Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 54
July 25, 2013
City Of Palo Alto to switch to 100% renewable energy
Interesting!
“On Monday in Palo Alto, the Northern California city’s council members voted in favor of switching to 100% renewable energy sources, effective almost immediately. The city already owns all of its own utilities, making it significantly easier to put the new plan into action.
The fact that Palo Alto already gets 50% of its electricity from hydro-electric sources is another reason why it will be a breeze to achieve this goal. Over time, even a percentage of that will come from solar,...
July 22, 2013
Arctic Rising now available in the UK & Commonwealth
The Del Rey UK edition of Arctic Rising launched this last Thursday! I’m told it’s findable in train stations, airports, and bookstores near you…
The eBook version is also up.
Del Rey UK has graciously given me their entire front page to promote the book on their site, which was awesome.
A list of places to buy it via your web browser is here at Random House UK’s website.
Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize is open for submissions
Writers in the Caribbean:
“The Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize is an annual award which allows an emerging Caribbean writer living and working in the Anglophone Caribbean to devote time to advancing or finishing a literary work, with support from an established writer as mentor. It is sponsored by the Hollick Family Charitable Trust and the literary charitable trust Arvon, in association with the non-profit organisation the Bocas Lit Fest.”
July 17, 2013
Reuters has climate change deniers at the top
Reuters supplies most of the news that newspapers just reprint, so this has tremendous second order impacts. An ex-reporter there takes a look at the inside environs of Reuters:
“In April last year, Paul Ingrassia (then deputy editor-in-chief) and I met and had a chat at a company function. He told me he was a climate change sceptic. Not a rabid sceptic, just someone who wanted to see more evidence mankind was changing the global climate.
Progressively, getting any climate change-themed story p...
Tesla recharge time is 20 minutes, and they’re planning to get it down to 5
This would have an effect on electric car adoption:
“Tesla Motors is quickly reducing the charging times. Last September, it unveiled a network of ‘supercharging’ stations—designed exclusively for its Model S and future electric vehicles—that could charge a battery halfway in 30 minutes. In May, it announced an upgrade that cut that time to 20 minutes. Now Tesla’s chief technology officer, JB Straubel, says the company eventually could cut the time it takes to fully charge the battery to just...
July 16, 2013
I’ll be in Barbados this August for AnimeKon Expo!
One of the most amazing trips I’ve done in the last few years was being a guest of honor at AnimeKon Expo down in Barbados. I’ve never sold so many books of mine in my life, and the food in Barbados is what I grew up with (I was born in Grenada), so it was an amazing trip. And getting to spend days hanging out with Barbadian writers Karen Lord and Robert Sandiford just added to the awesomeness. Omar and the crew running the event were so nice to me.
I must have done something right, because I’...
Some interesting posts on J.K Rowling that caught my attention….
Three really good posts about J.K Rowling’s latest book, which turned out to be a mystery written under a pseudonym. I agree with Static Split, we could actually tell more had the book come out for a year or so and gone through a bit more of a cycle. And her first books had similar numbers. Potter took off around the third book. People seem to have straight up forgotten that.
“It just goes to show how fleeting commercial success is in the book world. Take away those magical series of events th...
The riots that never came
The riots that Fox and its ilk predicted never came:
“At some point in the saga of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, it became a truism in certain quarters that a not-guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial would be greeted by fire, chaos, and mob violence. This idea has apparently survived the almost completely peaceful protests over the verdict that took place this weekend: on Monday, Newt Gingrich—a man who has taught history in the state of Georgia—remarked on CNN that those in the crowds...
July 15, 2013
Photo: Puppy gets his first haircut
Our new puppy, Charley. He’s a poodle, but with his hair all natural, people mistake him for a labradoodle:
When he drinks water it sticks to his fur and he tracks it around the kitchen (making it slippery), and he’s just suffering in the full summer heat. So he got a summer cut, and now looks more poodle-ish:
We can see his eyes now! He looks like a puppy now, all lanky and awkward, whereas he looked like a mid-sized dog with wavy fur before. A walking teddy bear. (We used to give the collie a...
July 14, 2013
Dragon Roadmap: From domestic crew independence to humans on Mars | NASASpaceFlight.com
Something more cheerful and space-related than the grim past few days, a look at where Space X is along its path to human-certified launch:
“SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is continuing to make solid progress during the early years of its incremental roadmap, a path that has a firm focus on sending humans to Mars. With successful Commercial Cargo missions already under its belt, Dragon is already targeting the role of transporting NASA crews to the International Space Station (ISS).”
(Via Dragon Ro...
