A few notes before I begin my list. This is boring history and dry info; skip it if you want ( Read more... )

I'm going to try something. Maybe it'll totally bore you. I don't really care. :) It's not about politics - so I should get some credit at least for that ( Read more... )

I was getting a little concerned about my daughter - she'd been miserable the last couple of mornings (5:30 wakeup calls are not easy), and annoyed with herself for getting a B on her first math quiz, and muttering about how she's going to quit band next year ( Read more... )

I grieve for the families of those who died in Colorado, but it's not *my* tragedy. They're just a bunch of Americans I don't know - no different, ultimately, than if they were Syrians I don't know - and anyway, Americans are shot and killed by the dozens every day. It just usually happens one at a time, and no one hears, or takes notice, outside ( Read more... )

Saw Wicked again on Sunday (it's basically as good the second time as the first).

I want to do a "Stephen Schwartz Generic Musical" chart at some point... (cut for spoilers if you care) ( Read more... )

There is this disorienting moment when you find a video of the high school drum line for your kids' high school - and they're doing a song for competition, and you listen to their (very good) all-percussion performance, and you suddenly realize they are playing Tom Sawyer by Rush:

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I was thinking about asteroid mining, now that there are some rich people who want to do it ( Read more... )

Setting idea: near-future 1950s-style-spaceflight campaign - mankind is spreading through the solar system; transistors work but microchips don't, so there's no Internet, no reliable robotics, all communications are analog. Inside Jupiter's orbit, the Solar System is what 1950s SF thought it was; from Jupiter on out, it's what we see it as today, ( Read more... )

When Robert was five, I promised I'd one day take him to Meteor Crater ( Read more... )

I want you, for a moment, to imagine being a loyal Party member, in the old Soviet Union, maybe around the time of WWII ( Read more... )