Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 32

“Fascist States of America” Series #2: The anti-democratic Congress…

[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member!) It’s not antifa per se; it’s pro democracy. If you recognize words blasting your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt the...

Coding and quantum computers…

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a famous British mathematician known for creating the “Turing machine” concept and using it to prove the “halting problem” for these machines was undecidable, the Gödel’s theorem of computer science. Because of a fairly recent movie, he justifiably is now considered a national and world hero for breaking the Enigma code by extending the deciphering capabilities of the “Polish bombe,” a mechanical technique used against the Nazi U-boats’ damaging offense launched again...

Stupid anti-vaxers…

How stupid can people be? Obviously, from all that’s going on, damn stupid! Stupid enough that they prefer to commit suicide and take others with them rather than use a thoroughly tested and tried solution to a public health emergency, one that is extremely lethal. We hear and read about the rationalizations for this stupid behavior akin to lemmings intent on suicide, following their brethren over the cliff. The lemmings are actually smarter; they’re driven by instinct. The anti-vaxers are just ...

“Fascist States of America” Series: What’s wrong with this word?

[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member.) It’s not anti-fa in the sense of that extreme left group; it’s pro democracy. If you consider that my words don’t agree with your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their...

Super-villain Vladimir Kalinin…

He’s back! He’s a psycho; a power-hungry, greedy devil; and a bad-ass villain who sometimes manages to do some good. That more or less sums up his appearance in Leonardo and the Quantum Code, Book Five of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series.

I needed a foil for both Janos Rakoczy, Hungarian assassin extraordinaire and the true villain in that tale; and Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard inspector, who’s the saucy main character. And there he was, waiting in the wings, s...

Rich boys with their expensive toys…

Bezos, Branson, and, to some extent, Musk, are the three rich boys; and who knows what their expensive toys cost? At least Musk actually did something that blows the other two out of the sky: He put NASA back into space without kissing the butt of that old KGB agent, the evil Vladimir Putin.

With Branson’s flight, the hype was over the top: “Democratization of space” and “opening space to everyone” were examples of CNN’s hyperbole repeated again and again by Rachel Crane, whom CNN might now regr...

Content editing or organic growth?

Happy Bastille Day to all my French readers! Vive la France!

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When I started polishing my stories at the beginning of the third millennia (that sounds better than turn of the century), thinking about publishing them, I already had computers to help me. The internet was still in its infancy, but word publishing software wasn’t (in fact, MS Word was probably better then because it wasn’t so bloated).

There are three types of editing: content, copy, and proofing. Copy editing is the last thing ...

A potpourri of tweets…

I’ve decided to be more efficient. Instead of sending a lot of tweets out via Twitter (which those website folks would love me to do, I’m sure), I’ll put them all here in one blog post. There are probably more people following this blog than are following me on that website anyway; and, if not, the audience here might be, generally speaking, more educated (Trump’s right-wing trolls still water down Twitter’s IQ quite a bit).

Will Biden become the world’s worst mass murderer? It’s looking that wa...

A treasure hunt?

Come join the party! You know, those parties where the guests scoot around town to find clues and finally reach something worthwhile at the end. In this case, the treasure is five large gems (modesty aside), and the clues are a bit obscure.

I’m referring to the five novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Unlike the related “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series, all novels published by Carrick Publishing (#1 even has a paper version), the novels in Esther’s series have been p...

Steele gathers dirty rust…

To those who lament the PA Supreme Court’s decision to free Mr. Cosby, I’ll paraphrase what someone said (I don’t remember who said it or which side they were on): The US does not have a justice system; it has a legal system. Mr. Steele should never have prosecuted Mr. Cosby, and that DA did a disservice to Ms. Constand by doing so. The previous DA had promised Mr. Cosby no prosecution, and that was legally binding, so he went ahead with a deposition in a civil trial, figuring he wouldn’t need t...