shark bytes

"The Door Dilated," Needless Exposition Contracted: Heinlein as Narrative Innovator.
James L. Cambias, F. Brett Cox, Daniel P. Dern (L), Fred Lerner, Tom Purdom
Robert A. Heinlein was the first sf author to regularly write about the future as though the reader already lived there. From our current perspective it may be hard to imagine just how radical an innovation this was. We celebrate the centenary of his birth by examining the profound influence he's had on the art of sf storytelling.

Smooth and Lumpy Expanded Universes.
Michael Cisco, James Alan Gardner (L), Yves Meynard, Ian Randal Strock, Rick Wilber.
There are convincing and unconvincing ways for a writer to build on a created world. The introduction of the Bene Tleilax in Dune Messiah strikes many readers as an off-note, because it's inconceivable that the organization wouldn't have been mentioned in the original novel. In contrast, the Order of the Phoenix fit beautifully into J. K. Rowling's world. Isaac Asimov spent the last years of his career relentlessly expanding and merging his created universes, with controversial results. What other examples stand out? What are some of the tricks of the trade?

Midsummer Nights’ Science will recount the scientific transformation that began more than a century ago with the seminal studies by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel — the “father of genetics” — who observed the ways in which physical traits were passed from one pea plant to another. In honor of the scientific field it helped to launch, the pea plant provides the inspiration for the seminar series, which takes its name from one of William Shakespeare’s well-known plays.

• On July 11, David Reich will explain how decoding DNA from chimpanzees and gorillas is enabling scientists to dissect the evolutionary relationship between our ancestors and those of other primates.
  
• The following week, on July 18, Pardis Sabeti will explore what researchers are learning about the crucial changes to our DNA that have occurred during human evolution and the biological forces that drive these changes.
  
• On July 25, Todd Golub will describe how genomics is helping scientists to classify tumors according to what goes wrong inside them — information that has the potential to advance the understanding and perhaps treatment of cancer.
  
• Concluding the series on August 1 will be Vamsi Mootha. He will deconstruct the inner workings of mitochondria — the miniature engines that normally supply our cells with much-needed energy — and how their misfiring can lead to human disease.

The nine lawmakers who switched sides on gay marriage yesterday came from both parties, different parts of the state, and they traveled different ideological paths to their decisions . But in interviews yesterday, they seemed to share something in common: a desire to listen to all sides and a concern about hurting gay couples and families who they believed in many cases had experienced discrimination. The lawmakers spent hours, even days at a time during the last five months, meeting gay couples and their friends and relatives. Their personal stories made the difference more than anything else, the lawmakers said.

Some constituents wrote saying that they had changed their minds, like the elderly woman who said she previously asked Candaras to support the ban.
"But since then, Gale," the woman wrote, as Candaras told it, "this lovely couple, these two men, moved in next door to me, and they have a couple of children and they're married, and they help me with my lawn. And if they can't be married in Massachusetts, they're going to leave -- and then who would help me with my lawn?"

MR. SNOW: But you also understand, we expect to have a Republican Congress, so we're not going to sit around and start doing "contingency plans."