Archive for May, 2011
Going Quiet
May 11th 2011 at 1:54 pm
For various reasons I’m going social media/blog/email/IM quiet until the 19th. There may be a blog update or two. The reason will become apparent on the 19th. Mysterious? Sure, why not. For kicks and giggles, while I’m out of the loop, I dropped the price for Nascence: 17 Stories That Failed and What They Taught [...]
Unbundled Mondays: My short story Aerophilia available as eBook
May 9th 2011 at 10:03 am
One of the ideas I’ve wanted to play with, but haven’t had the time to, was to see what happened if I ‘unbundled’ the short stories I had in my eBook Tides From The New Worlds and sold them directly via Amazon.com. I had 18 stories I could do that with. Will the iTunes music [...]
Invisible productivity gains?
May 6th 2011 at 2:03 pm
A really interesting post on ‘ephemeralization:’ a couple of years ago, Google waved a magic wand that transformed millions of Android phones into sophisticated navigation devices with turn-by-turn directions. This was functionality that people had previously paid hundreds of dollars for in stand-alone devices. Now it’s just another feature that comes with every Android phone, [...]
Yes Virginia, superheroes do come in non-superpower varieties
May 5th 2011 at 1:14 pm
In this local Utah news story about real life superheroes trying to clean up the streets, the video section has the reporter saying: “Unlike Spiderman and Batman, these superheroes have no superpowers…” Hey, I hate to break it to you, but Batman had no superpowers (other than just being rich). And many superheroes had no [...]
Arctic warming accelerating still further
May 5th 2011 at 12:14 pm
When I started writing Arctic Rising, the idea of a mostly ice-free Arctic Circle was *extremely* science fictional, and it wasn’t even a worst case scenario being mentioned other than by hippy green types to get a rise out of people. Now it’s getting mentioned more and more in scientific literature and models as a [...]
Brooks on Human Nature
May 5th 2011 at 12:05 pm
From a new review of The Social Animal: Brooks believes Western culture has a lobotomized view of human nature inherited from the French Enlightenment. René Descartes and other philosophers described humans as autonomous individuals endowed with powers of reason that are separate from and pitted against the emotions. The ability to flourish depended on an [...]
iPad eBook ignorance on full display
May 4th 2011 at 11:35 am
Spotted this bit of eBook stupidity at Publishers Weekly: While the iPad has been a huge success, selling about 20 million units since it was introduced a year ago, it has not translated into e-book sales comparable to those through the Kindle store or BN.com. One reason for that, Hildick-Smith believes, is that not enough [...]
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot Awesome
May 4th 2011 at 11:30 am
Under the general collection of tropes, one of my favorites is Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot. According to TV Tropes: This trope is a variety of Rule Of Cool in which some cool things are combined, and the combination acquires a coolness that exceeds the sum of its parts. This combination is usually physically impossible or [...]
Economics neepery
May 3rd 2011 at 11:08 pm
Modeled Behavior has a look at some economic stats for 2011 that are interesting in that they show signs of the continuing recovery on many of the fundamentals. Unemployment is always a lagging indicator, particularly after a devastating period like this recession. If you’re like me and geek out over charts, you’ll want to click [...]
Solar thermoelectric break step forward
May 3rd 2011 at 5:23 pm
A new development in solar power noted at Physorg: Their system, described in a paper published online in the journal Nature Materials on May 1, produces power with an efficiency roughly eight times higher than ever previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device — one that produces electricity from solar heat. It does so by [...]
