Archive for January, 2011
Bloomberg calls US rail investment ‘dithering’
January 24th 2011 at 11:17 am
Even business mags are starting to wonder what the fuck’s up with America’s refusal to invest in rail: The train from Shibi in Guanghzou to Hong Kong will reach speeds of 217 mph before arriving at a 15- story atrium topped by impossibly thin ribbons of solid roof alternating with glass. This is the $8.6 [...]
A weekend of Confusion: A quick con report
January 24th 2011 at 10:43 am
I like Confusion. It’s a chance to water cooler chat with a lot of other writers who are my friends a mere two hour drive away from my own house. Emily, who’s been going with me for eight years or so, also enjoys it, so it’s a family trip every year. And Confusion is a [...]
iPod Nano as wearable computer
January 21st 2011 at 3:41 pm
Daring Fireball: But just playing with the thing makes me realize that wearable computers are inevitable. Imagine a Nano with an always-on display and a Bluetooth connection to your iPhone, allowing the Nano to serve as a status display for live informat. Yes please. Yes please very much.
Confusion 2011
January 21st 2011 at 12:52 pm
I’ll be out this weekend at Confusion, a Detroit-area regional gathering of writers, readers, scientists, and everyone else who shows up. If you’re interested in seeing what I’m up to live, you’ll probably want to check in on me via twitter. Updating will be light/slight. See you again on Monday.
A cyberpunk world
January 21st 2011 at 12:13 pm
The world increasingly looks more and more like a cyberpunk world to me: Erik Prince, the founder of the international security giant Blackwater Worldwide, is backing an effort by a controversial South African mercenary firm to insert itself into Somalia’s bloody civil war by protecting government leaders, training Somali troops, and battling pirates and Islamic [...]
Community gun ownership and Tulsa
January 20th 2011 at 12:20 pm
Around Martin Luther King day I saw some discussion of this HuffPo article about MLK and his guns: One issue on everyone’s mind this Martin Luther King Jr. day was gun control. King’s calls for resolving our differences through peaceful nonviolence are especially poignant after Jared Loughner gunned down six people and wounded several others [...]
Does an electric car just shift the carbon/pollution problem elsewhere?
January 19th 2011 at 12:17 pm
From Jess: Would you be willing to talk a little about electric cars? How exactly are they greener? I mean, yes, the use less gasoline, but the electricity to charge the battery is still coming from somewhere, right? Producing electricity still costs resources and creates pollution. If all the gas cars were replaced with electric [...]
10,000 songs
January 19th 2011 at 11:38 am
In an interview in Men’s Journal, Merle Haggard talks about his apprenticeship while in prison: I wrote 10,000 songs at San Quentin — they weren’t no good, but I had to write those songs to get to the good ones.
AToW progress 11%
January 18th 2011 at 5:18 pm
This short story I’m writing for an editor, that I’m calling AToW, is coming along. I spent most of last week on some freelance work, doing eBook conversions for Sub Press (I converted a number of Robert Silverberg short story collections). I haven’t talked much about it, but I’ve been creating eBooks for Sub Press [...]
The Detroit Auto Show does the electric shuffle
January 18th 2011 at 12:43 pm
I love fast cars. Pretty cars as well. I despise econo-boxes. I love anything electric. Because I hate the fact that after 40 years, our cars still get basically the same gas mileage. So when my stepdad asked if I wanted to travel up to the Detroit Auto Show, along with my younger brother, I [...]
