Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 20

Tuesday’s Brain Dump: The End is Still Nigh

Sarah Hoyt, always with the good advice, this time on raising kids when the world’s gone nuts. Here’s hoping she finally gets well soon, because we need all the non-nutty people we can get. Behold: Bank of America shows which side it’s on in the gun control debate. Hint: it ain’t free markets or liberty. [...]

Sunday Night Music

Everybody else blogs about their music now and then, so I might as well get into the act. There’s not much modern music (how about that alliteration?) that I care for, a sure sign that I’m getting old. Either that, or it really is all crap. And since you can’t spell CRAP without RAP, I’m [...]

Keeping the Blog Alive

Just found some great quotes while reading about our first principles at The DC Clothesline: Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. -Benjamin Franklin And this, from the original George W: From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present [...]

Christmas From God’s Front Porch

Forty-four years ago, three Americans shared a rather unique Christmas observance with the rest of the world. From nasa.gov: Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts; Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders [...]

Yo Canada

Amazon.ca has been live pretty much all month, but nobody’s showing any love for Perigee. What’s up with that? So I guess ya’ll just have to push me to go there and make it free. Fine. You got your way. Now go spread the word!

The End is Nigh

Happy last day on earth, everyone! Between the Mayan calendar and an impending Christmas trip to the in-laws, I don’t know how much time there’ll be for posting tomorrow. If you don’t read anything else today, go to Ace of Spades for the single best collection of helpful advice for today’s world that I’ve seen [...]

How Businesses Commit Suicide

Draconian rights-grabs aren’t just targeted at unwitting authors. If you use Instagram, you might want to reconsider your arrangement: Facebook thinks they have the right to sell your Instagram photos – without your specific consent nor for any compensation. (Hat tip: Passive Voice) If that C/Net story is accurate, I cannot see how this ends [...]

Tipping Point

2012 may be known as the year Indie publishing broke down the final barriers to general acceptance. This may be one of the biggest roadblocks to fall: NY Times Critic Selects Self-Published Book Among This Year’s Top 10 A lot of writers have been of the opinion that a big-shot reviewer’s stamp of approval is [...]

Irony

…can certainly be ironic sometimes. Via Instapundit:

Coincidence?

I think not. J.J. Abrams, call your office: Right down to the title font! Just sayin’…