In a bizarre story, the BBC reports about a printer adapted to produce 3 dimensional living tissue.

Again via the BBC, President Bush looks set to back NASA’s project to use nuclear propulsion systems in spacecraft. This has the potential to make the exploration of space by either crewed or robotic craft a lot more viable, but is something likely to meet with opposition from anti-nuclear campaigners. Needless to say the news will please those in favour of a human exploration program.

There’s been wide reporting of the discovery of a fossil of a four-winged dinosaur in China. Here’s the New Scientist report and the BBC report.

Researchers at Imperial College London looking into memory and neurofeedback make claims that it might be possible for people to be trained in better recall. Neurofeedback techniques involve showing people their brainwaves on a screen and teaching them how to exert some control over them. (Guess what? via the BBC.)

Just posting this stuff for the sake of it really.

Although this has been covered everywhere already, I’ll mention the publication of Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a joint online/hardcopy publication which can be downloaded here under a creative commons license. I’ve enjoyed Cory’s stuff before, not to mention Boing Boing, so I’m looking forward to getting into this over the weekend. I reckon that I’ll end up buying a copy too.  (Also available online, at scifi.com, is Jury Service, a collaboration between Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross, also worth reading.)

Hmm, what else has been going on…

Read a discussion about Palladium and the release of American Megatrends palladium BIOS on Slashdot yesterday. Don’t think I’ll be buying one for my next PC (if I have any choice , and the whole thing makes me feel a bit uneasy.

Had a laugh at dontlink.com, which I hadn’t seen before, and thoroughly approve of.

Got bored in the evenings and started on yet another minor makeover for this blog, this time trying to be a bit more XHTML and CSS orientated.

Going to try and post a couple of more original pieces that have been brewing for a little while at the weekend, too.

I like the High Strangeness History of UFO Phenomena cartoon I found syndicated on the Fortean Times website. You can look at the strip from the beginning at the High Strangeness archive.

Cool! Check it out.

(via Boing Boing)

This topic has been in the news recently what with the announcements from Clonaid that the first two human clones have been born, one in the US and one in Europe. The announcement of the birth of the first clone was greeted with scepticism (BBC report), and a proposed DNA test has now become less likely after a lawyer in the US began a legal action against the “parents”. The birth of the second clone was announced this week (BBC report), and will no doubt be treated sceptically as well.

For those not au fait with the ins and outs of cloning, the New Scientist has devoted part of their website to the subject. These pages include a FAQ and compilations of reports and articles on the subject.

I’m disturbed by the news that human clones have already been created (assuming that they have, and this wouldn’t surprise me). I’m not disturbed by the concept of cloning, and I don’t feel that there’s necessarily anything intrinsically wrong with the cloning of humans, what disturbs me is that the technology is far from being a mature one. The various experiments which have resulted in successfully cloned animals over the last few years have thrown up many questions about the long term viability of clones. Dolly gets arthritis young, cloned mice appear to age rapidly – what’s clear is that we just don’t know enough about this technology to start applying it to humans in an ethical manner.

Research and experimentation on humans is a complex area. In most western countries there are ethical frameworks for it involving concepts of informed consent (an example). I’m not sure how these sorts of rules are usually applied to unborn or unconceived children, but I imagine that it would be difficult to get a program of medical experimentation past many Ethics Committees where the potential consequences were quite so vague and uncertain, and where the actual subject had no chance to give consent of any kind.

Of course out in the real world there are places where and people for whom such considerations are irrelevant and, as has been said many times before, the cloning of humans is probably inevitable. I think that it’s profoundly irresponsible for anyone to have embarked upon this project at this time, and I think that it will ultimately damage rather than improve chances for the technology to be used positively.  I suspect that one factor motivating this rush to produce that first cloned child (rather than money, fame and a place in the history books, of course) was to do it before it became illegal everywhere.  Unfortunately this very action is likely to encourage knee-jerk legislation against cloning technology before we even really know whether it has any potential human applications at all.

Published by Earthlight in the UK

I just finished reading this the other day, bought with some of the book tokens I got for Christmas, and as it was such an enjoyable read I felt obliged to give it a bit of hype, despite the fact that most of what I say below has been said before.

I’d encountered some fairly good reviews of this (see below for some links) before I picked it up, but I’d been meaning to get it anyway as I’ve enjoyed WJW in the past. It’s a Space Opera in the classic sense, complete with galaxy-spanning decadent empire, aliens, planet-busting weaponry, dramatic space battles, and most of what you’d expect from such a work.

The aliens who thousands of years previously had established the empire and it’s code of ethics (the Praxis) by ruthlessly conquering everyone else – humanity included – have been dying out gradually, and the death of the last member of the race occurs during the book, triggering all sorts of events best left out of this brief commentary. The story follows two human characters, both of whom are fun to read about and I found myself interested in both of their fates. The pace doesn’t really pick up until the last half/third of the book, but when it does the action comes thick and fast and I found myself up late reading the last sections.

Although The Praxis doesn’t really break any ground in terms of innovative plot structure, amazing new technology or particularly well rounded aliens, it’s a fine example of it’s type. It’s the sort of book you’d expect to see from an accomplished writer like WJW who’s decided to sit down and pen a classic space opera, and as such is highly readable and I recommend it for those times when the future shock is getting too much and you’d like to get back to the old days of ray guns, rocket ships and adrenalin. It’s the first book in a sequence too, so there’s the next in the series to look forward to once you’ve finished off this one.

Other reviews available online include:

• A Post on rec.arts.sf.written by Charlie Stross here.
• A review at Infinity Plus here.
• And a short review in the Guardian here.

Walter John Williams has a website.

On a lighter note, I went to see this last night – fantastic! I’m not going to attempt to review it here at the moment, suffice to say that if you enjoyed Part 1, you’ll enjoy this. Get to your cinemas!

Heard a couple of titbits in the news this morning that serve to remind that we already live in the future.

In the UK a Doctor calls for public debate about the ethics of Face Transplantation. Apparently this could be of benefit in reconstructive surgery where the patient has suffered extensive damage to their, err, face.

Dr. Severino Antinori, the Italian famed for being a vocal proponent of human cloning, announces that the first three human clone births are imminent.

Note: this might contain spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen the film.

I think that I’m getting too old for Bond. Went to see the new one last night and have to say that while it was fun, it was also disappointing. Now I know that one shouldn’t expect too much from Bond movies, but still.

At first I found it a little difficult to pin down exactly what it was that I didn’t like, I just left the Cinema with a feeling of disappointment. I certainly found that the film didn’t quite carry my attention, although that might have had something to do with the irritating group of teenagers who kept whooping whenever Halle Berry appeared on the screen. I think that the film suffers from trying to compete with the modern action movie, where constant fast-paced action sequences and flashy effects take precedence over scene setting and plot development. From what I recall of the Bond films from earlier decades there was often a lot of scene setting along with the action, and what action there was wasn’t always of the breakneck variety prevalent in today’s action movies. This can probably be partly explained by the capabilities of new technology (not to mention the enthusiastic desire to use it as much as possible), but it doesn’t always make for a good film. DAD was basically a series of intense action sequences spliced together with a small amount of banter and a bit of background, and I think that it suffered from trying to follow this model. Leave it to Vin Diesel. Please.

I also suffered a lapse in my suspension of disbelief faculty, which can take quite a lot given the amount of SF I read (although that can often make it a more rigorous faculty, but that’s a different subject). Bond movies pretty much have to contain a plethora of cool gizmos, but the car’s invisibility mode… I know, I know – in the past there’ve been lots of similar things, but this got to me. The improvised windsurfing escape also boggled a bit, as did the fact that the aeroplane managed to survive it’s trip though Icarus’ beam of concentrated sunlight (well, maybe it just clipped the edge or something). The sheer quantity of ideas caused a bit of overload too.

Brosnan makes an OK Bond, although I always find his delivery of the trademark quips a little unconvincing. Maybe it’s just growing up with Connery and Moore, but those two could both pull this aspect of the role off far better than either Dalton or Brosnan. He gets higher marks on the sophisticated amoral killer persona. I happen to like Dench as M and Cleese as Q, Dench gets that exasperated-with-but-fond-of relationship with Bond just right, and Cleese is, well, Cleese, and I suppose that if you like him then you’ll like him in this role.

Over all DAD gave me the impression of being an action movie trying to be a Bond movie. This isn’t the first time that I’ve felt this about the more recent offerings, and I think that there’s something about the whole franchise that doesn’t quite work for me outside of the context of the 60s and 70s. Having said that, I’ll probably go and see the next one (apparently Brosnan has agreed to do another), and I’m sure that it will proove to be an entertaining couple of hours. Despite my gripes, the film is watchable and entertaining and has some good set pieces (I enjoyed the sword fight), but I don’t rate this as classic Bond. Go watch it, and make up your own mind.