Bruce Dorminey reports in COSMOS on a fascinating paper that suggests the early Earth may have had three moons, only for the orbits of the two smaller (~100km or so) moons to become unstable over a billion years or so. The paper by Jack Lissauer and John Chambers is an excellent example of the sort [...]
After consulting the masses, Talking Squid is trying out a new theme, Velocity. Over the next little while we’ll be tweaking the design, so you can expect a new banner, highlighted hyperlinks, and maybe some surprises.
Margo Lanagan will be hosting a writers’ walking tour of the Tarkine wilderness in Tasmania. The tour will stretch over the week of 5-11 January 2009. Fitness levels do not need to be extreme. All the walks are “easy grade” and the emphasis is on observation and reflection rather than on burning up the [...]
In the never-ending circus of lies, misattributions, and ethical lapses surrounding the current so-called Culture War, especially as it relates to evolutionary science versus religious fundamentalism, biological anthropologist Pat Shipman has contributed yet another outright lie to the debate.
Michael Mihalev’s Rusty has served Talking Squid well, but I think it is time for a change. And I need help choosing a new theme. Follow the break and comment to tell me what you think…
Norm Geras, whom I usually rely on to write thoughtful exercises in clear thinking, has let me down by praising a review by Marilynne Robinson. It’s not that I disagree with the point that attracted Geras to the review in the first place. Robinson was reviewing Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion for Harper’s, and she [...]
The Spiderwick Chronicles is a superb fantasy movie that towers over its Narnian and Dark Materialed rivals despite, and possibly because of its non-epic, almost domestic scale. Although ostensibly for children, the filmmakers made a laudable decision to allow the threats to be very, very real, to be genuinely scary, and to avoid easy, [...]
When I win the lottery, I shall build myself a house with a fossil wall. I’ll put a sandstone wall behind and mount museum-grade fossils as a patchwork facade. There will be one or two window boxes to let in light and to support those fossils that need to be put on stands rather than [...]
See how many clues it takes you to guess the identity of this historical figure.
12. Although not a Lutheran by denomination, he was a great admirer of Martin Luther.
A few days ago I was in Eisenach and stood on top of the Wartburg, where a great German once translated the [...]
Via normblog, here are the American Book Review’s lists of the 100 best first lines of novels [pdf file] and the 100 best closing lines of novels [pdf file]. These lists exist largely to generate debate, and indeed Norm himself could not resist saying that The Great Gatsby should have come higher and Mr. Sammler’s [...]
