Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 272 entries, all of them here in full.
October 13, 2009 · 597 words
The Prize
It’s probably a little late to chime in on the Nobel Prize thing, but what the hell. I had a busy weekend that kept me from posting, but at least I had time for mature consideration. I’m sure I was as surprised as anyone else. “This is, at best, premature,” I thought. I voted for […]
Read entry →October 7, 2009 · 162 words
Shroud II: the Deliverance
An Italian scientist has succeeded in duplicating the Shroud of Turin, which he says exposes the Shroud as a fake.Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages. They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment contain
Read entry →October 7, 2009 · 458 words
Reviews Too Late: In Bruges
Imagine a gangster film in which nothing happens. That’s where I thought I was for the first half of this movie, in a film about what gangsters are like when they’re on vacation and not being gangsters. Not that this is a bad thing. The first half of In Bruges is the best part. Nothing […]
Read entry →October 7, 2009 · 46 words
Free Spaces
The first seven chapters of Implied Spaces are now available for free on the Baen webscription site. If you don’t have your own copy yet, you might want to give them a read. For the following eighteen chapters, however, you still have to buy the book.
Read entry →October 6, 2009 · 304 words
Resting Place
Here I am at my parents’ final resting place. “Resting” being an understatement, since their activities may also include flying, swirling, scudding, and fertilizing giant fir trees. My mom passed away a little over a year ago, and my father twelve years back. His ashes have since resided in a kind of shrine I built [&h
Read entry →October 1, 2009 · 547 words
Nero’s Movable Feast
A few years back, when we were in Rome, we visited the Domus Aurea, the Golden House built by the Emperor Nero during the last years of his reign. This fabulous 300-room palace was the centerpiece of Nero’s entertainment empire— walls were plated with fabulous marbles, or ivory, or frescos. A large part of the [&
Read entry →September 29, 2009 · 620 words
Doomsday Now!
Doctor Strangelove would seem to be my favorite movie. I believe I’ve seen it more often than any other film— I’ve watched Slim Pickens ride that H-Bomb to Laputa something like twenty times. It was Strangelove that popularized the notion of the Doomsday Device. (The Doomsday Bomb was actually conceived by Leo Sz
Read entry →September 29, 2009 · 715 words
Trying Not to Blush
Christian Sauvé says some kind things about This Is Not a Game on his web site: But there’s a bit more at stake than a look at games that bring together thousands of people in a global clue-hunt: As This Is Not a Game begins, our ARG-creating protagonist Dagmar Shaw sees her holidays in Indonesia […]
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