Richard Leis

Horror Writer & Poet

Month: March 2004

  • Cash Prize for Space

    The X Prize is US$10,000,000 for the first privately funded team to launch three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles), safely return them to Earth, and do it all over again within two weeks using the same spaceship. The prize is meant to stimulate interest and investment in space tourism and may help advance technologies…

  • The Weak-Jawed Mutants

    Imagine that you are a new parent. Your baby is a strange-looking creature: obviously human, but with much more delicate features than the norm. At first you worry, but he grows into a healthy and very intelligent child. The mutation that caused his strange looks makes him weaker in some minor ways but he has…

  • A New Day, a New Mars

    A New Day, a New Mars

    First there was evidence of fossil bacteria in a Martian rock found in Antarctica. Next came confirmation of liquid water on the surface of Mars in the distant past. Now three separate scientific teams have discovered methane in the Martian atmosphere. On Earth, two primary sources produce methane: volcanoes and life. So, what is the…

  • Population Future

    Most of world will live in cities by 2007, UN says (AFP). – UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Urban areas are growing so quickly that for the first time in history, most of the world will be living in cities by 2007, a new UN study said. – Source: Yahoo! News – Science; Thu Mar 25,…

  • Nine Lives are Not Enough

    Cute CC is the clone of a calico cat and looks absolutely nothing like the original. This apparently is only a problem with cloning calico cats in particular, and other cats should clone more exactly. Genetics Savings and Clones is now commercializing their cat cloning project. They offered to clone up to six cats per…

  • MESSENGER Delayed

    The launch of MESSENGER, the first mission to Mercury since 1974, has just been delayed until after June 30, 2004. The planetary gravity-assist flyby schedule has changed because of the delay. MESSENGER will now fly once around the Earth, twice around Venus, and three times around Mercury before entering orbit around Mercury in March 2011…

  • Spinning Webs and Microstructures

    Betterhumans has a story about a new technology for “printing” 3-D devices as small as one that could fit inside a human hair. The abstract for the paper in the journal Nature is available online as is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report. Talk about foundation building.the article mentions such technologies could eventually benefit…

  • Mars – Liquid Water on Surface in Distant Past

    Mars – Liquid Water on Surface in Distant Past

    How beautiful the view is now…how beautiful it must have been then. NASA announced yesterday evidence from its Opportunity Rover of a salty sea in the distant past. The evidence is quite compelling. Even though the current rovers are not best equipped to look for signs of ancient and current life, scientists admitted that if…

  • Building a Brand New Home in 24 Hours

    [Updated May 17, 2018 to fix article link.] Marshall Brain has suggested that in about 30 years we will be at 50% unemployment because of robotics and automation. He specifically predicted robots building our homes and structures in his “Robotic Nation” essay. Now he brings us word of a home-building robot prototype and he suggests…

  • Science, Pseudoscience, and My Love of the End of the World

    I have a morbid fascination with Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. He interviews guests regarding topics such as ghosts, UFOS, governmental conspiracies, and end-of-the-world scenarios. Tonight his guests were David Booth and Wayne Green. David Booth claims to have had a psychic dream about a global disaster sometime this coming autumn. Tonight was…

  • Sedna in the Sky with Diamonds

    Tenth planet? Oort cloud member? Planet-like? Just call it Sedna, the newly discovered furthest object in our solar system, second only to Mars in redness and estimated to be about three-fourths the size of Pluto.

  • Robots Everywhere

    [Updated May 17, 2018 with new article link.] Chatty robots, cocktail-shaking computers, pen phones wow CeBIT crowds (AFP). AFP – A chatting robot, a BMW that can make dinner reservations and a computer server that can mix a dry martini are among the gadgets drawing crowds at the start of the CeBIT, the world’s biggest…

  • The Mice of Outrageous Fortune

    Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. 17 May 2018: Update to fix links and remove direct link to pseudoscientist Richard Hoagland’s website. The Methuselah Foundation is a prize for the first science team to extend the average lifespan of a mouse from three years to five years. The hope is…

  • Wall Monitors

    Start-ups turn flat-panel TVs into works of art (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com – An expensive new digital television is big, beautiful, flat and can hang on the wall. Some might even consider the set a piece of art. – Source: Yahoo! News – Technology; 3/16/2004; 9:23:00 AM Change is not always earth-shattering, but sometimes comes in happy…