I don't know if I finished the first draft of my novel. At the beginning of last year I said I was going to, but I don't know. That's because I'm no longer sure what should count as a first draft. The zeroth draft was clear. I had a beginning and an ending, but the middle lacked some chunks. Now all the parts are in place, and in the right order. ( Read more... )

A fire alarm rings at work. You leave your desk and properly evacuate to the parking garage. It turns out to be a drill, and 10 minutes later you are allowed back. You get a brilliant idea: you'll use this disruption to do something good for you health. You'll take the stairs up to the third floor where your office is. And maybe you should try ( Read more... )

Not long ago it was an anti-drug week at Erika's elementary school. Every day of the week the students were supposed to make an anti-drug statement with visual aids, including their clothes. What, you ask, were they told to stop wearing gang attributes to school? Even their hemp-promoting t-shirts? Nooo. They were supposed to wear mismatched socks ( Read more... )

I often hear that engineers are literal. This typically includes software developers. I hear this even from people who work with engineers all the time -- you'd think they would take a more nuanced view. But perhaps not many people understand what "literal" means. I'm not even talking about the common, oft-ridiculed use of "literally" to mean " ( Read more... )

Some stores must be really, really sick of people stealing their shopping carts. So sick that they put the cart before the horse's customer's safety... or maybe just don't think how anti-theft devices can put customers at risk ( Read more... )

In all my programming life I never tried communicating in code with real-world objects. But now there is something to make it easy (or at least doable): Arduino. Sharon Cichelli demonstrated it at the All Girl Hack Night in October of 2011. Arduino is a microcontroller that lets you program blinky LED lights, or things that make buzzing alarm ( Read more... )

This must be the season when American students learn about the first Thanksgiving, and pilgrims, or the first immigrants. First-graders might not necessarily know the difference between pilgrimage and immigration, because my daughter asked me if I was a pilgrim. Ancient as I might seem to the youngest generation, I'm not that old!


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Rowan gurgles, screeches and makes sounds slightly resembling a cartoonish alien. Or a cartoonish alien crossed with a cat in heat. He stares into your eyes for a minute, and eventually says "ngu". He may cry while you're changing his diaper, but then you'll raise your head and he'll be suddenly looking at you and smiling, without even letting a ( Read more... )

Defining the peak oil is not simple

As we may have already reached peak oil, the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, it is timely to have a panel like "Imagining a future without fossil fuels". But before we can ask science fiction writers what will happen once oil production enters inevitable decline, we ( Read more... )

This is an example why I will never try to make money off my website and blog by running ads. I saw this on Freethought Blogs website.


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