Chimpanzees Prefer Fair Play To Reaping An Unjust Reward. We're often told that "life isn't fair", but certain of our primate relatives feel otherwise: Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate…
Mathematical Methods for Optical Physics and Engineering on Amazon!
Couldn't resist posting a short note that my textbook now has an Amazon page! The cover image hasn't been added yet, so I may have to take matters into my…
Richard Matheson’s Shadow on the Sun
No matter how much Richard Matheson I’ve read — and I’ve read a lot — it always turns out that there’s a bit more out there that I’ve managed to miss!
If you aren’t familiar with Richard Matheson‘s name, you’re nevertheless familiar with his work — starting in 1950, he has penned countless science fiction and horror tales, many of which have been filmed as major motion pictures and Twilight Zone episodes. I did a “horror masters” post on him some time back, noting his most memorable works such as Duel, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, I am Legend, and The Shrinking Man. He also was a significant influence in the creation of The Night Stalker movies and television series in the 1970s, having penned the screenplay of the two films.
Matheson is a prolific writer who has written in many genres, but unfortunately many of his novels have been hard to find. Recently, though, I stumbled across a reprint of a novel of his that I hadn’t read before, Shadow on the Sun (1994):
The novel was written during his “western” phase of writing in the 1990s, during which he wrote a number of novels about gunslingers. Shadow on the Sun is set in the Wild West, but it is also a horror novel!
ResearchBlogging editor’s selections: bulletproof T-shirts, spinning light, beauty for birds, and flocking folks
Bulletproof T-shirts? Who'da thought it was possible? Christie over at Observations of a Nerd discusses recent successful attempts to "bulletproof" T-shirts! Measuring the Angular Momentum of Light. Light can carry…
Mythbustin’: 1808 edition (the incombustible man)
I swear that I’m not going through journals looking for old versions of the Mythbusters‘ experiments! After blogging about old scientific papers on myths such as “finger in the barrel” and “Archimedes death ray“, I figured I’d pretty much tapped out historical mythbustin’ papers. Scientists of every era, however, have an eye for the weird, so I suppose it was inevitable that I found another paper with a connection to modern mythbusting!
The paper in question is “Memoir on the Incombustible Man; or the pretended phænomenon of incombustibility,” from volume 32 of the Philosophical Magazine from 1808, by Louis Sementini, M.D., chief Professor of Chemistry in the Royal University of Naples.
What this paper describes is an in depth series of experiments, performed by Dr. Sementini upon himself, on the science of fire eating!*
The Giant’s Shoulders #22 is up!
The Giant's Shoulders #22 is up over at The Lay Scientist! Thanks to Martin for assembling it! The next edition is something of a special one: it will be hosted…
One day left to submit “grand challenge” ideas to the White House!
My friend Damon over at Internal Reflections blog asked that I spread the word about this, as there is one day left to submit ideas. The easiest thing for me…
Michelson and the President (1869)
I’m currently working my way through the book The Master of Light: a Biography of Albert A. Michelson (1973), written by one of his daughters, Dorothy Michelson Livingston. I typically find the beginnings of biographies to be rather slow-moving, with some sort of statement like, “There was little to indicate in his/her childhood what a great scientist he/she would become,” but this is definitely not the case for Michelson — his life story is interesting starting pretty much at birth!
I thought I’d share another anecdote from the book that I found fascinating: Michelson’s meeting, at a young age before he was famous, with the President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant!
ResearchBlogging editor’s selections: Leopards v. primates, “theories”, dark secrets of stars, and corals and climate change
Have the hunting habits of leopards shaped primate evolution? Brian at Laelaps looks at fascinating research which investigates how the hunting of primates by leopards may altered the evolutionary path…
Some happenings
I'm in the midst of a few new science blogging posts, though all of them involve me doing a lot of research and learning about things I don't know as…
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