Ken MacLeod's Blog, page 34

Scientists behaving badly? Social Sessions 04

Over the past few months the Genomics Forum has hosted three very successful public events, the Social Sessions, on: the scientist as seen in literature and in science studies; genetics and crime; and science as an inspiration for poetry.

We are now planning a fourth, to be held in March, on the relevance of science studies to the controversy arising from the East Anglia emails hack - labelled 'Climategate' in the media and online. Our panel and audience will discuss whether the attitudes and ...

The Early Days of a Better Future

'Can things only get better or do we have to look over a mountain of rubble to see beyond the next fifty years? Scottish writers are leading a renaissance in British speculative fiction, but does our national identity have any future at all?' That's the question posed at an event at Glasgow's Book Festival Aye Write!, where Andrew J. Wilson will be be discussing it with Mike Cobley, Hal Duncan, Richard Morgan, Deborah J. Miller and me - along with, we're promised, 'some very special surprise...

More Green, less slime

A Green Party supporter claims the Party has ditched the woo. One small victory for reason and science, though I still deeply mistrust a party that ever thought that forcing scientists to swear an oath to respect the Earth was ever a good idea in the first place.

Student Humanists event this week

I've been asked to give a talk to the Edinburgh University Humanist Society this Thursday. I'll be talking about religion and non-religion in SF, as well as about some of my recent work with the Genomics Forum (there is a connection, trust me).

Date: Thursday 25 February
Time: 7.00 pm to 9.00 pm.
Place: LT1, Appleton Tower Edinburgh EH12 5AU (map)

Free, and all welcome.

Check here for other upcoming events from the Society.

Regulatin' genes

Another science rap:



(Via (Via)

Voices for audio

There's an increasing number of virtual voices being raised in support of nominating that fine audio SF magazine, StarShipSofa, for a Hugo Award. This is a very good idea.

PS: not least of StarShipSofa's many good points is its links to interesting pieces in print, such as this M. John Harrison review of a newly published lost novel by John Wyndham:

At its worst, science fiction is a kind of rumour mill, in which concepts such as cloning are first reduced to conceits, then ground into...

Recipes for the cookshops of the future

The Genomics Forum recently hosted two designers as Visiting Fellows: James King and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. Among other activities in a busy week, they presented a slideshow of their activities. Check out Daisy's Synthetic Kingdom and Growth Assembly, and James's Meat of Tomorrow for imaginative and witty visualizations of biotechnological possibilities, translating the submicroscopic and nano-scale into macro objects of a possible future everyday.

Elsewhere in the noosphere, sculptor John ...

The liquidity trap, shown by boom and bust rap!

A much clearer and fairer account of Keynes and Hayek (and thus, roughly, left and right responses to the current crisis) than you're likely to find anywhere else, as well as more fun:



(Via).

Science prof's office untidy - shock claim

The Mail on Sunday is on the case:

[T:]hanks to the row over leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit, we now learn that this body's director, Phil Jones, works in a disorganised fashion amid chaos and mess. [...:] His colleagues recall that his office was 'often surrounded by jumbled piles of papers'.

Elsewhere in the paper, we learn the full horror:

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said 'his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of...

Just in time for Valentine's Day

It seems I've contributed to a category I didn't even know existed: stories about sex with spaceships.

i09 has lots more geeky romance, as does New Scientist, with wedding pic and everything.