It’s week two of a lot of us Americans staying at home. Per historian and librarian recommendation, I am keeping a journal during this time. Lesson plans and activities are set up for the kids. We’re doing our best to make sure Jabberwocky Audio Theater continues as planned for this year. And of course, there’s some home projects that are rearing both their practical and sanity-based heads. In the face of all this, it can…
I’ve posted about science fiction tropes before, but as we’re now deep into the Era of Social Distancing, at least some writing has got to happen, right? So here’s another list ranking tropes via Ross Johnson for Barnes & Noble. I might quibble with the ranking of the top 5 (dystopian governments and time travel would be my 2 and 1 respectively), but everything on the list should give you a knowing nod or a…
Much of this week has been adjusting to the very new reality of self-quarantining (well, with the fam). My social media feeds are now almost exclusively news and reports about the coronavirus striking the globe and memes to try and help with it. Replicating the social media feed seems quite pointless, but I’ll certainly post links to resources or other fun things as relevant. For now, one recommendation, which I heartily endorse, was for families…
Someone posted about Bobby McFerrin earlier this week (who many people still know best from his song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy“) and that made me think of this short video where he shows how humans naturally think in musical terms: If you like the video above, it’s part of an overall talk that is just delightful in a geeky sort of way (which I’m biased towards anyway.
Readers know I have an abiding interest in Star Trek (as evidenced in part by my previous series of posts, Crisis of Infinite Star Treks). So it should come as no surprise I happily devoured the data and geekery on display in Keith Wilson’s Medium entry last month all about Star Trek fandom likes and dislikes. From over 3,500 responses, he breaks down Trek fans’ likes and dislikes of the various series and by different…
A towering presence in cinema –literal and figurative– has died. Max von Sydow, an actor we’ve seen on screens since the 1950s, has died at the age of 90. You can read (and listen) to accounts in the BBC, Variety, and NPR among many others. What struck many of us moviegoers was the wide range of parts he would play… and could play with such quiet conviction. Here is a man who played the Son…
Back on March 1st, 2015, I re-entered the web world with a personal website, something I really hadn’t had since the 90s, which in Internet terms is ancient history. Perhaps because March 1st doesn’t correspond with any other anniversaries in my life, I keep on meaning to do an annual retrospective about posts and such on the blog, but keep on forgetting. This year, however, I made sure to set a reminder for myself. As…
February 29th is sort of a little bonus of a day, so perhaps in line with thinking about traveling to the moon early this week, there’s more space news. In fact, we have a second moon. No, really. Our planet has a temporary second natural satellite. See the coverage from New Scientist, NBC News, and Mental Floss. Now granted it’s not big enough to land on (it’s about the size of a car) and it…
Although I don’t have a huge number of posts on the site about space exploration, it remains something I always like to follow. I mean, some of this should be obvious given the whole writing science fiction thing. The writing doesn’t exist in a vacuum, as it were. A couple years ago, I read a number of science fiction (and straight science) pieces about Mars, but I suppose I just scratched the dry, red soil…
I’m always interested in different people’s writing processes, including how they balance non-writing. Okay, I should probably specify productive non-writing. It’s pretty easy to procrastinate and not write. Novelist Vincent Zandri has an interesting approach that I’ve heard from other writers in how they approach the business of writing by being very definite about both the writing part and the business part. I appreciate the level of detail.