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Book is Here; Oscar Wrap-Up
Posted on March 26, 2003 2 Comments
First, a personal note: I got my advance copy of The Rough Guide to the Universe yesterday; you can see it modeled by my beautiful assistant just to the right of this text. Notwithstanding one minor flaw (there are a couple of places where metric units should be alongside more familiar imperial units like miles […]
Music Plug; HTML Editor Update
Posted on March 10, 2003
A couple of random notes, which may or may not be of interest to you. * My pal Joe Rybicki has a band called Johnny High Ground, and he’s written a tune that’s well likely to become the rock anthem for the “no war” crowd, called “Trigger-Happy Texan.” You can guess who it’s about. Putting […]
Mr. Nice Guy
Posted on March 7, 2003 2 Comments
There’s no pleasing some people. I spent yesterday’s Whatever slagging Dubya, and the mail I get pounds on me for a throwaway comment I make about Dubya probably being a nice man (I specifically wrote: “I don’t doubt Dubya’s a nice man and not traditionally what one describes as stupid, but his thought processes are […]
Incompetent
Posted on March 6, 2003 13 Comments
The fundamental problem with the Bush Administration is that it appears to be working from the position that being right excuses being incompetent. This presents two problems. First, when it happens that the administration is right, as it is in wanting Saddam removed at the earliest available opportunity, it blunders about being right in such […]
John Scalzi’s Biography
Posted on March 1, 2003 268 Comments
A brief introduction to me: I was born in 1969 and by 1983 it became clear to me that I had better become a writer because everything else was actual work. Fortunately, so far I’ve managed to pull this off: My first job out of college was as a film critic at the Fresno Bee […]
Publicist Guidelines
Posted on March 1, 2003
Updated 12/29/06 Interested in sending me a book, CD/DVD, video game, a press release, or any other thing in an evaluative capacity? Increasingly, I’ve found, people are. If you’re one of those people, here’s what you should know. 1. First, about this site: The Whatever is a personal blog written by John Scalzi, on which […]
Disclaimer
Posted on March 1, 2003 1 Comment
For everyone who needs one, the following disclaimer: 1. Everything here is my opinion, and mine alone. (Except for comment threads, which are other people’s opinions, and theirs alone.) 2. Occasionally, I am completely full of shit. 3. Well, all right, fine, more than occasionally. 4. On occasion I will also opine on things I […]
The Hudson and Visiting the Big Apple
Posted on February 23, 2003
I’ve been rather dreadful about updating the last couple of weeks, and the chances are excellent I will continue to be this week as well. My excuse? Work, baby. Freelance writing is like that: Some weeks you have nothing to do and some weeks you simply never stop working. Last week was one of those […]
A Threat to World Peace
Posted on February 14, 2003 1 Comment
The European edition of Time magazine put up a poll on its Web site asking its readers which country in the world was the greatest danger to world peace: North Korea, Iraq or the United States. As of this second (8:53 am ET), 423,618 votes are in, and 85.6% of them say that it’s the […]
Whoosh
Posted on February 13, 2003
Our house is at the highest point in a couple of miles around us — which is not to say that it’s all that high up (this is Ohio), merely higher up than everything around us. also, our land is fairly treeless, and while there’s a windbreak of trees to our east and direct north, […]
Oscar Predictions
Posted on February 11, 2003 1 Comment
Update: A newspaper article on blogging in which I am quoted is up on NorthJersey.com. Here’s the link. Before I get in trouble with the blogoverse, let me take a moment to clarify this paragraph, since it will surely get someone’s back up, somewhere: “Scalzi claims to be one of the world’s first bloggers. He […]
Slaughter
Posted on February 10, 2003 3 Comments
In the e-mail on Friday, an e-mail from a stranger (but not spam) with a link to a video of an AC-130 gunship taking out a suspected Al Qaeda/Taliban holdout in Afghanistan. Writes the correspondent: “This video shows one – *ONE* – AC-130 gunship destroying an entire Taliban installation suspected of harboring members of al-Qaeda. […]
Stupid, Stupid Microsoft
Posted on February 7, 2003 4 Comments
There’s likely to be a brief pause in updating this site — hopefully not more than a week or so — because I need to change the software that I use to update. And therein hangs a tale. Basically, well over a year ago I purchased Microsoft Front Page 2000 in order to keep this […]
New Retirement Accounts
Posted on February 4, 2003
I’ve made no secret of the fact I’m generally of the opinion that the words “Republicans” and “taxes” are just grown-up words for “children” and “matches,” so you can imagine my utter shock and horror at learning of a tax proposal from Dubya and his cronies that (in theory, at the very least) I can […]
Columbia; A Trip to Tor
Posted on February 3, 2003
Others have commented extensively on the Columbia explosion, and I don’t have much to add, except to say: I’ll go on the next shuttle. And so will most of the people I know (which would make the shuttle ride crowded, to say the least). And it’s because we all believe that people need to be […]
Palm Pilot; Criticism
Posted on January 29, 2003 1 Comment
One rather unexpected side benefit from my whole recent computer meltdown fracas is that I’ve found myself in possession of a Palm Pilot — an m125 Palm Pilot, which if I follow the Palm Pilot nomenclature correctly is sort of their “Accord” model: Not exactly a Kia, but not as full-featured as a Beemer. I […]
Bad Mechanical Karma
Posted on January 27, 2003 2 Comments
First, an exchange between me and Athena. It helps to know that she just learned how to count to three in Spanish. Got that? Okay, then: Me: Hey, Athena. Say ‘three’ in Spanish. Athena: Three in Spanish. Just in case any of you were wondering if she was really my kid. *** I suspect that […]
Salon’s New Deal; Editing
Posted on January 22, 2003
After a trial period earlier last year, Salon has decided to go ahead with a new way to stay alive, which is to allow non-subscribers to view its content — if they agree to view an ad first. Essentially, Salon is doing this because its subscription model is a big fat failure. David Talbot, Salon’s […]
Busy Redux; Academic Emergency
Posted on January 16, 2003
I know, I haven’t exactly been a world-class updater these last couple of weeks. My excuse is the same as it was last week around this time: I’ve been hella busy, and it’s been the good “damn if my writing career isn’t just totally coming around” sort of busy as opposed to the bad “holy […]
Steve Case is Smart
Posted on January 13, 2003
Steve Case is stepping down as Chairman of AOL Time Warner sometime in May, and that pretty much clears the deck at AOLTW of any major executives in the company that came from the AOL side of things. AOL may have swallowed Time Warner, but Time Warner then digested AOL from the inside, eventually bursting […]
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying