Astronomer Charles Lada thinks that stars may form in isolation more often than previous scientific models have suggested. As many of these are red dwarfs, stable over a much longer period than a star like our Sun, this finding appears to shorten the odds of life developing elsewhere in the universe. [NewScientistSpace]

I’ve never put much thought into the movie ratings system, so I found this review by Moriarty pretty damn interesting. It considers the recent documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Choice quote: “The way they let cartoon violence pass with a PG-13 or even a PG in many cases while making sure that any hint of normal sexual dynamics between adults is slapped with a restricted rating is just asinine, and it’s got to have something to do with the way our culture gets hung up over its naughty bits while having no problem at all expressing its rage and aggression through violence.”

One of the side effects of a rapid and accelerating world is that learning is constant, and constantly evolving. Thus Safari Books Online’s concept of selling “Rough Cuts” of technology books in the process of being written makes a weird kind of sense. [boingboing]

2006 is shaping up to be the year that nanotech really gets off the drawing board. Scientists affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison have managed to make ‘block co-polymers’ form themselves into complex 3D structures with a very low flaw rate. This opens up a number of applications, from chemical separation and catalysis to semiconductor manufacture.[PhysOrg.com]