Reading Recommendations, Musings, and the Occasional Political Rant

New Website and Blog up

2007-02-05T21:09:00.000-08:00

My website is all shiny and redecorated, and available at www.brenda-cooper.com. I've moved a few of the posts from here to there, and will be posting all new information there in the future. So please feel free to drop by and visit!
This blog site will stay up (without any new posts) for a few weeks or a month, and then it will go down.

Thanks!

Brenda

December reading recommendations and musings

2007-01-01T22:45:00.000-08:00

December News:
Well, lets start with November news, which was wet (the wettest month, ever, on record in the Seattle area), and ended with snowstorms. Here, one of our two backyard gargoyles looks almost as happy about staying home as we were about driving on icy roads.
So on to December. We love the holiday season. The house is full of Christmas music and we're shopping and wrapping and planning and lighting and singing.
And yet we're spending some of our evenings planning the summer already (family reunion, family wedding, other trips), while wrapping Christmas gifts. It feels very odd.
I feel like I have a gift, though, in the November elections. At least temporarily we have a balance of power again, and a chance for good conversation.
Working on my fourth novel. I had a goal of 30,000 words in November, and made it. I'm on target to make 30,000 in December, so far. The holidays will make that challenging.
I wish the very best holiday season to anyone who stops by to read this. And speaking of reading, here are my
December Reading Recommendations:
Throne of Jade, by Naomi Novick, the sequel to a book I recommended last month. I'm on the third one now, and this series is so good I'm using it as a carrot - if I write 1,000 words on my book, then I can sit down and read Naomi's work.
Labrynth, by Kate Mosse. I didn't really read this - I listened to it on tape. There were points where I sat and turned my car off, leaving the keys in the ignition, and just sat outside my house for fifteen minutes before I could bear to turn it off. Really. It was read by Donata Peters, who had a fabulous way of making the characters come alive. Be warned! This is a LONG book, whether you read it or listen to it. Worth the time, though.

Some contemplation of ancient cultures

2006-12-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

There is a very interesting article in this week's Nature magazine about a greek calculating machine, the Antikythera mechanism, which modeled the movements of the heavens. Although you can't get to the article unless you're a subscriber, some information is available on the wikipedia. Pretty cool. I've been studying Mayan astronomy for the novel I'm currently working on, and it's quite interesting how there are still a lot of people (not generally the scientists and archeologists, BTW), claiming that Mayans couldn't possibly have developed thier level of astronomy on thier own and arguing for everything from divine intervention to alien intervention (hmmm...how different are those?).

Both cultures provide reminders of how sophisticated the ancients were. And if you think about it even on the surface, they could, after all, see the stars. I can barely pick out five or twn at night from my suburban backyard.

October News and Reading Recommendations

2006-12-03T09:41:00.000-08:00

October News (a late capture from my website):

The most exciting news for October is clearly the new cover art for THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA:

The art is by Stephan Martiniere, the same artist that Tor used for Building Harlequin's Moon. I'm pleased that it captures the desolate feel of Fremont, the planet I created for the book. Note that the hardcover can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com now.
The other news is that I'm getting much more serious about a few things: global warming, and understanding Web 2.0. That will eventually translate to re-doing this page to be more interactive and blog-like. My model is probably Tobias S. Buckell's page. Except I can't imagine looking as cool as Toby. Anyway, I'm also playing with a livejournal and a global warming blog (links to all above). Both are time-sinks, so we'll see how long at least the live journal stays up, but it's a rather nifty way to stay in touch with people.

Last bit of news - I traveled to Alaska in September, and fell in love with the state. It is breathtaking. I must have taken hundreds of pictures in just two days. A wild and beautiful and largely unspoiled place. Nice to be surrounded by so little concrete.

October Reading Recommendations:
Naomi Novick: Her Majesty's Dragon

Easily the best dragon book I've read in years. Naomi has a wonderful voice, and the story is exactly familiar enough to comfortable in and different enough to delight. I loved this book. An easy fun, read. And not easy to put down.

Vernor Vinge: Rainbow's End

Talk about a futurist's dream of a book! Vernor packed credible, fascinating near-future world building into every single page of this book. As icing on the cake, he added good characters and an interesting story. Note - this is a book you savor, and think about. It wasn't a page-turner for me; it was a sheer joy. Even if you don't regularly read science fiction, if you want to understand a very plausible future this book will help you. I've met Vernor a number of times, and he is one of the brightest intellectual lights on this planet. It shows in this book.

September reading recommendation, news, and musings

2006-10-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

Updating my web page today, saving the old content here.

September News:
Nothing terribly new. The World Science Fiction Convention last weekend was probably the most well-run Worldcon I've been to. Kudos the army of volunteer staff and just plain volunteers that pulled that off - the scheduling was great, the panels they picked for me were interesting, directions to everywhere worked, and even the food lines were short. Heck, even the elevator lines were short.
Worldcons are always work for a writer, but on top of that, I had a LOT of fun.
And a highlight - my friend David Levine won a Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I don't remember the last time I saw anyone look quite that happy, and David deserved every little bit of that. It was also nice to see another David, David Hartwell from Tor Books, win a Hugo for Best Editor.
September Musings:
Still spending much time musing about global warming. I think we've radically underestimated the affects, and may have radically underestimated our chances of doing much about it. Except, of course, we have to try.
The Global Warming panel at Worldcon was packed. Panelists Gregory Benford and Kim Stanley Robinson did a great job. At one point, a skeptic stood up to contest that it was happening at all, and essentially got a cold welcome from the crowd (the panelists were politer).

September Reading Recommendations:
I finished Steven Barnes' Great Sky Woman on my way to and from the convention. He's one of those writers who just doesn't quiet get the acclaim he should. Some day he'll hit big time, and his backlist will reappear. Anyway, Great Sky Woman was quite good. Be patient though, it starts out a little slow. Just let yourself relax into his world building, which is wonderfully detailed, and take it as a meditation while you wait for the tension to start quite a few chapters in. Trust Steven - he delivers.

Global Voices Online

2006-09-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

A cool link...TC sent me this today.
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/

A New Venture

2006-09-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

I've started something new, at least for me. I seem to hear about, or read about, global warming / climate change almost every day. I thought I'd experiment and start writing down what I see and hear. So I created a new blog devoted just to that. Perhaps it will make a small difference by collecting stories. I'm not going out of my way to search out content (there's plenty of it), but just noting what I see and hear in the course of usual day, where I read the Seattle Times every morning, go to work at a city, listen to NPR in the car, and talk to other writers and futurists from time to time.
So far, no day has gone by without something. But then, I'm not yet a week into the project.
Anyway, I'm open to ideas from others and would welcome comments at http://globalwarmingfuturist.blogspot.com.

New Futurist.com Design Up!

2006-09-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

We've just re-designed Futurist.com. I'd really like to complement our web designer, Tony Geer. And Glen Hiemstra, the site owner and Futurist.com founder, did a LOT of work to transform our content in a newer and cooler look.

Note that Tony used wordpress, a new product to us, and it seems to have worked well so far.

Anyway, please give it a visit, and feel free to comment.

Thanks!

Heroes of the Future?

2006-09-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do an article for futurist.com (newly re-done site, by the way - what do you think?) on "Heroes of the Future." It started with a panel of the same name for Worldcon. The panel was a bust (actually a fun conversation, but as many panelists and audience members - y'all know how THAT goes).

I know I'm going to include rich people and folk that want to help - our Rockefellers if you will (Gates, Google, Branson)

Scientists, who we'll need desperately to help with global warming

Leaders, if we get any. There's a bit of a vacuum right now, and a good leader would be handy - a Gandhi of our day

Who else from our time might the future look back on as heroes?

You go, Mr. President.

2006-09-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

You go, Mr. President. Try and convince me that "alternative interrogation" is different than torture. It's about the same as saying "differently abled" means the guy in the wheel chair no longer needs it. It just sounds a little better to all of us. But it doesn't change the basic situation.

The headline in today's Seattle Times suggests you don't care what congress wants to do about trials for suspected terrorists. Well, I do. I have a better chance of talking to my congressman or woman about an issue than I do to you. You feel pretty far removed. Not only from me as a citizen, but from the checks and balances of our constitution.

Sometimes, even from reality.

Go on - take the pendulum way, way up. It will have a bigger swing back, and the next few Presidents won't have any power at all. Maybe that's okay.

You're using "fascist" instead of "terrorist." You seem to be trying to make me think 2006 is like World War II. That war was over before I was born, but I don't think it was much like today. We're not in a conventional war, and we're not in a war we can win by being big strong bullies. The more you try to use brute force on a complex and dangerous situation, the more you strengthen the enemy. Being a bully isn't helping. It's not what I want leading my country, or me.

But go on. Really. You go!

Even the republicans in my family are starting to think its time for a big change.

News, Musings, and Reading Recommendations from August website

2006-09-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

News:
My mentor in the futurist business, Glen Hiemstra, just published a book called TURNING THE FUTURE INTO REVENUE. The core audience is anyone in business or that has resources to invest, but it's a pretty good general futures book, too. Glenn is a good writer, the book is easy to read so far (I'm about half-way through my advance copy).
It's worth reading for anyone because a core piece of creating a good future is understanding the economics of a better future. Some friends and I were talking about organic foods and stores the other day and the recent news that WalMart is "going green" and offering more earth-friendly products is a almost surely good economics. The Walton family may or may not have any altruistic bones, but they are the kind of businesspeople who now how to make a profit. They must see one in greener products.
There was an article in today's Seattle Times about electric cars. Given current gas prices, they are turning out to be hot sellers. Regardless of the fact that we may want to think of a future where humans suddenly and inexplicably do the right thing in business just because its the right thing (yes, it does happen occasionally), green products will become more available when it makes good economic sense for people to produce and them.
The book is about far more than that.
In other news, I'm getting ready to go down to San Diego for the annual ESRI conference in San Diego. I always really love this show, where thousands of Geographic Information Systems professionals gather from all over the world, and generally all want to save the world. I'll blog from there, so watch my blog link.

August Musings:
I saw seven fallen leaves on the grass this evening. It seems early, but then I never want summer to end. Each of these leaves was still deep green, bordered in yellow and brown. The weak ones, the ones that had trouble taking the late summer heat.
There has been awful heat waves this year. First on this coast and now on the other one. They've claimed lives that meant more than these leaves.
It seems a time of change.

July Reading Recommendations:
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
Fabulous. Really not much more to say. Read it.
I tend to always remember Neil's work, too. I got to see a movie that he directed at the Science Fiction Museum a month or so ago. It was hauntingly well done.
Blue Smoke, by Nora Roberts
A well-told tale of arson and the gal who fights it. As usual. by the time I'm half-way through a Nora Robert's book I just don't want to put it down at all, for anything. Trying to figure out how she does that.

World Science Fiction Convention

2006-08-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

I'm in Anaheim, California, at the World Science Fiction convention. A few quick comments about bits I've learned in panels....

Future of Cities: I'll likely do a whole article for futurist.com on this, but a fellow writer, John Barnes, did some interesting statistical work that suggests our megacities could grow 3 times bigger with new technologies that are coming. So the 8 million plus people in New York could become 24 million. A lot of that is growth up, but some is growth out. A related comment from Karl Schroeder, a writer who does futurist work for the Canadian government, is that border-spanning cities such as Vancouver BC <-> Seattle (think of it as one city) or San Diego <-> Tijuana could become political forces in their own right. When I think of the tension in the Northwest between the Puget Sound and the rest of Washington (what is good for the city is sometimes not good for the country) I find it an interesting concept.

World government. A science fiction convention is a great place to discuss this. Smart people. Most of us have read the warning books like 1984 and Brave New World, but we've also read the host of books that suggest planetary or interplanetary government is a given. It's a discussion we need to have more of in the world outside science fiction. While I wouldn't say we reached any clear consensus in an hour plus, I'd say the general sense was:

We need world government to solve the problems that are bigger than nations (primary conflict and ecology, although there are others)
It has to be a strong world government with a military and police force to succeed
Its charter must be very clear and very limited in scope

Anyway, another interesting topic.

Skydiving

2006-08-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

My son took me skydiving for my 46th birthday. It's something I've always wanted to do, and I had a lot of fun.

I heard a piece on NPR driving home yesterday that talked about how people get more rigid in thier old age. For example, if you haven't tried sushi by the time you're in your early 40's, there's something like a 97% chance that you won't. If you haven't pierced your tongue by the time you're 21 or so, same thing. The show
implied that effort spent in doing new things is good.

I love sushi. My tongue isn't begging to be pierced. I think I'd rather skydive again than poke a hole in my tongue.

Hanging Around with Geographers

2006-08-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

I'm at the annual ESRI conference in San Diego. That's the formal description of hanging around with a bunch of geography geeks that would love to make the world a better place, and are actually chipping away that quite nicely.

Remember the old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words?

In my life as a CIO, I've learned that's basically true. Only maybe the number should be even higher than a thousand.

We used to search after the ever-elusive "decision support system," or 'way to help managers and leaders and the government and even regular people make better decisions.' I'm responsible for both traditional information systems (think payroll and finance and office and the like) and for Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Both are important, and often critical. But GIS is the best decision support system I've ever seen.

A visual neighborhood plan on a single piece of paper conveys more visceral information than a twenty-page text document. Or a two-page text document. Or a hundred-page text document.

There are maps here about Katrina's fury, about global warming, about the unequal distribution of wealth, about the past, about various ecosystems and habitats, about disease and species recovery and depletion.

The maps tell stories.

Stories worth listening to. We're going to need tools to make important decisions in the near future. The population bust is on the horizon, but the boom hasn't peaked. Peak oil is in the past. Global warming is real.

All of these are international issues that demand information to help support good decisions. All of them are about life and death, about economics, and about quality of life. Global warming may be about whether or not we live at all as a species.

GIS should be able to help. I'm probably hanging around with the right people this week.

Go on, look at some maps. You might be surprised what you learn.

Capturing July Musings and Reading Recommendations

2006-08-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

July Musings:

I live on the West Coast. N. Korea just test-fired a nuclear missile that is supposed to be able to hit me.

This is not a hopeful sign.

That anyone has nuclear missiles is not a hopeful sign.

On a - maybe - happier note, I just got invited to join the board of the Lifeboat Foundation. Seems to be an attempt to be sure at least some of us escape before we collectively drown the planet in sunbeams. They do more than that, of course. There's a lot to talk about right now, and these folks seem willing to discuss hard subjects.

It's an odd place. Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems) and Ray Kurzweil have been arguing intelligently ever since Bill's article in Wired about the dangers of technologies. This argument was part of what formed my thinking about BUILDING HARLEQUIN'S MOON, the book I wrote with Larry Niven that deals with people's attitudes about technology. Bill and Ray have both won major awards from the Foundation. Sort of a situation where both sides of a debate are are largely correct and worth appreciating.

I'm looking forward to learning more about the work of the Foundation.

July Reading Recommendation:

Still listening to American Theocracy, and I'm enjoying that a lot. But I think it misses a few points. It's a good book that places current events well in the light of history. It suggests that America is on a precipice of pending change, and probably pending downfall for a number of good reasons, and compares our current state with other world powers shortly before they fell - the Dutch, Spain, and England. I generally agree, and have remarked more than one that our senate seems at least as corrupt as the one in ancient Rome just before it fell. Not all of them, mind you. But enough that the corrupt seem to be a majority. Look at the telecom bill that just came out of committee.

So we probably are poised for trouble. I think it will not be that simple. More than America stands of a weak precipice of over-extension, over-reliance on oil and other polluting technologies, and economies based on rampant consumerism and high debt. Much of the world is steeped in fundamentalist religious governance (including us to a bigger extent than I like) which blacklists scientific knowledge and progress. Science is, of course, not the only answer to our problems, and may cause some of it's own. But it doesn't matter what blind governments say or even what they fund. Not much. Companies and even individuals are learning more this very moment about genetics and nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

The whole world is at risk right about now.

I still recommend the book.

Some odd thoughts about enhancement

2006-08-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

The extra testoterone in our Tour de France bike-rider is still in the news. Thinking a bit about that. Two thoughts, really. One, I just went through a round of steroids combined with antibiotics for a sinus infection. How many drug tests would that kick me out of?

More, we're moving into the bionic people age. There are prosthetics out there that are a lot stronger than regular feet - we'll be making better athletes than anyone can be naturally soon. Heck, one of the few unintended and positive side affects of this really horrid war in Iraq is a lot of forward progress on prosthetics.

Do we have a whole set of different sports events for the genetically or bionically enhanced? Or does the special olympics become more interesting than the regular olympics?

Notice I didn't say "better" - that's a tough call.

Thinsg to ponder. I feel a story coming on....

Riding Horses in the Rain (and Snow)

2006-08-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

An overnight ride in the high country above the Teanaway River outside of Cle Ellum, Washington. Last weekend in July. Mounted on a great brown and white pinto gelding, threading through meadows filled with lupin, columbine, queen anne's lace, and wild rhododendron. Filled our water buckets from the headwaters spring for the Teanaway. The scent of flowers and unsullied air and wind (yes, wind has a smell).

Eight women, including the Outfitter and the wrangler and two staff, eight horses, two mules.

The glorious knowledge that I was skipping out on some copyediting I needed to do (I'll pay for that with late nights later). Talk of peace, outrage at the war and at the silliness of the world, at those who still don't believe in global warming although we were surrounded with spruce struck near to death by the spruce bud worm, which didn't used to live at the base camp. We believed.

Most gloriously, snow falling the morning as we poked our heads out of our tent at the ridiculouly late hour of 7:30 at 7,000 feet, above the spruce bud worm and free in the wild. Alone.

Not car camping or hiking on a busy suburban trail or sitting in our wonderful back yard. Out where we had no cell coverage, no store, no ability to ask anyone but each other for help.

A fabulous weekend.

Headlines That Hit You Wrong

2006-07-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

I heard a few headlines today that struck me funny:

Winner of Tour de France Has Too Much Testosterone: A young guy in the middle of the greatest sports event of his life isn't supposed to have a lot of testosterone?

Voting Rights Act Renewed For Another Twenty-Five Years: We think we might want to take away the rights of blacks to vote in 25 years? Reserving our options?

June news, musings, and reading recommendations from the website

2006-07-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

June News:

Returned from Blue Heaven writing workshop. A very nice break, and the rest and relaxation part already almost forgotten in the whirl of daily life. But hey, I was really pleased to be able to hang out with some of the best up-and-coming writers like Tobias Buckell, Charles Coleman-Finlay, Paul Melko, Bill Shunn, Sarah Prineas, Catherine M. Morrison, Tim Pratt, Greg van Eekhout, and Sandra McDonald. Not to mention a high point of some walks with Mary Turzillo, who is wonderful writer.

Sold two stories this month, one with Larry Niven to FAST FORWARD 1, an anthology edited by Lou Anders at Pyr, and one to an upcoming anthology from Tekno, THE FUTURE WE WISH WE HAD, edited by Rebecca Lickiss. Since I haven't sold a short story for a while (primarily since I haven't been writing them - I was finishing a novel), it felt really good to complete two that I think are good work. Just to keep life in balance, I'm also working on another anthology story I just can't quite get to work at all.

Yet.

Nice that the two new sales were both kind of core competency stories, dealing with thinking about the future - one of my favorite topics.

June Musings:

Still not myself physically. It's amazing how much difference energy levels make. I learned that from Steve Barnes a long time ago, and every once in a while I get great reminders of that.

The other thought is how important it is to see the little things, especially as a writer. I found I came home from Kelley's Island with a lot of pictures of simple nature things - pretty orioles, snail shells, lilacs in bloom. It's just such a shame that so much of my life I'm in too much of a hurry to see as many of these things I want to - to really look at them. The bright gold of a snail shell and the way the little creature hides when I walk up, the fluff of a tuft of grass, the scolding behavior of a grackle when you get too close to its nest....

June Reading Recommendation:

I hate to say it, but none. I've been reading for the workshop, and reading commercial best-sellers for an upcoming weekend study group. I liked them, but didn't love them. I'm part through listening to American Theocracy, and I'm enjoying that a lot.

Actually - I lied. Let me add two novellas:

Inclination, by William Shunn.

The Walls of the Universe, by Paul Melko.

I've just started seeing Bill Shunn's work, and just met him at Blue Heaven. He has a unique voice that's a pleasure to read. I've been recommending Paul's work for Nebula's for years - he may be our biggest rising star in well-written and accessible sf.

See Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"

2006-07-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

First, this the best PowerPoint presentation I've ever seen. Second, the message is dead on. I came back to check some of his facts, and the ones I checked all panned out. In global warming, we have started something that we need to act on now to reverse.

This is the kind of leadership, by the way, that we need. I recently got asked what the world needs to succeed over the next few years. Lots. And one of the things we need is leadership. I don't see that emerging from inside the political system. Not just ours, nor anyone else's. A great failure of democracy (which has other successes) is that it makes long-term thinking and action just plain hard. I think the leadership we'll need will come from the Al Gore's and the Bill and Melinda Gates's and the Google programs for giving, from Jack Dangermond's conservation GIS programs, and other efforts like these. Surely there are serious philanthropy efforts in other countries, too. We've allowed the world to evolve to a place where a lot of money and power is concentrated in comparatively few places - and we'd best hope and encourage that those act responsibly.

Which doesn't let us off the hook. Stay and watch the credits when you see "An Inconvenient Truth." They are peppered with good ideas for how we can help as individuals.

Doggie Teamwork

2006-06-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

Our two dogs, the border collie Sasha, and golden retriever Nixie. It took no training on our part to get them to retrieve together (maybe a little on Nixie's part).

If only people always worked together so easily!

Why Wish for Armageddon?

2006-06-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

I've had a lesson the last few weeks. There are really people in the world- a lot of people, fairly mainstream people - who wish the world would end. Middle-class people with advanced degrees and careers.

I first heard this in a book I'm listening to in my car - American Theocracy. I suspected the case was being overstated. Page 3 of the Seattle Times today said the same thing. I went out and looked for evidence on the net. I found plenty.

I'm mystified.

First, if you know anything about history, there have been claims of immediately pending doom for at least two thousand years. I suspect as long as humans have been around. The Earth has been around for a lot longer than that. What makes anyone think this is the likely year-of-our-lord or year-of-the-asteroid-strike or year-of-our-lord-holding-an-asteroid-in-his-fist? You've got to admit, it's a little like playing the lottery. And many of these people have masters degrees.

Second. Why would you want the world to end in the first place? Is it that hard to find beauty? Sounds like a bunch of depressed folk that don't want to take responsibility for creating a better world, or even for sifting the one we have for the good news. Don't you have puppies? Children? At least flowers?

A spiritual teacher once told me the cure cure for depression and "poor me" syndrome was to go do something for someone else. Wouldn't it be nice to turn all the fear and energy going into actually wishing for disaster into helpful vounteerism?

I bet we could solve world hunger.

A Science Fiction Writer Looks at Stars

2006-06-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

As part of a school auction at Open Windows school, we bought a star party. That's the ability to go hang out with very serious amateur astronomers and look through their telescopes at the summer night sky. We loved it.

We saw nebulae, galaxies, binary stars, and four of the moons of Jupiter.

Two interesting observations came of the evening.

One: This is how many of the great discoveries of our world were made. Earnest, curious people watching the stars. I've been reading a lot about the Mayan civilization getting ready to do some writing set there, and much of their world-view and religious beliefs appear to have been defined by the stars. That, and these men (Almost everyone up there was male) are probably not that different than Galileo, except that they have better equipment. One of them had a great 20" telescope on a huge motor, so tall you had to use a ladder to look through the eyepiece. They reminded me of the rocket scientists I met at the Space Access conference a few years ago, bright and capable and driven. People with the ability to make a difference.

Two: We're very small. We know that. Looking at the night sky with unaided vision tells us that. There is much to protect and nurture here, but there is far more out there. The vast unknown. That time scales alone are astronomical (pun intended). The light we captured in the telescopes came from both a long ways away and a long time away. Looking at other galaxies is a very good reminder of how insignificant we may be in the scheme of the universe. And, somehow, a reminder to value what we have here that is precious.

Free Wireless in Kirkland

2006-06-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

Testing our free wireless in Kirkland again. This sign is from the free wireless in the parks in New York City. We are incredibly pleased to offer this, and are working hard to debug the service. If you're downtown or in Peter Kirk or Marina parks, please give it a try. If you're willing to, please let us know what your experience is at wireless@ci.kirkland.wa.us.

Washington Post Chat

2006-06-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

I got to do a chat for an hour today for the Washington Post. It was really a lot of fun. They have a whole series running on the future, with some great discussions by Ray Kurzweil, Alvin Toffler, and more. Well worth dropping in to look at the transcripts. The blog title is hot-linked to my transcript and you can navigate to the others from there. You may need to create an account.

Directional Symbols

2006-06-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

This one was at the Top of the Rock - the top of Rockefeller Center in New York City. I like interesting directional symbols....and am pretty happy with how this picture came out.

Two Books About Life

2006-06-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading two bestsellers, Everyman by Philip Roth, and Marley & Me : Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan. Both tell the tales of a being's life from early years through death. Both were fabulous, easy reads. I recommend them both highly. But I recommend the dog's life most. Grogan had me laughing out loud, and I spent ten minutes in tears at Marley's death, even though there was no surprise in it at all. Maybe it's partly because I'm a dog person. We have a golden retriever and a border collie who bring us endless moments of joy and laughter and also drive us to tears.

But I think even more than that, Grogan's experience as a newspaper columnist gave him an easy and practiced voice. Perhaps Marley and Me was also a slightly happier book...Roth is a wonderful writer, but Everyman seemed to be largely a sad story.

A Northwesterner Visits New York

2006-06-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a three-day trip with Toni and Katie to New York. The writer in me romances the Big Apple - after all, it's where our agents and our publishers and our editors reside in a magic place full of the power to bring our words to the shelves of Amazon.com. New York postmarks herald most of our rejections. And our checks. For me, there are still more of the former than the latter. Sort of badges of honor, like walking uphill in snow. For writers, New York zip codes are tightly anchored to the bitterest of disappointments and the best of news.

But forget the emotional connection to New York for a moment. My "home" big city is Seattle. New York is overwhelming in a bad/good split, as if it were copying the rejection/acceptance gig of my stories visits.

Why?

First - .8 million people. Seattle is only a touch over 1½ a million. Sometimes it feels hard to breathe.

Central Park is the most beautiful park in the US. Perhaps it is the same dichotomy thing. I mean, IÂve been struck dumb by the Tetons, not to mention Yellowstone. But so much beauty, so many birds and dogs and horses and castles and water, all in one place in the middle of a city? And in the middle of the park, impossibleossibile quiet even while surround by 8 million people. Impossible things happen in New York.

New York is a big band event. Sirens and car horns and trash trucks and demolition blasts and air tools. People calling for taxis and playing music and buses with air brakesÂ

New York stinks. You can smell the sewers. They pile garbage out on their streets, in big bags, every night. There's smoke stench and stale alcohol everywhere, almost as many cigars as cigarettes. New York has smoke shops every few blocks. At home, they are every few miles.

The city is alive very late at night. You can buy socks at eleven PM. I bet you can get a hammer at 1:00 AM. And I know for sure that you can get "I *heart* New York" on anything, any time of day. Not to mention more FDNY and NYPD stuff on any one block than a whole force of the real deal could possibly need to be uniformed. Note that I've never seen SPD or SFD merchandise in a tourist shop in Seattle. Maybe it's because I'm not a tourist, but I suspect it's because we had the WTO and New York had 9/11.

New York has a subway. It's almost worth moving just to have a subway. I wonder what New Yorkers would think if they knew we actually gave some people front page celebrity status for doing without a family car for a month in Seattle. Or if New Yorkers understand that it's six times harder not to have a car in Seattle than it is to have a car. We almost had a monorail. Once. Or Twice. Maybe even three times. A side note is that New Yorkers, even with the gift of a subway, walk more than we do. I suspect thatÂs part of why the average body mass of a single individual in new York seemed about twenty pounds lighter. Purely a small sample observation, but still...

There are trash cans everywhere in New York (in addition to the bags of trash on the sidewalk). But almost none of them look or are labeled like recycle bins. In Seattle, we're encouraged to choose recycle bins the size of garages and trash cans that hold about a quart.

I didn't see anyone in New York get fined for:

Passing on the right
Jaywalking
Stopping in the middle of an intersection
Stopping in the middle of an intersection while passing on the right and threatening jaywalkers.
Excessive use of horns
Loud boom boxes
Driving without checking for pedestrians
Smoking within 25 feet of a public entrance to a public building Â or worse yet, INSIDE a public building. For this purpose, public in Seattle is defined as any building that isnÂt a detached family home with a five acre yard. I think Bill Gates could smoke if he wanted to.

That's not, by the way, a value judgment. Both systems seemed to work fine. They just yielded different results.

Our pedi-cab your driver told us Bill Gates owns TWO places in Manhattan. As far as I know, he only owns one in Seattle. But our Bill Gates house is bigger. It might not be more expensive. Or our pedi-cab fellow might have lied. Our first taxi driver lied to us. Either that, or the tolls INTO New York are over 20 dollars, and the ones OUT of New York are about two.
New York has a memorial to John Lennon and it still has Yoko Ono. We had Curt Cobain and we may still be stuck with Courtney Love.

I'm happy to be heading home as I write this. But I'll be back. If just for the subway.

Waking up in 1984

2006-06-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

Some mornings I wake up and I'm sure I'm in an alternate universe where George Orwell was completely right. Headlines this morning, side by side in the Seattle Times:

Medical Privacy Law Nets No Fines: Basically - HIPAA is not being enforced. So, federal support for our privacy rights, zero. Any American out there feel like thier rights are being enhanced? Phone records, internet records...and once we get ID chips, all of our movements, I'm sure. Feel like there is any transparency going the other way? Do you know more about your government these days?

Pentagon to Reject Geneva Standard for Detainee Care: With all these self-professed Christians at the helm, let's just throw out the golden rule. New Math - multiple wrongs make a right. The government no longer needs to do the right thing.

Maybe we should all go back and read "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451." Maybe it's not an alternate universe at all. Maybe it's just where we live.

Future Goals: Comments on Move On's Agenda

2006-06-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

The political group Move On came out with the following today:

The results are in. We're proud to announce the MoveOn member choice for our new, positive agenda:

Health care for all
Energy independence through clean, renewable sources
Democracy restored

Wearing my futurist hat, I really think these are worth jumping in and supporting. At least the first two. No matter what political party you belong to.

I'm particularly enamored with the Health Care and Energy Independence goals.

The United States is abysmal at Health Care, and our current system is making it less affordable for most and reducing availability. I know what that costs: until three months ago, I was my adult son's insurance program. We were lucky - David is healthy and I have a better than average income. But still, I wrote a few thousand dollars in checks for unplanned dental care and know about the shadow of economic doom. If something terrible had happened while he wasn't covered, it could have shadowed his economic future for years. I keep my day job largely because it is benefited, even though my dream is to be a full-time novelist and futurist. And that's the consequences for a generally healthy and at least middle-class family. I can barely imagine what it might have been like to have no coverage back when David was young and we lived paycheck to paycheck. Or if we were ever really, seriously ill while uncovered. Solving the healthcare problem will enhance the quality of life and economic viability of the whole country.

Energy independence is equally important, if not more so. Without oil, we wouldn't be in Iraq. And oil isn't renewable or in infinite supply. Solving this problem will help with our economics and address global warming and global peace. If we don't make significant progress here, we almost certainly have a bleak group future. For the US, and the world.

I'm a little less sure how to read the third goal - "democracy restored." It needs some fleshing out. But if it builds two-way transparency and balance of power more definitively into our government, and restores our faith in elections, I'll take it.

I want to applaud Move On, even though I'm not a particularly active member. I'm a social liberal and a fiscal conservative (balanced budgets and savings - not trickle-down), and prefer a smaller government to a bigger one. Right now, that aligns me more closely with democrats than republicans, although I've been known to vote for either party, and in some elections for one of each.

But I digress. Let's hear it for clear goals.

Haditha, Samarra, Mai Lai

2006-05-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

Driving today, I heard an NPR special on the Haditha massacre. It made me think of Mai Lai. It also reminded me of young men I knew who had returned from the Vietnam war. I worked beside and hung out with some Vietnam vets. Most of them were just a few years older than me. About half of the ones I knew were deeply scarred, and I've always suspected most of the others just hid it better. Some killed themselves with alcohol, or drugs, or just plain anger and pain. Others managed to heal and rebuild. I think amongst the ones I knew, it was about half and half.

How damaged will our soldiers be this time?

The Iraq war has always felt like Vietnam to me - an intrusion of Americans on a soil where we aren't wanted, fighting a fuzzy enemy (communism, terrorism - both largely fuzzy, albeit with specific horrors attached as well. I'm not discounting 9/11).

Fighting a long insurgent war seems like a recipe for events like Mai Lai, Haditha, and the shooting of a pregnant woman in Samarra today.

Let's take Haditha and Samarra as red flags.

Family Sailing

2006-05-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

Got a chance to spend the weekend down in Southern California with my father - a weekend that started out as a few people flying down for his birthday dinner and turned into almost a full-scale family reunion.
My little brothers are great sailors and led a pretty inexperienced crew to a win in a long race around Catalina Island.
There were three generations on the race - ages ranging from six-year-old Morgan on his first long race to dad, who is seventy. The futurist in me is intrigued at the age range that was able to play together in hard physical activity. The daughter in me just really enjoyed all of us playing together.

Fences are Stupid

2006-05-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a week off, playing on an island in Lake Erie, generally avoiding anything happening outside of a fabulous writer's circle. I am so not happy to return to news that Bush is trying to repeat history yet again. In this day of electronics and globalization, he's building a wall between us and Mexico?

Maybe Bush was the one person in the world not happy to see the Berlin wall come down?

Back in 2004, I called Mr. Bush on his attempt to get as close to repeating Vietnam as he could in an article on Futurist.com. Yes, the two wars are different, but the nature of insurgent warfare and how occupied people act didn't change a lot between Vietnam and Iraq.

Well, I doubt the nature of walls as effective deterrents has changed either. Plan to see us spend even more money we don't have trying to solve a symptom (Mexicans want to come here) and not a problem (America is so much nicer for Mexicans than Mexico that they'll risk their lives to come here).

Argh.

Rock with Tree in Lake Erie

2006-05-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

Mary Turzillo and I went on a great walk along a largely elevated path through a wetland today. The walk was very pretty. Bird song surrounded us (and periodically, we were even quiet enough to listen to it), and blooming honeysuckle decorated the walk and the air. This rather interesting rock has a pretty big tree growing out of it - at least proportionately.
Blue Heaven has been wonderful, but at least at this stage, most of us are pretty ready to head home.

Why would you want to tresspass?

2006-05-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

Directional Symbols

2006-05-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Showing up at a week long workshop like this is a good time to look for both inner and outer direction. I'm particularly pleased with this trip since about half of each day is directed time, and the other half is personal time. Personal time seems to be spent in gaggles in bars sipping internet together from a small wireless connection, taking long walks (alone or together), napping, or writing. All are noble pursuits. This picture is from a lovely solo walk I took along the shores of Lake Erie. This lake looks enough like an ocean we spent some time today putting together a list of visual cues about how to tell lakes from oceans.

The odd things writers do in their spare time...

Thunder over Writers

2006-05-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

There are four of us from the writing workshop sitting in The Pump (the only free wireless we've found here on Kelley's Island so far), surrounded by lightning and thunder. It's terribly fun to be so connected in such a remote place. Water just started pouring down in sheets, coating the windows.

Glacial Grooves on Kelleys Island

2006-05-16T15:54:00.000-07:00

These glacial grooves are really interesting - this is only a small bit of them. They're deep, and except for a little recent weathering they look as if they were machined. They were created by rocks that glaciers dragged across limestone.
Note that this island is bounded by both the United States and Canada.

Blue Heaven on Kelleys Island

2006-05-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

At the Blue Heaver writer's workshop on Kelleys Island in Ohio (on lake Erie). I brought the Seattle weather with me, but other than that, it has been a fabulous time. Most of the writers here are new to me, or people I'd only met casually at conventions. But I've read almost everyone's work, and it's fun to paint names with faces and personalities. The critiques are fabulous and everyone's work has been fun. I expect to see most of these books we're discussing in draft on shelves in the next few years.

Kelleys Island is pretty interesting. I don't know if this trolley will get used this summer, but I suspect not. The island's history seems to be a working island of about 4,000 loggers,limestone quarry workers, and associated functions turned to a tourist and visitor haven with about 200 year-round residents. That makes for an interesting small economy, a bit of trouble getting adequate connectivity, and a great time walking about and noticing ruins. I'll do at least one more post today with a picture from the glacial grooves - a rock formation left behind by a glacier.

Space Done Right

2006-04-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Click on the title for a very nice CNN article on a multinational space trip. A Russian, and American, and a Brazilian (the first Brazilian astronaut). Space needs to be multinationaL.

Seattle Restaurant Recommendation: Earth and Ocean

2006-04-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

Lunch on my own in Seattle today. I decided to go real-food (after doing SBC coffee and a molasses cookie yesterday, and then having trouble staying awake). Well, I came across Earth and Ocean as I was out walking and looking, and ducked in. I'd seen great reviews of the place.

Had a fabulous pasta with fresh vegetables and lemon...perfectly blended flavors, just enough food (let's hear for people who serve one person enough food for one person instead of three), and very unobtrusive but effective service.

Not cheap - lunch with a tip was $21. But the food was worth the price. I'm going back for dinner sometime.

The only problem is I'm still sleepy. But I think that's because they picked a monotone speaker for after lunch. On FCC decisions.... a tough topic to be anything but monotone on. Maybe I'll go take a nap.

See you at Earth and Ocean sometime in the next month or two!

-- Brenda

Let's Hear it for New Orleans

2006-04-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting in a conference on telecommunications law for two days, biting my tongue. I've had to hear Verizon tell me why I shouldn't do municipal networking OR make them build out thier network to everyone in town (they're bring good high-speed bandwidth to town in Kirkland, which is very good [yeah, competition and real high speeds], but I don't much agree with thier policy stance). This is a recipe for no competition anywhere except the richest parts of town. Most of Kirkland is rich - it's a problem for us, but not a bleeding on the floor problem. But there are a lot of communities that the union of these two laws will disenfranchise entirely. SInce I came from a few of those, I care.

Anyway, in the middle of trying mightily to be polite in the face of a lot of conservative rhetoric from about half the speakers here, I see this article on New Orleans (on wired.com. Click on the blog title). Apparently, the big telcos want to turn off New Orleans' network. Bad boys. Makes you look like the RIAA.

Follow-up from March Musings

2006-04-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

Well, I did finish the first draft of the book. It felt fabulous to mail copies off to my first readers. Now I've had a week off, and my writing fingers are positively itchy. But hey - I've finished reading three books - it's SO nice to get time off to just soak up new material.

Just now feeling better - and not yet 100% - so maybe the exercise will start up soon.

More doggie pictures soon....

March's Reading Recommendations and Musings

2006-04-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

March Musings:

We're doing a strategic plan at work, and I'm talking about future planning to a group of City and County managers in the next few days. What better time than spring to think forward? I also just uploaded this great picture of our Border Collie, Sasha, straining to catch a Frisbee on the beach. That's a nice spring goal - catching a Frisbee. Maybe my Frisbee's for this quarter are finishing the book (just a few chapters away now), getting more exercise (I've been rather laid up with a persistent cough), and spending some good quality time with the people I love. A good time for action, for doing what the flowers and plants are doing - unfurling and growing.

March Reading Recommendation:

Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson. One of those Science Fiction books that manages to educate and entertain all at once. Very well worth reading.

Where is the NPR of Newspapers?

2006-03-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

Molly Ivins has a great column in today's opinion section of the Seattle Times entitled "Understanding the Perils of Fewer Media Outlets." I do recommend that you read the column. For a day or so, it can probably be found at creators.com.

Molly's column made me think about NPR. There is no equivalent for NPR in the newspaper world. There is a lot of personal reporting and opinion in places like this - blogs and websites. This is good. But the professionalism varies widely (as Molly points out in her article). Wouldn't it be nice to have a publicly funded newspaper that's run as professionally as NPR? Reasonably advertisement free?

I'm not sure what to do about distribution, but that's the worst hurdle. I'm not from the industry, but I don't see any other showstoppers.

Maybe the good folks at NPR can contemplate this.

Capturing February's Reading Recommendation and Musings

2006-03-14T18:32:00.000-08:00

February Musings:

Well, it's sunny today. A strange thing for Washington, and very welcome after truly dreary weather in the last part of December and all of January. Winter sunshine seems to elevate the mood of the entire state.

The world outside feels a little less sunny. Bush seems to be getting away with entirely too much, I still don't see a doorway out of the mess in Iraq, and sometimes it seems we are just so slow in growing up. And no, I'm not claiming perfection for myself either. Maybe it's the winter blues....but then the small things do intrude and require a laugh - the puppy tearing out pages of the phone book (why on earth do we have a paper phone book anyway - we use it once a year, maybe twice), the first blooming crocus in the yard.

February Reading Recommendation:

Mary, Mary by James Patterson. I had to read this for a writing workshop, and since I didn't much like the last James Patterson I read (London Bridges), I wasn't looking forward to Mary, Mary regardless of the striking cover. It turned out to be quite enjoyable. I very much liked the humanity of Alex Cross, and the entire situation he was in did seem believable (an unbelievable situation was my primary problem with London Bridges).

Anyway, nicely done thriller. Edge of your seat, but with real touching human moments and a reasonable level of perversity in the universe - this fictional world was just about as odd as the real one seems to be.

Pink Snow

2006-03-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

It's a typical spring in western Washington.

As I drove home yesterday through high winds blowing dark clouds that threatened rain and -- maybe -- snow, great clouds of pink petals from flowering trees blew across my windshield.

Four trees just across the back fence from us dropped nearly an inch accumulation of pink petal-snow.

I shivered.

I found the first few spring narcissus in a pot in our side yard, brave yellow flowers like tiny daffodils.

I shivered.

The dogs raced outside to play, turned on thier heels, and demanded to be returned to the warm house, which they then raced around like maniacs.

I shivered.

Spring in Washington.

Small Publication News (No pun intended)

2006-02-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

Had a story, "Isaac's Granddaughter," selected for a nice small literary magzine, The Salal Review. I've had both a poem and another story in it over the years, and I'm quite pleased that my work will be included in the 2006 issue.

I have fond memories of Salal-as-a-dream. Way back when I went to school at Lower Columbia College in the late nineties, my creative witing teacher, Joe Green, talked about starting the magazine. Tenderly. It meant something to him for the school to have a literary magazine, and because of that, I still like to submit to Salal even though I usually get paid for my work these days (for Salal, I'll get two copies or so of the magazine, and then buy a bunch more to support them and have copies to hand out, so the deal's not a financial win for me). Mind you, they have rejected me in the past, as well. But this year, they did choose one of my stories.

It always feels good to show up in someone's good dream. Not to mention that it's really cool that students work on the magazine.

Capturing January Musings

2006-02-10T10:30:00.000-08:00

January Musings:

Well, a new year always brings thoughts and goals. Looking back, last year was pretty good. I have a lot to be happy about. Toni and I bought the house, we've acquired two new puppies, my first book came out, I got my first inclusion in any of the year's best anthologies, and I sold two books. My son David is a full-fledged nationally registered paramedic, and we pulled that off with no debt (just a big dent in the savings). He's got his first full-time potentially benefitted job, and while it's not yet what he wants most (Firefighter/paramedic), he's feeling proud and he likes what he does. We had a great holiday with much of the family visiting.

And for 2006? I want to finish this book, and one more that has been rattling around in my head for awhile. I have a story to write with Larry (we committed to it a long time ago - it may be my last chance to collaborate with him), and I hope to enjoy the pups and my great family and get enough exercise to lose a bit of weight....that same old hope so many of us have every year.

Good luck to everyone in 2006!

There is no January Reading Recommendation - I've been very busy fighting the good fight with the last part of the second novel I sold to Tor, family, a broken-legged puppy, and a new puppy. I'm reading - writer's read - but I keep picking up books and putting them down, starting something else, etc. I'm a bit too distracted, apparently, to finish anything. We did go see King Kong - a wonderful movie that would have been perfect if Peter Jackson had been happy with re-making King Kong. Apparently, he decided to re-make Jurassic Park as well - or at least half of it -- and stuff that into his monkey movie. He did do King Kong and the girl really well....it is worth seeing. But don't drink anything for three hours beforehand.

Are we in Rome?

2006-02-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

The headline in the Seattle Times for the article covering Bush's speech is "We are not in decline."

Who declares that?

Most likley, someone who IS in decline.

For a long time, I've wondered if we arean't a bit like the old Rome just before the fall. We have a largely corrupt government that has lost support from more than half of it's citizens most of the time on most issues, we are over-extended, and entire nations have declared themselves our enemy.

Mind you, I hope I'm NOT right.

There is much to love in our culture and I rather like my life. But I have this regular sensation lately that the world is slowly falling backward and I can't seem to reach out my hands and help catch it. Even forward progress seems immediately threatened - we did pass an equal rights bill for gays and lesbians and transgender folk, and already there is a ballot measure to overturn it. What harm can it possibly do to most people?

I have been reading the "American Girl" series book about Addy, a young black woman during the time of the civil war. It's one of the most pleasant duties in my life - reading goodnight stories to my partner's 9 year old. Well, we'rereading about Addy's direct experiences with the fact that "Colored people are not really free, even in the north," during the Civil War.

I'm not sure they are now, not entirely. Prejudice still exists, even today.

We read that the same day Coretta Scott King died.

I cried as the child protagonaist in the book heard that the Civil War is over. The child I'm reading to has two great mothers, me (not her mother, but a useful and handy household adult, at least), and two fine godmothers. She is in a private school, brilliant, well-educated. I had no idea how to explain to her the silliness of there being any question about something as private and generally irelevant to others as sexual preference. But the fight over the simple law we just passed is a pale echo of the Civil War, and it seems that those echoes should have died away long ago.

Some of them seem to be getting stronger rather than growing weaker. Is that a sign we might actually be in decline?

The new puppy

2006-01-25T08:08:00.000-08:00

As promised, a picture. This is Nixie, sound asleep

Thanks to Microsoft

2006-01-23T18:11:00.000-08:00

Just a short note -- this time last legislative session I chastised Microsoft for refusing to take a stand on gay rights. My point? Corporations need to take the lead on social areas - to display thier personaility and culture. Why? They have more global reach than governments.

Anyway - see my May '05 post for more on the subject, but I wanted to mention that they did take a stand this time and came out in favor of the anit-discrimination bill. Good for Microsoft!

I don't think I get the credit for that, but maybe me and a lot more people like me, collectively, earned at least part of the credit!

Puppy Update Two

2006-01-16T18:02:00.000-08:00

Sasha got her Get Out of Jail Free card. Her leg got x-rayed and the break is completely healed. Good thing -- we were all going a little nuts (us and the dog). Ever tried to keep a border collie sedated for 6 weeks? I don't recommend it.

We are back to morning walks and as soon as Sasha got to exercise, her disposition and training all returned (and she had truly lost both - becoming bored, bitey, and mis-behaving badly).

Happiness.

But we can't much leave well enough alone. The household had been back to normal for three days and what did we do? We drove to Eastern Washington (Don't ask - we live the Seattle Metro area and drove three hours for Sasha, too) and got Nixie - an 8 week old Golden Retriever pup.

Pictures coming.

2005 Looking-back Thoughts

2006-01-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

In 2005:
A year of heart-whipping:

My first book was published, my second finished, and my third sold
Hundreds of coalition soldiers and thousands of Iraqi's died for oil
My beloved partner and I bought a beautiful four-bedroom house on a golf course
The asian tsunami and the pakistani earthquake left dead and homeless
We planted tiny flowering ground cover, witch hazel, and fresh sweet basil
While the waters rose in New Orleans and wind ripped whole oak trees free

November Musings and Reading Recommendations

2006-01-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

Late November Musings:
I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle read his new book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. See below for more information on the book itself, but it left me in a nice, calm place. Which was good - we had a chaos-filled Thanksgiving full of sick family members and a dog who broke her leg while she was in the kennel and four states away from us. Maybe I needed the extra calm to manage through all that. Odd, how the universe seems to take care of you. See my blog for a picture of the broken-legged puppy.

Focusing in on the spiritual dimension of life, and staying involved in the creative side, makes the outside world seem even stranger.

I had two odd war-related realizations:

First, I was reading Jay Lake's Rocket Science (again, see below), which is set against a just-barely-post-WW2 time frame. In those days, war changed much about us. People did without to support it - no hosiery, no new cars, the rationing of certain goods. I cannot imagine the America of today doing without anything as a result of the Iraq war.

Secondly, I'm reading London Bridges by James Patterson, a sort of war-on-terrorism thriller. I'm thinking, gosh, this is unbelievable. People just don't act like this. His villains are too cold, too single-minded to ever exist. Then I'm listening to NPR today, and they are talking about some poor archeologist in Iraq who's been kidnapped. She's apparently being set up like the other people who've been beheaded there: an attempt to use a hostage to get a government to back down (in this case, to get Germany to bow out of supporting the war in Iraq). Real people, just as bizarre and impossible to understand as Patterson's villains.

November Reading Recommendations:

I'm half-way through writing a new novel, so I haven't had much reading time. I did get through four books. Two of them are worth mentioning:
Flying in Place, by Susan Palwick. A brilliant book. Originally published in 1992, the book didn't gain a wide readership. Well, it should have. A brave discussion of child molestation through the eyes of the child, a well-honed character study, full of hope as well as hurt. It's a quick read, and I don't recommend reading it anyplace where you have to put it down, or where you don't want to risk a good cry in public.
Good for Tor Books for reissuing it - particularly with such a beautiful cover.

Rocket Science, by Jay Lake, Fairwood Press. Jay's debut novel. Not at all believable, but a hilarious, pulpy ride with a main character who IS believable. A very worthy debut: Jay is a master of voice of style, and they both shine in Rocket Science.

I've also been listening to an amazing audio book - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle. When I was a kid, the two books I'd have taken to a desert island were Stranger in a Strange Land, by RA Heinlein, and Think on These Things, by J. Krishnamurti. Both books, by the way, are still in print in multiple editions. So I guess I had good taste in books. That aside, Eckhart Tolle reminds me of Krishnamurti. His voice seems both as timeless and calm and correct as Krishnamurti's, and his message is both as old and as fresh. I did buy the hardback, and I'll be giving a few copies away for Christmas, and I really liked listening to Eckhart's voice. It's a great jolt of spirituality without any religious trappings.

Globalization: Small Notes

2005-12-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

There is an article in today's Seattle Times that highlights the new jobs Microsoft is creating in India. Increasingly, people I talk to are beginning to understand that India, and probably China, will surpass us in GDP in the near future. My guess: probably both within the next decade, especially if we keep our current policy stance.
In itself, this is fine. In fact it is probably quite good for us.
But we may be missing something important.
Multiple strong economies are going to require world governance. Maybe not world government, but representative bodies to make decisions. World courts, which we've avoided like the plague. World policing bodies, like the UN, but perhaps a stronger UN or a different group. World trade organizations, only hopefully not entirely run by corporations. Today, we have enough strength to help form and mold these organizations. But we don't seem to be doing that. There is certainly no obvious national dialogue about it. We will have a smaller voice when we are the third largest economy, or perhaps even smaller than that.
Just a morning thought....

Puppy Update

2005-12-07T17:54:00.000-08:00

Sasha is doing well - she has lost the cast and now has a ten-inch metal plate and nine screws and two wires in her leg. Not to mention, for the moment, an impressive row of staples. She is kept tranquilized and sits near us looking a bit stoned, but everytime we try to avoid the tranq's she does her very best to demonstrate that she is perfectly fine and quite capable of jumping tall buildings, thank you very much.

Puppy Breaks her Leg

2005-11-29T21:15:00.000-08:00

Miss Sasha broke her leg this Thanksgiving - while we were four states away! Here she is in her temporary yellow cast, surrounded by her toys. Someone has to be with her all the time at this point because she needs help getting in and out to do her business, and she's so miserable we can't imagine leaving her alone. Its just as bad as a human family member getting injured. Maybe worse. It's certainly caused as much heartbreak and chaos.

October Musings and Reading Recommendations

2005-11-29T19:16:00.000-08:00

October Musings:

October 21st -- I very much enjoyed attending a talk by Ray Kurzweil early this month. He is a brilliant fire hose of information. A positive futurist, a successful inventor...

I'm working my through his new book, THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR. It's a wonder of statistics and leaps of imagination. I recommend reading it, but I also recommend reading it with some caution -- I'm sure Ray is right on many points, but I'm feeling a little nervous about how far he is reaching in this book -- there is an aura of "we are it, and we will populate the universe," that reminds me of the America settler idea of manifest destiny. I'm not suggesting that he's wrong at this point, just that I'm a little chary of the tone of the book. But the book is worth reading. It will make you think.

I spoke to the Kruse Way Economic Forum in Lake Oswego, Oregon, wearing my futurist hat. A very enjoyable audience full of smart business people. I left feeling more positive than I arrived: the group was well-read and thoughtful, and I had to reach to stay ahead of them - if I even managed to! Generally, a group of leaders that seemed to have earned it.

October Reading Recommendation:

I'm half-way through writing a new novel, so I haven't had much reading time. I did finish Karl Schroeder's LADY OF MAZES. A very delightful read. LADY OF MAZES is a thought-problem, a sort of fantastic unfolding shell of ideas. The characters are not particularly well-drawn, but the book is so full of ideas it doesn't much matter. If you like hard SF, Charles Stross or Larry Niven, you'll probably like LADY OF MAZES a lot. It is NOT a fast read - it does grab your attention' the challenge is that it is so dense and full of information that I had to take it in regular bites and think about. This was not bad - I may have enjoyed it more than anything I've read in the last year. Karl is worth watching. I've also read and recommended a previous book of his, VENTUS, which is lightly linked to this novel.

September Musings and Reading Recommendations

2005-10-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

Sasha's first day at the beach. We took her down to a park on Mercer Island and let her play in Lake Washington. She loved the water!

September Reading Recommendations:

GODSLAYER, by Jaqueline Carey, Tor Books. Excellent fantasy that leaves you questioning right and wrong, and the worthiness of our striving for light and right. I stayed awake for hours after finishing this book, savoring the story, the fabulous writing, and the deep sense of disquiet the book left me with.

END IN FIRE, by Syne Mitchell, ROC Science Fiction. I actually read this awhile ago, and did one of the inside blurbs for this book. No point is posting it until you could get a copy....END IN FIRE is a good, fast, tense read, and feels a lot like the classic science fiction. Even more important, it's based on a scenario that really isn't very far-fetched, and seems to be getting less far-fetched every day: the events in the book are triggered by oil shortages. Well worth picking up, enjoying, and thinking about.

THE LIGHT AGES, by Ian R. McCloud, Ace.
Nice, nice writing. I met his this month, in Glasgow, on a panel. Nice fellow, as well. He's a writer like Neal Stephenson or China Mieville - sometimes his sentences are so beautiful you have to re-read them and re-read them and then just sit and look at them. BTW - it's a nice alternate-history fantasy.

A Sad Commentary from Heinlein and Clark

2005-09-06T18:04:00.000-07:00

At the recent Heinlein Society awards (presented at Cascadiacon to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), I had the opportunity to watch a video of Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clark being interviewd by Walter Cronkite on the day we first set foot on the moon. Talk about three brilliant men!

Yet the video made me cry. Literally.

Clarke and Heinlein, both visibly pleased and excited about the moon landing, talked about how such a historic event surely heralded an age without wars. How colonies would be established before the end of the century, made up of people who could see beyond such small things as world politics. Heinlein got a deserved standing ovation from the room (in 2005) when he mentioned that women could porbably fly starships as well as men. That, at least, has largely happened. Not to mention finding its way into much good science fiction (think Honor Harrington and Kris Longknife, for starters. That list is long.). But peace on earth would have been even better.

The hard part was that in 2005 we have no moon bases, a barely functional space station, an aging fleet of shuttles, and a plateful of wars and poor international politics. We have starvation and genocide.

The interview brought back the deep sense of hope that permeated the 1960's.

We need to access a deep well of the same.

We do have Burt Rutan and a fledgling commercial space industry, but we've probably spent more on weapons in space than we have on getting people there. But Burt Rutan is a start. Let's keep up hope.

Homage to New Orleans

2005-09-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

Whatever utimately happens in the disaster zone that New Orleans has become, the loss affects us all. New Orleans is a mythical city, a city to awaken sleeping senses; to remind us about fun, jazz, vampires, ghosts, history, and food. Whatever is rebuilt will be new; a bit of the old veneer that covered it in magic will be gone. Change happens. Perhaps New Orleans will rebuild even stronger.

We wish that for the old lady by the sea.

Yet even as we hope for good in the midst of pain, sorrow, and disbelief, we know that in many ways some parts of New Orleans will be lost forever. Here are some of our memories:

August Musings and Reading Recommendations

2005-09-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

August Musings
Here is the puppy. Meet Sasha. She's very adorable, and very hard to photograph (she does not sit still often). She's become fast friend's with Toni's daughter Katie, and of course Toni and I are in love with her, too. She's spoiled rotten, and I used to laugh at middle-aged people who spoiled dogs.

The garden is coming along, too:

I leave for London tomorrow. I noticed they seem rather intent on catching the bombers and terrorists. Good for them.
From there, Glasgow, and then Boise, Idaho, to work with Glen from Futurist.com and fellow writers Louise Marley and Bruce Sterling on a program about "The Future of Libraries."

August Reading Recommendation:
Well, Harry Potter, of course. J.K. Rowling.
This Harry Potter is fabulous. I hated to put it down. J.K. Rowling may be getting quite rich off of these books but she surely deserves it.

Reading with Syne Mitchell

2005-08-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

I did a reading at the University Bookstore with Syne Mitchell tonight. Another Seattle-local writer, Syne is very good. Her latest book, END IN FIRE, is a fabulous space story set in the near future, and exploring a very realistic set of possibilities about what might happen when we begin to actually run out of oil. Highly recommended reading.

We had a great time reading together, I think especially since we blurbed each other's books.

I remember Vernor Vinge once telling me how much he likes one of Syne's other books, TECHNOGENESIS.

I read from BUILDING HARLEQUIN'S MOON, my novel with Larry Niven.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who came - I hope it was fun for all.

Scientific American Issue

2005-08-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

The November 2005 issue of Scientific American has the words "Crossroads for the Planet Earth" splashed across the cover and the line at the very top of the cover says "A Plan for a Bright Future Beyond 2050."

Good for them.

No, they aren't being Pollyanna; they see the dangers and work involved in getting to a better place. The solutions they suggest all involve work.

They'll probably get some flack for doing this issue (scientists having an opinion about how to make the world a better place? For shame!) since it isn't just plain science reporting. Besides, they'll get flack just for publishing hope in a world that seems to laregly prefer doom and gloom and insoluble problems.

Whenever a handful of us futurists gather, I tend to be the one with the most positive view. We can continue to thrive for hundreds of years - we can continue on our trajectory of becoming ever more tolerant as a world (despite recent setbacks). They are doing that - being positibe and publishing hope.

I want to compliment Scientific American for thier work. Not because there is a bunch of brand-new paridigm-busting thought in it - there isn't. But hey, we know the problems. At least its fair to say we know a bunch of them (poverty, globalization (good and bad there, btw), global warming, etc.). It's just nice to see somone suggesting we can do something about our problems in a loud front-page manner.

Back Home

2005-08-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

Back in the states, quite pleased with my experiences at Worldcon in Glasgow. I've decided those people "over there" know how to put on a really good convention. For me, Worldcons are usually punctuated with highs and lows, with easy good experiences and with high spots in my career, nice dinners, the insights of brilliant speakers, and then a disqueting sense of feeling alone amongst so many people. Interaction in Glasgow was simply a good time. It had the right highs - and not one moment in which I felt lost and adrift even though I was travelling alone in a strange country. Nice job.

Almost as good, I came home to two books I can't wait to read - Jacqueline Carey's Godslayer, which I'd ordered months ago, and Lady of Mazes by Karl Shroeder, which I discovered was out while I was at the con and which I ordered an hour later from Amazon (Karl is an amazing post-human writer). And bless Amazon for having it waiting for me. Now I just have to decide where to start.

Life is good.

London/Glasgow Travelogue - Day ?

2005-08-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

7 or 8 or whatever! After 11 Pm anyway. Spent some time in downtown Glasgow today, shopping. It's much better looking that the parts I've been in. A nice walking town, with wide cobbled boulevards. There were many of the same shops that I saw in London (and we share a bunch of those as well in the US). Oh - and Starbucks on many corners. They sell different food, but the same coffee. It tastes right, so apparently the same training, too.

The con ended well - the last panel I went to was Tor Book's "What's New" and one of thier editors, David Hartwell, suggested that I'm a new writer worth watching. Actually, I think he described me as "Hot young writer." My writing is getting some attention, but I may have been as pleased by the "young" word. I decided that was such a nice closing note I skipped the dead dog party (the traditional last of the convention party) and stayed in my room to write and pack. After all, writer's write!

And by the way, although not perfectly located, the Menzie's hotel over here is very nice, with big rooms and helpful staff.

Even though I didn't have nearly enough days in either London or Glasgow, I'm quite happy to be heading home to my family.

London/Glosgow Travelogue: Day 7

2005-08-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

The Hugo awards were held last night - quick and professional, and blessedly not too long.

My friend from my writing group, David Moles, didn't win the Campbell, but he's a great writer and worth watching for. Another nominee worth paying attention to is Strange Horizons (website category: they didn't win, but they publish a lot of great fiction. David Moles and I have both had fiction published there).

Ellen Datlow got the best editor and Sci Fiction the best website, so it was a good and well-deserved night for Ellen.

Hugo night is always a very fun glitterati evening with many people dressing up thier best and enjoying the last gasp of well-attended late-night parties.

Some Glasgow observations: I'm going out into it further today, and hopefully learning a bit more, but it really feels like a butterfly struggling with an old cocoon. Old and crumbling buildings are right next to new shiny buildings. There are more fences and walls and there is more dirt and clutter than London had, and I even passed a few fences with warnings about "anti-climb paint" - whatever that is. I suspect something that comes off on you and glows? It doesn't feel like somepleace I'd walk around in on my own on Friday night.

Not too many of the older buildings in the part of town I've seen are very well restored, although last night I was at an Orbit Books party in a very trendy new bar in downtown Glasgow that looks like a restored warehhouse. Trains rumbled above our head and arched brick doorways and ceilings all looked fairly old, although in good condition. My guess is some were original, some re-made, and all restored. Another party-goer described it best as very similar to the landscape of Neil Gamin's "Neverwhen."

London/Glasgow Travelogue / Day 6

2005-08-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

I got out once at lunch, so I have some pictures.

This one is the auditorium where the Hugos will be given out.

It's attached to a big building, the SECC, where the convention is happening.

Some of the people from an electronic list of Larry's fans, including Nick Edwards, Tim Atkinson, Tim's sweetie Corinne Svoboda, and Nick's brother (whose name I unfortunately forgot to write down) ended up being great lunch partners - we went down to town and got chinese buffet that was actually quiet good.

Nick and I and Tim are pictured (in order) in our very nice Larry-Niven-L list T-shirts. I have another picture where the graphic is a little clearer but I don't have time to post it right now. It was nice to get out and go to town to eat and feel the sun (it was a beautiful day, and the first few days here were quite rainy).

I listened to an interesting talk on Augmented Reality by Karl Schroeder (author of Ventus and Lady of Mazes). According to Karl, you can define augmented reality as a different interface to the computer, an interface that is much more seamlessly integrated with the real world than our current interface which is more akin to looking at another world througha window.

I also got to meet Harry Harrison -- one of the nice things about being here is meeting folk that don't seem to often show up at conventions at the states.

London/Glasgow Travelogue: Day 5 (More of a Conlog)

2005-08-06T01:30:00.000-07:00

Well, no pictures of Glasgow. I haven't even seen the city except as it passes between me and the SECC, where the convention is, or as it smiles up at me in sunny moments as I look down from tall hotel windows where I'm drinking wine or water and chatting. Glimpses of fascinating buildings from those same windows. I was keeping Sunday free, but that turned out to be the day everyone can meet me, so I may not shop or see Glasgow much. :(

The weather is just like Seattle in spring.

Ran a panel on research that must have had 300 people in the audience. It devolved a bit into a discussion about how much science you need to have in science fiction books, and whether or not you have to get it completely right. I think we came generally to the sensible conclusion that it depends on the book you're writing.

A side note: One of the panel members was Ian R. McLeod, and I'm having serious trouble putting his book, "The Light Ages" down.

Except for Harry Potter (which is sacred now, and a guilty pleasure), it's been a long time since I let a book get the way of my writing. Worldcon was an inconvenient place to discover a new writer that I like.

Getting ready for a workshop on Libraries after I get back, and I conventiently met some librarians from the US and we sat and chatted over coffee. So that was good!

Anyone with ideas about the future of libraries, please free free to email me or comment on theis blog entry -- I have my own ideas, but I'm interested in other peoples!

I've been gone long enough I'm missing home terribly, although every once in awhile I dig out pictures of Toni and Katie and Sasha (the puppy) to show people.

Thoughts about World-Class Cities

2005-08-05T02:46:00.000-07:00

Well, in the last eighteen months, I've been to three world-class cities: Paris, New York, and London. I'd never been to any of them before. They all have a lot in common. Rivers run through or near them. They're ports. They have good public transportation. They are diverse. They are at or near the center of politics for thier country. All of them have rich and varied cultural options - theatres and museums and big parks in the middle of the cities that actually provide a sense of real space. They are all basically liberal, but with a good enough balance of the conservative voices to maintain sensibility.

I compare that to Seattle, which I love, but which is not quite on a class with these cities. I think our biggest mistake was screwing up the transportation. In fact, we're still doing that. Screwing up the transportation. We have the water, we're a port city, and we're reasonably diverse. Not much to do about being far away from DC, and maybe that's a good thing. We're socially progressive. We do all right on museums. We have good theatre and nice summer venues for concerts. But we can't, for the life of us, figure out the transportation. The people know that - they voted for the monorail. Three times. Now we just need the political will to make it happen. Or better light rail which is all connected. Something. Instead, we throw everything that's not perfect away, which leaves us with nothing.

You know - we voted against the stadium once. The powers-that-be built it anyway. We voted for the Monorail three times, and I suspect it will never get built. What's wrong with this picture?

London / Glasgow Travelogue: Day 4

2005-08-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

Scotland is much less well-off than London. At least the part of Glasgow that I've been in has a lot of vacant office space and a lot more buildings that are not well-kempt. The coffee is terrible. It's either Nescafe or weak and bitter brewed stuff. They are OK at cappuccino though, and there are Cafe Nero's (which are as good and as ubiquitous as Starbucks) everywhere. There are also Starbucks, which are about the same as at home, but not so many as Cafe Nero's.
The people are fabulously polite, and the lilt and run and chatter of their voices is like listening to a pleasant stream - it's not quite the English I'm used to; I've had to ask for clarifications a number of times. But it sounds so much better than we do. London did too, but not as good as here.
The architecture is great - both the new and old buildings are typically interesting.
I'm actually here for the World Science Fiction Convention, and I'm enjoying that so far. I had dinner with one of the Tor editors, a magazine editor, and some writer friends of mine last night up at the Hilton and the food was quite good. I'll try and get some pictures to include today - it rained most of yesterday and I didn't get any good ones.

In Glasgow now - day 4

2005-08-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

Short post -- not much connectivity (I get fifteen minutes free at the convention).

It's rainy and cold. I had a nice greeting though - I met a very nice fellow on the tram from the airport who hired a Taxi and gave me a ride as well so I didn't have to walk with all my luggage. That's how this community is. Friendly.

Got to listen to my friend David Levine do a nice reading of a book he's hoping to sell. He was very good, and the book sounds like it will be very good.

I'll buy some real access later - but it's $26 a day and even I have my limits.

London Glasgow Travelogue: Day 3

2005-08-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

I got stuck for a half-hour on the underground District Line yesterday. Not fun. But that freed me from the responsibility to go anywhere particularly far away, or particularly historic today. I had been thinking of the British Library or the British Museum - both nice responsible choices. But the Library is on the Circle line which doesn't run right now and the Museum is two changes away.

So I went shopping.

Oxford Street is fabulous. London clothes are fabulous - at least what they're selling this season. Skirts just like my favorites from High School. Tunics. I could have spent a ton more money, but my suitcase only holds so much. And pounds are dear.

I took the bus - the big double-decker ones like the one that got blown up. But if you didn't take the underground or the tube, then what? Be relegated to taxis or walking? At least on a bus, if you get stuck, you can get off. And big red busses are thicker than flies in London - the odds of not getting blown up must be good. Yesterday we just sat in the underground and waited on the track. Boring. Luckily it was an aboveground part - sitting in a tunnel for a half hour would have been worse. The big busses are actually pretty cool.

So -- more London observations. This city has a ton of newspapers. We have two - which are kind of one since they share the same printing press etc. back in Seattle. Here there are morning papers and evening papers and sensational papers and international papers and USA papers and liberal and conservative papers. What a wonderful plethora of news! Maybe it's because they have so much public transport, and what are you going to do on public transportation except read? Especially on the underground, which has no useful sightseeing.

Also, London is very busy. There are almost no "To Let" signs, most people seem to be employed, and the economy seems to be just fine. The picture below shows a number of building cranes just across teh Thames from the Tower of London. Old and new, mixing.

The bus drove by Hyde Park (if you know London, I took the number 10 - but don't tell me that the number 10 also goes to the Library, I don't want to know that). I mentioned that when I went walking early yesterday, Hyde Park was empty. I have pictures of it with no one in it, or almost no one. Of flocks of geese nibbling the grass by empty arm chairs. But this afternoon around 5:00, it was full. Frisbee. Rugby. Meditation. Running. Walking. Dancing. Very full, and jubilant.

I've decided London is worth coming back to. I'm sort of sorry I have to leave tomorrow morning.

Oh - one last London thought. They believe Nescafe is coffee. They serve it in hotels and restaurants. They're wrong.

London/Glasgow Travelogue: Day 2

2005-08-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

Walked through Kensington gardens. Very pretty.

Interesting tidbit: Londoners don't pay attention to signs. There is very limited cycling allowed in the gardens, yet everyone cycles everywhere. And it's a great place for it - long paths. Also - London does not wake up as early as we do in the US. It was a struggle to find coffee at 6:00 AM - thank you McDonald's! Even the coffeehouses don't open until 7:00. The streets were deserted early, and the park as well, although a few runners were out.

The gardens are very pretty even though largely barely-kept grass, barely mowed. There are pretty flower walks. I'll try to get a picture or two in here later today or tomorrow.

Of more interest, I was the first one in the memorial fountain for Diana, Princess of Wales. It is beautifully done - streams of water running both directions from a low bubbly fount at the top which is fed directly by groundwater. In the fifteen minutes I was there, many people came in, so that the grounds were nearly full as I left. It's amazing what one woman can do - both because of and in spite of the man she married. Her accomplishments, surely, were based on her own strengths even if her title helped make her the world's darling. I imagine she would have hated Blair's support for Bush's war.

Well, off to write some more, and maybe nap.

London/Glasgow Travelogue: Day 1

2005-08-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

I normally don't so personal blogging, but a few folks wanted to track my travels this week. In London today -- and reminded of how tough international flights are - everytime I get on one I swear I'll only do it again if I fly first class, but then when it comes time to ticket I think about the money and choose the cheap seats. This time, that meant next to the bathroom with a seat that didn't recline properly. Ugh. Not much sleep - but a little Janis Ian music helped.

I survived the underground, which was mostly aboveground. Terrorist's didn't bother me at all. Not one. But there were a lot of flights of stairs to bump up with luggage. Those bothered me. Family has all suggested I avoid the underground, but it turns out that a Taxi would have been $120 and the underground was around $7. So, tough. London is VERY expensive.

London's not like Paris - I'm not immediately in love. It's more like Paris than Seattle, and I love both of those cities. So I suspect it will grow on me. There are smart cars (the little bitty ones) and there are SUV's. The people here feel very similar to people in a US city - I don't feel out of place at all.

The sense of history is fantastic. I can see buildings outside the window of the internet cafe I'm sitting in which may well be older than our country. I walked by a castle that wes definitely older than the US.

I'm in the Kensington area, and plan to go to Hyde Park tommorrow. Maybe I'll rent roller blades.

Capturing July Musings and Reading Recommendations

2005-07-31T02:04:00.000-07:00

July Musings

Summer. More gardening...watching Toni create our garden is wonderful - she is so very creative and so very focused. I sit and write and watch, and every morning I wake up to see the little plants and how they are doing. Birds visit the yard, and we spotted a raccoon the other day - not quite so good. We're pondering how to make sure it stays outside the fence. Not as easy it sounds, if you've ever dealt with a raccoon.

We're getting a puppy - and are ever so excited! So I've posted her baby picture from the breeder here. She's a border collie - smart and active.

July Reading Recommendation:

The Secrets of Jin-Shei, by Alma Alexander
A beautiful subtle book in a delicately built and well-drawn magical world resembling ancient China. Enter a society where a bond deeper than friendship unites women across caste and clan, and affects the outcome of an empire. A very, very nice read.

Follow-up on solar sail/comments on a word

2005-07-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

Taken from the Cosmos 1 web site:

"The word failure is sticking in my craw. Certainly, we failed to achieve the objective of Cosmos 1: we did not achieve solar-sail flight. But I don’t think, with all we have done, that I can call Cosmos 1 a failure."
-- Louis Friedman, in his Report of June 25, 2005

Follow the link above to read the whole article.....

We need big thinkers like Louis Friedman. An big thinkers are big people - expansive people. People that change the world. Maybe not everyone of them manages to do it....but without an army of big brave people doing big things, we'd see very little punctuated growth - very littl real change.

Reading Louis' report about the solar sail that didn't sail is a good reminder for all of us to be willing to try the big things, even if we might fail.

June Musings and Reading Recommendations Captured from Webpage

2005-07-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

June Musings

Summer. We've planted a garden in the backyard. Amidst all of the craziness associated with a book coming out and buying a house and unpacking, we managed to plant a rose garden (actually, Toni planted the whole back yard, but we did the roses together).

June Reading Recommendations

The Hallowed Hunt, by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Lois returns to a new part of the world she built in The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. A very fun read, with fabulous scenery along the way and quite a few interesting characters to meet. She is one of my favorite line-by-line writers and one of my favorite creators of worlds - a combination worth stopping to read. I highly recommend any of her work, and particularly the three in this series (and you do not need to read this third book in any order in relation to the others). I sincerely hope she returns to this world yet again.

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
A fabulous, tender, illuminating novel.

Kudos to the Seattle Times

2005-06-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

The Times is running a series called "Suddenly Sick" - excellent journalism designed to help us see the darker side of the medical industry. As we have been struggling at work to try and understand why our insurance rates keep rising, and rising, and rising....way beyond inflation, the underlying problem the Times is discussing has become increasingly clear: one of the worst contributors to our out-of-control system is big pharmaceutical companies (there are others -- big pharma is one)of the worst).

I linked the article above - and highly suggest reading it.

Many years ago, I gave up regular television. Not because of the poor quality of the shows (although that might have been enough, eventually), but because of the high quality of the advertising. Here I was sitting in front a tube watching interesting one-minute shows that multinational corporations had spent millions of dollars on - solely to try to make me behave in ways they wanted. I suspect I'm more my own person for attempting, whenever possible, to avoid advertsing. Am I going to have avoid the doctors office next?

A Real Solar Sail

2005-06-20T22:02:00.000-07:00

And less than 24 hours to launch....what a wonderful solstice idea.

Science fiction writers have assumed solar sails in multiple books and stories...and a real solar sail is expected to launch tomorrow.

Yum. Check out the website linked in the title....

An image for today

2005-06-16T23:25:00.000-07:00

This morning as I drove to a conference to give a talk, I sat in a long line of cars at a stop light. The stoplight glowed red against a gray sky; Seattle gray: cloud covered, but not wet.

A man walked past me, going the other way. He appeared homeless. At least a week's stubble decorated his lined cheeks. His hat was pulled down over his head. His head was down, his gaze low, as if the sidewalk in front of him held every secret in the world. His shoulders were down. His clothes were dark and slick; patched and worn. Around his left leg, below the knee, he wore a knee cup like a children's skate protector. It was the only white thing on him. Except for faded white words on his gray backback:

DEFY GRAVITY.

The Ghost of the ERA

2005-06-15T22:04:00.000-07:00

The ERA may be a herald for gay rights. Women are still not truly equal. And gay rights may follow the same path, becoming a sort of ghostly equality, not quite there, not quite complete.

I spent this past weekend at a wonderful songwriting workhop on Shaw Island. Over dinner, one of the hosts mentioned to me that she spent a lot of time trying to get the ERA passed. For those of you who may not be up on what seems like old history, the ERA is a simple bill:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

It has been passed by 35 of the required 38 states, and is still reintroduced in Congress annually. The fact that it has not passed means that we women still do not have equal rights.

Yet as far as I can tell, the ERA is considered somehwat passe feminist history.
Many people say we no longer need the ERA - that we have equal rights. My own history would tend to bear this out -- I have had fine and equal jobs, and I know that I do, in fact. make at least as much as any other male in my field in a similar sized city, and in general, I make more. Opportunities have been available to me and I have rarely felt discrimination based on my sex.

My life, perhaps, sybolizes that progress has been made. But I was also born into an upper middle-class family, given a good education, and blessed enough to live on the rather more enlightened West Coast for nearly all of my life.

For many, the glass ceiling still exists. as of 2004 statistics, women still earn 77 cents on the dollar against men. The gap is even larger for minorities. Inequality doesn't stop with pay. Women are for more likley to be victims of rape and abuse than men. Women are not - quite - equal. Minoriy women are even less equal.

The fight for women's rights in America is pretty much under the radar in most places. My conversation in the weekend cabin made me think of the more current issue of rights based on sexual orientation. They seem, also, to be going the way of the ERA. Recent state votes indicate that there probably would not be 38 states to vote for equal rights. Hopefully, there are not 38 states to ratify an ammendment against, either.

Only one state allows gay marriage (which is not full equal rights - it just equalizes one important right and the host of priviledges and responsibilities that go with it). No states have voted for gay marriage. Here in fairly liberal Washington State, we haven't managed to pass a legislative promise not to discrimate against people at work for sexual orientation (it missed by one vote this year).

After I got up from my dinnertable conversation and sat down to write in my journal, I felt the ghost of the ERA following us into the current rights fight. It looks likely that people will be discrimated against on the basis of sexual orientation for a long time. The future may be a long slow journey full of tiny battles (some wins, some losses).

Wouldn't it be better to just pass equal rights for women and sexual minorities, and anyone else who needs them and move forward? Why not be free?

May Musings and Reading Recommendations

2005-05-31T21:26:00.000-07:00

May Musings

Well, getting closer to June, and to the release of BUILDING HARLEQUIN'S MOON. I'm quite excited. I've had other good news as well this month: Tor has indicated that they want to buy my recently completed novel, THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA and a sequel (yet to be written).

I found that out on my way back from a quick trip to the east coast to talk to the Air Traffic Controller's Association and NASA Ames at their technical symposium. There, I had the opportunity to be part of panel of futurists talking about the future of aviation. That was a very fun topic, and I got to be the generalist who discussed trends in privacy/transparency, demographics, and other other social topics. I would have enjoyed staying for the whole day, but took the opportunity to run up to New York, wander through Times Square in the evening, and walk through about half of Central Park on a grand spring day. The park and the day were both so beautiful that I felt as of spontaneous joy had decided to just visit, landing me in some place more manic and ecstatic than usual (I'm typically a pretty even person).

Anyway, more on the books after I have a contract, etc.

In the meantime, before I can even think about more writing, there is packing - we move into our new house next week!

May Reading Recommendations

The Sunborn, by Gregory Benford. A nicely done piece of classic science fiction. Exploration of our solar system, aliens, encounters between humans and between humans and aliens, and classic dust-ups between the humans on-the-spot and the folk hanging safely back on Earth. If you like nice classic science fiction, you'll like The Sunborn.

Global Warming needs Global Action

2005-05-17T05:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed that people are reacting rather locally to global warming. For example, they are covering their local glaciers in blankets to keep them cold. I read another article recently (sorry, can’t find the attribution) about a group of people moving whole colonies of birds (or rather trying to), supposedly because of global warming.

What’s the first word in “Global warming?”

I’m sure we do need to act locally in the sense of driving less, buying more fuel effient cars, recycling and reusing, etc.

We can, perhaps, still affect the causes of global warming. But I doubt we can control the effects much. Precisely because nature is a self-balancing and successful system, I’d generally caution against treating the symptoms randomly by trying to stop glaciers from melting and moving bird colonies. I don’t think we understand the complex intricacies of global weather enough to do much messing with it successfully.

We do, partially, understand what we’ve done wrong to cause the system’s imbalances. Working together as a global community through instruments like the Kyoto treaty is critical. In the meantime, it may not hurt to experiment with blanketing glaciers, but I’d prefer we treat nature like the wild, brilliant, chaotic, resilient, sensitive system it is, and work on our part rather than trying to control the whole thing. I suspect the global weather system is bigger than we are.

Corporations Should Take Stances

2005-05-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of talk up here in the Seattle area about Microsoft softening its position on gay rights from supportive to neutral. It may have done them more damage than any technical faux pas in the last ten years. I certainly feel less enthusiastic about their software.

Microsoft's social policy shift bothered me more than the fact that I've paid for a lot of things in my Enterprise License that really weren't delivered. But then, they will be. Longhorn will ship someday, and hey, less buggy is better than fast, right? But I don't yet know if Microsoft will change its position on gay rights. And while I never did count on ship dates, I did count on Microsoft's personality.

Microsoft's personality?

Yes. Maybe that's a stretch, but "corporate culture" is too bland. So I've been thinking about this for a few days, and here is my take on why I feel so betrayed:

Corporations have a lot of power, and in some cases and some arenas, they have more power than governments. Certainly global corporations with Microsoft's fiscal clout have more power than most single governments do, regardless of the regulatory role that we in government play. So the choices corporations make matter. They influence staff, customers, and the media. In other words, in Microsoft's case, just about everyone. I heard Bill Gates talk about the power of software just a few months ago, in person. He meant it. He's right, but Microsoft is even more powerful than its software.

I expect different attitudes, positions, marketing, and even product, from Apple than I do from IBM. From Newman's Own than from RJ Reynolds. These companies value different things. I don't make all of my decisions on what product to buy based on company values, but it is one factor among many that forms part of my buying decision.

Corporations can take political positions. They can make a difference based on their values. In the past, Microsoft has always clearly valued diversity, including trying help make it happen by taking political positions. They can make more of a difference than some governments (see above).

So when a company with the power and clout of Microsoft changes position on something important to me personally, I feel betrayed, and even mistrusting. This is kind of tough; in the past I've defended Microsoft when other CIO's and I have been in the room talking about bundling or security or marketing practices. Now, I'm not so sure how much I can trust them to be themselves.

Now, let's hope this argument doesn't convince Microsoft management that the bland choice of a neutral position is the right one, and that they would have been better off to have never taken a position in the first place.

In other words, Microsoft, don't change your personality....someone has to lead, and corporations matter a lot in this world. I used to be sure Microsoft was one of the good guys in the social policy arena.

Capturing April musings and reading recommendations

2005-04-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Musings
Spring is a great time for new beginnings. We have a new house (probably - it still needs to inspect and all that silly stuff that goes with home buying), a new bicycle for Toni to put in the house, and it's finally daylight savings time. That matters to a Seattleite who works...it's wonderful to come home and have time to actually do something. Even if that something will probably be pack for the next few weeks...

It seems that more people are interested in the future these days...a hopeful sign! I normally do more writing than speaking, but both activities are picking up. Here's hoping that's a positive sign about the future. Curiosity is usually a good thing...or at least it beats dread, which seemed to have been the watchword last winter. So here's to a great spring.

I'm beginning to get excited about BUILDING HARLEQUIN'S MOON, which I wrote with Larry Niven (a wonderful writer, teacher, and friend). It comes out in June from Tor Books, and that mean I'll be able to hold it in my hands sometime soon, and go into bookstores and buy it....which will be one of those lifelong dream realized kind of activities.

Reading Recommendation
Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
A surprisingly wonderful work. Most of my reading is either genre fiction or science or the web. I picked this up on the recommendation of a friend of mine who also loves words, and who told this was the best book she had read this year. It's very lyrical and very fun, with a soft tension that draws you right through. Eugenides takes on a very touchy and brave subject, but that actually ends up being simply background - the real joy in reading this book is its delightful and well-drawn characters and beautiful prose style.

Semantics: When is a terrorist a terrorist?

2005-04-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

The front page of my Seattle Times has an article headlined "Survivalist Rudolph to admit 4 bombings." The article goes on to say he will admit to the deadly Olympic bombings. What I want to know is why is this guy a "survivalist?"
If he'd had dark hair and dark eyes and been from any middle-eastern country, or maybe even been from any country except ours, we'd be calling him a terrorist.
Is he getting described with the romantic and attractive word "survivalist" because even though he's a raving demented bomber, he's also an American conservative who counted a lesbian bar and a family planning clinic among his targets? Because his targets are the very same ones as this administration, only they're using money and political pressure and he used explosives?

March Musings and Reading Recommendations

2005-04-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

Capturing the text from my Website before I update it with new information...

March Musings:
I'm a little late, but perhaps St. Patty's day is a good day to post for March, anyway. We took a week's vacation in Mexico, and that left a bunch of work and writing commitments which beat out updating pages and blogging for the last month or so.

I'm getting kind of tired of this always being political, and I've noticed that when I see almost any headline these days my eyes just want to slide over it...even though that is, of course, the least responsible option possible. This morning, it's a war hawk being appointed to run the World Bank (and why the heck does the US get to appoint the head of the World Bank anyway, or did my eyes have too much trouble sticking to that story to pick out that particular detail. Drilling in ANWR. Could we get a little less responsible if we tried? Gee, we've affected most of the Earth already, greedy little beings that we are, how about we just make sure we don't miss any pristine corners, okay?

A regular mystery in my life (a good writerly puzzle) is how come we all seem like really decent human beings on the one by one by one level? I like almost everyone I know. In the city I work for (Kirkland, WA., USA) almost all of our politicians and staff really care about the environment and human dignity and health. Even the ones for whom that is not the first priority aren't irresponsible with either issue.

Is it really as simple as the more power you have, the more corrupt you are?

Reading Recommendations:

Sue Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is a very magical little book, very empowering. I had a fun experience with this - I was reading it on one leg of our vacation - I think on the way home, and no fewer than five people saw me with the book and made sure to tell me it was a great read.

Nicola Griffith's With Her Body is equally wonderful. Nicola's strong feminist science fiction is rich with setting and imagery, every page a delight. This book is part of the series "Conversation Pieces" published by Aqueduct Press. This is the second month it's been up here, but you know, it's that good, and it inspired me to write a Mayan story.

February Reading Recommendations:

2005-03-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

Reading Recommendations:

Jaqueline Carey's Banewreaker is fantastic! Jaqueline Carey takes a pretty standard set of Fantasy/Myth tropes and applies her unique voice and excellent line by line writing to craft a truly incredible book.

Nicola Griffith's With Her Body is equally wonderful. Nicola's strong feminist science fiction is rich with setting and imagery, every page a delight. This book is part of the series "Conversation Pieces" published by Aqueduct Press.

Movie Tip - There's a reason "Million Dollar Baby" is doing so well, and is up for so many awards. Don't worry about whether or not you like boxing, just go see it. Bring a box of kleenex.

Capturing February Musings from Web Page

2005-03-17T06:26:00.000-08:00

February Musings:
Well, it's really late January, and the Iraqi elections are going on. It feels so hard to tell what is really happening -- if the rhetoric were true, it would be great. I can't quite believe it. I read a very interesting editorial by Houzan Mahmoud in today's paper that dealt with the fate of women in Iraq - and made a strong case that women's freedoms (from basic physical freedom to freedom of choice) are eroding, and that they have been eroding since the occupation. Houzan concludes that the elections are likely to erode that freedom further.
After reading Azar Nafiz's "Reading Lolita in Tehran" I find that case very believable. We are creating and strengthening the insurgency by our very existence in Iraq, and perhaps driving many individuals into the arms of the fanatic segments of Iraqi society. And in Iraq, that is generally Muslims on the far right (and not supportive of women's rights). And at the moment, we're waging our own righteous war on the far-right Islamic groups, led by our own fanatic far right.
I'm not sure I expect any better eventual outcome than we got in the crusades. The further we drive the Iraqi people to strict far-right Muslim beliefs (as opposed to much of Islam, which is generally about as militant as the local Unity church), the worse off Iraqi women are likely to end up. Martyrdom is a strong concept in both religions - and killing Muslims and Christians strengthens both core religious systems, particularly on the right.
Given how important strong, empowered, and educated women are to successful society, I'm convinced this is a true tragedy.
Now, I'm willing to stay hopeful it doesn't work out that way - that somehow the Iraqi people choose a representative democracy that respects everyone, regardless of gender or religious belief. That's the rhetoric, and it's fine with me if it turns out to be true.

Comments from Nelson Mandela and President Bush

2005-02-03T04:45:00.000-08:00

Last night, we heard President Bush make a case for spreading "liberty" around the world. A good idea, in my opinion. I happen to think there are better tactics. Nelson Mandela also made a statement yesterday: The rich should feed the poor. I've linked the CNN short on Mandela's speech to this article. CNN quotes him as saying, "In this new century, millions of people in the world's poorest countries remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. They are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is time to set them free."

President Bush seems to believe that having the right to vote will set people free, and Mandela that being fed will help. As long as Mandela's plan includes a healthy dose of education, I believe he is the more correct one.

I am at a conference in Phoenix related to my day job in technology, and some of the other attendees are from other nations. The lunch table discussion yesterday touched on India's IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), which one of the CIO's at the table graduated from years ago. India is a technology powerhouse today, and it was the long-term economic development vision of India's leaders that powered the establishment of IIT. Paraphrasing my colleague's words, education was the tool India saw for feeding its people.

It has certainly worked rather well.

I do believe people want the right to vote. The Iraqi people just demonstrated that beautifully. I also believe that over the long run, they must be educated in order to create truly meaningful democracy, and to create the wealth required to contribute to the well-being of the world in a positive way.

Can we turn our guns in Iraq to textbooks and teachers? I beleive those two things will translate to both votes and food, in a sustainable manner.

On the Iraqi Vote and Women

2005-01-31T07:07:00.000-08:00

I brought these over from my web page since I kept wanting to go back and add information....

February Musings:

Well, it's really late January, and the Iraqi elections are going on. It feels so hard to tell what is really happening -- if the rhetoric were true, it would be great. I can't quite believe it. I read a very interesting editorial by Houzan Mahmoud in today's paper that dealt with the fate of women in Iraq - and made a strong case that women's freedoms (from basic physical freedom to freedom of choice) are eroding, and that they have been eroding since the occupation. Houzan concludes that the elections are likely to erode that freedom further.

After reading Azar Nafiz's "Reading Lolita in Tehran" I find that case very believable. We are creating and strengthening the insurgency by our very existence in Iraq, and perhaps driving many individuals into the arms of the fanatic segments of Iraqi society. And in Iraq, that is generally Muslims on the far right (and not supportive of women's rights).

At the moment, we're waging an ideological war on the far-right Islamic groups, led by our own fanatic far right. I'm not sure I expect any better eventual outcome than we got in the crusades. The further we drive the Iraqi people to strict far-right Muslim beliefs (as opposed to much of Islam, which is generally about as militant as the local Unity church), the worse off Iraqi women are likely to end up. Martyrdom is a strong concept in both religions; Islam and Christianity become stronger when beleivers are being martyred.

Given how important strong, empowered, and educated women are to successful society, I'm convinced this is a true tragedy.

Now, I'm willing to stay hopeful it doesn't work out that way - that somehow the Iraqi people choose a representative democracy that respects everyone, regardless of gender or religious belief. That's the rhetoric, and it's fine with me if it turns out to be true.

January Musings and Reading Recommendations Captured

2005-01-29T10:54:00.000-08:00

These are the January section from my Website, saved as I start penning February.

Welcome
I overheard a sad conversation today. I was sitting on the battered leather couch in a great local coffee shop, JJJ's, writing, when a woman at a table just over my shoulder leaned in and asked if I was a writer. I said "Yes, I write science fiction and fantasy," and they asked if I was published and I said I'd sold a few short stories, and turned back to the scribbled-on novel pages I'm in the middle of going over for awkward phrasing before I send it off to my agent.
Anyway, the woman's female table companion said, "I'd like to write," and the reply she got was something like "Why waste your time? The only people who should write are the people with natural talent. It's too hard to get published."
Ouch. Talent is training and desire, not something innate. No gold medal gymnast started out even able to stand neatly on a balance beam.

Reading Recommendations:
Not much for this month...I've been writing rather than reading. And re-reading old fantasy's I like. I did run into a book that gave me a good belly laugh at a friend's house:
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
by the writers of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart
Very good poke-fun humor.
We did go see the Lemony Snicket movie today, and liked it very much. Yes, it was over the top - as critics say. But what the heck -- so were the books. It was very fun, and I thought the cast did a great job. Violet, particularly, seemed like herself.
Meantime, we are having trouble waiting patiently for the next book, and have already ordered out Harry Potter from the local independent bookstore, Park Place Books, which throws just great Potter parties. We'll be there at midnight!

Observations about Two Software Giants

2005-01-28T20:55:00.000-08:00

I had the chance to hear Bill Gates speak this week at a conference for Public CIO's held at Microsoft. I was already impressed with him, but even more so after seeing him in person and hearing him speak. He was very real, and warm, and casual about the work he is doing in the world. That wasn't the subject of his talk, but it came out in some of the answers he gave to our questions.

I've had the same reaction to another tech giant I've been lucky enough to be around - Jack Dangermond from ESRI, the company who's software powers most of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the world. Inside of the GIS community, "Jack" is understood to mean Jack Dangermond in the way "Bill" means Bill Gates at Microsoft. Jack is also passionate about changing the world. He has aligned ESRI closely and openly with his passion for using software to help guide good decisions about the world around us. ESRI gives significnat grants (money, software, hardware) for targeted solutions, particularly in environment, government,education, and emergency response (but certainly not limited to those areas). At the annual ESRI Users Group meetings in San Diego, Jack addresses us specifically and passionately about using GIS to change the world - and his passion has carried to many people in the GIS community.

Bill certainly does not do less. The directions he has taken his software in have enabled much of our current electronic world, and through his foundation, he is a regular and signifianct contributor to health and education issues around the world.

So for the moment, lets set aside any issues about business practices, wishes that either software platform was less expensive, and other gripes. Lets assume those are valid discussions, but that they belong in another forum.

I believe we are lucky to have these two people. Both are truly brilliant, and they have amassed significant wealth and power (there is power in software - the software available to us enables and/or limits our choices in many ways). We are lucky they choose to use this intellect, wealth, and power in large part to address problems and opportunities that are too big for governments, that by thier nature need to cut across government lines (are global). Both men focus on positive images of the future which include, and in fact empower, humanity. They are global thinkers.

I see some other rich people focus more on toys, on external trappings of power, on yacht races...and then I see these two focus on a better world. It's a good thing. Especially since they both have the power (the software) to make the world a better place. That's leadership.

Follow-up on News Commentary

2005-01-27T06:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I was wrong - both stories persisted as lead stories in today's paper. That's good. I still feel like the news flashes before us with little time to talk about it before it the next story pushes it aside.

A Commentary on the News

2005-01-26T20:26:00.000-08:00

I often write about the speed of change (I've done this in a few stories, and in a few articles on Futurist.com that discuss Vernor Vinge's idea of the singularity (boiled down: a point in time beyond which we no longer recognize ourselves or our world because it has changed fundamentally and nearly completely - and FAST).

I watched news off and on today, and noticed a number of stories that appeared, and then nearly disappered, apparently on the assumption that in less than a day's time everyone who needed to know, knew. One of these was the tragic train wreck in LA, which occupied much of the morning news space on CNN and in other venues, and then faded to a short "update" piece by the time the early evening news came on. The huge number of casualties in Irag today were handled similarly. And both of those are big messy stories which will still appear in my morning paper, although unless it's a short news day, I bet they won't be the lead stories by then.

So failing to keep up on current events events for just a day or two can mean that they get missed entirely. I already mentioned in my previous blog that the daily paper I take, the Seattle Times, considers one-day-old news an archive and requires registration for access.

Just an observation -- but I think an interesting one. Perhaps this contributes to information overload and makes us pay more attention to the constant stream of news that we might if stories hung around a little longer. At the very least, it leaves less time to absorb and discuss the news. And we really could use some nice, civil discourse these days.

US Losing Ground

2005-01-24T05:54:00.000-08:00

I started out to quote an article in the Seattle Times yesterday about the US losing ground in Iraq. I didn't link to the article (like everybody else they want me to create an account, and the more times I give away my personal info, the more spam I get and the higher the risk of identity theft - why isn't the news free? More importantly, why don't I have some secure way to log into everywhere are be recognized? Different subject). The article starts out "The United States is is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick." It goes on to suggest that we are creating more insurgents than we're killing, which is a point I made in an article on Futurist.com a few weeks ago.

But here's the observation - I decided to see if the Seattle Times article had been picked up by someone who would make it free. I googled "US Losing ground." It returned "Results 1 - 10 of about 3,130,000." That's a lot of losing ground. So I decided to see how much ground we were gaining. About half as much as we're losing. "Results 1 - 10 of about 1,700,000 for US gaining ground."

It was even more interesting to learn how we're losing ground vs. how we're gaining ground. Of course, there is no real information in this odd result - but it struck me as interesting anyway.

This is an experiment I suggest you do try at home.

Music Industry Sales are Good for Writers

2005-01-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

Music sales are up. Internet sales. This bodes well for the internet future of writers like myself. Today, it's easy to buy and enjoy music from the Internet. At 99 cents a song for my iPod, I feel like I'm getting a good deal. And I have more choices than that - many artists post some or all of thier music for free as well.
Digital books (with the exception of audiobooks) don't yet have an optimal form-factor device, like music has the iPod, not to mention many other great playback devices. But someday they will. And the idea that there will be both a commons area where I can post fiction and/or non-fiction for free if I so desire, and a way to sell other wriing so that I can make a living as a writer, is a good thing.
Today, I sell books and stories (primarily to print media) for money. And I write here and for Futurist.com for the sheer joy of it - with no monetary return expected. So let's hear it for both strict copyright law and a rich digital commons. And for the digital world, where the cost of music is pretty low, and where as a reader I may be able to buy stories for less, and yet make as much, or more, for the stories I sell.

A Math Lesson

2005-01-14T19:20:00.000-08:00

Katie, Toni, and I (two grown women and an eight year old), were talking about the Huygens probe, which by the way, is very cool. Nice science. We read that the whole Cassini mission, including the probe, cost 3.3 billion dollars. Katie asked who paid for it. So one of us said, "we did" - and explained that it was paid for by taxes. So Katie said, "That means we each paid about $10.00?"

Well, I did the math, and sure enough she was about right (I divided 3.3 billion by the current population of the US, which is 295,255,584, figuring the US population was a close enough estimate to the US + Europe + Italy total taxpayers for this rough an approximation -- I though Katie was way off). Katie was right. My math came out at $11.oo, and since I probably estimated the number of taxpayers low rather than high, the number is probably even closer to Katie's guess than that. Smart eight year old. Good instincts.

The Huygens probe was roughly a 25 year project and I think I'm getting very good value (heck, I'd pay that much to see a movie, and I'll spend more time than that reading about Titan).

I decided to see how that number matched up to the Iraq war numbers. Using the same exact calculation as above, I've spent $507 killing people in Iraq.

That's fifty more space missions. Much better than thousands more dead people.

And in case you are wondering, knowing more about the solar system makes me feel safer than the war on terrorism.