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.
September 2, 2009 · 76 words
Feel The Burn
It makes this New Mexican’s heart swell to bursting to know that the successful test today of the new all-American airborne laser assassination weapon was conducted right here in our state!Tremble, evildoers! Someday soon you’ll just be walking down the street working out your wicked schemes, and suddenly— just a
Read entry →September 1, 2009 · 304 words
The New Literacy
From the article by Clive Thompson (thanks to Blake Charlton).As the school year begins, be ready to hear pundits fretting once again about how kids today can’t write—and technology is to blame. Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has deh
Read entry →August 31, 2009 · 456 words
Rescission
In response to Ron’s post on “Putting it Simply,” below, I dug up a statistics on government-run health care. Since most of you probably don’t read this blog for the comments on the comments, I thought I’d put them here.In countries with government-run health care, there isn’t a man with a gun telling you that [&hellip
Read entry →August 28, 2009 · 231 words
At This Rate, My Plan for World Domination Will Come to Fruition Even More Quickly!
Mark W. Tiedemann has said some awesomely nice things about This Is Not a Game over on irosf.com. When Williams is good, he is very good—and this is one of his best. He dances across the lines that blur real world and gameplaying with elegance and an acerbic sense of consequences that denies the artificial […]
Read entry →August 26, 2009 · 766 words
Inglourious
We had a power outage last night, and I couldn’t do the stuff I usually do, and it was getting too dark to read. So I headed out to see Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Inglourious Basterds. The short review: this is Tarantino’s least successful film. But because it’s Tarantino, it’s most likely better than most of [&hellip
Read entry →August 26, 2009 · 400 words
Standing On Her Head
Saturday night we joined Gene Bostwick for dinner and the Santa Fe Opera. Dinner was at Espiritu, a hole-in-the-wall Italian joint next to K-Mart. Let’s just say that chipotle Alfredo sauce doesn’t sound like a good idea, but it tastes like a great idea. It’s lucky that I don’t live within 90 miles of Espiritu, [&helli
Read entry →August 26, 2009 · 106 words
Creamy
I tried to take a picture of tonight’s dinner, but the colors came out weird, and the photo seemed the opposite of appetizing. A pity, because it was one of those lingering-on-the-palate type dinners.In honor perhaps of Shah Akbar, I made Mughlai-style chicken, a dish that hails from Andhra Pradesh, renowned for spicy
Read entry →