Editorial notes: This Essay was found as a ‘draft’ entry in Everything2. It was last updated on 03/05/2011. I’ve always been sympathetic to science fiction, but never really ever loved any of its progeny. For example, I’ll always have fond feelings towards Star Trek: The Next Generation for its naive utopianism, but could never take its campy plots seriously. That said...
Editorial notes: This scientific analysis was found as a ‘draft’ entry in Everything2. It was last updated on 03/05/2011. In 2006 Harvard presented a short movie they’d contracted called The Inner Life of a Cell. This eight and a half minute production was a 3D animation of (ostensibly) what a cell could look like on an atomic level*. This forms the final chapter of my three...
Editorial notes: This Book Review was found as a ‘draft’ entry in Everything2 with the Summary section missing. It was last updated on 03/05/2011. C.S. Lewis is the British author best known for writing the Narnia series of books, but he also authored a number of books that discussed his religious beliefs, including this one – Mere Christianity. The book evolved out of a series...
Many drugs, and most drugs that are directed at cognitive processes (e.g. anti-depressants, hallucinogenics) target receptors. Receptors are proteins involved in the way cells in the body signal to each other. The following is a review of one particular type of receptor called the 5-HT2A receptor, and it’s role in mediating the effects of LSD. What is a receptor? Our body is made up of...
The central dogma of biology says that DNA encodes RNA which encodes proteins In the beginning, you were a single cell made up from a fused sperm and egg. This cell had 23 pairs of chromosomes which together made up all your DNA – chromosomes are what DNA looks like when it’s tightly wrapped. DNA is a long code made up of four nucleotides that form a four-letter alphabet – ACGT...
Editorial notes: Shai was always fascinated with cartoon characters and, at least as his written coverage is concerned, mostly with Superman. Between March 2011 and December 2014, Shai writes nine articles dedicated to this superhero and in November 2014 he starts a blog dedicated to reviewing Superman novels. Superman came first, anyone else came later. It all started with...
World of Warcraft (WoW) has the population and GDP of a small country, and yet for all that, it’s just another niche community. Some two billion people all around the globe have access to the internet, and while they may have a few inducible portals in common – google, facebook, Wikipedia – there are countless virtual spaces that are known to most only by name or reputation, if...
The Ancient Greeks who presaged our philosophies, political systems, and arts emerged in a land that had already been settled by mankind for tens of thousands of years. Despite what some of them believed the Greeks were not been born out of the Earth, but rather from the ashes of earlier societies. In Greece’s prehistory – the time before writing – entire societies, including...
Gibson and hipster consumerism in Zero History Successful as he’s been, William Gibson has always been something of a misfit. Gibson is best known for his first novel and cyberpunk classic Neuromancer. But the extent to which Gibson is a cyberpunk author is debatable. Sometimes it feels like the intersection between Gibson and cyberpunk is incidental. There’s no doubt that Gibson has...
The mythology and history shared by many of Alastair Reynolds’ books has been called the Revelation Space Universe (RSU). The world gets its name from the first book to feature it, namely Revelation Space. RSU and space opera: Reynolds writes space opera, which to me means stories that contrast the heroic individuality of the protagonist against the enormity of space. That “enormity...
