Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

At the risk of showing some people how a certain trick was done, I present some lovely new words I learned today from “A Few of My Favorite Words” page at andreas.com:
Wabi: Japanese noun. A flaw that gives elegance and uniqueness to the whole. Western culture sees beauty in mass produced technical symmetry, such as [...]

Here’s how the contributor list reads to me:
Brian ALDISS * Jacqueline CAREY * Arthur C. CLARKE * William C. DIETZ * David DRAKE * Lynn FLEWELLING * Esther M. FRIESNER * David “Where’s my damn Chtorr book” GERROLD * Joe HALDEMAN * Brian HERBERT & Kevin J. ANDERSON * Nina Kiriki HOFFMAN * Tim [...]

So, while I was out buying a new office chair1 today I happened to hear Shelagh interviewing Leonard Cohen, mostly about his new book. (You can actually hear the interview if you can deal with Real streams. It’s worth it just to hear Lenny read “Titles” from the new book. The stream runs to seventeen [...]

A while back Paul Myers made a list of books for evolutionists. The list included a number of items “for the kids”. I really liked the idea of starting Sarah’s science education early–why not learn about science along with math and vocabulary, etc–so I decided to order some of these books “sometime”. (I figured the [...]

I’m not sure why, but for some reason book reviews written by authors whose work I like tend to carry more weight with me than reviews by almost anyone else. This is why I pay special attention to things like Paul Witcover’s reviews at Realms of Fantasy and Sci Fi Weekly, or Norman Spinrad’s review/essays [...]

Steve Ruggles at University of Minnesota has prepared a lovely historical chart of Bush’s approval rating over time, as reported by a variety of sources. There’s a pretty clear trend here. Cynical Chris wishes he could believe that this represents a rejection of the policies of the administration by the public, and not irritation at [...]

I can’t believe this list was written 35 years ago. I mean, I wasn’t even born yet, and every item on that list is still 100% on the money. You don’t expect anything to resist obsolescence for that long in a field like computer science. We’re in a major design phase at work right now, [...]

Quoting from the When God is gone, everything is holy post at Science Musings:
Once we reject the absolute truth of one thing, whatever it might be — God, a holy book, a law of nature — then everything, even the smallest element of reality — an insect, a leaf, a grain of sand — [...]

Continuing the series of posts that try to capture the various pieces of art I have hanging around the house. Remember that these posts are made up of quick snapshots–these are hardly professional images, and the upstairs images are worse than the downstairs ones since the angles I could use to take the snapshots are [...]

So, just to review:
Adminstration fabricates evidence and knowingly misleads the country into a way: OK
Administration tramples civil rights several ways: That’s fine
Administration’s crazy war kills 1000s of Americans and 1000000s of brown people: No problem
Supposedly ‘conservative’ Administration cuts taxes and raises spending to result in record deficits even though they started with record surplus: Sure
Administration [...]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Ryan James Turnbull, Day One:

(Have I mentioned how much I love living in the future? He’s around 2000km from here, but we can see him immediately. Awesome.)

I really love the idea that Titan has seas of sand. It’s so ‘pulp science fiction’. You can totally imagine some John Carter analogue, riding some kind of beast adapted to the thicker atmosphere and lower gravity (not to mention temperature!) across the dunes of Titan’s Sea of Shifting Sands. Yay also for the fact [...]

Well, it looks like Lost Girls is finally going to be a published reality. As you could imagine, if you know me IRL, or if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m kind of a big ole’ drooling Alan Moore fanboy, so a new 240 pages graphic novel from him is [...]

Continuing the series of posts that try to capture the various pieces of art I have hanging around the house. Remember that these posts are made up of quick snapshots–these are hardly professional images, and the upstairs images are worse than the downstairs ones since the angles I could use to take the snapshots are [...]

“Say that I was foolish/Say that I was blind/Never say that I got left behind”
I saw the nerd apotheosis of Flash animation today: The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Batman! Godzilla! Zombie Lincoln! And then it starts to get really good.
When I started to spread the word I found out that this actually circulated a [...]