Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 220

Advancing, the Creeping Enemy

What is this, you ask? It's the entire Afghan war reduced to a flow chart and put on a PowerPoint slide. Of what use is this slide, which was presented to General McChrystal as part of a staff briefing?Well, none. But it sure looks like it contains a vast amount of information, doesn't it? It actually looks as if it might mean something! But it's empty of actual useful information.Up till

Collapse-- the Musical!

And it's all true![via Daniel:]

Dangerous Encounter

I was contemplating the moon at 2:30 this morning from the hot tub, and I looked down to see an enormous hound standing under the elm tree staring at me. It looked big enough to rip my arm off. I had a moment of frigid horror, and then the hound moo'd and wandered off, chewing its cud.

Progress

I just got round to reading an essay/review by novelist/critic James Wood published a month or more ago in The New Yorker. It begins as a reaction to Reality Hunger: a Manifesto by David Shields, and then goes on to review Chang-Rae Lee's The Surrendered both in terms of the Shields book and Wood's own stance as viewed through the lens of the Shields book.(A discerning reader, merely from a

The Persistence of Vision (New Mexico)

Saturday night we drove to Santa Fe to enjoy a baroque concert. It might as well have been titled "Music You've Heard a Lot," as it included Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Bach's Concerto in D for Two Violins, and a concerto grosso by Handel, the precise title of which escapes me. Whether you know it or not, you've heard the first two a lot, and I, at least, have heard the Handel more than a few times.

90 Years and Counting . . .

Happy National Sovereignity Day to my friends in Turkey!

Dead Print, Dead Paper

I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to drop my subscription to Albuquerque's sole surviving daily paper.I don't want to, y'know, be Part of the Problem. Newspapers are dying. Friends of mine in the newspaper business have been laid off and can't find jobs. Journalism is a (potentially) noble profession and a (potential) valued resource in a democracy. I've subscribed to a daily paper

At the Club Savoy . . .

I'm brush-whacking and sawing dead limbs off my apricot trees today, so while I'm ducking deadwood and dodging the chainsaw, please enjoy Virginia O'Brien ("Miss Deadpan") recalling a night of adventure.

Come Up the Mountain

Y'know, yesterday was one of those days when it occurred to me that I might just be a good teacher. I got an email from my sometime student Saladin Ahmed (Taos Toolbox 2007) that he's just got an agent. This is on top of an amazing few weeks: a Nebula nomination, a Campbell nomination for best new writer, and becoming father to twins.Not to take away from Saladin's considerable talent, but I'd

Goldman Sachs Gets Theirs

Ah, lovely! The S.E.C. is finally suing those meretricious smart bastards at Goldman, Sachs for selling their customers the same bonds they were shorting in the market. And which were, furthermore, structured to fail and to make Goldman a ton of money.The instrument in the S.E.C. case, called Abacus 2007-AC1, was one of 25 deals that Goldman created so the bank and select clients could bet