Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 156
February 20, 2015
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #81…
Item: Harry Bosch from a parallel universe? As Michael Connelly observed, the new Amazon series has made a “fair amount of changes” to his famous LAPD detective. Why would we expect otherwise? Hollywood always has to tinker when turning a book into a movie! In this case, we’re talking two books, Bosch #3, The Concrete Blonde, and Bosch #8, City of Bones, for the premier of the TV series on Amazon Prime. Bosch in the books is an ex-Vietnam tunnel rat; TV makes him re-enlist after 9/11 to becom...
February 19, 2015
Parodies v. truths…
I had just finished Scott Dyson’s short story collection Dark Windows on Monday night a week ago, so I decided to cruise a bit through the 999 Comcast channels we pay so much for and so seldom use (anyone believe that the planned merger with TWC will make that any better?). I came across Mike and Molly, a sitcom, on one of the traditional network TV channels. I remembered an episode from a few weeks ago I watched under similar circumstances (rather than launch into a new book and stay up late...
February 17, 2015
Chocolate is not the only Swiss sin…
CBS Sixty Minutes opened my eyes a week ago last Sunday. I could only say, “Wow!” I’m pretty good at watching scrolling text on my screen—did enough of that with lines and lines of code at my old day job—so it was easy to pick out the countries affected by the duplicity of HSBC, the Swiss bank. While it’s HQ’d in London, all the sleazy accounts were Swiss, and, as befitting the bank’s name corresponding to the acronym, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, those Swiss accounts were regis...
February 12, 2015
The Argentine-Iranian connection…
One interesting subtheme about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris was that both anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish sentiments reared their ugly heads to play off against and feed each other. I suspect this will be a coming trend in Europe—maybe in the U.S. too. Long known for anti-Semitic sentiments (the Nazis successfully channeled them into a monstrous fascism), Europe is now torn caught between a rock (anti-Islamic elements) and a hard place (anti-Jewish elements). Not so Argentina. Anti-Semitis...
February 10, 2015
What’s wrong with people?
I know all the anti-vaccination fanatics are going to come down on me (they already did in a Facebook comment I made a few weeks ago—time has proven me right, of course). Never let it be said that I’ll let fanatics silence me. Here’s what science says: If you’re vaccinated against measles, there’s only about a 1% chance that you’ll come down with the disease if you’re exposed. If you aren’t vaccinated, there’s about a 95+% chance you’ll get it if you’re exposed. Moreover, if you and members o...
February 6, 2015
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #80…
[Aren’t you the lucky one? This newsletter, after eighty editions, still isn’t cluttering up your email box. It never will. In particular, I’ll never use it to collect readers’ email addresses, so, if you feel guilty about reading my books, you’ll still be able to do so in anonymity. It’s a feature most Friday’s right here at this blog, where I regularly talk about reading and writing…and books, others and my own.]
Item: Sequel? Prequel? So, they found Harper Lee’s lost MS, Go Set a Watchman,...
February 5, 2015
Trust no one…who labels you (Part Two)…
[This continues the post from this last Tuesday. Splitting posts is always debatable, but maybe readers won’t think I’m wordy this way….]
To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.—Thomas Paine
I’m an issues and solutions man, like I said, so I posit that all ideologies are conspiracies. My definition of ideology is broad, and it’s tightly coupled to fanaticism. Yeah, I know, people like to categorize other people—that’s why labels are in...
February 3, 2015
Trust no one…who labels you (Part One)…
I’m an issues and solutions kind of guy, and I hate labels. Bill Maher would call me a “psychopathic patriot” for my anti-terrorist positions and seeing the necessity of having people like Chris Kyle defend our fighting men and women, irrespective of whether the war they’re fighting is justified or not. Michael Moore would call me a coward for recognizing the necessity of snipers—probably for supporting drones and special ops too, instead of boots on the ground, in the fight against terrorism...
February 2, 2015
All sports fans win big in Super Bowl…
One of the most exciting Super Bowls ever, right down to the last seconds. I really thought the Seahawks had it. A great show by two great teams and a fiesta for adrenalin-seeking sports fans. Any team could have won this one…as it should be when two teams get this far. Most of the playoff games this year were spectacular–excitement mixed with strategy in America’s unique game.
Now, back to writing….
January 29, 2015
Skills and training for the modern world…
[Consider this a rebuttal to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul….]
In my old day job and my previous academic life, I loved to work with young people. In academia, you have to enjoy that, or you shouldn’t be there—even research teams do that. In my R&D day job, I was often a mentor and loved to sit at the lunch table to exchange ideas with bright, young minds. Sure, it bothered me that some preferred Java to Fortran—maybe I was tolerated by them only because I knew some C++–or they didn’t know what an LP...
