Monthly Archives: December 2021

2021 in Review

Here’s something I don’t usually do. But perhaps it’s worth doing, especially for this past year. What were the significant events of this past year, in my personal life and in the history I’m living through? I had a heart … Continue reading

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Links & Comments: Narrative Shortcuts, Fantasy Worlds, Arabic Numerals

Sunny but chilly today; we’ve had rain for much of the past two weeks, and now we’re in for a week or so of sun. We did a 34-minute walk, though Robinson Drive and around on  Skyline and back to … Continue reading

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E.O. Wilson, HALF-EARTH (2016)

E.O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, Liveright, 2016, 259p This is one of Wilson’s last four or five books, the first one following The Meaning of Human Existence in 2014. These books seem slighter that most earlier Wilson … Continue reading

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Boosted

I thought to post a summary of one of those E.O. Wilson books tonight, but it’s past 4:30 and I don’t think I have the time. (I try to wrap up here by 5:30.) So some miscellaneous items today. First, … Continue reading

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E.O. Wilson

The great evolutionary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died on Sunday. He was 92. He  had been publishing new books right up to the end, with Tales from the Ant World in 2020. Several of his earlier books, from On … Continue reading

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Don’t Look Up, 2

Follow-up to previous post: about the film Don’t Look Up. So, I give the film a thumbs-up, even though it’s uneven. It follows through on its premise. It effectively parodies the denialist nature of the anti-vaxx crowd, with a crucial … Continue reading

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Don’t Look Up, 1

Another quick holiday post.

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Christmas Eve and Family Traditions

No links political or scientific today. Instead I’ll indulge on what’s happening now, and what happened in my childhood, on Christmas Eve.

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Extinction Debt

Henry Gee is a long-time editor of Nature, one of the two (along with Science) general interest scientific journals. Gee came to notice of the science fiction community in the 2000s (iirc) when he commissioned short science fiction stories from … Continue reading

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Christmas Week Rain; Insecurities and Lack of Imagination

Finished my Christmas shopping today — I had to be done today — though one or two ordered items won’t be here until next week. It rained fairly heavily last night and the residue set in today; supposedly not raining, … Continue reading

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