Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 268 entries, all of them here in full.
March 15, 2010 · 405 words
Back To the Fifties!
I remember when an acquaintance of mine was working as a substitute teacher, and was trying to find something for her grade school class to do. So she— the product of a typical American nuclear family— decided that they were going to play “house.” She figured that they would play members of a nuclear family
Read entry →March 11, 2010 · 59 words
Health Plan
Republican plans for health care reform have finally been revealed!Hoyer-Larson Bill: All 45 million uninsured Americans would be guaranteed medical care, all of it provided by Dr. Tom Janicak of Houston, TXGriffith-Cantor Bill: Low-income families would be allowed to huddle outside hospital windows in the cold and loo
Read entry →March 11, 2010 · 881 words
Media Miscellany
Brief notes concerning images recently made visible on my television. Survivors. While I had a cold last week I watched several episodes of this British post-apocalypse series, seen here on BBC America. BBCA usually runs SF and/or fantasy on Saturday nights, and have so far managed to prove that the Brits can produce s
Read entry →March 5, 2010 · 326 words
Famous For All the Wrong Reasons
Renowned atmospheric physicist Charles B. Moore passed away on Wednesday. Though his career was chock-a-block with scientific accomplishment, he is best known for something that didn’t actually happen.Let me explain.Dr. Moore was a pioneer in the use of large polyethylene balloons, or aerostats. On June 4, 1947, one of
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