Spider Star

The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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Praise for Star Dragon

"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin

"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine

"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review

"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly

"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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Approaching the End of the Year Starlinks

December 28th, 2008

I seem to have accumulated a bunch of them.

Best 50 Astronomy Pictures of the Year 2008. Some really cool shots. Worth a click and a look. Not a slideshow.

An interesting article and response about evolutionary psychology. I’ve always thought evolutionary psychology to have some of the best explanations going for some things, and the field has some successes, but it is also quite fair to criticize the lack of rigor it often fails to provide. Anyway, there’s some good stuff in evolutionary psychology and it’s still a young field. Some healthy criticism is good for science.

A friend pointed out this Cracked list of 7 (stupid) people who sued the scientific method. Funny lists, a lot of dumb people. I’ve got a related list with some overlap I’ve been working on. I’m a little less interested in the garbage like astrologers suing NASA, and more in the things like the ridiculous and semi-ridiculous claims adopted by large minorities, often supported by a few scientists, that do more serious damage. The overlap between the lists includes the Large Hadron Collider is going to destroy the Earth by making a black hole. The anti-vaccination crowd is in there, too.

And speaking of dumb anti-vaccination people, over POLIO, count the Taliban. This is part of their generally insane attitude about everything, and the article discusses how they’ve been destroying schools for girls for years now. Moreover, other somewhat more moderate Muslim practices like wrapping women in burqas, is a health risk in northern countries. A deficiency in vitamin D, a vitamin made by your body by being exposed to sunlight, causes a lot of health problems, especially in pregnant women.

And amateur superheroes, the so-called Reals, continue to grow in number in the United States. I think this is kind of cool, but worry about how many are going to experience violent deaths and other misfortunes. A few, certainly. I wonder if someone could at least set up some real-world training centers for them. I think it makes the world a more fun and interesting place, for sure, and helps me to remember there is good in the world to balance out the stupid freaks like the Taliban.

Brain birth defects reversed with stem cell therapy. Really, what the Bush administration did lying about the state of stem cell research to justify their narrow-minded, legally inconsistent, and religiously based decision to block federal funding was a crime against humanity.

Finally, an interesting article about how the large scale structure of the universe may affect our determinations about the existence and quantity of dark energy in the universe. The punchline is, “not too much it appears,” although the effects could have turned out to be large in principle. Good science check here.

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