The image immediately put me in mind of Oscar Wilde's story "The Selfish Giant."

I was just talking with someone a few days ago about his novel about two giants. Are giants the new sexy vampires? We can only hope.

For those who like this sort of thing, I recommend Head to Toe, by Joe Orton. From the flap: "The hero,…

It may also mean being directed to the planet where lie concealed the ancient Tombs of the Cybermen.

That's not what teleology means. Being directed toward an end (telos) does not mean being toward a pinnacle of achievement.

I don't know that a molecules-thick layer should be called a slathering, unless one is seeking to put a distasteful spin on things. In my own view, lab-grown meat is much less squicky than the stupefying complex of processes going on inside the farm animals we raise for consumption: digestion, metabolism, endocytosis,…

Do a bit of Googling, and you'll find out how the researchers involved have been attempting to overcome the very shortcomings you imagine. The use of mechanical means to stimulate parallel fiber growth, for example; very clever. As for compositing large pieces from littler pieces — the use of transglutaminase is…

Robert Pinsky, also a famous author, also did a video game: Mindwheel, I think it was called. And it's really something.

This puts me in mind of those oral-culture, vernacular Christian churches in Africa which even today reject the Bible, following the argument that written text is a tool from outsiders, and that only direct inspiration can allow one access to the divine.

Makes one year for the good ol' days, in Greek antiquity, when the books came to you without commas, and you had to put them in yourself. True story.

Count me out of any Odin celebrations. I'm an athorist.

The phrase "transcends the physical universe" suffers from unintelligibility, and therefore shouldn't play a role in your reasoning.

There's plenty of room at the bottom.

I work to promote the idea that people should not have faith. Am I a "fucking dick" for doing so? Perhaps I would be, if I was doing this work person by person, in a slugfest of interpersonal contact. But I'm not; instead, the work I do is in support of change in cultural and social attitudes about religion and faith.…

"There are a lot of people in the world who have nothing. Faith in a higher power gives them one thing. You know what we call people who try to take away other people's one thing?"

Cory, not Corey.

"we're presented with a false binary like science vs. culture and are forced to choose a side."

It would be exasperating to have to resist this binary choice, but the reality is, such a choice isn't being pressed upon us by any authority greater than the commentariat.

" Spiritual belief systems can help illuminate these issues too." An easy, and generous, thing to say. But pointing to examples of such illumination is less easy. To paraphrase a gambit Christopher Hitchens often put to his opponents*: Can you cite any issue explained by spiritual belief systems, which can't as well…

"Rolling in the Deep" is about giant spiders.

io9 posted this last week; following the hat-tip breadcrumb back we go from here to from http://theawesomer.com/glas/241978/ to http://geyserofawesome.com/post/545487510… to http://io9.com/we-cant-stop-w….

RG at io9 in turn got it from http://kottke.org/13/07/glas, where the post author acknowledges one "arjan" for…

HERE is thy Sting: http://io9.com/somehow-the-ki…

As an atheist, I'm grateful to the various liturgical traditions at least because they supply one with a great range of lines ripe for stealing.