Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 250

According to Posner

Distinguished appellate judge, law lecturer, and public intellectual Richard Posner has taken on the current economic crisis in his new book.Surprisingly for someone appointed by Ronald Reagan, Posner blames not speculators, or regulators, or greed for the current problem, but capitalism itself.This from the NYT review:The current crisis, Posner maintains, is a depression. True, it is not (we

The Golden Horn

Would this work as a jacket photo, do you think? (Photo by Patricia)

Pamukkale

Pictures of the famous travertines of Pamukkale.These small ponds are natural mineral formations. They're only a couple inches deep, which made me wonder why they're so darned blue, as well as why the shade of blue is a distinctive turquoise.I remember that last year in Canada we saw a number of glacier lakes that were turned turquoise by "stone flour" finely ground by glaciers, and I wonder if

Sacred Pool

You might think I'm smiling in this picture because I'm looking at Melinda's chest. This wouldn't be true. While I'm sure Melinda's chest is worth smiling at, I really couldn't see it from this angle. I'm smiling because, Dude, I'm diving the ancient ruins of Hierapolis! Hierapolis was an ancient spa town built on a plateau behind the white calcium cliffs of Pamukkale ("Cotton Castle"), which is

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.