-
Dorothy
Dorothy Wright, 1962-2010
My friend Dorothy died last week, apparently a suicide. Born in Canada, a naturalized American who grew up in Pennsylvania, she’d lived for many years in London. She originally moved there to pursue a PhD in biology or biochemistry. She was close to completing it when she dropped it and took up a career in ( Read more... ) -
"manned space flight" becomes an oxymoron
I have mixed feelings about the proposed NASA budget that effectively removes manned space flight from the agency's agenda, but that also would boost NASA scientific programs tremendously. Logically, it makes great sense, but the old science fiction fan in me can't help but mourn over the increasingly high probability that I won't live long enough ( Read more... ) -
success is in my own f---ing eye
This quote from Ricky Gervais has parttimedriver written all over it: "David Bowie said that after Let's Dance, which is his biggest album ever and obviously not his best, he was doing these stadium gigs and looked out at the audience and suddenly realized that he had Phil Collins fans instead of Iggy Pop fans. And that's how I feel about everything I do: I ( Read more... ) -
Happy birthday, Andy D.
Hat's off and happy birthday to Andy Duncan, a fine writer and heckuva guy. He shares his birthday with Stephen King and H.G. Wells. May Andy's writing bring him the money of one and the reputation of the other.
Dan
-
Nancy Kress
For years I've had a love-hate relationship with the stories of Nancy Kress. Note that I said "the stories of." Nancy herself is a sweetheart. And she's an excellent writer; I wish we had more that were as talented and dedicated. But with many of her stories I'd find myself positively *hating* something about them. No need to go into details ( Read more... ) -
more twittering
I'm using Twitter more than I expected. It has about as low a bar as you can expect for getting going. I'm at http://twitter.com/interrociter. I'm going to try to start gathering and tweeting links to weird news stories out of North Carolina. I do *not* plan to do that thing where your tweets get reposted to your (this) blog. I find that ( Read more... ) -
simulated nuke or asteroid impact
Here's an app that'll give you a basic idea of the blast coverage of a variety of nuclear devices or a 10-km asteroid impact. Lets you choose any place in Google Maps and then nuke it. Oddly refreshing ( Read more... ) -
Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate Tweets
Could creating a Twitter account be construed as part of a mid-life crisis? After all, I am a bit old and set in my ways, and anti-social, for all this social media stuff. I mean, just look at how ofter you find me gushing here. However, I'm tired of people asking me "What's this Twitter thing all about?" and my not being able to provide a ( Read more... ) -
Trinoc*con is no more
Word's starting to get around that Trinoc*con has been canceled. This is correct. I've seen one posting that said Trinoc*con 2009 was canceled. This too is correct, but it's my understanding that Trinoc*con in general, and not just for this year, is gone. Unless someone comes along and starts up the franchise again, there will be no more Trinoc ( Read more... ) -
marry merry Mary
My son's first-grade teacher gave us a note she confiscated from him, apparently in the act of passing it to a girl. The note read, "Can you merry me". My son denied writing the note and said he wasn't passing it; instead, he was trying to find out who really wrote it. Besides, he added, whoever wrote it didn't know how to spell "marry." That's ( Read more... )