Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 221

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

New This Week!

Tor Books has done an amazing job of publishing two of my friends on the same day! First up is my former student, Ian Tregillis, who is a Los Alamos physicist, and who in his spare time wrote a trilogy that has me clenching my jaw with bilious envy. Bitter Seeds is the first in the series, a harrowing tale of espionage, treachery, and darkest magic set in an alternate World War II. You can tell

The Truth . . . about Popcorn Lung

I just found out that someone I know has popcorn lung, an irreversible lung disease caused by inhaling the buttery aroma of microwave popcorn, or specifically diacetyl, the chemical used to produce the buttery taste in the absence of actual butter. Diacetyl is also found in candies and wines. [In interests of fairness, I would like to point out that this is not April First.:]Why have you never

Des Imperiums

The Praxis is now available in Germany. I advise you all to buy lots of copies for your German friends.

Watch the Skies!

While in Portales I got to admire Steve Gould's new iPad, which I have to say is a lovely, shiny toy that for the most part does nothing that other platforms can't do better and cheaper. It's an awkward size and my cargo pants would have to be completely redesigned if I were to carry one around. (And it won't run Flash, and because it doesn't have a phone you can't call for pizza, so what's the

Political Idiocy Week, #-2

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as the Vatican's secretary of state is Number Two among the Catholic clergy, was asked yesterday about a pedophilia scandal involving a priest having sex with a large number of underage girls. Cardinal Bertone's answer: blame the gays!"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others

Political Idiocy Week, #-1

Oklahoma Tea Party types along with conservative legislators are planning to create a new, state-sponsored militia to stand in arms against the federal government, and particularly against the new health care bill.In other words, Oklahomans are planning to give arms, ammunition, and explosives to the same sort of people that blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City just 15 years ago