I like the idea behind the show occasionally aired on Animal Planet and Discovery, The Future Is Wild. Since the process of evolution never stops, what might be living on Earth over the millions of years it will exist? The full version of The Future Is Wild is some three hours long and filled with intriguing renderings of potential future organisms. But one has to wonder, how likely are those guesses about what evolution might bring to the planet in over 200 million years? In the last 200 million year jump we went from a tiny reptile with an odd hip joint to the biggest animals that ever walked the Earth to intelligent life. Are turtles bigger than even the largest known dinosaur and flying fish really out of the question when we think about it?

Maybe not, but it's very likely to be all wrong as the evolutionary adaptations we imagine are things we're designing. Actual evolution will come up with very weird things and will be messy and unpredictable because it's not designing adaptations, but animals who happen to be able to survive in a given environment at a given time. These programs are interesting, fun but very doubtfully will be able to give us an accurate idea of the future, even with a panel of highly distinguished scientists on board. The way evolution is show in popular science programs makes it seem guided and purposeful as we try to project every possible stage of development. However, what we're doing is missing the messiness of it all and sudden changes that catch on and eventually make new species.

NGC 281, The Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia

This picture is a composite of 12, 15 minute exposures made through a Hydrogen-alpha filter, so, the otherwise red image, has been desaturated to black and white. It was taken in my back garden in Chelmsford at the beginning of October this year.

The nebulous area is about 35 arc minutes across and 10,000 light years distant. It is an area of new (about a million years old) and forming stars, probably in the dark, dust lane, regions of the nebula. The very small open cluster (IC 1590) near the centre contains the smaller group of bright stars that is illuminating this nebula.

NGC 7635, The Bubble Nebula and M52 in Cassiopeia

This picture is a composite of 9, 15 minute exposures taken under the beautiful dark skies of Kelling Heath at this years Autumn Equinox Star Camp.

They are an often photographed pair, ideal for wide field imaging with small, short focal length telescopes.

M52 is the small open cluster of more than 150 stars, of magnitude 8 or fainter, and 13 arc minutes across, in the right half of the picture. It was first recorded by Charles Messier in 1774. The distance is not well known, but is in the ball park of 5,000 light years.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Bubble Nebula NGC 7635"][/caption]

The spectacular Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635), on my astronomical A-list, is an apparent bubble floating in a sea of red gas. It is 3 arc minutes or 6 light years across and 7,000 light years away. The bubble is expanding at the unbelievable speed of 4 million miles per hour! It was formed by the stellar wind from the blue, 8^th magnitude, central star blasting into the surrounding denser material. This central star, at some 40 times the mass of our own Sun, is living a predictably short and very violent life.

Sh2-101, The Tulip Nebula in Cygnus

The second Sharpless catalogue (Sh2), published by Stewart Sharpless in 1959 is a catalogue of over 300 large nebulae, many of which are suitable for wide field, narrow band imaging. In other words great for small refractors under light polluted skies.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="The Tulip Nebula Sh2-101"][/caption]

This tulip flower shaped nebula, taken in June this year, in Chelmsford, is a composite of 24, 10 minute exposures, taken over two nights, using an H alpha filter. The star that looks over exposed, but is in fact surrounded by nebulous gas, in the top right, is Eta Cygni.

The Tulip is an emission nebula about 20 arc minutes across and 8,000 light years distant.

Just over half way back to the Tulip from eta cygni on the picture, and making an angle of about 45 degrees is a close pair of bright stars. The brighter, 9^th magnitude star, has an optically invisible, but strongly x-ray emitting partner, the famous Cygnus X-1. This was the first object discovered that was considered likely to be a Black Hole.

Hardware and Software

• Modified Canon EOS350D DSLR. The internal infra red filter has been replaced with a sharper cut off filter to extend the red end of its spectral response, particularly to give improved sensitivity to the hydrogen alpha line.

• Starlight express SXV guide camera in a separate, piggy backed, guiding telescope (70mm f/10).

• Televue x0.8 focal reducer/field flattener to give a plate scale of 2.2 arc seconds per pixel (1.8 without the reducer).

• William Optics ZS 105, f/7 apochromatic refractor.

• Losmandy GM8 mount.

• MaxIm DL for camera control, guiding input and focusing, via a laptop, and for image calibration and registration.

• Photoshop CS3 for post processing.

Sources

• NASA website
• Celestial Objects for Modern Telescopes, Michael A Covington.
• CCD Images of the Sharpless Catalogue

Keith Elliott

October 2008

Topics so far include dark matter, cosmology and the Large Hadron Collider.

The radio show is streamed from www.cfrc.ca, but if you can't listen to it live you can download the shows as podcasts here.

Some time back Jennifer Ouellette gave a good list of Science popularizing books (or is it popular science books?) There are 75 of them, out of which, I have read only a handful.Here are some of them:

4. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
9. *Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
10. 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
11. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
15. *A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
17. Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
27. *Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter (as I mentioned earlier)
29. A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
33. *Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
43. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
56. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Saga
64. The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
65. Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
72. Chaos, James Gleick
73. *Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
75. Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais

(Jeez, Jen, how did you land up with Yakov Perelman, my favorite - and the one I thought not many would know...)

She writes at the beginning of the list

0. Principia, Isaac Newton

Oh, just kidding. Granted, it's an influential work that pretty much founded modern physics, but has anybody read the Principia in its entirety lately? Really? How about De Revolutionibus? If so, do you not have a life? Seriously, Newton would turn over in his grave in horror at any inclusion of his masterpiece in a list of popular science books.

Well, er, I HAVE read Newton's Principia, at least in parts for my Ph. D. and subsequent research; that too, from more than one translation. And, er, I DO own a copy of the (modern translation) of 1543 version of the de Revolutionibus of Nikolai Copernici, and, have read a few pages...

On the 2nd October 1608, the Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey demonstrated the first practical telescope to the Dutch parliament. He is thought to have been the first to try and patent the invention, which could provide the user with roughly three times magnification. (However, legend has it that Lippershey got the idea after seeing some children playing around with his lenses in a telescopic fashion...)

50 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH

On the 11th October 1958, Pioneer 1 became the first spacecraft to be launched by NASA. The mission objective was to study the radiation, magnetic fields, and micrometeorites of the Earth/Moon environment, but due to a malfunction at launch it never acheived its intended lunar orbit. It did reach an altitude of nearly 114,000km above the Earth though and was the most successful of the early "Thor-Able" craft.

This article in Popular Science on strange sleep disorders (pg. 55) puts a name to my awkward dreaming. According to this, I am a lucid dreamer, which means that I can control what happens in my dreams, which is true. 

"Lucid dreamers' brains stay conscious during REM sleep, allowing them to control their dreams' content. Recent electroencephalogram evidence points to heightened activity in the region of the brain that processes self-awareness."

"Bizarre Sleep Disorders" Melinda Dodd, Popular Science, October 2008 (Volume 273, No. 4)

Showing this to my friends (who frequently reached out and took the magazine, geekily interested), they thought that this was the coolest thing ever.

Frankly, I find it annoying. What often happens to me is when I wake myself up after dreaming like this, my head is mildly throbbing. I never stop thinking! Also, I tend to be chased in my dreams (my dream-self takes this as a game, and grins madly) which makes my knees ache too, because I can't run any faster.

Perhaps one day I learn to embrace this idiosyncrasy.

If you have not seen the ISS pass over before - you are looking for a fairly fast moving bright point object. The times and locations given in the above link will guide you.

Because 2008 has brought so many blank-disced Suns, some observers had wondered when the ongoing deep solar minimum was to end. Today's new sunspot is an encouraging sign that the 11-year solar cycle is indeed progressing...albeit quite slowly.

This activity might also give the Society something to look at through the new Lunt LS60 solar scope purchased recently.

I drew some suspicious glances reading this one on the subway earlier this year, but it was completely worth it. The scientific explanations for the way women sometimes act the way they do are endlessly fascinating and enlightening. Does it make up for my not having read any Jane Austen? Probably not. But it's a start.

Do be sure, though, to tune in if you can next Thursday, when Dr. Brizendine, author of The Female Brain and head of the Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic at UC San Francisco , appears on Oprah to discuss the difference between male and female brains. Check your collections for this one; we're all aware of Oprah's sway.

-David

La versión española de la revista estadounidense Popular Science ha elaborado un informe gráfico sobre las carreras universitarias españolas de ciencias, incluidas las técnicas y las ingenierías.

A partir de las cifras producidas por instituciones públicas (CIS, CSIC, RedOTRI, MICINN, etc.) y alguna privada (Universia, La Caixa y ADECCO), Popular Science ha elaborado un ranking de la situación de las carreras científicas en universidades españolas.

Según el informe de Popular Science, entre 2000 y 2005, las universidades con mayor producción científica, es decir, las que más investigaciones publican en revistas científicas, son la Universidad de Barcelona y la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. La Autónoma de Barcelona se sitúa en el tercer puesto.

En relación con las prácticas que el alumnado de ciencias realiza en empresas, son la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (con 8.000 convenios) y la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (con 7.000 convenios) las que firman mayor número de convenios. La Universidad Politécnica de Madrid y la de Cataluña son las que más presupuestos dedican a este tipo de contratos para trabajos científicos o de formación en empresas.

Dentro de los 6.545,72 millones de euros que se invirtieron para el Plan Nacional de I+D en España en 2006, se destinaron 6.198,86 a investigación científica. La investigación y el desarrollo tecnológico industrial (2,9 millones de euros) son las áreas que más inversión han requerido, seguidas de Fomento y Coordinación de la investigación científica y técnica (un millón de euros). Por su lado, la investigación básica ha tenido una inversión de 0,6 millones de euros.

Entre las diez universidades españolas que mayor financiación han recibido del VI Programa Marco de la UE de apoyo a la investigación destacan la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (con más de 25 millones de euros y 127 actividades organizadas), la Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (con 32 millones de euros y 117 actividades), y la Universidad de Barcelona (con más de 19 millones de euros y 82 actividades). En el VII Programa Marco, la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid lidera hasta ahora el número de actividades organizadas (44), seguida de la Politécnica de Cataluña con 24.

El informe también incluye datos sobre los estudios más valorados por la opinión pública, entre los que domina el de analista-programador .NET en el perfil de Ingenierías y Tecnologías de la Información (aunque descienda el número de estudiantes de carreras técnicas) y el de pediatra en el perfil de Ciencia y Salud.

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1. ATLAS DIGITAL DE LA ESPAÑA UNIVERSITARIA

Informe elaborado por la Universidad de Cantabria con la colaboración del banco Santander. La publicación aborda la situación de la educación superior en España desde una perspectiva geográfica y la relaciona con tres elementos clave: la oferta, la demanda y los recursos tanto educativos como económicos. Analiza además otros temas de relevancia como la futura demanda estudiantil en el ámbito de los distritos universitarios. El proyecto del atlas se enmarca en la línea de colaboración que la Universidad de Cantabria y el Santander mantienen de forma constante y continuada desde 1996.

2. CONSEJO DE COORDINACIÓN UNIVERSITARIA

Órgano de coordinación académica, así como de cooperación, consulta y propuesta en materia universitaria. Elabora la documentación y los estudios necesarios para la adopción de las resoluciones, propuestas e informes que inciden sobre temas relacionados con la educación universitaria. Entre otras tareas, el Consejo debe recibir las comunicaciones de los nombramientos realizados por los rectores, y asegurar la difusión, en todas las universidades, de las convocatorias de los concursos públicos para la contratación de personal docente e investigador.

3. RedOTRI

Red de Oficinas de Transferencia de Resultados de Investigación (OTRI) de las universidades españolas cuya misión es potenciar y difundir el papel de las universidades como elementos esenciales dentro del sistema nacional de innovación. RedOTRI se constituye como Grupo de Trabajo Permanente dentro de la Comisión Sectorial de I+D de la Conferencia de Rectores de Universidades Españolas.

4. OFICINA EUROPEA

Sirve de apoyo a la política científica y tecnológica del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) a través de sus actividades de coordinación y apoyo de los agentes del VII Programa Marco de I+D (7PM) de la Unión Europea, incrementando y mejorando la calidad de la participación española en los proyectos del 7PM, en colaboración estrecha con el CDTI. Es una oficina de estrategia y coordinación. Realiza un seguimiento exhaustivo de todas las iniciativas europeas tendiendo puentes entre los investigadores y los representantes políticos que toman decisiones.

5. MICINN

El Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, dirigido por Cristina Garmendia, es uno de los nuevos ministerios creado en la segunda legislatura del gobierno del PSOE. Su objetivo es impulsar las políticas de I+D+I (Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación). Recoge todas las competencias de Ciencia y Educación Universitaria que en la legislatura anterior tenía el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.

6. CDTI

El Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (CDTI) es una Entidad Pública Empresarial, dependiente del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, que promueve la innovación y el desarrollo tecnológico de las empresas españolas. Su objetivo es contribuir a la mejora del nivel tecnológico de las empresas españolas mediante el desarrollo de diferentes actividades.

7. SCIMAGO RESEARCH GROUP

Grupo de investigación de la Universidad de Granada, Extremadura, Carlos III (Madrid) y Alcalá de Henares, dedicado al análisis de información, representación y recuperación por medio de técnicas de visualización.

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Más información:

Consulte el informe de Popular Science:

Página 1

Página 2

Página 3.

Vía: SINC

]]> http://stopeugenics.wordpress.com/?p=25 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:23:59 +0000 stopeugenics http://stopeugenics.el.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/the-latest-man-made-organs/ In the "you'll live forever if you're ungodly rich" department:

Almost 100,000 people languish on organ-transplant waiting lists.  But new tissue-fabrication techniques should make swapping a man-made liver as easy as snapping Lego bricks into place.

Yeah, but even though you can afford legos you will not be able to afford the million-dollar costs for artificial replacement organs. According to the article, in five years we will be able to "print" fake blood vessels, drink ourselves silly like Mickey Mantle and replace our livers in about 15 to 25 years, and not have to worry about Flomax thanks to fake kidneys in about 10 to twenty years.  The article notes, "The first artifical organ was a bladder."  So, this stuff is already here.  It is simply a matter of time before the rich can buy themselves out of death.  The rest of us will have to be culled because of the terrible environmental evils of "over-population."

Source: Popular Science, Volume 273 #4, 10/08, p. 55.

Popular Science set up their own predictions exchange called PPX (the PopSci Predictions Exchange) after publishing this article.  I joined the market around that time, and have since been a fairly active trader.  However, this exchange uses fake money (POP$.)  Eventhough I really have nothing to gain from participating, it is still an interesting idea and I have been very succesful compared to others in the market.  Currently, I am ranked at 128 of 29,220 members and have turned my initial 200,000 POP$ into 1,860,360 POP$.

Currently, the PPX is trading 126 stocks and releases a new one every 3 days.  The stocks cover items ranging from the success of Grand Theft Auto IV to the chance of finding water on another planet.  People who are interested in modern technology should find the PPX a good way to waste several minutes a day on the internet.  At the least, you can find out about new products before the general public.

At 7:15pm, our Annual General Meeting will begin - a review of the past year from our committee members, your chance to put your views across, and we will elect our new committee.

At 8pm, Dr Clark will be talking about the Tunguska event - 100 years on from the famous air-burst impact by an object from space.

The meeting takes place at the Henry Dixon Hall, Rivenhall End, Witham. For details on this and how to get there, click the Events tab at the top of this page.

The human brain is one of the most fascinating things in the universe. And this is held true by the book "Phantoms of the Brain" by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran. In this brilliant account of different cases on neurology, Ramachandran gives us a peek into the inner workings of the human mind -- how we deceive ourselves, how we perceive our world, why we laugh, why we are depressed, why we could unconsciously be in denial of many unnacceptable things in our body and in our life and why we believe God.

Many of the featured cases here are bizarre. His experiments are simple. But his deductions about brain function would just jump through you and will make you look at life yourself in a different way.

It's a witty and insightful book about many things we never knew about ourselves. And this is just one of those books that I would always remember for the rest of my life.

http://www.svd.se/kulturnoje/nyheter/artikel_1622429.svd

Many thanks to the lovely Charlotta Lindell for asking me to share my thoughts.

ha en bra dag!

A good Archimedes page at Drexel.  Nova had a series about Archimedes' lost manuscript, suggesting there may have been calculus involved.

Related On This Site:  Re-Post: Archimedes Screw

From the get-go you know that Professor Cox is a person you want in your laboratory - he is a tireless advocate of communicating science to the world and his outreach style appeals to many. And you can see why from this excellent lecture he gave at the TED Conference this year:

But as with many modern scientists who are working on cutting-edge research, they are often at the mercy of public misconception, media hype and personal attacks. And recently, along with the mass hysteria surrounding the start of experiments with the Large Hadron Collider this week, we've heard news that that some of the physicists involved with the project are receiving threats...and one starts to further lose faith in humanity...

As Professor Cox puts it:- “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a tw*t."

If you think you'll be awake then, see the ISS viewing times for detailed listings.

Spotted these old Popular Science mags and could resist stacking 25 pounds of them. They're actually piled up on an old spring scale.

I've got half an hour in the lounge in Heathrow (the boss's guest on his platinum Voyager card ;-) ), and will make the best of the free wi-fi.

Here are the rules:
1. Highlight those you've read in full
2. Asterisk those you intend to read
3. Add any additional popular science books you think belong on the list
4. Link back to me [i.e. Jennifer]... so I can keep track of everyone's additions.

I've only read 10, but the really bad news is that most of that was during my university years. Not too long ago, but still, I see a trend, and it's not a good one. And reversing it will not make my wife happy. On the other hand, she has recently started reading some pretty serious literature and poetry in the evenings, so I suppose I should switch off Discovery (and Wordpress) and rather read a little.
The list:
1. Micrographia, Robert Hooke
2. The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
3. Never at Rest, Richard Westfall
4. * Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
5. Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
6. The Devil's Doctor, Philip Ball
7. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
8. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
9. Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
10. * 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
11. * The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
12. Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
13. Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
14. Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
15. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
16. A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes
17. Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
19. Universal Foam, Sidney Perkowitz
20. Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman
21. The Code Book, Simon Singh
22. The Elements of Murder, John Emsley
23. Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer
24. Time's Arrow, Martin Amis
25. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson
26. Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman
27. Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
28. * The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine
29. A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
30. The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
31. E=mc², David Bodanis
32. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife
33. Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
34. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin
35. Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
36. Apollo's Fire, Michael Sims
37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
38. Fermat's Last Theorem, Amir Aczel
39. Stiff, Mary Roach
40. Astroturf, M.G. Lord
41. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
42. Longitude, Dava Sobel
43. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
44. The Mummy Congress, Heather Pringle
45. The Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio
46. Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay
47. This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
48. The Executioner's Current, Richard Moran
49. Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
50. Pythagorus' Trousers, Margaret Wertheim
51. Neuromancer, William Gibson
52. The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
53. The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
54. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
55. Einstein's Clocks and Poincare's Maps, Peter Galison
56. *** The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan (This is currently at the top of the reading wishlist)
57. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
58. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
59. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
60. Consilience, E.O. Wilson
61. Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
62. Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
63. Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel
64. The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
65. Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
66. Storm World, Chris Mooney
67. The Carbon Age, Eric Roston
68. The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind
69. Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
70. From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne (a bit out of place, imho)
71. Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
72. Chaos, James Gleick
73. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
74. The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
75. Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais

My four picks for what should be added to the list:

1. Ingenious Pursuits - Lisa Jardine (she's on the list, but for another book)
2. Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon Singh
3. The Big Bang - Simon Singh
4. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

OK - on my way back home. Everyone, please go the NGK Moreleta Park and pray that I don't get eaten by a gay tiger when I step off the plane in lovely South Africa.

If you're a tech enthusiast with some nominations, e-mail 'em to BOWN@popsci.com. If you work at a company that's doing cool stuff and would like to toot your own horn, use this online entry form.

Thanks in advance for your ideas!

We have two bright, curious teenagers in the house, so I thought I'd try to find a good magazine for them to read. Some kind of science magazine, something with a hopeful outlook, to show them the wonderful possibilities that lie ahead for them. I decided to subscribe to Popular Science, since it focuses on upcoming technology. Turns out most of the stuff Popular Science covers is very fringe, and unlikely to ever become reality. I mean, fifty years ago they were predicting "cars without wheels." Seen any of those flying by lately? We are, after all, in the future.

We are living in the future
I'll tell you how I know
I read it in the paper
Fifteen years ago
We're all driving rocket ships
And talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry
And standing in soup lines
We are standing in soup lines
-John Prine

I think the mistake I made was in taking Popular Science at face value. It's really not about the future at all. It's about satisfying a certain geeky male fantasy about saving the world through technology. Is this really the message I want to convey to my kids? That no matter what the problem is, science can solve it for us? That's right, folks, no need to change your lifestyle or make sacrifices: science will take care of it.

Population out of control? No problem, we'll build hydroponic skyscrapers! (That's on the current cover, by the way.) Gasoline running out? We'll engineer some bacteria that'll turn sludge into fuel. The city of the future is coming, folks! Step right up! More and more, PopSci is talking green, but their solutions all have to do with more, and better, so that we can continue to live the high tech lifestyle without interruption.

Excuse me, guys, but wasn't it technology that gave us greenhouse gases and global warming and nuclear waste and toxic waste and shopping malls and four cars in every driveway and...oh, never mind.

This magazine isn't really interested in predicting the future after all. It's just about the love of gadgets. It celebrates the New, with an unwavering belief that new is always better, and that all problems can and should be solved through inventions. Science leads the way, and things are always getting better. Don't believe me? Just look at the cool new stuff every month. Scientific progress! Even interpersonal problems have a technological solution. Can't get it up? Just check out the ads in the back for the male enhancement wonders of science. Having a little PTSD from seeing your buddies blown up in Iraq? No problem: science has found a way to make it all go away. (No, I'm not making this up.)

Definitely not the sort of thing I had in mind for my kids when I subscribed. It's just a Wired magazine for the pocket protector crowd. Oh well. Excuse me while I hop in my personal, hydrogen-powered helicopter and fly on down to the spaceport. I'm telling ya: the future is just around the corner! It's gonna be great!

John Allen Paulos is a mathematician-atheist who has collected, like Dawkins, the most common arguments for the existence of God, and, like Dawkins, he refutes them one by one in a hugely entertaining way. Some of them I understood a lot better in the short and sweet form presented here, even though there is nothing original in them. Paulos' witty style, spiced with personal anecdotes was a pleasure to follow and quotes like "much of theology [...] is a kind of verbal magic show" are worth remembering.

I cannot possibly badmouth the God Delusion, but at some time in almost any long-term (reading) relationship comes the point where you like to flirt with the cheeky book next door because it makes you laugh in unexpected places and gives you just what you needed in a lighter and quicker way.

- Reviewed by Kirsten -