Story openings, bad science teaching, social bookmarking showdown, Big Brother hits Second Life, laser arphids…

• 1 – Blindsight and Hard SF
  “…one of the things I want to talk about, at least in passing, is what it means to say the book is ‘hard sf’…” Niall Harrison grapples with definitions of sub-genres in the context of Peter Watts’ ‘Blindside’.
  (tags: Blindside Watts Peter hard definition subgenre literature sf scifi fiction science)
• 2 – Openings: What happens next?
  “…readers at the beginning of a new book want less to know what *is* happening than to find out *what is happening next*.”
  (tags: genre tips advice author action plot openings novels stories fiction writing)
• 3 – Affinity Ratings – New gigg for Digg?
  “Even more useful than mashing up social networks and digg and bookmarking would be adding user-specified Affinity Ratings to digging and tagging.”
  (tags: ideas tagging ratings affinity networks Digg community bookmarking social)
• 4 – Lords say bad teaching of science blights British future
  “Science teaching is in a dangerous decline that is putting Britain’s technological future at risk. Only a complete overhaul of education policy can rescue the situation, a high-powered House of Lords committee warns today.”
  (tags: universities schools government policy overhaul popularity standards decline education science UK)
• 5 – Social Bookmarking Showdown
  “There’s a score of services out there, and no single service has it all. Some social bookmarking sites focus more closely on sharing and discovery, while others offer more options for sorting and organizing.”
  (tags: bookmarks tagging Web2.0 service features comparison community del.icio.us social bookmarking)
• 6 – State of the Blogosphere, October, 2006
  “First off, the total posting volume of the blogosphere has leveled off somewhat, showing about 1.3 million postings per day, which is a little lower than what we were seeing last quarter but still about double the volume of this time last year.”
  (tags: blogging internet 2006 October statistics report research blogosphere Technorati)
• 7 – Army Recruiters Accused of Misleading Students to Get Them to Enlist
  “An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist.” That’s not a pretty story.
  (tags: politics fraud pressure lies war Iraq military recruitment Army US)
• 8 – Toddlers learn complex actions from picture-book reading, says new research
  “Parents who engage in the age-old tradition of picture-book reading are not only encouraging early reading development in their children but are also teaching their toddlers about the world around them…” Whoa, newsflash.
  (tags: education interaction parental reading assisted books picture psychology research cognition learning toddlers children)
• 9 – Virtual reality TV: Big Brother to launch in SL
  “Contestants will have to spend at least 8 hours a day in the transparent virtual Big Brother house for a total of one month, and will complete various tasks such as building replicas of famous buildings.” I knew it was too good to last.
  (tags: entertainment virtual worlds synthetic television reality Brother Big Life Second)
• 10 – Machinima Group Animates Life ‘In-world’
  “Machinima [...] is animation that is made by harnessing 3-D game engines, such as those used in Xbox or PlayStation games, and adding original content–dialogue, dramatic situations, and new or modified characters.”
  (tags: movies worlds synthetic Life Second budget art cinema graphics 3D Group Work Machinima)
• 11 – Hollywood Talent Feeling The Weight Of Industry’s Woes
  This is a difficult line for the studios to walk. On the one hand, they know they have to cut salaries, but without good talent, they won’t have much of a product to sell.
  (tags: salaries writers actors stars budget cinema problems industry movie Hollywood)
• 12 – Aeros to develop peacetime Walrus that will will do to the cargo industry what Internet did for information exchange
  “[It] could equally offer myriad peacetime solutions, opening land-locked countries to trade, enabling heavy construction materials to be delivered into urban centres … and facilitating a more robust and agile air transportation network.”
  (tags: futurism logistics vehicle transport cargo bulk Aeros Walrus hull rigid airship aeronautics aircraft)
• 13 – Laser RFID tags
  “Conventional tags get their power from a radio signal transmitted by a reader. The new tags will instead draw power from a laser beam produced by a reader, a photocell on top of the tag converting this laser light into electricity.”
  (tags: technology encryption reader authorised beam laser patent surveillance privacy security tags arphid RFID)