Dave Higgins's Blog, page 110
September 30, 2015
That Sinking Feeling
As part of my quest to play instalments of games before the one that follows goes on discount, I started playing Fallout: New Vegas last week. So far, it’s been great fun: the revisited content and mechanisms are comforting rather than stale; the new content and mechanisms provide excitement rather than frustration; even the return […]
September 28, 2015
The Small Things
As an example of the power of my words, I was washing my hands this morning when I heard Una meow loudly from somewhere else, so I meowed back where I was. Immediately, there was a pattering of paws and she rushed into the bathroom. Clearly, my Cat-tongue is improving. As a more generally applicable […]
September 25, 2015
Clockwork Menagerie by Karen Kincy
Intermingling the fast-paced action of a spy thriller with solid character development against a background of clockwork mysticism, Kincy produces a story that will appeal to a broad range of speculative fiction readers. Archmage Konstantin would like nothing more than to devote his time to studying the clockwork dragon Vienna has captured from Russia. However, […]
September 23, 2015
Liberty in Proportion to Restraint
The morals and ethics of Kim Davis’ stance have been hashed and rehashed over the last several weeks. Philosophically, both the choice between civil obligations and religious ones, and the determination of what are properly obligations rather than personal choices, are complex topics. However, the question of whether imprisoning her for not doing her job […]
September 21, 2015
A Crust of Peace
Social anxiety is often portrayed as a trait of shut-ins and outsiders, but it isn’t. Some coping mechanisms might display as traits commonly assigned to those groups, but others don’t. Depending on the person, their method of coping with a situation might not even present as anxiety. Much as mine doesn’t. I have presented cases […]
September 18, 2015
I’m Antisocial, Coffee Never Lies: Part I by Mallory Smart
Mixing cats, coffee, and mellow commentary, Smart peels back the masks of social meaning that cover our choices to reveal that it might not matter why we enjoy things as much as whether we enjoy things. From an objective metric perspective, this book is 45 pages long including front and back matter, contains five illustrations […]
September 16, 2015
The Beauty of Our Own Reality
PsychGuides have published a study of how the BMI of successful contestants in the Miss America contest has changed for the worst over the years, along with some of the risks of an unhealthy BMI. I can’t add to their science, but what I can do is add my voice to the side of healthy […]
September 14, 2015
Infinite Hyperspace Folding Incident
I started this blog three years ago last Thursday, and over those years I’ve moved from considering publishing to having published. The way I use this blog has changed too, so it seemed like time to shift some things around. I’ve been feeling slightly cramped by the margins on my theme for a while: it […]
September 11, 2015
The Friendship of Mortals by Audrey Driscoll
Counterbalancing the hidden experiments and disdain for inconvenient laws of the mad scientist with a sympathetic search for solutions to human misery, Driscoll forces the reader to face the reasons for their horror: is visceral attachment to the flesh of … Continue reading →
September 9, 2015
Halloween Never Ended
While shopping this fair morn, I turned to face an aisle clad in reds and gold. Pies of mince and cakes of festal mien. I reeled back, dear reader. The Christmas Out of Time had infested another year. But I … Continue reading →
