Do not read this if you follow BSG, haven’t yet seen last night’s episode, and are averse to spoilers along the lines of “Oh, look, it got even grimmer. Who’da thunk?” Because today’s post will carry such vague, thematic spoilers.
Here we go.
Oh look. It got even grimmer. Who’da thunk?
Way back in high school I remember [...]
A few bits of personally-relevant science have slid down the pike the past few days: yet another step along the road to functioning head cheeses, and a development in graphene tech that might — if you squint really hard and give me way more credit than I deserve — seem a bit reminiscent of Rorschach’s computational [...]
Don’t mind the unpainted gyprock and the generic sidebar elements. They’ll be deleted, tweaked, or replaced by more appropriate widgets over the next few days. I just thought it’d be better to jump in with both feet than to dick around endlessly behind the scenes until things were perfect, you know? The more visible the [...]
Regular visitors to rifters.com know that most of the stuff I’ve ever published is freely available in a variety of e-formats on this site (and on some others). I’m a bit worried that this may not be a sustainable approach over the long haul (especially in times of global economic meltdown), but so far [...]
Anyone out there know someone in Toronto with a used treadmill (or elliptical trainer, I guess) to unload for a reasonable price? I can always go the Craigslist route, but I’d rather do business with someone one of you folks personally vouched for. It’s important to have someone other than me to blame, in [...]
It’s pretty hard to escape a feeling of pervasive optimism today. We have witnessed perhaps the first-ever presidential inaugural address to contain the phrase “data and statistics”. We heard Obama add “nonbelievers” to the usual Christian-Jew-Muslim litany trotted out in deference to the diversity of the melting pot. We heard the most [...]
In this particular business, the standard components of a novel pitch are the first three chapters plus two, maybe three pages of synopsis for the rest of the story. The pitch I just sent to my agent— the latest iteration thereof, at least— contains 36 pages of prose; 27 pages of “synopsis”; a two-page [...]
Tendonitis, they tell me: chronic, and calcified, and apparently dating from the time I dislocated my shoulder while surf-kayaking in 1991. Now, after almost two decades of peaceful dormancy the fucker decides to wake up and turn me into the One-Armed Wonder throughout the holidays— apparently provoked by too many lame-ass bench presses and [...]
Most of you probably know about Turing machines: hypothetical gizmos built of paper punch-tape, read-write heads, and imagination, which can — step by laborious step — emulate the operation of any computer. And some of you may be old enough to remember the Sinclair ZX-80— a sad little personal computer so primitive that [...]
Some of you may remember this scene at the very end of Starfish — the moment when the chrysalis splits open and Lenie Clarke Mk 2 emerges to wreak vengeance on the world:
A slender, translucent tentacle wraps softly around her wrist. It fades away into a distance utterly black to most, slate gray to Lenie [...]
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| Sept 2-6: | Worldcon, Melbourne. Also some kind of GoH at Dudcon 3, evidently. |
| Oct 23: | SpecFic Colloquium, Toronto |
| Nov 10-14: | Utopiales, Nantes |
| Nov 19-21: | SFContario, Toronto |