Despite the best efforts of scientists, the role of the brain (as opposed to the mind) in the learning process is largely ignored by education systems. Ever since the turn of the millennium, a quiet revolution has been brewing at the Harvard School of Graduate, with courses creating graduate teachers capable of using the latest advances in genetics and brain scans to enhance education – and the student’s response to it. Which is great news – maybe a few decades down the line the same techniques will be used to enhance the apparent ability of dogs to learn in the same way as humans.

Of all the organisations cheerleading for 3D virtual environments, none has a bigger name or longer pedigree than IBM. And they must mean what they say, because they’re putting their money where their mouth is by designing a new range of mainframe computers based on the Cell processor (as used in the PS3) that are specifically created to handle the increased computing overheads that applications like Second Life demand of their hardware. So, is Big Blue aiming to reclaim the computing crown it once held in the golden era of mainframes? Or are their employees just really keen on taking virtual drugs at virtual raves?

Solipsists the world over are grinning with uneasy and paranoiac triumph after hearing the news that a group of Austrian physicists have asserted that, according to the best evidence available from quantum physics, reality as we know it doesn’t actually exist if there’s no one (or nothing) observing it. I’ll freely admit that this is probably pure journalistic overstatement of the genuine facts, but I for one don’t have the PhD that would allow me to know that for certain – and besides, it confirms something that I’ve secretly always felt to be not just true but self-evident. You are all figments of my imagination, you see, and I can make you all disappear just by clicking shut this wi* [Error Type: 500 – connection terminated.]

You’d have had to have been asleep underneath that heavy news-proof rock I mention periodically to not have heard about the Earth-like planet discovered a little over twenty light years from the ball of rock we currently call home. For the more detailed facts of the matter (unfiltered by mainstream journalism and headline editors), I refer you on to the ever-reliable Centauri Dreams, which discusses what is known for certain (and what is mere conjecture) about the planet and the solar syastem it is situated in, and then looks at the potential of the planet as an environment habitable to humans. Of course, not everyone is particularly impressed by this – Michael Anissimov believes (with some justification) that we should use our time and effort more effectively, and stop getting excited about other planets until we’ve properly addressed the issues and potentials of the one we find ourselves on already.

… but it’s not evenly distributed yet. Just to prove that it’s not only the Futurismic team who believe we’re living in a science fictional world, here’s an article by British sf author and critic Gwyneth Jones about the way science fiction has become science fact – and all the more sinister and alarming connotations that this state of play presents to us.