From osOpinion: <<Tiny Silicon Spies To Sniff Terror. Bunker bombs, battleships, and B-2 bombers step aside -- the next hero in the war on terror may soon be a brain that is smaller than the grains of desert sand in Afghanistan. Smart, covert "silicon dust chips" can detect the tools of terror before they have a chance to ply the deeds of evildoers. >>
12:32:31 PM  #   your two cents []

From Wired: <<Sci-Fi Women Want Brains, Brawn. Female science-fiction fans didn't often see strong women in their favorite childhood books, but that's changing. And with more scientists penning novels, there's sounder science in the fiction too.  [Wired News]>>

Heck, yeah! I hated the way the girls were always such insipid characters in childhood books -- with few exceptions, such as the girls in E Nesbit's wonderful, wonderful books, it made you always dislike the girls and envy the boys. Come to think of it, that was true of an awful lot of adult books as well...

BTW I love this excerpt from Gore Vidal's 1964 appraisal of E Nesbit's books (reached through the link above), in which he notes she is relatively unknown in the US: "E. Nesbit's failure in the United States is not entirely mysterious. We have always preferred how-to-do to let's-imagine-that. In the last fifty years, considering our power and wealth, we have contributed relatively little in the way of new ideas of any sort. From radar to rocketry, we have had to rely on other societies for theory and invention. Our great contribution has been, characteristically, the assembly line."

12:31:17 PM  #   your two cents []