Halloween, Lou Reed, and Stories
I live in New York. It’s the city that you can’t imagine Lou Reed without – his being here, from when he played the clubs to the exhibits of his photographs. Listening to his music was a kind of...
View ArticleThe Traveler…
I called this blog Traveler’s Tales. It’s a bit of a homage to Carl Sagan. His book Cosmos was one of the things that made me see science could be poetic, and for that I wish I had thanked him when he...
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Is The Fermi Paradox Really A Paradox?
Photo from WIkimedia Commons, by Colby Gutierrez-Kraybill. Apropos of a bit in Wait But Why? About why there are (apparently) no other intelligent beings that we can see in the universe, there were a...
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The Fermi Paradox Part II: Ringworlds
By Hill, via Wikimedia Commons In a previous post I addressed the issue of why we might have lots of extraterrestrial civilizations nearby and never see them. It was a stab at addressing the Fermi...
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Fermi Paradox Part III: Why Aren’t They Here?
A Bussard ramjet, one of many designs for a true interstellar spacecraft. Ramjets wouldn’t go more than a fraction of the speed of light. By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons This is the...
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GMOs Are Safe, But Bill Nye Was Still Right The First Time
Photo by Mark Schierbecker, via Wikimedia Commons Recently Discover, Mother Jones, the Washington Post, and many corners of the blogosphere have gone over Bill Nye’s change of heart about genetically...
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Arsenic and Cheap Wine
By Multimotyl (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons The recent revelation (via a class-action suit) that some cheaper wines have high levels of arsenic got m to thinking: how toxic is it, really? And is...
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Indian Metallurgists and Real-Life Valyrian Steel
Image from Wiki of Ice and Fire. Game of Thrones is back, and with it Valyrian steel swords. Magic or otherwise better-than-normal swords are common to fantasy literature, and it got m thinking about...
View ArticleThe Heating Engineers of Winterfell
In Game of Thrones Winterfell is a large castle that is built on a set of hot springs that provide warmth and even keep the castle comfortable during the years-long winters that characterize the...
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