In the great search for other earth-like planets, things have oscillated between encouraging and downright weird. So few of them seem rocky at all–mostly just gas-giants–but we’ve assumed that it’s just because the detection methods we’ve been using (gravitational wobble) are biased toward finding gas giants in close orbit. That …
We’ve been waiting for it. We’ve been talking about “What will happen if/when?” We’ve speculated ho how it will change things when the mythical species arrives: The $99 e-reader. Well, now we get to find out. Today, Amazon unveiled the $79 Kindle, as well as a $99 model. Don’t take …
Warning: This blog post is about politics. Proceed at your own risk. Yesterday, I had occasion to visit an old friend–a conservative Rancher who’s occasionally been very active in Republican politics, who I hadn’t seen in close to five years. After the normal catching up, talk turned to writing and …
One of the side effects of having a little sports car is that there are some times when you need something different. Maybe you’ve got to take your collection of old computers to the surplus store, or help a friend move their piano. Me? I had to go to Reno, …
So, the latest-and-greatest panic rumor is that Amazon is going to create a “Netflix for books,” where any Amazon Prime member can download (presumably) any ebook they want for nothing more than the cost of their Prime membership. People on the net–particularly paranoid authors and lugubrious tech writers–have been speculating …
“We are at our best when we move together, and we are at our worst when we move together. When our leader was killed by your people, we went mad together. We stayed mad for a very long time, a madness that almost consumed your world, until finally, before it …
So, you want to make your work–book, movie, sculpture, whatever–perfect, don’t you? You want it to shine. And you’re going to polish it, rewrite it, re-imagine it, and retcon it every chance you get? Or maybe you just can’t resist adding those few last-minute flourishes? Well, you’re in good company. …
I’m going way out on a limb here. I’m only a lay enthusiast in the field of economics, not an expert in the field, but I’ve got a middling amount of business experience in a variety of different fields, and a strange notion has been growing on my mind lately: …
Compared to ancestors in eras past, modern Americans are pikers when it comes to ritual. We tend not to like them when they’re formal, and we’ve gotten rid of most of them. But there are a few left, and of those there is one that is easily the most barbaric …
Continuing from the previous post… By mid-day Friday I had my bearings a lot better. We managed to locate some decent casino food–if your only experience with casinos is looking at the advertisements on billboards and the decadent meals there pictured, trust me, this is not as easy as it …
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