Late as usual, and therefore in a time-machinely manner, I’d like to wish everyone the best for Easter and Passover! No other message tonight. But I’ll be back!
Happy Easter!
posted in: Uncategorized
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Cool Science in Discover Magazine
posted in: Uncategorized
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On a more cheerful note, the April and May issues of Discover Magazine have some interesting articles on cool science and technology. (The links below will mostly just get you to teasers, unless you can sign in as a subscriber, though the whole Cow Train article is there.)
In the April issue, a paleontologist named Mary Schweitzer (who happens to be an evangelical Christian) discovered soft tissue inside dinosaur bones. And with it, the possibility of serious DNA analysis. Her findings, according to the article, caused great excitement in the paleontology field, and a firestorm of controversy among the biblical literalists. Great stuff. She doesn’t see Jurassic Park on the horizon, but I can’t help wondering.
Also in the April issue, Anything Into Oil, a long article about a pilot plant that uses thermal conversion to turn turkey offal and all kinds of garbage into oil.
Moving into May, a thematically related story, All Aboard the Cow Train, shows us a train locomotive in Sweden that runs entirely on methane produced from cow manure and organic sludge of various kinds.
Also in the May issue is a story about smart fish, Nemo Goes to College. It seems that even goldfish have more cerebral power than most of us would dream of giving them credit for.
And while we’re on the subject of brainpower, how about Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip? The stuff of SF, all right, moving toward reality. (This is from Livescience.com, but it seemed a good segue.)
Attack Iran? The Final Insanity?
posted in: public affairs
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(I was planning to write next about an issue that is causing me to sharply criticize my Democratic senators, whom I have been supporting for years. That will have to wait.)
A couple of days ago, a friend asked me if I had heard anything in the news about President Bush planning to attack Iran. I said I hadn’t, and that I didn’t think even Bush was crazy enough to launch a new preemptive war while we were still trying to get out of the quagmire of Iraq. In the back of my mind, though, I remembered that Bush is controlled by aliens. (Scroll down for the entry on that, if you haven’t been following.) I meant that as a joke, at the time. Now, I’m not so sure. I was alerted to the following by an email from moveon.org.
Writing in this week’s New Yorker, Seymour Hersh asserts that the Bush administration is seriously planning for a massive bombing attack on Iran, allegedly to prevent Iran from enriching uranium, but as much as anything, to instigate regime change. Hersh writes:
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?'”
Among the options the civilian planners are seriously considering is the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Bunker busters. Nuke ’em before they can get nukes. Rummy and friends are no doubt planning to “minimize civilian casualties”—maybe by handing out umbrellas to keep the radioactive fallout off people’s heads?
Israel took out Iraq’s nuclear reactor, years ago, before it could be started up. They did it in a single air strike, and no nuclear materials were involved. Iran, on the other hand, has many of their facilities underground, and widely dispersed. If they’re already processing uranium, then attacking those facilities with nukes would probably result in significant fallout—both radioactive and political.
Again, here’s Hersh:
The Pentagon adviser questioned the value of air strikes. “The Iranians have distributed their nuclear activity very well, and we have no clue where some of the key stuff is. It could even be out of the country,” he said. He warned, as did many others, that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world: “What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?”
According to Hersh, it is the civilian planners, not the career military leaders, who are providing the impetus to this.
The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said….
The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.”
I’ll stop trying to summarize the article, because you should all go read it. Read it, and when you’re finished banging your head against a wall, contact your Congress people.
The really scary thing is, I’m afraid Bush really believes he has been anointed by God to take charge in the Middle East. And if he continues to carry out a messianic crusade, Armageddon might not be so far behind. Or at least, a much more dangerous world.
Taxes Done! And Other Stories of Astronomical Importance
posted in: personal news, space, wrestling
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Well, I got those pesky taxes done and out of the way with time to spare! (Let’s see, about a hundred hours to spare, I figure.) So I sort of, almost, kept my New Year’s resolution to not fall behind and do my taxes at the last minute this year. We wound up owing a bit, so it’s not like we lost out on getting an early refund.
And having finished that, I’m now back to wrestling with a far more challenging problem: making sense of Chapter 13 in Sunborn. (It didn’t come out so well in the first draft. I think I’m getting there, though.)
Astronomically speaking, I just read a couple of interesting stories. Venus, that greenhouse hothouse of a planet, has a new visitor—the European Space Agency’s probe Venus Express, which entered orbit around the planet just yesterday. Here’s to Venus Express [takes a swig of Winterhook Ale].
Out at the other extreme of the solar system, Hubble scientists have taken a look at Xena, aka 2003 UB313, considered by some to be (maybe) the long-sought 10th planet. The Hubble people put its diameter at 1490 miles, rather than the original estimate of 1860 miles. That would make it almost exactly the same size as Pluto. Says Space.com: “Since 2003 UB313 is 10 billion miles away not even as wide as the United States, it showed up as just 1.5 pixels in Hubble’s view. But that’s enough to precisely make a size measurement, astronomers said.” If they can really do that, that’s…impressive.
And finally, consider RS Ophiuchi. It’s a binary star system, a white dwarf and a red giant. Like many such pairs, it’s also a source of fireworks, as matter falling from the giant onto the white dwarf periodically causes the smaller star to explode. What’s different about this star is that it blows up inside the atmosphere of its larger buddy. This is something new, never seen before.
And if you periodically worry, as I do, about what’s going to happen to the Earth a billion years from now when our own sun blows up into a red giant (incinerating us), some astrophysicist types named Fred Adams, Gregory Laughlin, and Don Korycansky have an answer: use carefully aimed asteroids to give Earth a gravitational boost and move it to a safer orbit! It’s a sort of long-term project, with each pass of the asteroid (every 6000 years) nudging the Earth a little farther from the sun. (“Captain, our orbit is decaying!” Nope—not anymore!)
Galactica Website
posted in: Battlestar Galactica, science fiction, writing
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It seems I’m getting a lot of visits here from people who found a mention of my Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries novel on http://www.gateworld.net/galactica/. Hi everyone! Yes, it’s true that you can read here a lot of my thoughts on writing BSG. But you’ll have to scroll down a ways. There are probably half a dozen entries, if you look far enough. (Or do a search.) Anyway, welcome and feel free to look around the place. It’s small, but we’re all friends here.
Links: Conspiracy Theories, and Others
posted in: public affairs, quirky
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But before I do that, let me take a moment to wish everyone a happy Palm Sunday, what little remains of it (at least in my time zone).
Oops—between my starting with that sentence and getting back to the computer to write this one, midnight has passed and we’re well into the next day. (Sigh.)
So I’ve been collecting interesting links that people have sent me. This first one is fun, especially if you wonder whether the FBI is tracking your use of the web (be careful what you say, and move your mouse quickly):
http://users.chartertn.net/tonytemplin/FBI_eyes/
If you’re really into conspiracy theories, this one about 9/11 is plenty chilling at first viewing. Given the amount of propaganda we’re exposed to on a daily basis, it’s an interesting exercise to look at this kind of thing and assess its truthfulness (if possible). Here’s the flash presentation: http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm#Main
And after you’ve thought that over a little bit, here’s an analysis of the claim by snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm.
And some more responses: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blflight77.htm and
http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2002/03/14
But enough of the conspiracies already! Here’s a really constructive video—literally—showing How to Build an Airbus 380. (It’s about 7 minutes long, and well worth it.)
Hi Again!
posted in: Battlestar Galactica
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Well, it has been a long gap in my postings. I wish I could say it’s because I’ve had my head deep in the world of Sunborn, but the truth is, it’s because tax return time is upon us and I’d fallen a year behind in my bookkeeping. So I’ve been living in receipts and Quicken, and am about to dive into Turbotax. (For those of you not from the U.S., we have this national ritual in the weeks and months leading up to April 15 every year, when everyone has to file their income tax return with the national government. It’s no fun for anyone, but for self-employed people like writers, artists, and small business owners, it’s an exercise in accounting torture.) However, I’m starting to glimpse a few stray photons, which I hope are the first promises of the light at the end of the tunnel. And praying it’s not a freight train coming the other way.
I-Con was great fun, by the way—for me, but maybe even moreso for my family. We saw a number of friends, made a couple of new ones, and indeed got to say hello to George Takei (Star Trek’s Sulu) and Ron Glass (Firefly). I had a brief but pleasant chat with Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica). The con was far more media-oriented than most I go to, and it seemed as if there were hardly any actual books being sold in the dealer’s room—and yet I sold more copies of my own books at the autograph table than I have in most recent cons that were more book oriented. And, I got my first look at the middle and outer end of Long Island, very pretty.
I have a whole bunch of links to quirky things stored up to mention here, but that’ll have to be for next time. Right now, I really do need to get to work on the book!
This Weekend: I-CON
posted in: science fiction
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I will be at a convention called I-CON this weekend, March 24-26, at Stony Brook University on Long Island. If you’re going to be there, please stop and say hello. I’m scheduled to do a book signing at 8:00 p.m. on Friday evening, and will be participating on some panels throughout the weekend.
Other featured guests include George Takei, Kevin Sorbo, Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Terry Brooks, and—last but far from least—Tom Doherty, founder and publisher of Tor Books, book marketing genius, and one heck of a nice guy. If any of these people want to hang out at the same parties where I hang out, that’s fine with me!
Hope to see you.
David Stemple, Rest in Peace
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David Stemple was the husband of writer Jane Yolen. He died today at age 68. He was a gentle and witty man who brightened any room. He was a computer scientist, but his delight was studying birds, and he had compiled some enormous database of bird sounds. I saw him only on occasion, when he was with Jane for a book signing or some other function, or at one of their gatherings at their farmhouse. I wish I’d had a chance to know him better.
Jane herself is a delightful person (besides being a fantastic writer), and they were perfectly suited to each other. I remember them visiting once, on their way to being proud “rock and roll parents,” watching their son Adam perform with his group Boiled in Lead at Johnny D’s in Somerville.
It is so sad. We are losing too many of our best.
Back Home, BSG Off to Tor Again, and…
posted in: Battlestar Galactica, science fiction, wrestling, writing
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What? Galactica—again? Yes, this time I had the page proofs for the mass market paperback edition to correct. (We won’t mention that the proofs were mailed by mistake to Craig Gardner, who wrote the second book, and who fortunately lives just a few blocks away.) This meant reading through the book again—actually, for the first time since I corrected the proofs for the trade edition. Why should I have to do this? you might ask. Well, partly because the typesetting has been adjusted for the smaller page size, and sometimes errors are introduced when that’s done. But mainly it’s to catch all the stupid mistakes we missed the first time around. Yes, it’s true.
I know this makes it sound like we’re careless when the first edition goes out, but that’s not true. It’s amazing how many errors can sneak by multiple proofreaders (including yours truly), who are all doing their best to catch the little buggers. And then there are the occasional infelicitous phrasings or word choices that any one of said proofreaders (including yours truly) should have caught—but didn’t. Things like the phrase “for a moment” appearing three times in a paragraph. Yeesh.
So it’s done. And you know what? I really liked reading the book. I consider this a positive sign.
Oh—the wrestling. Alexandra placed third in the Ohio state girls tournament in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. It wasn’t a huge field. But lemme tell you, some of those girls who are wrestling in Ohio are tough hombres! (You should forgive the expression.) I’ll try to snag a few stills off the video we shot and get them up soon.
With my sister Nancy as tour guide, we also visited the campus of Kenyon College, which is right down the road from where the tourney was held. We admired their fantastic new athletic Taj Mahal, and sought out advice and info from fellow SF author/biology professor Joan Slonczewski.
We arrived home, well after midnight on Sunday night, exhausted but happy—greeted by wife and other daughter, and dinner laid out on the table! Who could ask for more?