The Cambias Digression

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

  • June 6

    I visited the Normandy beaches in 1993, a year before the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the invasion. Beaches, of course, don't preserve anything very long. They are places where the ocean grinds everything to sand. Normandy's seashore is good for strolling; the water's too chilly for swimming and there are more rocks than sand. Most…

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  • Random Encounters: The Floating City

    Akmon is a city of a million people floating in the hazy blue-green atmosphere of Uranus. The city's held aloft by a ten-kilometer balloon made of diamond, filled with hydrogen superheated by a fusion powerplant which doubles as an artificial Sun. Akmon serves as a hub for atmosphere mining, a base for airships hunting the…

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  • Medical-Historical Notes

    No, I'm fine. Not that kind of medical history. I'm talking about the history of medicine, and the history of medical terminology. A couple of weeks ago I had my annual checkup. It mostly consisted of a blood draw and some lab work, to see if all my humors were properly balanced. But I did…

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  • Random Encounters: The Infinite Library

    "The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves…

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  • The Baristiary

    For more than twenty years now I've done a lot of my writing in coffee shops. It gets me out of the house, I can observe my fellow pseudointellectuals and blowhards, and I don't have to answer the phone or walk the dog. In that time I've seen a lot of coffee shop employees. A…

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  • Random Encounters: Martian-Ravaged London

    (Yes, the Random Encounters are back! Once again, I'm going to try to put up one table each week.) The Martians dropped down out of the sky onto southern England in the spring of 1899, and got as far as London before succumbing to Terrestrial germs. They left behind a devastated city, transplanted Martian organisms,…

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  • A Curious Omission

    Like most people, I went to see the Disney/Marvel super-epic Avengers: Endgame a couple of weeks ago. It was good; I give it an A overall. This post isn't a review or analysis of the film. It's just one question. The question is this: during the Big Final Battle with all the heroes against the…

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  • Unleash The Wild Hunt!

    No, not the one with mythical hounds and/or Celtic deities crossing the sky on dark nights. The one with University of Chicago students taking a break from being obsessive overachievers in order to overachieve obsessively. Here's this year's list. Can you get all these things before noon Sunday?   And if you haven't got the…

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  • Hollywood Insider Gossip!

    According to my Hollywood sources the actual title for Star Wars Episode IX will not be The Rise of Skywalker, but rather Everything Rian Johnson Told You Was A Damned Lie A Film by J. J. Abrams    

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  • Be Careful What You Wish For

    It's an old lesson, but one we must re-learn every now and then. Recently I began to suffer from "gamemaster withdrawal" after half a year or so without running any roleplaying campaigns. I was bursting with ideas for games, so finally I sent out a call for interested players, and drew up a "prospectus" of…

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The Worldbuilding Index