vendredi 14 mars 2003

Martial drift A tech newsfeed caught a roving eye last night: "New images and analysis suggest the slopes around the Red Planet's largest extinct volcano, Olympus Mons, contain dark stains caused by brine flowing down hill. "The discovery indicates that the substantial underground ice deposits on Mars can sometimes melt and flow across the surface. "It is bound to increase speculation that life may exist near to the surface of the planet." University of Oregon researcher Tahirih Motazedian spoke of the find to the Beeb, who may have been following up a NASA press release about 'Melting Snow as [possible] Cause of Gullies'. An earlier report, then billed a "landmark discovery"; dates back to June 2000. If "life near the surface" speculation is indeed renewed, I'd doubt anyone's hoping to find more than minute and extremely simple organisms which can survive in almost unimaginable cold. Water plays a vital role in Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy about the exploration, terraforming and difficult settlement of the planet: 'Red Mars,' 'Green Mars' and 'Blue Mars'. What I enjoyed about these books, apart from the hard science dosed into a narrative that swept me readily on from one to the next, was the political, social and economic breadth of Robinson's near-future history. Increasingly closely, he interweaves the Martian settler society's setbacks and successes with a highly plausible scenario for developments much closer to home. A commendable site about 'Mars in the Mind of Earth' credits Robinson with "perhaps the most realistic look at the colonization of Mars in literature". To date, I've found no reason for that 'perhaps'. I've been waiting for Robinson's 'The Years of Rice and Salt' to appear in paperback. Now it has. Plenty on that at the SF site in my link-list and elsewhere. Quite why this latest is classified as SF I don't know. Robinson's one of my favourites because he writes novels which often happen to include a lot of science. 11:13:12 AM  link   your views? [] Humbug, fudge and blue cheese To say, like a French weasel politician whose name I failed to catch from the bathroom said this morning, that Chirac didn't say 'No!" to a resolution opening the way to war is nonsense. The argument was that Chirac said "no" on Monday, but might change his mind since the "no" was in Monday's context and even French people had failed to grasp the "ifs", "buts" and devil in the detail. Crap. The man said "No". It was perfectly clear. In 'Le Monde', I've now read cogent French people who disagree with him. Good. I was beginning to worry. Let nobody pretend that he didn't lay it on the line. French people, apart from his "friends" like that member of parliament, got the message. Last month, Brendan O'Neill listed 10 wrong reasons to oppose the war. I didn't buy two of them, but the man's integrity made me a regular reader. 10:53:47 AM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.