Category: Weblogs
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Ancient Recipes
Very interesting BBC Travel story about re-creating ancient Mesopotamian recipes. Read it here. They include a lamb stew which sounds worth trying. The only surprising thing, really, is that anyone should be surprised that people living nearly 4000 years ago ate much the same things their modern descendants do. Food is a bedrock of culture…
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Yale, Academia, and Power
This is a fascinating article by Natalia Dashan about her own experiences at Yale and the endless, seemingly pointless political/social controversies there. Read the whole thing; it's a bit long but very insightful. One thing which struck me very profoundly was her point that the Yalies (both faculty and students) are actively abdicating power. This…
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The Philosophical Alphabet Inside Us
Let us return to those thrilling days of yesteryear . . . specifically to Restoration-era England, when a group of intellectually curious men began to meet at Gresham College to watch scientific experiments and discuss matters like how gravity works and whether blood circulates. At first they were informally known as the "Invisible College" (not…
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Changes in Fandom: A Different Perspective
Judith Dial (editor of the delightfully un-redacted Conspiracy! anthology) published some remarks on the Amazing Stories blog about the shifts in fandom which provide an interesting "parallax view" on my own musings about status and social class in SF. You can read her post here.
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Open the Pod Bay!
You can hear my voice on the latest episode of the Baen Free Radio Hour podcast, talking about Arkad's World and various digressions. Listen here.
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The Arkad Machine Rolls On
Marshal Zeringue has a fun 'blog with a neat premise: he asks writers what they're reading. To celebrate the launch of Arkad's World, he asked me to contribute an entry. You can see what I'm reading here. And if you're in Amherst, Massachusetts, tomorrow evening, please stop by Amherst Books for the Arkad's World launch…
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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.
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What I Saw On Facebook Yesterday
"In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and…
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“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…
The Cambias Digression 