Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 136
February 17, 2016
Steve’s shorts: Escape from Earth, Part One of Four…
[Not all my stories have their origin in what-ifs. I began this little novella even before my first novel that I wrote the summer I turned thirteen. I won’t say how many years it took me to finish it, but it has a certain teenage innocence about it still. Enjoy!]
Escape from Earth
Copyright 2016, Steven M. Moore
Part One: The Encounter
Chapter One
Lucas watched twin sister Jan’s antique Civic speed away from the farmhouse. Four months ago he would have been following her in his old but newer...
February 16, 2016
“Democratic” party?
The races to determine the traditional U.S. parties’ nominees for president is on. Europeans, not worried about policy details (they probably worry about them more than the traditional U.S. parties and their voters, though), might look at the party names and seek comfort in that one party is called Democratic. That probably doesn’t include Germans, who will remember that German Democratic Republic, and other European countries bordering the Iron Curtain, who remember all those Democratic Repu...
February 15, 2016
Monday Words of Wisdom
Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s achance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands. (Seen in a church bulletin. Husbands take note if you forgot Valentine’s Day.)
February 12, 2016
Movie Reviews #24…
The Finest Hours. Craig Gillespie, dir. I resisted going to this one. “Just another disaster movie,” I said. Two things convinced me to see it. First, it’s a true story. Second, it’s set on Cape Cod. Having lived in the Boston area for many years, I’m familiar with the Cape. We have our little inn there, the Nauset House Inn, where we love to stay; it’s conveniently near many of the settings in the movie. We’ve taken boat tours off Chatham around the bar and on to Monomoy Island to see the si...
February 11, 2016
Clinton’s two problems: trust and vision…
Mrs. Clinton has been around too long. Her past drags her down, especially those events reflecting on her trustworthiness. Her lack of vision diminishes her future electability. And she learned to waffle from her hubby. In the last days before the Iowa caucuses, she said she was the better candidate because she is more moderate. Now, in New Hampshire, she’s saying she’s the progressive. I put her more toward center than the Bern, but her ties to big money, special interests, and lobbying grou...
February 10, 2016
Is a positive book review an endorsement?
[Last week, book endorsements came up in a discussion thread on Goodreads, the best social media site for readers and writers. That little exchange motivated this blog post. Comments are always accepted.]
Product endorsements are as common as eyes on a potato. If you ever did any “live experiments” in grade school general science “labs,” you know those eyes can sprout. Mark Watney knows that a good dose of fertilizer helps, but the sprouts will come even in sugar water (maybe even tap water i...
February 9, 2016
Heartless hypocrites thanking God, and other themes…
This is an interesting election season. On one hand, we have the brash and mutually insulting leaders of the wolf pack, heartless hypocrites thanking God for election wins and forever looking for the alpha-male. On the other, we have two old people who should be checking to make sure their long term care insurance is in good standing and looking for nursing homes, one a faux progressive and Wall Street’s darling (for good reason), the other a political sage who is galvanizing young and energe...
February 8, 2016
Monday words of wisdom…
Don’t be a jerk on the way to work. Even if late, don’t spread hate.
In libris libertas…
February 5, 2016
Pre-release excerpt: Rogue Planet…
Before giving you a first look into my new novel, here’s the blurb:
Hidden away from near-Earth planets in remote spiral arms of the Galaxy are Human worlds that have lost contact with more progressive worlds and reverted to strange and primitive customs and traditions, their leaders using religion, superstition, and imported technologies to rule in tyranny. Survey ships explored and catalogued these planets as suitable for future colonization centuries earlier, but groups with a special inte...
February 4, 2016
Scientists and mathematicians #2…
Benoit Mandelbrot (11/20/1924—10/14/2010) popularized the description and construction of 2D and 3D sets of fractional (non-integer) dimension. He called them fractals. I won’t use the word “invent” because such sets were studied as far back as the 1800s. Of course, to say fractional (or “fractal” or non-integer) dimension, one has to redefine dimension a wee bit—Haussdorf, a 19th century mathematician did that. (The famous Cantor set, always a subset of the real numbers between zero and one,...
