I’d like to think that this story about some poor souls who need hypnotherapy to get over the election is a story from The Onion, but it’s from my new home-town paper:
Boca Raton trauma specialist Douglas Schooler said he has treated 15 clients and friends with
Jon Goff has an excellent roundup of the recent Space Frontier Society conference in Long Beach, for those of us not fortunate enough to have attended.
[Via Clark Lindsey]
Keith Cowing is having some legal problems with Orbital Sciences Corp.
We had a very nice trip (other than missing our flight Friday night, necessitating a later one that went through Dulles, and didn’t get us into Denver until late, instead of early evening). Weather in the Rockies was gorgeous on Saturday and Sunday, and we hiked in the park. I may post some pics later.
We’re flying out to Colorado this evening for a little vacation in the mountains (it was the trip that originally was supposed to happen on Labor Day, but was interrupted by Hurricane Frances…). I’ll probably not be blogging from there unless it ends up having an internet connection.
See you Tuesday.
…weaponry.
Whenever I read things like this, I have to laugh at the idiots who accuse us of “mass murdering civilians,” and “blowing up countries” and being “indifferent to collateral damage.”
And the new de-vices are just in time for this:
“American commanders seem convinced that it is only a matter of time before the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, gives the order for them to retake the city,” the Times notes. “For many marines here, that order cannot come too soon. After a long summer of cat-and-mouse games with shadowy insurgents, they are hungry for a decisive battle.”
I, too, would like to see that Arlen “Not Proven” Specter doesn’t ascend to the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In fact, I wish that we could just appoint him as ambassador to Scotland, where perhaps he’ll find the law more to his liking.
I’d even be happy to accept a Rendel-appointed Democrat in his place. At least he’d be an honest one.
The race is finally completely over. Bush was just awarded Iowa, and all the electoral votes have been assigned. A thirty-four point difference.
XCOR needs a new subsystem for their rocket propulsion development. They’re offering a prize.
Here’s an interesting interview with Neal Stephenson over at Slashdot. My two favorite bits–first, in a discussion of the bifurcation of the writing community between those who are commercial and those who are “literary”:
Like all tricks for dividing people into two groups, this is simplistic, and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But there is a cultural difference between these two types of writers, rooted in to whom they are accountable, and it explains what MosesJones is complaining about. Beowulf writers and Dante writers appear to have the same job, but in fact there is a quite radical difference between them—hence the odd conversation that I had with my fellow author at the writer’s conference. Because she’d never heard of me, she made the quite reasonable assumption that I was a Dante writer—one so new or obscure that she’d never seen me mentioned in a journal of literary criticism, and never bumped into me at a conference. Therefore, I couldn’t be making any money at it. Therefore, I was most likely teaching somewhere. All perfectly logical. In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she’d never heard of me was because I was famous.
But this part, about his relationship with Blue Origin was quite intriguing:
As for my visions of future private space flight: here I have to remind you of something, which is that, up to this point in the interview, I have been wearing my novelist hat, meaning that I talk freely about whatever I please. But private space flight is an area where I wear a different hat (or helmet). I do not freely disseminate my thoughts on this one topic because I have agreed to sell those thoughts to Blue Origin. Admittedly, this feels a little strange to a novelist who is accustomed to running his mouth whenever he feels like it. But it is a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel.
And don’t miss his description of his battles with William Gibson.