It seems that the business world is waking up to the profit pontential of space exploration/exploitation. This article at CNNMoney.com discusses these issues, comparing space to the Wild West, and projects like the space elevator to the railroads that opened it up for expansion.

I really hate it when people use their mobile phones in the library, in flagrant disregard for the signage that asks them not to. But maybe soon it won’t be a problem for us, as well as for cinema and theatre-goers, thanks to a special paint that has copper-filled nanotubes suspended in it, that the manufacturor claims will block mobile phone signals.

As the literary world mourns the loss of one of its most unique and strong voices, tributes and remembrances are flooding the web. Henry Jenkins of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program has posted up transcripts of two of her appearances there, one of which is a discussion with fellow SF author Samuel Delany.

Researchers have discovered a new method of forming complex networks of nanotubes, which causes large interconnected hexagonal networks of the tubes to form on the surface of a layered crystal in under a second.