Monthly Archives: July 2004

Note to the (Not Unduly) Paranoid

Here my question to everyone who is worried that electronic voting systems without paper trails will steal your vote in the upcoming election: Didn’t I hear you say that you were traveling on Election Day? And wouldn’t that mean you’d need an absentee ballot? And didn’t I hear you say that everyone else you know […]

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Kerry’s Speech

Unlike the other speeches of the Democratic Convention, which I caught after the fact on streaming audio, I pulled myself away from the computer and my book deadline long enough to watch John Kerry’s speech. I figured, as a politically-involved American, I owed myself that much. I thought the speech was excellent — it did […]

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Getting Geeky

Like many sad pathetic gaming freaks, I will be rushing out sometime next week to grab a copy of Doom 3 from my local store, not doubt beating other pasty geeks over the head for the last remaining copy. Prior to doing so, however, I want to give some consideration to upgrading my video card, […]

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2004’s “Let Them Eat Cake” Moment

Someone remind the DNC to send this nice young lady a fruit basket: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones — or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better. “Why don’t they get new jobs if they’re unhappy — […]

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No-Show at JournalCon

Some depressing news: Do to an unavoidable schedule conflict, the details of which I prefer to keep personal, I am unable to attend JournalCon this year. This really bums me out; I was really looking forward to seeing friends as I always do, and, of course, singing badly at karaoke. But I know y’all will […]

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Satellite Internet Sucks

Venting. I want somebody to give me a broadband alternative to satellite. Now. One of the disadvantages to living out in the middle of nowhere is that there’s no cable, no DSL, no nothin’. So I’m stuck with satellite if I want broadband. The reason satellite sucks is that it’s not that fast (most of […]

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A Chilling Tale of Terror in the Skies!

Turns out that the person on Annie Jacobsen’s infamous flight from Detroit to LA that most worried the air marshals was Jacobsen herself: Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger overreacted to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials […]

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The Writing Flight Deck

One of the contributors to a recent rather long comment thread asked me if the Whatever, and keeping track of the subsequent comment threads, is taking away from my book writing. Well, no. Playing Unreal Tournament 2004 instead of writing is taking away from my book writing. The Whatever doesn’t take time away because any […]

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I, Hollywood

Over on his journal, science fiction writer Bill Shunn has got himself worked up on principle over the I, Robot movie, which is based on the Issac Asimov book of the same name roughly in the way a store-brand grape soda is based on an actual grape. Shunn is personally boycotting the film and thinks […]

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Whoops

Note to self: From this point forward, remember that it’s the 1/4″ attachment you use on your hair clippers, not the 1/8″ attachment. Alas, by the time I realized I was using the wrong attachment I had already buzzed off a big fat swatch of hair; there was nothing to do but finish it up. […]

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In Defense of Marriage

E-mail from various people asking me what I think about the anti-gay marriage amendment being batted back in the Senate: Well, obviously, I’m very pleased about it. Any day a bunch of politically opportunist homophobes get stuffed back into their holes — and on a procedural note, meaning they didn’t even get the showboating vote […]

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Wonder Twin Powers Activate

Folks who knew me when I was younger — a lot younger — have told me that Athena is the spitting image of me when I was her age. While I think there is of course family resemblance, I remained neutral on the matter, since I don’t particularly remember what I looked like at that […]

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Shadows and Clouds

Sunset this evening, and we were treated to a very odd shadow on the clouds, which you can see here. I have no idea what caused it, although I suspect it was another cloud in front of this one (but out of sight from me) blocking the path of the light onto the cloud. Whatever […]

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Election Notes

I’ve spent the last day or two trying to write something about the election, but every time I do, it’s as if someone sticks an industrial-sized plastic jug of mayonnaise over my head and then beats on the jug with a rubber mallet: I get a sickly, suffocating, pain-inducing feeling and a bad, eggy taste […]

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Copyedit

Pictured: The manuscript to Old Man’s War (the first time, incidentally, that I’ve ever seen the whole thing in hard copy form), onto which the copy editor assigned by Tor has made (I’m presuming the sex here) her copy edits, which I’ve either accepted or rejected, the latter being noted by me scribbling “STET” in […]

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The Art of Comments

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Daniel Drezner’s recent post regarding comments, which was inspired, I think, by the recent removal of the commenting ability on several “big name” blogs. There seems to be an anecdotal observation going around at the moment that as a blog’s popularity goes up, the overall quality of the […]

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Your Suggestions, Please:

I’m putting together some articles for Book of the Dumb 2 on really bad TV shows. So: Any suggestions you have would be appreciated. Criteria: 1. A show that was clearly a bad idea in its own (and indeed in any other) time. 2. A show that actually failed (i.e., one season or less). No […]

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Mail Woes

Just got another “can’t send mail to AOL” message, which means two things: 1. Now I really am going to change my hosting — two of those in the same month suggests things are going to get worse, not better; 2. There’s a reasonably good chance all my mail is kind of screwed, so if […]

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Kerry/Edwards

First, a cheap laugh at the New York’s Post’s expense: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Of course, screwing up a major story this badly will just make the Post even more vindictive toward Kerry, Edwards and the Democrats — if that’s at all possible — and that’s probably no good, but for the […]

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