Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 312

Ask the Mad Scientist by Sabrina Chase

Ask the Mad Scientist! – by Sabrina Chase

Welcome to another episode of Ask the Mad Scientist, coming to you *live* from the underwater submarine base of Raison d’Ethray! Brought to you by the fine folks at Blue Glow, purveyors of fusion reactors, Cherenkov radiation sources, and other petawatt power supplies for every kind of lair. Remember, look for the Blue Glow!

First, the winner of last week’s Research Funding Proposal Obfuscation contest is “I.M.A. Tank”, for “Method for Rapid Tissue Sa...

Jean Pierre Squirrel — a Blast From the past from February 2011

*Sorry guys, still somewhat under the weather and made myself ill by doing a blitz clean yesterday (it’s double edged, as I’m allergic to household dust too so if I don’t clean I get sick.) I’m not bad, just about where I was three days ago.  Well enough to write, but not well enough to come up with an idea for a blog that doesn’t take me all morning to write.*

It started innocently. At the time we were living in the small mountain town of Manitou Springs. There were the two of us, (of course...

Reclaiming the Culture

A few days ago, I was on the book of faces, on a thread started by Brad Torgersen, in which we’d already had at least three progressives come by and scream at us that Hillary had won the popular vote and why weren’t we making her president, when progressive #4 came by to announce that it just wasn’t fair we weren’t giving the presidency to Hillary Clinton, despite her popular vote in.  By that time I’d grown a little testy (who, me? Nevah) and my answer was “Another constitutional scholar!” a...

I Have Topics I Need To Cover

But I’m really not feeling very well. Our room at Cosine didn’t have heat for the first twenty four hours we were there and we both caught SOMETHING. I had been TRYING not to catch something for two weeks, to be fair, and the cold weakened me enough it whomped me. Dan is sick too.

On the good side, I finished Darkship Revenge and it is in. I wrote two chapters yesterday (because I’d changed the thrust of the ending, different people died, and I had to adjust things. I know the action chapter...

Real Animal Names

Okay, so I need to send this book in today. And I mean, NEED to, and I am still recovering from con crud from h*ll and had some worrying news from my parents.

Which means, I really am not functioning very well.

I know that there is such a thing as “It came from Imgur” but seriously, this one is cute. On Friday we had dinner with the Greens, and Steve infected us with these “real animal names” including doing the the National Geographic voice on the narration for the Majestic Sea Flap Flap.

Th...

For the Times They are Achanging

Sixteen years ago, when I was first on the blogs (under deep cover, with mustache and sunglasses) there was a lot of talk about the cold civil war.

It is only now that I understand the name wasn’t EXACTLY right. Sure, there were two camps sharply divided, and the fact that we were geographically enmeshed meant that it couldn’t go hot in the traditional way. But there were other factors too.

In the cold war, what prevented it going hot was Mutual Assured Destruction. Sure, the Soviets were fan...

Surviving the Cult

It’s been three days since Trump’s inauguration and I haven’t lost it and bitchslapped anyone in public, but it’s a difficult thing, I’m always ten seconds from a righteous bitchslapping, and I must take it a day at a time.

It’s not his fervent supporters who are driving me to the screaming mimmies. Sure, a lot of the more fervent ones are absolutely convinced he sits astride a white horse (with a golden saddle) and is coming to cure the world all their ills, but frankly, they don’t bother me...

Ain’t gonna post today

You know what? Ain’t gonna post today. I’ve been at a convention (Cosine, Colorado Springs) where I got a room so I could write in between panels.

So of course, the room’s heating didn’t work AT ALL for the first day and a half, causing both of us to be slightly ill, and also causing me to go into semi-hibernation where EVERYTHING takes forever.

I’m going to do my buying rounds of the art show (Robert and I also have art up there, and I need to figure out how to take it down/what the procedur...

They Wanna Be Loved By You

Or actually, they wanna be loved by government. Or maybe not. In the heads of the people on the left there seems to be a curious kind of confusion between government and all of us.

They didn’t snort-giggle when Obama came up with “Government is the name for what they choose to do together” (Was it Obama or Warren? Those leftists all look alike to me.) Instead they nodded their heads with pseudo-wisdom.

Well, brothers and sisters, I’m 54 years old. In my life, I’ve chosen to study with people,...

The Glooming Morning

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished

This has been running through my head all morning, because it seems to be the mood of most people on Facebook.

It was made worse by the fact that we woke up to overcast skies, then drove to Colorado Springs, where Dan is right now at work, and I’m sitting in a coffee shop waiting for it to be time to check in t...