Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 26
August 7, 2012
The Amerikan Way
If you’ve never read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, you should consider doing so. Its controversy-inspiring title was itself inspired by an unlikely source. Remarking on the likelihood of tyranny coming to America, George Carlin said, “it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jackboots. It will be Nike sneakers [...]
August 6, 2012
Curiouser and Curiouser
Ho-lee crap. NASA actually pulled it off. Curiosity, a rover that’s roughly the size of a Mini Cooper, is now safely on Mars and ready to cruise. This was a real feat – if , like most normal people, you haven’t been paying attention (as opposed to abbie-normal space geeks like me), this wasn’t your [...]
August 4, 2012
The Opression of the Tolerant
Yeah, I’m kind of late to the Chik-Fil-A party but it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Being a good Southern boy, they’ve always been first and foremost in my mind whenever the term “chicken sammich” is uttered. My heart leaped with joy when they (and Waffle House) started opening franchises up here in the [...]
July 24, 2012
Indefensible? Not Necessarily…
I’ve not seen the new Batman movie yet, and have to admit I’m in no big rush anymore. Even my boys aren’t in as big of a yank as they used to be, though being young boys, they’re certain to feel differently soon enough. Doesn’t make sense if you really think about it anyway – [...]
July 20, 2012
One Giant Leap
Despite (or perhaps because of) today’s dreary headlines, I’d be neglecting my space-nerd cred if I didn’t point out that today is the 43rd anniversary of the first moon landing. I was five, and completely obsessed with the whole program. My grandpa loaded me up with Apollo toys from the Gulf station, including some nifty [...]
Not Again
So now you can’t even go to the movies without fear of some psychopath shooting up the place. I can’t begin to imagine the horror, or what the families are going through right now. One of the victims was a six-year-old. Regardless of the wisdom of taking a young kid to a midnight movie, many [...]
July 17, 2012
Jumping On the Meme Wagon
I just couldn’t help myself… UPDATE: On second thought, the Death Star actually was a government project, wasn’t it? Crap.
Live on Kobo
It wasn’t quite “pushing the easy button”, but it was mostly painless: Perigee is now for sale on Kobo. I couldn’t get it to accept my ISBN numbers for some reason, and there’s no obvious way to link to reviews from Goodreads and other sites. More to follow as I figure it out… UPDATE: Always [...]
July 16, 2012
Kobo Publishing: How Much Longer?
Some tantalizing details about Kobo’s self-publishing platform have hit recently, and it looks like they’re prepping their website for launch. I’ve been anxiously awaiting this since hearing about it several weeks ago. It was supposed to be a done deal by now, but they’ve been sitting on it a bit longer to collect more info [...]
July 14, 2012
What’s Old Is New Again
In the closing notes of Perigee, I mentioned that one of the biggest reasons spaceflight has been so stupendously expensive is the problem of reusability. A big rocket is every bit as expensive and complex as a new airliner, but it all gets thrown away after one flight. Think you could afford a weekend jaunt [...]
