic intelligence cognition bird animal science)

• 5 – IBM performs computer simulation of mouse brain-substrate

  “IBM researchers [...] assembled a simulated mouse cortical hemisphere (that is, a functional half of a mouse brain) on one of the smaller BlueGene/L supercomputers. They then ran the simulation…” Blimey.

  (tags: neuroscience singularity technology computing neuron brain mouse simulation supercomputer IBM)