An Cosmic Virus

The Blight has been our top priority since its instantiation a year ago. This is not just because of the Blight’s obvious strength, the destruction and the deicides it has committed. We fear that all this is the lesser part of the Threat. There have been perversions almost as powerful in the recorded past. What truly.distinguishes this one is its stability. We see no evidence of internal evolution; in some ways it is less than a Power. It may never lose interest in controlling the High Beyo...

 The Unimaginative Naming of an Ancestor

Raymond Dart, then, gave the name Australopithecus to the Taung Child, the type specimen of the genus, and we have been stuck with this depressingly unimaginative name for our ancestor ever since. It simply means 'southern ape'. Nothing to do with Australia, which just means 'southern country'. You'd think Dart might have thought of a more imaginative name for such an important genus. He might even have guessed that other members of the genus would later be discovered north of the equator. S...

 Rules in Science and the Loss of the Brontosaurus

A hundred years earlier, a very popular dinosaur mistakenly got named twice. The first time it was called "Apatosaurus" or "deceptive lizard" and nobody much cared, because the name was dull and the fossil wasn't all that spectacular, but later discoveries were more dramatic and looked different enough that scientists mistakenly thought they'd found a new dinosaur. They called it "Brontosaurus" (meaning "thunder lizard"). Brontosaurus stuck, in part because of the cool name, plus the Sinclai...