SF 68: A Sound of Thunder (adapted from a story by Ray Bradbury)

This is one of Bradbury's better known stories, perhaps his best known. In it, a man with more money than sense pays some people with more greed than sense to take him into the past to hunt dinosaurs. Although the people with the time machine are aware of the risk of altering history, they believe their precautions should be sufficient to prevent it and if they are not, at least heavy fines will be applied. This all ends fairly suboptimally.

I wonder if the new timeline is the one that leads to the "To the Future" timeline.

I'd like to say I cannot believe a company would be dumb enough to put all of history at risk to pocket some money but actually it is quite believable.

Sf 68 The Answer (adapted from a story by Philip Wylie)

Nigh simultaneous nuclear tests by the Americans and the Russians produce twin casualties; for different reasons both the Americans and Russians are alarmed to discover they seem to have killed an Angel. Both great powers struggle to understand what the significance of all this is.

Interesting set-up, terrible ending.

As pointed out in email:

Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile

SF 68: The Will (Adapted from a story by Walter M. Miller, Jr.)

links later.

A terminally-ill young boy hangs all his hope for salvatio on his realization that ( Read more... )

Air Force sex assault prevention chief charged in sex assault

ARLINGTON, Va. — The chief of the Air Force’s sexual assault prevention and response branch was arrested this weekend and charged with sexual battery.

Folk music...FROM SPACE!

International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield led a high-tech concert Monday, joining thousands of young voices from around the world — with his own voice from space.

Students, musicians and other participants across Canada and as far away as Singapore and Australia sang along with Hadfield, belting out ISS — Is Somebody Singing?, the song Hadfield co-wrote with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies, to celebrate the ninth edition Music Monday, an annual celebration put on by the Coalition for Music Education.

This year, the event was a partnership with CBC Music and the Canadian Space Agency.

Silly question

Inspired by how expensive ball-point pens used to be: any guesses as to the cost in material of writing a page of fiction in, say, 1950?

Trouble in Paradise

Fig is pretty good about not intruding on other cats' territory (the exgf pointed out his nose is pretty scarred, which may indicate he used to) but it turns out if he notices Groucho sleeping in a small patch of sunlight, he will carefully sit uplight of Groucho, putting the old cat in shadow. Groucho did not appreciate this.

(although he also did not get up or even open his eyes before growling)