Yesterday I participated in a “plotbreak” session, in which I and some other writers got together to help plot another writer’s book— or in this case, series. This is one of the tools that our local writers’ group uses to, well, make our books so damn good. We had six creative minds contributing in the […]

The world’s oldest oil paintings have been discovered in Asia, dating from the 5th to 9th centuries, well before the technique was imported (or independently rediscovered) by Europeans. The most heartening aspect of this news is that the oil paintings are at the Buddhist site in Bamyan in Afghanistan, where the Taliban, with encouragement from […]

Okay, a roundup of this week’s amusing videos.From Thailand, Sylvania helps you fight ghosts.Gorbachev saves Russian hotties from Stalin zombies with laser eyes, head stain, and a battle axe, causing a rain of Twinkies and popsicles from the sky.And, for those who haven’t already seen it, a lengthy chunk of the new Joss Whedon project.

At the end of our trip we spent two nights at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon in something like thirty years: I went with my dad as a teenager, and some time in the late 1970s there was a LepreCon on the South Rim, and I […]