A rundown of new books released between August and September 2005, with a look ahead to releases planned for later this year. Read the full story.

The communists plan to launch a heavily-modified Russian space capsule carrying two taikonauts on October 13. Read the full story.

My gaming group is comprised of mid-twentysomething-to-mid-thirtysomething gamers who love role-playing, who enjoy delving deep into the intricacies of a plot, running down leads, fleshing out a setting, and generally immersing themselves in the campaign. Yes, there's hacking, and yes, there's slashing, but we're just as likely to spend a night doing nothing but role-playing. Sometimes though, we just want to crawl. And that's what Maure Castle is for.

Japanese scientists have taken the photos of a live, active giant squid attacking some bait in 900-meter deep water off the coast of Japan's Bonin islands. The creature was 8-meters (or 25-feet) long. Read the full story.

Jason talks about the Duke University Podcasting Symposium, discusses getting listed in iTunes, and plays the track "Columbia and Cameron" by The Physics of Meaning. Read the full story.

The Red Team continues their efforts to reorganize their command structure, while the Blue Team makes a new alien friend. Read the full story.

Last year's DARPA-sponsored race ended unspectacularly as most of the robots involved in the 150-mile race crashed near the starting line. The 20-odd contestants are looking to do better this year thanks to upgraded AI and equipment. Read the full story.

Nuketown's forums have been up since late August, and have been slowly gathering momentum. I'm still experimenting with ways to drive traffic to the forums, including linking to them from some of the articles on the main site, highlighting them in the newsletter and now this: a weekly round-up of notable conversations. I'll be doing one of these round-ups every Tuesday for the next month as an experiment; after that I'll assess how well it worked and adjust accordingly.

The Cap'n gives Bill O'Reilly a little lesson in fuel economics. If only he'd actually listen... Read the full story.

Mur Lafferty offers insights into being a geek and a parent, and also updates everyone on the upcoming Duke Podcast Symposium. Read the full story.