The Cambias Digression

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

  • Happy Boxing Day!

    The perfect day for a strong Yuletide Punch!

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  • Hanson on Fermi

    I've posted at great length on the Fermi Paradox — the simple question "Where are they?" in regard to extraterrestrial civilizations. One element of that paradox is simply that the time it would take for an expanding civilization to spread across the Galaxy is relatively short in geological terms. Or so we assume. Now Robin…

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  • A Servant of the Empire

    My lost Star Wars story can be read here.

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  • My First Story

    Back in the 1990s I wrote some adventures and sourcebook material for the legendary Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by West End Games. Some of the worlds and plot elements I put in those pieces actually worked their way into the "canon" of the Star Wars universe, and I got paid, so I was happy.…

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  • The Lost Manuscripts of Lemuel Gulliver, Part the First

    Historians and students of literature were tremendously excited by the recent announcement by Oxford University that several volumes of unpublished notes by Lemuel Gulliver had been found in the Bodleian Library.  Dr. Gulliver was a little-known 18th-century explorer, the first European to visit Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and other lands of the Pacific. His accounts of…

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  • Son of Great Filters

    Robin Hanson, who invented the term "Great Filter" in the first place, comes back to the topic in his own blog for a look at a couple of neglected aspects of the topic. You can read his whole post here. One of the key issues he raises is whether or not a given planet (for…

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  • Safety Last

    I was recently reading about the legendary silent comedy star Harold Lloyd, and learned the interesting fact that he did his famous comedy stunts despite having lost the index finger and thumb of his right hand (he used a glove with prosthetic digits to hide the injury). Here is Wikipedia's account of how Lloyd lost…

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  • Movie Review: The King

    On Thanksgiving, after a huge midday dinner, we all sat down on the couch to watch a movie. We eventually decided to watch David Michod's 2019 movie The King, featuring Timothée Chalamet* as Henry V of England. The three of us gave it a solid B+ — good acting, good filming, nice locations and costumes,…

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  • Post-PhilCon Report: Oceans of Space

    Last weekend's Virtual PhilCon went very well, and gave me a couple of 'blog post ideas. This is the first. On Saturday the 21st, I moderated the panel on "The Oceans of Space." Moderating was easy because there was only one other panelist, the brilliant and charming Kelli Fitzpatrick. We had a pretty good audience,…

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  • Godel Operation Now Up at Amazon!

    My first Tale of the Billion Worlds, The Godel Operation, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. The official publication date is May 4 of 2021, but it's always a good idea to get at the head of the line.  If you want a sneak preview of The Godel Operation, tune in to my reading…

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The Worldbuilding Index