Guest Thinkers — December 21, 2010

The Muhammad bin Nayif Tape

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to blog about this, because I would really like to. Instead, it will have to be a link dump. First there is the audio tape (or at least selections from the phone conversation between Muhammad bin Nayif and Abdullah ‘Asiri.)

Al-Sharq al-Awsat publishes the transcript of the tape along with a fascinating article, I was particularly intrigued by the news of al-Shihri’s wife.

Finally, Asiri’s father who still has another son on the run in Yemen condemns the attack.

In General Relativity, white holes are just as mathematically plausible as black holes. Black holes are real; what about white holes?

Slimy biofilms made up of bacterial and eukaryotic life forms have taken over an abandoned, flooded uranium mine in Germany.

Air currents in our atmosphere limit the resolving power of giant telescopes, but computers and artificial stars can sharpen the blur.

“It’s a liquid, but it’s not just a liquid.”

Could the prevalence of flood myths around the world tell us something about early human migration or even the way our brains work?

Up Next

The piece I wrote for The National on the attempted assassination of Muhammad bin Nayif is now on-line.