Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 132

Chickenhawk

There’s a massively important article on the American military in the currentAtlantic, which is fortunately readable online. It’s by James Fallows, who has always seemed to be the military analyst who asks the right questions.
Here’s your take-away:
If I were writing [a history of our times] now, I would call itChickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going. It would be the story of a country willing to do anything for its military...

Dates and Times

We have released our lovely calendar for the year 2015. As in previous years, the calendar features images from the previous year’s travels, plus a list of holidays from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the U.K.
As with previous years, I make no money from this. I just do this to share my life with my friends.
You’ve probably got to have a calendar, so why not this one? (Not the best advertising slogan, I must admit.) But it is very pretty, and besides, if you have a pressing need to find out when...

25 December

Have a happy Isaac Newton’s birthday!

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:

God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.

Pre-Electric

On Christmas Evethe Los Altos neighborhood on the west side of Albuquerque turns off its street lights and returns for one evening to the 19th Century. The only illumination is the soft golden glow of luminarias, which are basically a candle in a brown paper bag, with a bit of dirt or kitty litter in the bottom to keep it stable.
Photos really can’t do justice to the silent flickering flame, in this case outlining every curb, sidewalk, wall, roofline, garden, and driveway. Most years we walk t...

Raucous Homecoming

Back in New Mexico! Hurrah!
The last leg was the shortest but difficult, because of the difficulty of driving an overloaded, underpowered vehicle uphill, into the face of a headwind gusting to maybe 40 knots, on a weekend interstate highway choked with 18-wheelers. When the wind died down I finally made good time, and the welcoming holiday tumbleweed men waved the Joadmobile to its new home.

Medium Rare

We are now in Amarillo, Tx. After two days of crossing the Great Plains, I’m beginning to grow a bit nostalgic for those Pennsylvania mountains. Variety has its virtues.
But tomorrow we’ll be in New Mexico, where there are plenty of mountains. Though alas, the entire drive there will be boring.
The Joadmobile continues to serve brilliantly. It’s even getting close to 30 mpg, which is pretty good for an overloaded vehicle traveling at freeway speeds.
I have only one real beef, which is with beef....

Fields of Springs

We are in Springfield, Mo., having previously passed through, or been within hailing distance of, Springfield, Penn., Springfield, Ohio, Springfield, Ind., and Springfield, Ill. It’s like we’re on the Simpsons tour of the U.S.!
I noted that there were a lot of big gun stores in Indiana, just over the Illinois line, from which I gather that Illinois has more strict gun laws than Indiana. If you live in Springfield (the one in Illinois) and want to kill someone properly, I guess you have to trav...

Joadmobile

I write from a motel near Dayton, Oh., after a long second day of our Cross-Country Odyssey.
The plan was to load the car of Kathy’s late Aunt Dolores with such of Dolores’ things as we wanted to bring west, then drive cross-country in the middle of winter in an underpowered, overloaded 1995 Ford Escort station wagon with 94,000 miles on it. Surely I wasn’t the one who thought of this.
I can’t help but think I’ve been conscripted into the Joad family. We’ll be strapping Granny to the roof any t...

Black Sun, Stalking

So over the weekend we had our twice-yearly black belt weekend, which was mostly devoted to graduating 33 new Kenpo black belts. I also re-certified for my own black belt, in which I re-tested for, well, just about everything I’ve learned over the last thirty-odd years. I was a sweat-soaked bag of silly putty at the end, craving salt and carbs, but I was smiling. Now that it’s over, I
Please enjoy the accompanying video, which has only a thematic relationship to anything I did over the weekend...

Honor/Dishonor

John McCain, the only member of the Senate known to have actually been tortured, speaks on the Senate torture report. I wanted to include this in yesterday’s essay, but ran out of time.
“The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow,” [Mccain] said, standing at his desk on the Senate floor as Ms. Feinstein and other colleagues looked on. “It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to i...