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July 22nd, 2008
 | 06:38 pm
Slow News Day
"No Major Incidents Reported in West Tennessee This Morning"--headline, Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, July 21
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July 20th, 2008
| 01:48 pm
The Glorious Twentieth
As Jerry Pournelle is wont to say.....
If we can put a man on the moon.... ..., why can't we put a man on the moon?
This is more than just a desire to do so. It is a statement that we no longer can. Not only the hardware, but the know-how is gone -- scrapped or retired -- and NASA has become a bureaucracy rather than a mission.
* * *
And, not to be forgotten, today is also the annual "Derrieres in the Delaware" in which people float via inner tube from Eddyside Park to Scott Park. A different sort of "moon."
 "Moon River, wider than the sea...."
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July 15th, 2008
| 11:04 am - A New Trend in Crime
July 1
- "Naked Man Breaks In, Flees in Woman's Clothes"--headline, Associated Press (dateline Stuart, Fla.),
July 3
July 8
July 9
- "Naked Man Arrested after Hijacking Las Vegas Bus"--headline, Associated Press, July 9
July 10
- "Naked Man Breaks In, Trashes Neighbor's Home"--headline, Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press, July 10
- "Windham Police Search for Naked Man"--headline, Eagle-Tribune (North Andover, Mass.), July 10
And how does he get around so fast???
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| 09:48 am
The Glorious Fourteenth
OK, so I'm a day late.
Courtesy of J. Pournelle' Chaos Manor:
On July 14, 1789, the Paris revolutionaries with aid of the local militia stormed the Bastille, a fortress in downtown Paris which was similar in purpose to the Tower of London. The revolutionaries freed all the prisoners held in the Bastille on royal warrants. They were all aristocrats: four forgers, two madmen, and a young man who had challenged the best swordsman in Paris to a duel, and whose father had him locked up so that the duel could not take place. The garrison consisted largely of invalid and retired French soldiers. After the surrender much of the garrison was slaughtered and their heads paraded on pikes. The four forgers vanished. The two madmen were sent to the common madhouse where they much missed the special treatment they'd had in the Bastille. The final freed prisoner joined the Revolution, became Citizen Egalite, and was later killed by guillotine in the Place de la Concorde for joining the wrong faction.
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July 12th, 2008
| 07:57 pm
The Glorious Twelfth
Well, depending. Three hundred and eighteen years ago more or less today,* the Jacobites and Williamites met at a great battle near Boyne, in Ireland, over which absolute monarch would get to rule the United Kingdom. The Williamites won.
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Up Jim River
I finished an Irish Pub novelette, "Where the Winds Are All Asleep," which I plan to send off to Analog one I'm sure it doesn't suck.
So the sequel to The January Dancer is now officially launched and weighs in at 6000 words. Woo-hoo. Only 94,000 words to go!
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July 8th, 2008
| 11:34 am - The Glorious Eighth
The Glorious Eighth
On July 8,1776, the Great Square in Easton, PA, was the site for one of only three public readings of the Declaration of Independence. At the time, there was a courthouse in the Square. The local militia assembled, and Robert Levers read the document from the courthouse steps.
"...a dog-hole of a place, remote from all the world."
-- James Burd to Edward Shippen III, Tinian, January 16, 1772
The crowd then gave "three huzzahs" for Independence, fired off some shots, and unfurled a flag with a device representing the thirteen united colonies. It has long been the tradition locally that this is that flag:
The original is preserved under glass in the Easton Public Library, but it can be authenticated only to the War of 1812, when it was used by Captain Horn's Company. It is now the municipal flag of Easton.
It is celebrated every year: http://www.heritageday.org/Heritage_Day/Home.html
_____________________________________
[*] one of only three. Philadelphia and Trenton, in case you were wondering.
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July 1st, 2008
| 11:03 pm - Dispatches from the Edge of DEATH!!!
Okay, how can you tell a statistician whose been told he had a condition with 40% mortality?
Easy. He sees he has a 60% chance of survival. Always play the odds.
Such was my situation. I had a heart attack while flying from Chicago O'Hare to Lehigh Valley. It was not a knock-em-dead sort of thing, obviously, but it was a profound pressure across the chest and pain down the left arm. Shortness of breath. Some sweating, too, but I was in a regional jet, and things were sardine-like.
Back in O'Hare, my 7PM flight had been moved to 9PM, then from F-11 downstairs to F-12, then back to 8PM and then upstairs to F-11 (again). A Johnny Rocket double-burger probably did not help. But then, this was not a single-point failure mode.
I arrived in ABE just after Midnight, Friday/Sat. The symptoms seemed to diminish when I stood up. I had begun to ascribe them to weariness and to the weight of the computer back over my shoulder. I had been teaching a seminar in Chicago. However, the symptoms began to build again as I traversed the tunnel to the baggage claim, where Margie met me.
"I think I'm having a heart attack," I told her. So we grabbed my luggage (small airport; no waiting) and headed for the nearest hospital.
Fortunately, it was near indeed - just one exit down the Thruway, and right off the Thruway. And it had the regional heart center.
The Emergency Room acted swiftly and efficiently. If you must ever go to the Emergency Room - which I do not recommend - try to go after midnight. No waiting.
They asked Questions. Margie handled the insurance. I told them about the pain. On a scale from 0 to 10? How is this scale calibrated? The pain is in my right arm, I said, pointing to my left. Like I was looking at my body from the outside.
They put nitroglycerin under my tongue. My head did not explode. I think the ER people had heard that joke before.
Eventually, I was "stabilized" and the next day (Sat, still) I was EKGed, X-rayed, and sonogrammed. Never have my insides been so thoroughly studied. The medtech who did the sonogram smeared my body with jelly. Under other circumstances, this might have been fun. Most of the others stuck needles into me in various places; and this was decidedly Not Fun. (I am not a needle kind of guy.)
The cardiologist already treats my dad and my wife. "You hit the trifecta," I told him. "I should have gotten you first," he answered.
Two arteries on the heard blocked. One 90%. The other 99%. This is the part where he says under those conditions, a heart attack would have been fatal in 40% of people. I was one of the 60% because I've never smoked and I don't drink much.
On Monday, he did an angiogram. This involves punching a hole in your groin and running a snake up your femoral artery to the heart for a look-see. He looked. He saw the aforesaid blockage, and inserted two stents. These are like flying buttresses on Gothic cathedrals, except they are tubular and made of medicine-impregnated wire mesh. They expand and hold the plaqued tube at bay.
That was yesterday. Today I came home. (Sure, pull me back from the brink on one day; send me home the next.) I have more tablets to swallow than Moses ever dreamed of; and an exercise rehab regimen awaits me. I cannot lift anything more than 10 lbs for a while; and Johnny Rocket Double Burgers are right out.
It was not a near-death experience; but it is as near as I care to get. Margie says I'm lucky; but I have always thought I was.
The truly curious thing is that the conviction that I would have a heart attack soon had been growing on me for the past couple months. The ban Sidhe, perhaps, whispering. And my brother dreamed of me, and my father awoke with an inchoate sense that something was badly wrong.
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June 26th, 2008
| 07:55 am - We Remember Kelo
The Supreme Court handed down its Kelo decision three years ago. This allowed local governments an enhanced "eminent domain." They could take private land if they believed it could be developed in a way advantageous to the local economy. But as Jane Jacobs and others have pointed out, governments are notoriously incompetent at planning economic development.
Steven Malanga reviews the results on Real Clear Markets: Indeed, the very redevelopment project that sparked the Kelo lawsuit, an effort by the town of New London, Ct., to turn its Fort Trumbull waterfront into a haven for high-priced homes and 21st century jobs, has sputtered. The ground where Susette Kelo’s home stood is now barren, because the townhouses that the city-sponsored developer was supposed to build there have never gone up. Interest in the area isn’t very great and the developer hasn’t been able to get financing. In fact, what began more than a decade ago as an extravagant ‘public-private’ scheme to redevelop this whole area around tourism, research and development and luxury residential uses has produced little except ongoing construction on a $17 million Coast Guard station. . . .
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June 25th, 2008
| 05:35 pm - This is old news, but....
Heinlein in DOOR INTO SUMMER described "Hired Girl," a robot floor cleaner.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/051011_scooba.html
On video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RllcyHYE9n0&feature=related
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June 24th, 2008
| 07:47 pm - What is Mike Flynn Reading?
Who cares?
Although not a fictioneer, Lukacs is occasionally guilty of striking prose, especially when he sets out the vignettes with which he likes to populate his texts.
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June 23rd, 2008
 | 09:45 pm - Good Mood
Just saw e-mail from my esteemed Agent. EIFELHEIM sold in Czech language. Dobry!!
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| 07:26 pm - Of All Unlikely Things
This, found elsewhere, struck me as an odd juxtapostion:
***************************************
The Incredible Hulk, The Philokalia, and Anger Management
Posted by Anthony Sacramone on June 23, 2008, 9:26 AM
So Saturday I caught The Incredible Hulk (not to be confused with Ang Lee’s 2003 merely credible Hulk). I also happened to be working my way through Volume 1 of The Philokalia, a collection of fourth- to fifteenth-century texts that exemplify Eastern Orthodox spiritual wisdom. A strange dynamic formed, and about fifteen minutes into the Hulk, the words of Evagrios the Solitary came to mind:
The demon of anger employs tactics resembling those of the demon of unchastity. For he suggests images of our parents, friends or kinsmen being gratuitously insulted; and in his way he excites our incensive power, making us say or do something vicious to those who appear in our minds. We must be on our guard against these fantasies and expel them quickly from our mind, for if we dally with them, they will prove a blazing firebrand to us.
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A strange dynamic, indeed. One does not expect the Incredible Hulk to be prophesied by Evagrios the Solitary.
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June 21st, 2008
| 06:52 pm - The Death of Logic and Reason
While I was in Tyngsboro this past week, there was a news reports from Gloucester, Massachusetts, about seventeen girls under the age of sixteen who had made a pact to become pregnant together. Time Magazine has this to say: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html
The usual unexamined assumptions cause them to push Catholicism as the problem and contraception as the answer in the second paragraph:
“The question of what to do next has divided this fiercely Catholic enclave. Even with national data showing a 3% rise in teen pregnancies in 2006—the first increase in 15 years—Gloucester isn’t sure it wants to provide easier access to birth control.” Do they read what they write? The root cause was not limited access to birth control or Catholic disapproval of it. The root cause was that these girls =wanted= to become pregnant. Even if PP had given each of them a case of contraceptives, it would not have mattered. The story was about teenage pregnancy; so the answer has to be condoms. Hard to stop that ol' knee from jerking, I suppose.
+ + +
In back of everything, we read later in the story, these girls wanted to be loved unconditionally -- and a baby would do just that. Certainly, boy friends would not do so. Boy friends have been liberated since the 60s. Is it any wonder that the suicide rate among sexually active girls is six times higher than among their inactive sisters?
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June 9th, 2008
| 01:58 pm - On the Road
In the middle of a four-week swing. Last week, I taught a Lean Certification course in Chicago with four people. Played hob with the simulated process, which involved eight work stations cutting, punching, folding, and stapling a "product." But ingenuity prevailed.
This week, I am in Kalamazoo as segundo on a Lead Auditor training relative to ISO 13485, quality management system for medical devices. The prime on this job is an old colleague that I haven't seen in a while, and I am always impressed by his ability to cite examples - say in plasma welding of titanium or in the use of bone growth to embed passive prostheses. He can even quote passages not only from the standard but from the Code of Federal Regulations: 21 CFR820
Then next week, I am in Boston, doing a Design for Six Sigma seminar; then back to Chicago for week 2 of a Master Black Belt cert course.
Then I get to go home and have two wisdom teeth pulled.
Meanwhile I work at night on a novelette, "Where the Winds Are All Asleep," the latest in the Irish Pub series that ANALOG we hope will buy. Once it is out of the way, I have a request to write a pro-bono article regarding the stillbirth of Islamic science. Then it's rock and roll time for Up Jim River.
Review of The January Dancer
Oh, sure. First Tom Easton hangs up his crown after 30 years reviewing for ANALOG; then he goes and writes a review of The January Dancer for his own personal amusement.
Fortunately he's posted it for our amusement: http://technoprobe.blogspot.com/2008/05/michael-flynn-january-dancer.html
He begins to wit:
Michael Flynn's latest novel, The January Dancer, represents his bid to displace Mike Resnick from his position as champion writer of thoughtful space operas.
And concludes thusly:
The scarred man ... tells enough for the reader ... to hope that Flynn continues with the universe he has created here. He's done such a grand job that Resnick must henceforth share his throne.
Now he's gone and attracted Big Mike Resnick's attention. I must watch my back.
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May 30th, 2008
| 11:03 pm - A Fine Day for Statistics
Well, any day is a fine day for statistics, naturally. But there was a story in this morning's Express-Times off the AP wire.
A second item comes by courtesy of JJ the Crabmeister, the Hammer of the Crustaceans:
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May 26th, 2008
| 12:02 am - Posting from Balticon
Balticon
Sunspots
Were Our Ancestors Idiots?
The following is an exchange of board postings elsewhere that I thought said something interesting:
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May 18th, 2008
| 05:37 pm - An adventure on Peacock Junction
Those who dislike reading preview excerpts can skip this:
“Bridget ban,” the scarred man says, “arrived at Peacock Junction... …a world of lush colors and bubbling waters, and of careless men and women. There, the tropics run from pole to pole and the ocean currents are delightfully warm and languid. It is a world on which not much happens, and what does happen happens slowly. They have a Seanaid of sorts: garrulous old men and women who meet in an open amphitheater during the dry season, and not at all during the rains. Someday they may pass a law, but there is no hurry. The universe is in motion: planets and stars spinning, galaxies swirling, starships sliding from star to star along superluminal channels in the fabric of space. There is no reason why any world in such a universe should be so much at rest as Peacock Junction. But while Peacock has very few laws, she is rich in customs; and customs have the greater force. A law may be appealed; but from custom there is no recourse. When Billy Kisilwando killed his partner in a drunken fit, he was given one hundred days’ grace. He set off into the Malawayo Wilderness with a rucksack, a hiking staff, and a small, but faithful terrier. He emerged after ninety-nine days, minus dog and staff, and reported to the District Head, confessed his sin, and prayed forgiveness from his partner’s manu; and ever afterward he repeated his confession in the Hall of Remonstration to all who came to see him. Such is the cruelty of custom.
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May 15th, 2008
| 04:58 pm - Polar Expressions
The polar bear population has doubled from around 12,000 in the 1960s to about 25,000 these days, an apparent peak. This has apparently upset someone. They are being removed from under the tough protections of the Marine Mammal Protection Act to the more lenient provisions of the Endangered Species Act. It is not clear what species is endangered by a doubling of polar bears -- perhaps salmon?
A Doubling of Polar Bears. Good title. But why would polar bears be playing blackjack?
If polar bears could be transported to Antarctica, would they be bipolar bears?
I cannot bear this any longer.
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May 14th, 2008
| 12:24 am
In answer to an earlier post challenging folks to classify the 16 characters in The Wreck of The River of Stars, only Annafirtree had the courage to try. She asks:
How did I do?
In the table, the canonical answers are on top; Annafirtree's analyses are on the bottom. It is always possible that the canonical answers are wrong because I failed to achieve the personality I aimed for.
Annafirtree's correct answers (8 of the 16; all the EP's and all the F's but two flipped) are bold-faced, and the two pairs of flips are in blue and red, resp. In addition, four others were flipped opposites.
The Artisan S-types (Fife, Grubb, Bhatterji, The Lotus Jewel) are in italics; the Guardian S-types (Corrigan, Miko, Ratline, Hand) are non-italic. The Idealists and the Rationals are in whole columns.
| | ST | SF | NF
Idealists | NT
Rationals | | I | J | ISTJ - Inspector
Corrigan
Ratline | ISFJ - Protector
Miko
Miko | INFJ - Counselor
Okoye
Okoye | INTJ - Mastermind
Gorgas
Fife | | I | P | ISTP - Promoter
Fife
Satterwaithe | ISFP - Composer
Grubb
Grubb | INFP - Healer
Wong
Wong | INTP - Architect
Koch
Gorgas | | E | P | ESTP - Crafter
Bhatterji
Bhatterji | ESFP - Performer
The Lotus Jewel
The Lotus Jewel | ENFP - Champion
24 DeCant
24 DeCant | ENTP - Inventor
Rave
Rave | | E | J | ESTJ - Supervisor
Ratline
Corrigan | ESFJ - Provider
Hand
Akhaturian | ENFJ - Teacher
Akhaturian
Hand | ENTJ - Field Marshal
Satterwaithe
Koch |
That's 8 of 16 (50%) spot on.
5 off by one letter (Ratline/Corrigan, Hand/Akhaturian, Gorgas
2 off by two letters (Satterwaithe, Koch)
1 off by three letters (Fife).
The two flips are interesting: Okoye thought that Akhaturian could have been Hand reincarnated save that one was born before the other died. And Ratline and Corrigan differ only in being external (Ratline) vs. internal (Corrigan).
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May 11th, 2008
| 05:22 pm - Let the Seiun Shine In
I have just been told that I've been nominated for the Seiun Award for the story "Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth." (Translated by Kazuko Onoda, Hayakawa S-F Magazine 2007/7)
http://www.sfawardswatch.com/?p=711
How do you say, "It's an honor just to be nominated" in Japanese?
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