It looks like no Democrat has the guts to do it. So my "Designated Trump-flatterer" turns out to be - the President of France! Followed by the (also French) Prime Minister of Canada. Good for you old frogs! Now teach our own Resistance the art of Judo.


Tiny, Lens-Free Camera Could Hide in Clothes, Glasses. Surprised? It's sometimes called "Brin's Corollary to Moore's Law... the cams get smaller, faster, cheaper, better, more numerous and mobile with every passing day. Light is spreading everywhere and you will not evade it... but you might USE it to stay free and safe, if citizens learn to look back at power. See The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

https://www.livescience.com/59642-ultrathin-tiny-lens-free-camera.html


Revered colleague and friend Nancy Kress offers up wisdom here on whether science fiction does its part to encourage problem solving... or goes for cheap undermining of both science and confidence.


Michael Ravine, one of the guys who made the Malin camera that takes the big pictures on Juno, just posted this image of Jupiter's Red Spot. You've seen it here, first. Wow. Eye of Sauron stuff!

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/Vault/VaultOutput?VaultID=10394&t=1498672205

Reminiscent of a scene in my 1989 novel EARTH, the National Wildlife Property Repository, near Denver, is crammed with stuffed monkeys and ivory carvings, snow leopard coats and dried seal penises, chairs with tails and lamps with hooves. The repository contains 1.3 million confiscated items. See a purse of alligator skin; a stool made of an African elephant foot with a zebra skin cushion; walrus tusks; a hat made of black bear skin; medicinal snake wine; an orangutan skull. A room filled with tigers and leopards. I don’t know if it existed in 1989… but read my ultimate suggestion for what to do with these things… in EARTH.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/science/national-wildlife-property-repository-colorado.html

Midweek posting is about science fiction! Starting with... Over the years, many folks have written to me about The Postman. Most of them grasp its core message — that any civilization-wide collapse would not be like the Mad Max genre cliché, featuring survivors who only hunker down in passive acceptance while a lone hero battles some grotesque villain and his mohawk-wearing thugs. But Postman was deliberately crafted to break that cliche. Come read about how both those fighting for civilization -- and some wanting to bring it down -- are now citing this novel!

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/07/surviving-apocalypse-postman-influences.html

The coming Starship Conference in Monterrey will feature both me and Miguel Alcubierre, known for a speculative warp drive by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel.

Scan through the cool prizes for supporters of the Kickstarter campaign.



More than half of the Republicans surveyed for Monday's Pew poll say colleges and universities are hurting the country, a drastic shift from how the same group viewed such institutions two years ago. Alas, this article doesn't go to the heart of why. Every single fact-using profession is now warred upon by Fox and right-media... scientists, teachers, doctors, journalists, economists, civil servants... and now the FBI, Intel Officers and the U.S. Military Officer Corps.

The Orwellian hate fest toward fact-people became essential, as they are the ones standing in the way of a re-imposition of 6000 years of feudalism. And what do all fact-folks have in common? Nearly all were influenced by the fact-places called colleges and universities.

There's more to it, of course, and I explore the disease in more detail here: "Declining trust in our expert castes: what are underlying causes?"

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/04/declining-trust-in-rising-fear-of-our.html

Says Malin Space camera designer Mike Ravine: "In case you’d like to see what things are looking like on Juno in advance of this evening’s perijove pass, there’s a realtime rendering of the current spacecraft location at:

http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/orb/misc/juno_spacecraft/

Closest approach is a 6:55 PDT this evening. Eleven minutes later, we’ll fly over the Great Red Spot. Hopefully, it won’t take too many days to be the images down…"