Minority Government?
It now appears, pending the results of the Green Party’s initiative to force recounts in three states, that Hillary Clinton, while losing the election through the Electoral College, actually won the...
View ArticlePhilosophers’ “Truth”
Gottfried Liebniz has three claims to fame. First, he was an outstanding mathematician who developed the mathematics of differential calculus independently at about the same time as Newton did. Second,...
View ArticleShaking Things Up?
Trump and a great percentage of those individuals who voted for him claimed that he was going to shake things up and get rid of the career politicians who had created the political deadlock. Trump also...
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On recent trips, I’ve squeezed in a little reading, including The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, which is listed as the first of three, but which I found just fine as a stand-alone. Another book...
View ArticleEmotional Attachment
Over the years, I’ve run across more than a few contradictory comments by readers, where one reader finds a particular “fault” and another reader says that what the first reader said wasn’t true at...
View ArticleA Government of..?
As President-elect Trump announces his choices for various posts in government, those choices look very much like a government of, by, and for the rich. When asked about this, Trump replied to the...
View ArticleThe Religion/Pay Gap?
The financial news and opinion company 24/7 Wall St. recently released a study of the one hundred largest metropolitan areas comparing the median wages of men and women, and listing the ten best and...
View ArticleScience and Republicans
For some time, at least certain “liberal” commentators have insisted that Republicans are scientifically “challenged” and that Republicans consistently ignore well-established science. According to...
View ArticleThe Problem with Algorithms
I’m reminded on a daily basis of the prevalence of algorithms, since every time that I check on how well one of my books is doing on Amazon or B&N before long I get an email or an internet add...
View ArticleThe Death of Wonder
Over Christmas, we visited family in the New York City area, and one of the sights we took in was the Botanic Garden’s model train exhibit – which features G-scale model trains winding their way...
View ArticlePublication Realities
Within a week of the publication of the hardcover edition of Recluce Tales, I had several complaints that the hardcover was not the same size as the other Recluce books… and that it didn’t match. Guess...
View ArticleThe Age of Illusion
The International Union of Geological Sciences, the organization in charge of defining Earth’s time scale, defines our current geological age as the Holocene (“entirely recent”) epoch, which began...
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During my recent stints on airplanes over Christmas, I actually did get in some reading, not all of it science fiction and fantasy. In some ways, the most interesting book I read was Dark Genius of...
View ArticleAnother Legislative Misstep?
Last year, in an effort to curb the sale of fraudulently signed sports memorabilia and other memorabilia, the state of California passed a law that also affects the sale of books signed by the author....
View ArticleHow Could You Possibly Miss…?
… or what about a little perspective? The other day I was reading a post on Tor.com that listed books in which weather magic was central to the plot – and, yes, The Towers of the Sunset was mentioned....
View ArticleThe March on Washington
Last Saturday, in Washington, D.C., well over 300,000 women, possibly as many as half a million, demonstrated in support of women’s rights and against the Trump administration’s positions on those...
View ArticleThe Importance of Place
No, I’m not going to pontificate about where people of privilege live and how that location benefits them, true as it is. Rather, I’m going to point out how the patterns of how and where Americans live...
View Article“Do You Hear What I Hear?”
During a discussion with a friend, who spent a career in the production side of popular music, ending up as the head of a fairly well known record label, the question came up as to what actually...
View ArticleThe Right to Impose?
With Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, liberals are fuming, and conservatives are rejoicing. Both ought to be weeping. The “battle” over the appointment of a justice to succeed...
View ArticleSimplistic “Solutions”
President Trump has unleashed his pen and set forth something like twenty Executive Orders, in an apparent effort to carry out a number of his campaign promises. What is obvious about this rush of rash...
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