2018

The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

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The novel “The Long War” by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter was published for the first time in 2013. It’s the second book of The Long Earth series and follows “The Long Earth”.

Many years after the Step Day, which marked the opening of the Long Earth frontier, humanity has expanded into many parallel universes forming a complex network of communities, sometimes even large, and fleets of airships that maintain contacts. Relationships with Datum Earth are becoming tense because the Americans who staid there want more and more money in taxes from the inhabitants of the other Earths without offering anything in return.

Many communities of Americans who settled on other Earths don’t like their government’s attitude and the pushes towards independence increase. Captain Maggie Kauffman’s mission is to remind all of them of the presence of their government. The situation is made complicated by the presence on many Earths of other intelligent species and their relationship with human beings are not always easy.

Jim Whitehurst in 2010

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IBM and Red Hat announced that they have reached an agreement with which IBM will acquire all Red Hat’s shares, whose value closed last Friday at $116.68, for $190 per share paid in cash for a total value of about $34 billions. Red Hat will become part of IBM’s Hybrid Cloud division while its CEO Jim Whitehurst will join IBM’s senior management reporting to CEO Ginni Rometty. This acquisition is oriented above all to make IBM a giant in the field of cloud services.

Archaeopteryx albersdoerferi fossil (Image courtesy John Nudds. All rights reserved)

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An article published in the journal “Historical Biology” describes the discovery of a new species of the genus Archeopteryx. A team of researchers examined a specimen discovered in the 1990s in a quarry in Bavaria, Germany, and passed through the hands of a number of owners. Thanks to a sophisticated microtomographic technique they were able to create a virtual representation that convinced them that it belongs to a species different from the two already known and they named it Archeopteryx albersdoerferi.

Doctor Who - The Dominators

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“The Dominators” is the first adventure of the sixth season of “Doctor Who” classic series, which aired in 1968. It’s a five parts adventure written by Norman Ashby and directed by Morris Barry.

A spaceship carrying two Dominators on board lands on the planet Dulkis on what’s called the Island of Death because it’s radioactive due to nuclear explosions carried out in the past, when it was a test site. The Quark robots are sent to perform some tasks and when a spaceship of visitors arrives in the area it gets destroyed and only their pilot Cully manages to escape.

The Tardis lands nearby and the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), along with Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury), starts visiting the area. When they hear the sound of an explosion they look for safety in a nearby war museum, where they meet some natives who are trying to understand why their instruments are detecting no radiations.