Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,174 entries, all of them here in full.
January 8, 2010 · 235 words
Your Brilliant Writing Career Awaits!
Amazingly, applications for Taos Toolbox are still open! This means you can still have that brilliant writing career you’ve been dreaming about! All you have to do is go to the Taos Toolbox web site, and follow the instructions thereon! If you’re accepted, you’ll join me and Nancy Kress and Carrie Vaughn in Taos next [
Read entry →January 8, 2010 · 485 words
News Hour
Just some news tidbits that flew my way. #1. Why economists are skinflints. In recent research, University of Washington economists Yoram Bauman and Elaina Rose found that economics majors were less likely to donate money to charity than students who majored in other fields. After majors in other fields took an introdu
Read entry →January 5, 2010 · 61 words
Grand Masters
A video featuring all the Grand Masters of the Science Fiction Writers of America (through 2000, anyway). The video features voices that the years have stilled. I got chills. There’s a kind of prequel to this video featuring Jack Williamson, which for some reason is not available for embedding in such untrustworthy sit
Read entry →January 1, 2010 · 396 words
Not Thinking in Years
I’ve noticed that a lot of other bloggers are posting year-end summaries. Top ten news stories of 2009, favorite books of 2009, New Year’s resolutions for 2010, favorite blog posts of 2009, favorite 2009 blog posts by the owner of the blog. This is all fine, except maybe the last, which is kind of like […]
Read entry →December 29, 2009 · 454 words
Where’s Jesus? (A Holiday Game)
I picked this game up from Boing Boing, and discovered that it’s a perfect way to waste a cold winter afternoon, particularly during the holiday season.Go to Wikipedia. Click on “random article” (on the left side, under the globe). Of the various links on that random page, click on the one most likely to lead […
Read entry →December 29, 2009 · 336 words
Black Hole Created! Sorta.
Scientists have created a black hole in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Well, an acoustic black hole. Not a real black hole.But they may get some perfectly genuine Hawking radiation out of it, so it’s still cool. One of the many curious properties of Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs) is that the flow of sound through them i
Read entry →December 26, 2009 · 231 words
We Caught the Terrorist, So Let’s Have More Restrictions!
Some goofy terrorist wannabe named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set off an incendiary device in his own lap on an aircraft, and scorched the living fuck out of his thighs. (Of course “thighs” may be a euphemism here.)(He was on a watch list, apparently, so I have to wonder why he and his thighs weren’t checked […]
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