Although it was released way back in 2000, I watched the movie Thirteen Days (DVD, Amazon US & UK) for the first time this weekend. Based on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, I found it absolutely riveting. But for greater depth and accuracy on the subject, I’m planning to read The Kennedy Tapes (Amazon US & UK) and One Hell of a Gamble (Amazon US & UK). As the movie’s tagline says, you’ll never believe how close we came.
- Two fossils in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens.
- Stone Age settlement found in English Channel is being washed away.
- The remains of a massive Neolithic settlement dating back more than 5,000 years have been discovered in Orkney.
- New research says it’s the way genes are used that accounts for the striking differences between humans and chimps.
- Timbuktu hopes its ancient texts will spark a revival.
- Foam tile gouges three-and-a-half-inch hole in space shuttle. NASA weighs risky repair.
- China reveals first astronaut’s brush with death.
- There’s Helium-3 in them thar hills: China to map ‘every inch’ of the moon.
- Earth to go splat on the sun like a bug on a windshield. From Pravda, but how could I resist such a great headline?
- Dust ‘comes alive’ in space.
- How did the Universe begin?
- What causes gravity?
- What is it that keeps Earth’s plates oiled and on the move?
- Is glass a solid, or merely an extremely slow moving liquid?
- The race is on to detect dark matter. Shouldn’t they be searching for dark energy instead?
- Physicists take a trip to the nuclear ‘island of inversion’, where the normal rules of physics don’t apply to some radioactive elements.
- Pfizer in Nigeria: Drugs, poverty, and ignorance collide.
- Scientists are trying a plumber’s approach to rid the brain of the amyloid buildup that plagues Alzheimer’s patients: Simply drain the toxic protein away.
- Analysts see ‘simply incredible’ shrinking of floating ice in the Arctic. Canada to turn to military might in Arctic scramble.
- Ancient microorganisms, long frozen in glaciers, may return to life as the glaciers melt.
- After oil and gas, Sahara sunshine?
- Study says sunspots – or the slight brightening of the sun that goes along with them – may be linked to heavy rains, flooding, and even outbreaks of bug-borne disease in East Africa.
- Trees won’t fix global warming.
- Resolved: Public corporations shall take us seriously.
- If you’ve consoled yourself with the thought that there’s more to life than being really goodlooking, you’re in for a shock from new research.
- Sure, we’ve all wanted to see a close-up, in-focus UFO video — but is this one real or fake?
- The dream of time travel. Mallett’s Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality is available at Amazon US & UK.
Quote of the Day:
In Fort Worth on the morning of the day he died, John F. Kennedy and his wife discussed the risks that a President inevitably faces when he makes public appearances. What Kennedy said was mentally recorded by his special assistant, Kenneth O’Donnell, who repeated it to the Warren Commission: “If anybody really wanted to shoot the President of the U.S., it was not a very difficult job—all one had to do was get a high building some day with a telescopic rifle, and there was nothing anybody could do to defend against such an attempt.” A few minutes later, Kennedy departed for Dallas.
First paragraph of Time‘s ‘The Warren Commission Report‘, published Oct. 2, 1964.
