Learning is a skill. It is, in my opninion, the single most important skill a person can acquire. Without it, one is forever constrained by one’s culture and peer group and the narratives that form around them. A person who has not learned to self-educate has little hope of adapting …
I frequently preface and postscript posts where I talk about politics, ethics, religion, philosophy, or other touchy things with the categorical statement “I’m interested in the discussion/conversation. My opinion doesn’t matter.” The last couple weeks have reminded me of just how odd that sounds in our current cultural context, and …
This is a very long post containing technical information about how data security works, and how it interacts with a social contract. To read the whole thing, click under the cut. This post has been edited to include an explaination of what metadata is
If you envision science-fictiony science projects as children that come in generations, then the generation that gave birth to SETI is a pretty impressive generation indeed. The minds behind it are contemporary with (and sometimes, identical to) the minds that came up with ways to find black holes, with nanotechnology, …
Yesterday, I wound up in a protracted philosophical argument with Gail Carriger about the relative utility and desirability of cats and dogs. While normally such conversations between cat people and dog people devolve into “this is my species, that’s yours, let’s not kill each other about it” (or into actual …
This post contains language you might not want your boss to read over your shoulder. It’s a comparative taxonomy of two subspecies of four-letter excrement. You have been warned.
Clarke Lantham, the hero of my detective series, lives and works around the San Francisco Bay. One of the features of the books that draws frequent comment is how much the Bay itself is a character in these stories. Truth be told, it’s an intentional feature. I’ve been a lot …
Every time I turn around, I see more shared worlds popping up. What used to be a fairly limited market dominated by media and RPG tie-in novels (Star Trek, Star Wars, Dragonlance, etc.) is going mainstream. I suspect this is partly because the changes in the publishing industry make it …
So, a little while ago I said that Free Will was on production hiatus while I resolved some personal emergencies. Those emergencies related to a sudden lack-of-house situation I found myself in. Well, just as there was suddenly no house, there is now once again suddenly a house. This means …
By popular request, here are the Rules of Scotch, as defined in Down From Ten. According to Carol in the book a good scotch: 1) Must be unpolluted (served neat–no water or ice) 2) It must be individualistic (single malt only–no blended scotch) 3) Must be bold (i.e. distinctive flavor …