For better or worse, I’m a messy-desk type of person. Periodically, the mess escalates into a sort of info-singularity and I have a purge/cleaning session, but for the most part clutter stays proportional to productivity.

So here’s what’s on my desk right now, that is, aside from the stuff that’s supposed to be there:

Food: some ancient jujubes, Chex Mix (60% less fat than regular potato chips!),…

I attended all three days of Potlatch 20 last weekend, and I had a blast.

The high point is a chance to hang out with a large room full of very smart people. The readings were great, including Nebula nominees Vylar Kaftan and Rachel Swirsky, and I got to put faces to many names that come up often in the kinds of discussions I have.…

I had a sleep-deprivation induced moment of clarity this weekend, and the idea wouldn’t go away, so here it is:

The Big Bang Theory, speaking of the TV series, not the cosmological model, is an elaborate creation myth. Let me explain.…

Why 14 months? Because numbers are arbitrary, and there’s a better beginning, middle, and end this way. 🙂

The primary drawback of my choice of writing as an avocation is that on top of a sedentary, computer-centric work day of 8-10 hours, I throw on a few more hours of the same.…

Quite a wrought sentence from this article.

We very rarely bloviate, although there are often exceptions to that rule.

Speaking on behalf of tech journalists, the author clames they “very rarely” bloviate, as long as one overlooks “often exceptions”.…

The great Carl Sagan famously popularized the saying:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I’ve always disliked that saying. It was intended as a shout-out to objectivity, rationalism, and healthy skepticism, but it has the opposite effect for me. Any writer will tell you that overuse of adjectives will actually weaken the point the writer is trying to make.…