Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 250

Trek: A Military Analysis

You've probably already read a hundred reviews of the new Trek movie, and you don't need mine. (Short form: liked the characters, winced at the baaaad science and coincidence-heavy plot.) But over at Danger Room, we find the take of a genuine military analyst.* The villainous Romulan ship pulverizes Federation vessels with volleys of torpedoes. Yet no Federation warship employs electronic

The Future of Streaming Video

Comic/TV/RPG writer John Rogers has an interesting post about the future of TV over on Kung Fu Monkey. Now what's kind of interesting here is that everybody in TV looks at the music industry collapse as the Bad Story and iTunes as the plausible premise for digital entertainment distribution. iTunes makes money. QED, there is money to be made in digital distribution.But drawing this conclusion

Street Scenes

This is a street scene, sort of. It's a view from the breakfast room of the Hotel Spectra, looking across the old Roman hippodrome to the Mosque of Sultanahmet, better known over here as the Blue Mosque. Beyond is the Sea of Marmara. I highly recommend the Spectra. It's a small hotel with nice rooms, reasonable rates, an excellent, considerate staff, and you can't beat the location with a

A Brief Commercial Message

I hope you appreciate my restraint in not telling you in a while that you should go out and buy This Is Not a Game. Because it's a really good book and, y'know, you should.

Bodrum

On the tenth of April we came down from the Anatolian highlands to Bodrum, where we met the Aegean for the first time--- we had seen blue water here and there, but we were never on the shore, and always en route to one place or another. Bodrum was the place where we ended up taking a vacation from our vacation. Bodrum is on a long peninsula, with striking views all around. A hotel had been

Mutant Powers

In honor of the new Wolverine movie, we present: Why Having Wolverine's Claws Would Suck.

Little Caps

Because I was in the mood to do something tasty and elaborate, last night I cooked a meal for our friends, Peggy and Kevin. For primi I made capelletti, "little caps," in this case pasta stuffed with chicken, parmesan, parsley, a little nutmeg, and some cream to hold it together. You start with a 2x2-inch square of pasta--- all of which I made myself, the first use of the pasta machine I've

Gummi Bear Surprise

Here's why TSA will soon be banning gummi bears from aircraft!

Mystery Writing Contest

Always wanted to try writing a mystery?New Mexico Tech is offering cash prizes in a mystery writing contest.

Miletos Tristesse

The saddest sights we saw in Turkey were the ruins of Miletos. We saw a lot of lost and abandoned cities. Ephesus, Priene, and Kaunos were all once-thriving port cities stranded inland when their harbors silted up. That's also what happened to Miletos, which is now 10km from the sea. But somehow those other cities weren't sad, and Miletos was. There was the huge Roman-era theater that had