The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • The Trip to Iceland, Day 2

    We slept for about twelve hours on our first night in Iceland, then went downstairs for an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Lots of different breads, a kind of baked scrambled egg dish, skyr (Icelandic yogurt — you're going to see that a lot), cold cuts, and so forth. And a very exotic…

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  • The Trip to Iceland, Day 1 (second part)

    The ferry ride to Heimaey took about 20 minutes and was the quietest boat ride I've ever taken. We later discovered that the good ship Herjolfur is electric-powered, with a big recharging plug on the dock at Heimaey. It makes sense for a short-haul ship in a country with plentiful geothermal power and no local…

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  • The Trip to Iceland, Day 1 (first part)

    A few years ago the Crack Team and I went to Europe aboard Iceland Air, because they had good cheap fares and fly out of Logan Airport in Boston. Like all modern long-haul airliners, the plane had little video screens at each seat, and those little screens played promotional videos about how swell it would…

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  • Increasing Success, Increasing Danger

    Note: edited to reflect new information. The war in Ukraine drags on, and the courage and skill of the Ukrainian defenders continues to astonish the world. As I write, they've just announced a missile strike on the Russian Navy's flagship in the Black Sea, the cruiser Moskva. The Russians are reduced to trying to save…

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  • Endgames

    We're all following the progress of the war in Ukraine, bouncing around between hope, fear, and utter bafflement. I'd like to take a step back and think about what the results of this conflict are likely to be. I see five paths, and only one of them is not terrible. Russian Victory: supposing the Russians…

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  • Discover an Archipelago of Lost Worlds

    I'm pleased to report that the long-awaited anthology Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms is now available. It's edited by John Joseph Adams and features a pretty impressive lineup of contributors, including Theodora Goss, Cadwell Turnbull, and Becky Chambers. The seventeen stories in the book are all about visits to hidden or imaginary lands — a…

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  • Victory Conditions

    One of the most baffling things about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to Westerners, is that it seems impossible to succeed. If the Russian army gets badly mauled and driven out, Putin gets forced from power and probably shot in the back of the head. If the Russians somehow manage to occupy the entire vast expanse…

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  • Orwell on Putin

    Well, not Putin, actually. Another political leader noted for aggression in Eastern Europe. Orwell reviewed a book written by that leader and speculated on the reasons for his political success: "[That guy], because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control…

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  • Boskone is GO!

    After the sad cancellation of this year's Arisia convention, I'm very pleased and excited to announce that Boskone 59 is going ahead as planned this coming weekend, at the Westin hotel in Boston's seaport district! See the Web page here for membership information. I'll be there in person, and here's my schedule: Friday, February 18…

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  • Which War?

    At the end of this month the people of Deerfield, Massachusetts will observe the 318th anniversary of the 1704 Raid on Deerfield. This was not the first attack on the town in its early decades, nor the last, but it was definitely the most devastating. But nowadays people are a little vague about why it…

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