Manners and “Culture”
More than 200 years ago, Edmund Burke made the following observation: “Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there,...
View ArticleEveryone’s Like Me
One of my readers made a telling comment last week – that Republicans believe the election was “stolen” because they cannot believe they’re in the minority. The first reaction of those who aren’t...
View ArticleWhat Gives?
I’ve lived in Cedar City for close to thirty years, but I’ve almost been hit by drivers blatantly running red lights three times in the last month, compared to once in all the years before. Red lights,...
View ArticleA Certain “Freedom” Has Costs
As many pundits and non-pundits have pointed out, freedom isn’t free. And most people would agree. But what is seldom discussed are the costs of various freedoms. Freedom of speech, for example, means...
View ArticleSPECIAL 25% off on COUNCILOR
Barnes & Noble is offering a 25% off sale on all pre-ordered books for just three days, starting tomorrow, January 26th. That means you can get Councilor for25% off, either in hard-cover or in...
View ArticleFreedom: Back to the Basics
The first basic point about freedom is that absolute freedom does not exist and never has. Every object and/or entity is constrained by its environment and by other entities. The second point is that,...
View ArticleWhat Gives? [Part II]
The vast majority of fast food restaurants here in Cedar City have gone to drive-by service because they can’t hire enough people. I see “now hiring” signs where I never saw them before. It took almost...
View Article“Freedom”
Particularly with regard to COVID, there’s been a huge debate over “freedom.” As I pointed out earlier, a society that is densely populated or one that has densely populated urban areas that make up...
View ArticleBanned Books
Over the past year, banning books in U.S. libraries, both public and school, has reached an all-time high. Now, to be frank, trying to ban books in the United States has a long and odious history that...
View ArticleConversation With Scott Drakeford
Last night, Mysterious Galaxy books hosted a virtual event — a conversation between Scott Drakeford and me about our recent books, his Rise of the Mages and my Isolate. Mysterious Galaxy was kind...
View ArticleEducational Censorship?
From what I’ve read lately, the Republican Party is now proposing the very thing that it finds objectionable in certain segments of the Democratic Party – censorship by the extreme minority. Now, what...
View ArticlePolitical Speech
Over the past several years, there have been considerable furor, claims, and counter-claims over political statements by prominent candidates that have in fact been proven not to be accurate in the...
View ArticleSelling Out
Over the weekend, both Bill Maher and The New York Times made essentially the same observation – that large U.S. corporations are engaging in wide-scale self-censorship with regard to China. Movies are...
View ArticleEgalitarian/Authoritarian?
Americans, in particular, embrace a conceit that the United States is special because it has, if you will, “a government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and they tend to believe that the...
View ArticleWhy So Hot?
The other day, I was in the local Walmart, which actually has a good grocery and produce section, and which might be because it sits right next to I-15, and I-15 is the main interstate for produce...
View ArticleThe Other Ukraine Problem
Last week, amid the personal, geo-political, and humanitarian disasters caused by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, it also dawned on the tech world that between forty and seventy percent of the...
View ArticleThe Standardized Test Fallacies
With President Biden’s nomination for the next Supreme Court justice, standardized tests are once more in the news, along with the fallacies offered on both sides. What both sides fail to admit, at...
View ArticleThe Other “Opioid” Crisis … Electronic Soma
Over the past few years, there’s been a continual concern about the growing pharmaceutical “opioid crisis,” and there’s no doubt that it is a severe and continuing problem. But a significant part of...
View ArticleArticle 1
I recently turned in to Tor the latest Recluce novel —From the Forest, which is the first of several books about Alyiakal, whose name is mentioned as a historical figure in both Magi’i of Cyador and...
View ArticleArchform: Beauty/Flash Audio Releases
Tantor Media will be releasing Archform:Beauty in audio in May and Flash in July. With those releases, my entire backlist will be available in audio format.
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