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.
August 7, 2010 · 103 words
Ready for My Housewarming, Mr. Demille
Welcome to my blog’s new address in this fine, upmarket neighborhood. The blog has been lovingly mated with my web page, and they plan to have a long, happy, rewarding relationship. Previous blog posts and replies have all been transferred to this new location, so you can use the search function to look up all [&hellip
Read entry →July 26, 2010 · 831 words
Salander. Sula.
We went to the movies this afternoon, and the theater was packed. But as I looked around I realized that no one in the theater seemed to be under fifty. Okay, so the cheap Sunday matinees are attractive to people living on a pension. But why this movie, rather than the others in the multiplex? […]
Read entry →July 26, 2010 · 438 words
My God— It’s Full of Planets!
I certainly picked an interesting time to take an intensive astronomy course. Via David Brin, I hear that we’ve now found that our new space telescope Kepler has found 140 Earth-sized exoplanets. Kepler finds planets by detecting almost imperceptible ‘winks’ – the tiny amount of dimming that occurs each time a pl
Read entry →July 23, 2010 · 78 words
Signing in Albuquerque
I’ll be signing in Albuquerque this weekend, on Saturday the 24th, from 3-4:30pm. The signing will be at Page One, Albuquerque’s biggest independent bookstore. I will be signing The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories, along with whatever else they have in the store (which should be everything in print, and some oth
Read entry →July 22, 2010 · 789 words
1979: The Writer’s Life
We’ve been reorganizing the garage, and I’ve been going through a lot of old paperwork to see what can be tossed away. Among other things, I found boxes upon boxes of old tax forms and documentation stretching back to 1979, my first year as a full-time professional writer. I’ve tossed away pounds and pounds of [&hellip
Read entry →July 20, 2010 · 105 words
Ten Atmospheres
When I was learning scuba, I was being forever warned about the kind of stuff that many atmospheres of water pressure could do to you. Mythbusters had an episode that illustrated this very nicely, and Carrie kindly pointed out the relevant video on YouTube. They stuffed a dead pig in a hardhat diving suit, dropped [&he
Read entry →July 20, 2010 · 167 words
Amazon Sez . . .
Amazon has announced that it’s now selling more Kindle e-books than hardbacks, and that this is a huge milestone in the history of publishing. Several grains of salt need to be taken with this message. No raw numbers are provided, only a percentage (143 Kindle sales for every 100 hardback sales). It’s not clear how [&h
Read entry →July 19, 2010 · 142 words
A False-Color Image of Your Very Own
Behold a false-color image of Messier Object 27, better known as the Dumbbell Nebula. False-color images of astronomical objects are not unusual, of course, but what’s unique about this one is that I created it my ownself, while noodling around on software the final day of LaunchPad. And the absolutely cool thing is th
Read entry →July 19, 2010 · 276 words
Trapped With Astronomers in a Hot, Airless Room!
So I am back from Laramie, where I spent a week at LaunchPad, the workshop designed to cram as much astronomical knowledge into your skull as can possibly be accomplished without the use of a mallet. I filled an entire legal pad with notes. I wonder if, a year from now, any of it will […]
Read entry →July 16, 2010 · 69 words
Stellar Types
So I’ve been living and breathing astronomy for four whole days now, and it’s producing conversations like this: ME: I’ve been observing the Wal-Mart parking lot, and I’ve noted twelve Class O supergiant vehicles, fifteen Class B giant vehicles, eight Class G vehicles, and nine Class M dwarf vehicles. CARRIE: What conc
Read entry →July 14, 2010 · 207 words
In Wyoming
I am in Laramie, Wyoming, attending Launch Pad, which is an astronomy workshop for SF writers and other creative people, intended to give us sufficient astronomical knowledge so that our fiction won’t embarrass the professionals. Hosting is writer/astronomer Mike Brotherton, ably assisted by astronomers Jim Verley and
Read entry →July 10, 2010 · 140 words
Pawns of the Plutocrats
The Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA) has been sponsoring lectures for 250 years. But only recently have they been producing a series of brilliant animations of the lectures themselves, including this one illustrating a talk on the financial crisis by controversial anthropologist and geograph
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