Archive for the ‘All’ Category
Mathematical Puzzles
No thanks to Elayne Riggs, where I saw the game mentioned, I have now wasted something near to 20% of the last two days playing a game called Planarity. She's usually such a sensible person, too, so I don't know what happened here. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this is just the type of game that can […]
Singular Experiences
Tonight Isaac and I had dinner with our favorite engineer and said engineer's son; both are men with enquiring minds willing to play tag with silly and frivolous topics, in which we nevertheless try to find meaning or at least amusement. It's a game we enjoy. RT (the engineer) offered crocodile-tear regrets that he had […]
Liberal vs. Authoritarian
Phillip Honenberger, in an essay called "John Locke and Religious Fundamentalism" (What is Liberalism? 11 July 2005), wrote about the worldwide tensions between Liberalism and what we tend these days to label as Fundamentalism, and then (correctly, I'd say) he identifies Fundamentalism as just another packaging of Authoritarianism (which also travels under the guises of […]
In: All, The Art of Conversation
Republican Fortunes
Last night we ate at our semi-local Pho restaurant. After our big bowl of tasty noodle soup, we were given fortune cookies, standard chinese-restaurant fare, although this was nominally a Vietnamese restaurant. The one Isaac opened said: Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it. It sounded to us like an explanation for the [alleged] […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Making the Bomb — Excerpts
A big chunk of my month of June was spent reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1986) an historically precise and yet dramatic telling of the story of the people and events that came together to unlease the power of nuclear fission at the end of […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book
Rove's Nondisclosure Agreement
For those who are emotionally concerned with whether Karl Rove has actually violated the letter (perhaps even the punctuation) of the law, this note just came in from Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) office, via the Government Reform Minority Office mailing list: Friday, July 15, 2005 — A fact sheet released today by Rep. Waxman explains […]
Fascinating Footnotes
Just yesterday I finished reading Sharan Newman's The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code (Berkley Books, New York, 2005). We know and enjoy Newman's writing from her outstanding series of historical mystery novels, set in medieval France, staring the fascinating Catherine LeVendeur; Newman happens to be mentioned in my own "Top Twenty Mystery Authors: […]
Liberal v. Conservative
Liberal versus Conservative It's allowed if it's not prohibited. It's prohibited if it's not allowed. Hey, that's ours! Hey, that's mine! Do as I do. Do as I say. We're all in this together. Watch out for number one. I've earned this. I deserve this. See for yourself. Trust […]
Rove Dancing on DSM Grave? (BBA XIV)
Kenneth, sitting in his comfy chair, had his laptop in his lap, reading blogs to see what was on everyone's minds. Frank, similarly arrayed, was reading e-mail or downloading dirty pictures, or both. The companionable silence of shared but independent absorption had settled over them some time ago. "Do you think Rove did it on […]
Crude Poetry
Sometimes, driftglass reads to me like some sort of stoked-up poetry, usually a good thing. Although this stanza comes from the middle of a longer epic about using deliberately crude language*, it seems to have more truth per word than mere prose. Being gay is not a sin or a crime or any-damned-thing other that […]
Do Bisexuals Truly Exist?
Here's my punch line to this shaggy-dog tale: it's a silly question to ask in the first place. Besides, what difference does the answer make and who cares? Incredibly, bisexuality (the big, invisible sexual orientation) was in the news this week. An article in the New York Times by Benedict Carey* reports on a new […]
In: All, The Art of Conversation, Writing
Heavens to Murgatroyd
This just in from WKYT, 27 Newsfirst in Lexington, Kentucky: FRANKFORT, Ky. — A special grand jury indicted three of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's subordinates, including his deputy chief of staff, on various misdemeanor charges, including criminal conspiracy and political discrimination. Dick Murgatroyd, Fletcher's deputy chief of staff and former deputy transportation secretary, was indicted Wednesday […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Eighth-Century "Traditional" Marriage
Today I started reading a mystery novel by Peter Tremayne, Badger's Moon. This book continues his series feturing Sister Fidelma. The stories are set place in mid-eighth-century Ireland. To orient his readers who might be unfamiliar with the customs and laws of the time, Tremayne puts an "Historical Note" at the beginning of the books. […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation
Republican Chickenhawks
Just within the last few decades, I can remember actually hearing people, within hearing distance of my own ears, complain about how the word "gay" has been lost from the average (heterosexual) vernacular. You know, all those middle-aged white guys who wanted to tell you all about, say, how they were feeling so happy that […]
Statistical Fluctuations
Abraham Pais, a physicist who wrote what is generally regarded as the definitive scientific biography of Einstein, said of his subject that there are two things at which he was "better than anyone before or after him; he knew how to invent invariance principles and how to make use of statistical fluctuations." Invariance principles play […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
OYE Bingo
Since I generally believe that truthful mockery is a good way to irritate one's political adversaries, and that Republicans are well deserving of that irritation, I want to do my bit to draw attention to the exciting and rewarding new game called "Operation Yellow Elephant Bingo", invented by "PNC Paul from The AWOL Project" and […]
It's Good to Be Transparent
[Of jellyfish:] Their bodies are 99 percent water; they have fewer non-aqueous ingredients than lemonade. But they've been around for 700 million years. Armored trilobites, thunder-footed dinosaurs, and saber-toothed tigers have come and gone; the watery jellyfish endure. They have outlasted animals with bulk and brains. Their strategy for survival has been spectacularly successful: Keep […]
My 4.8% Lammy
This actually happened earlier in the month — 3 June 2005, to be precise — but I didn't think of mentioning it until now. I have become an award-winning author: one of my short stories has won 1/22 of a Lambda Literary Award, or Lammy. Let me explain, for those to whom this might be […]
Chicken Feathers
Yes, this is actually about chicken feathers. Partly, at least. During my reading this morning, I read a science brief (rather like this one: "Poultry Feathers Made Into Plastic Mulch" by Sharon Durham at Agricultural Research Service news) about some Agricultural Research Service research and engineering going on that has developed some processes that convert […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation
The Purpose of Science (Part I)
About 10 or 12 years ago, when I was still a scientist producing science, I was working on an experiment that eventually flew on two Space Shuttle missions (in 1994, then 1996 — our project was called "Zeno"1). We were working under the umbrella of "microgravity" research, research that wanted to exploit the very reduced […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Notes to Richard