No, the Moon is not “part of Mars.”
No, I don’t know what he meant.
No, I don’t really feel like posting about it.
So there. Nyah.
The Moon, Mars, and What?
June 8, 2019
What ever happened to May?
June 7, 2019
One minute I’m blogging along, the next minute…
No, I don’t mean Theresa May, I mean the actual May…er, May, as in the month of. I missed the entire month of blogging!
Right. Well, I have some catching up to do. A few more interesting science tidbits, more about family history and possible story ideas for historical fiction (and/or fictionalized history).
And there’s that SF novel I keep meaning to finish…
More soon, I promise!
Quantum downloading the brain
April 16, 2019
The research is in early stages, but it invokes ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics…
Hm. This sounds like an idea for a cool science fiction…
Ah.
RIP – Vonda N McIntyre
April 7, 2019
I bought her Star Trek novelizations when I was a teenager. At the time, I had no idea that (a) she was an original Trekkie (b) had studied genetics and (c) had won both the Nebula and the Hugo Award (the Nebula multiple times).
She also made it a point to prove that women could write science fiction just as well as men, in a completely male-dominated science fiction landscape.
She managed to finish her final novel less than two weeks before she died.
RIP.
(Read here if you don’t have access to or don’t care for the NYTimes: https://www.geekwire.com/2019/vonda-n-mcintyre-1948-2019-seattle-science-fiction-star-dies-cancer/)
Sea Levels Are Rising. Time to Build … Floating Cities?
April 6, 2019
At the core of Oceanix City is a 4.5-acre hexagonal floating platform that is meant to host up to 300 people.
Hmm, where have I seen this before….
And just think, to accommodate all of Manhattan, we only need to make…uh…
another 5,549 of them!
Compared to convincing the powers that be that climate change is real and we’re all screwed…piece of cake!
— Read on www.wired.com/story/sea-levels-are-rising-time-to-build-floating-cities/amp
Amazon shoppers misled by ‘bundled’ star-ratings and reviews
April 5, 2019
The combinations of formats and editions make it impossible for readers to pick between multiple versions of the same products, and allow those selling badly put together editions to piggyback on good reviews.
At this point, Amazon should just admit that its review policies are a complete shambolic mess. If they refuse to allow fellow indie authors from reviewing each other and even prevents their own friends and relatives from reviewing their work, how can Amazon justify trying to sell dreck this way?
Hypocrisy.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/05/amazon-shoppers-misled-by-bundled-product-reviews
Customers who purchased digital books from the Microsoft store will soon be forced to return them.
Already widely reported.
Note that if you buy ebooks *directly from the author – or *from Smashwords – then you get to keep them.
Yet another reason to cut out the middle man, especially if the middle man is a huge corporation that doesn’t care about its consumers.
via Microsoft’s ebook store closes, and will take all customers’ ebooks with it —
Gateway now includes Canada, eh
April 3, 2019
Now that Trudeau has agreed to help out, if anything goes wrong we can always “Blame Canada!”
No, no, it’s a joke, alright, eh. Sorry, sorry.
Enter the Dragon! It’s a new mating ritual?
March 3, 2019
“Attachment was made to a new type of mating adaptor on the ISS’s Harmony module. ”
Yes, we’ve matured so much as a species that we still insist on resorting to sexual metaphors to describe intricate technological details on our space vehicles.
But anyways, good for Space X and NASA. Now let’s hope other companies get into the act so we can kickstart this whole expand and populate the galaxy thing.
Er Ist Weider Da. Look Who’s Back, on Netflix
February 24, 2019
Although the book Er Ist Weider Da (Translated into English as “Look Who’s Back,” although literally it should be “He’s here again”) was published in 2012, the German language movie released in 2015, Netflix picked it up in early 2016, I just now stumbled across this movie over the weekend. Probably an algorithmic thing (don’t ask).
Normally, I blog about either family history or science/science fiction. But in this case, let’s just call it science fictiony-historical satire with a dark edge.
It’s good. Scarily good. Hysterically funny in parts. Deeply, darkly disturbing in many others.
And completely misunderstood by most reviewers. Especially the ones writing only in English. Continue Reading
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