Category: Miscellaneous
-
Class, Status, and SF
I spent last weekend at the Arisia science fiction convention in the heart of Boston. My chief amusement at conventions is the panels. I don't like "filk" singing much, I can rent my own videos, and I don't wear costumes (other than my "professional SF writer" outfit). I keep intending to spend more time in…
-
Firewood Observations
With the recent cold snap in New England I've been burning a lot of firewood. For several years now I've been cutting and splitting my own wood (it's cheaper than joining a health club for exercise), and I've learned quite a bit about firewood. Birch burns like plutonium, beetles will eat all the pine before…
-
Tales of the Time Patrol: The Wild Bunch
We recently re-watched Sam Peckinpah's famous gritty Western The Wild Bunch. This time around I realized something: at least one of the titular Bunch is a secret agent of the Time Patrol. The moment of revelation comes when the gang arrive at the headquarters of the corrupt Mexican warlord General Mapache and see the General's…
-
Mr. President, We May Be Looking . . .
. . . at a wargames GAP! Apparently the Pentagon needs to find replacements for the generation of beardy wargame grognards who are starting to fail their final saving rolls. Here's an article about the problem from War on the Rocks.
-
Most Infuriating Thing I’ve Seen Today
I drove past a hair-styling parlor with a fancy custom neon sign showing a pair of scissors and the name of the place: "A Notch Above." Huh? It should be "A Cut Above." Hair parlors all have lame-ass pun names — Mane Event, Short Cuts, Shear Magic, Curl Up and Dye, Cutting Edge, Hair Today, etc. …
-
Time to Clean House
Academics worried about "anti-intellectualism" in modern society need to realize that the modern system of research universities and scholarly journals needs some serious housecleaning. Read this article to see why. Until scholars can muster the courage to stop encouraging and defending fashionable nonsense, the rot will continue.
-
“Smart” Cities
First read this article, a summary and critique of some current "smart city" projects. The author unfortunately kind of skates around the main, fundamental problem with most of the projects he describes. They're completely antithetical to the way cities actually grow. Quite simply, you can't build a city. Maybe if your name is Stalin and…
-
Mars Cops!
Here's a neat article in (of all places) The Atlantic, about "How Mars Will Be Policed." I wish I'd had this when I was writing GURPS Mars, although it's fun to see that my own wild-ass guesses reasoning pretty much matches the conclusions of experts.
-
WorldCon 76 Report: Day 3
Saturday I rose relatively early and had a swim in the hotel pool. Staying at a hotel with a pool makes one feel about three times healthier than otherwise. No back problems from an unfamiliar bed, which means better sleep, which means one isn't living on caffeinated sodas to stay focused. Anyway. Once again the…
-
WorldCon 76 Report: Day 1
The Crack Team were already ensconced in the Marriott hotel in downtown San Jose before this year's World Science Fiction Convention even began. We began the day with an expedition to the amazing Winchester Mystery House. We got both the basic tour (90 minutes of hiking around the biggest house in America) and the extended…
The Cambias Digression 