book covers
Guess What I Got in the Mail Today?
This is my prize for winning Scalzi’s LOLCreation contest. Just showed up today. In case you can’t read the inscription, it says: “To Steve, who does not do logic wrong.”
intellectual property
On looking stupid, clueless, and unprofessional. . .
SFWA is becoming an on-line spectator sport. I’m not going to go into too much depth here, as the bandwidth expended on this is already reaching critical mass. I’ll only comment by posing the following rhetorical question: If the chair of your e-piracy committee screws up so bad that it Read more…
internet
How *not* to sell your book
You may have read my earlier post on how not to query agents. Here’s a follow up, using another spam message I got recently. I am genuinely mystified at the thought processes that produce things like this. Spam in general is only effective because it only requires .01% of the Read more…
politics
Why Mixing Religion and Government is Bad
Sudan doesn’t like your teddy bears. Britain’s foreign secretary said he was “very concerned” about the case of a UK teacher who was in court Thursday, facing charges of offending religion by allowing a teddy bear to be named “Mohammed.” Not only is is an appalling case of “let’s persecute Read more…
fantasy
Stupid for Sale, 3 cents a word
(Scalzi @ Whatever alerted me to this.) Note to aspiring writers: Don’t submit stuff to Dragon Magazine, just don’t. They are paying a whopping 3-6 cents a word for all rights. ALL RIGHTS. ALL!!!! This means you can’t re-sell it, you can’t put it on your website, podcast or whatever. Read more…
pet pictures
Bonus Kitty
This homeless waif accosted us while we were unloading groceries a couple of weeks ago, rubbing our legs and mewing incessantly. Since there’re coyotes in the neighborhood (I had seen two crossing the street earlier that evening) we took the creature in and placed her on the sun porch, segregated Read more…
real life
10 Things I learned this Thanksgiving
When you put 2 leaves in our dining-room table it doesn’t fit in a 10×11 dining room. The standard 8 pc. place setting that most of us get for a weeding gift will be inadequate once you start hosting the extended family for holidays, it is good to have a Read more…
internet
LOL is Win!
Wo hoo! I won Scalzi’s LOLCreation contest with the following entry: If you’ve read my earlier post on Science Religion you probably know why, though I’m respectful of people’s belief systems, I find the concept behind the Creation Museum eminently mockable. Here’s the point: Faith = The belief in a Read more…
internet
I guess I knew this
A blog post elsewhere led me to an online political philosophy quiz where I scored thusly: Progressive/Conservative score: 8 – Moderate Progressive (“You think the progressive movement is usually well intentioned, but is sometimes too extreme in its ways”) Capitalist Purist/Social Capitalist Score: 6 – Economic Moderate (“You support an Read more…