Chop off a salamander’s leg and a brand new one will sprout in no time. But most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs. Now, a research team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo — a species not known to be able to regrow limbs — suggesting that the potential for such regeneration exists innately in all vertebrates, including humans.

Strong overtones of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake… A book well worth reading

it was a bag, one of those coal bag types, although smaller, with a cable tie around the top, and a couple of tags attached with string.
very strange I thought, this does not look like anything I ordered recently. curiosity eventually got the better of me, and the trusty leatherman came out, and yet again performed its duty.

Inside the bag, was a box, am amazon.com box… and it was the books I had ordered only a couple of weeks ago. I promptly put them at the top of the ‘to read’ pile.

it now stands as such (in a vaguely chronological fashion):

• How to Change the World : Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas By: David Bornstein (yes – eventually got around to order it )
• User Interface Design for Programmers By: Joel Spolsky
• Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age By: Paul Graham
• Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to By: Joel Spolsky

R

Lenny Bruce has compiled a list of books, This list of books, is something I have been looking for some time now. Ever since I read Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’, as well as ‘La Peste’ by Albert Camus, I have had a strange fascination with the eventualities of life after a major apocalyptic event. Another similar book, is ‘Malevil‘ by Robert Merle.

Lenny very much echoes what I happen to think about the subject,

I think we often take our technology, modern medicine, and the privileges of civil society for granted and these books help me wonder what life would be like without.

Should time permit, I would very much like to read some of the books on the list.

R

p.s. I think my interest in this kind of thing stems from having loved this particular cartoon when I was younger ‘Thundarr the Barbarian’

Maxim Gorky – free web books online