Ted Chiang shorts online, diseases and climate change, pinwheels in spaaaaaace…

• 1 – Sorry, but I can’t find “Story of Your Life”
  The indispensible Maetafilter rounds up free-to-read online versions of some Ted Chiang short stories. If you’ve not read any Chiang before, here’s a chance to discover a brilliant sf writer.
  (tags: Chiang Ted writing literature sf scifi fiction science short stories online free)
• 2 – Humans ‘hardwired for religion’
  “The battle by scientists against “irrational” beliefs such as creationism is ultimately futile, a leading experimental psychologist said today.” As long as we continue to describe it as a ‘battle’, then yes, it is.
  (tags: fundamentalism human irrationality science belief faith religion cognition brain psychology)
• 3 – Payment Card with Electronic Paper display
  “…the first flexible display panel to be embedded into an ISO-compliant payment card…” This could be an interesting development in the anti-fraud battles.
  (tags: technology prevention fraud online security financial paper electronic card payment money)
• 4 – Some like it hot
  “So here’s another addition to the climate change “to do” list – stop the spread of infectious disease.” New Scientist Blog rounds up the alarming increase of semi-tropical bugs and viruses that climate change is encouraging.
  (tags: migration population diseases infectious change climate Europe medicine health science)
• 5 – ‘Astounding’ in the Glory Years
  “Astounding’s science articles mixed with its ever reliable stories gave it a special place in the history of the pulp magazines…” Centauri Dreams gets all misty-eyed about the Golden Age of sf pulps.
  (tags: nostalgia Age Golden magazine pulp sf scifi fact fiction science Astounding)
• 6 – Who Writes Wikipedia?
  An interesting lump of research into who does all the editing and additions on Wikipedia, and lots more. Link via Boing Boing.
  (tags: wiki technology trust source open editing community collaboration analysis research statistics Wikipedia)
• 7 – Strange Space Pinwheels Spotted
  “The heart of one of the Milky Way galaxy’s most massive star clusters harbors as many as five pinwheels, a strange and relatively newly discovered type of stellar object, astronomers say.” Quick, someone call Larry Niven!
  (tags: cosmology astronomy pinwheel clusters star galaxy Way Milky space)
• 8 – Blue laser disc to allow 200GB capacity – optics.org
  “Digital recording solutions company TDK…says it has reached a landmark in the development of recordable blue laser technology, achieving a groundbreaking capacity of 200 GB.” Now all they have to do is win the endless format war. Betamax, anyone?
  (tags: prototype capacity high technology media storage digital optical laser blue Bluray TDK)
• 9 – Software learns new words from Wikipedia – tech – 04 September 2006 – New Scientist Tech
  “A program that works out the meaning of newly coined words using the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia could help machines understand the slang used in blogs and other informal texts, say researchers.” First crosswords, now this!
  (tags: Zeitgeist discovery neologism internet meaning words language software program computer)

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