A comic strip that I've read for...well...a long time is coming to an end. Or is it (some additional details here, Adobe Acrobat file)?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Check out these great advance promo pics for the new season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

I know I'm married and twice her age13 years older than she is, but I think I'm in love with Summer Glau:

(More below the fold).

more...

Posted by: JohnL at 09:14 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Be sure to check out Virginia Postrel's new blog, Deep Glamour: At the Intersection of Imagination and Desire.

In addition to being pretty easy on the eyes, this new blog offers up a fresh perspective on what many may normally consider a superficial topic. Call it a more focused application of the "substance of style."

Posted by: JohnL at 08:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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After 8:00 PM the doorbell rang. It was a guy in a red shirt and a badge named Steve and he said he was from our telephone company.

He wanted to sell me their fiber optic service. I said we weren't interested. My reply was: "I told the first salesman why I wasn't interested. I did not feel a need to repeat myself to the next four. I am not effing (to clean it up) interested in effing explaining it again."

I then slammed the door in his face. I should have let OldDog (Mark 2.0 and NewDog (Mark 4.0) out to "greet" him.

I then called his employer to ask why they had people ringing doorbells after 8:00 PM. Maybe it's time for a new telephone company.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Continuing my interest in all things HALO (even though I've never played the game, just collected some figures, bought some books, and played some music), here is a view of the Master Chief vs. a view of the Master Chief. Remember that history is written by the victor!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Doctors purge the body, preachers the conscience, lawyers the purse."

--German proverb (from my desktop calendar)

Posted by: JohnL at 11:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In We Were Soldiers Once...And Young, we met a pair of characters (real people who are real unique, that is), Ed "Too Tall to Fly" Freeman and Bruce (Ancient Serpent) Crandall. Both were entitled to wear the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Joe Galloway, who was a direct witness to the events of the battle depicted in the book writes of the passing of "Too Tall".

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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First there was one. Then there was three. Now comes the news that Baen Books has negotiated the rights to the entire Technic Civilization series by Poul Anderson. Seen volumes of crunchy hard science fiction goodness! For the first time since, well ever, we're going to see the entire tale, from beginning to end (with even a story that never made it between book covers!) from one publisher.

All hail Toni Weisskopf (Baen's publisher)! All hail Hank Davis (the Baen editor overseeing the project)!

Feast your peepers on what's in store... more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I never realized how much Wall-E resembled Stephen Hawking until I saw this.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Take a look at this enlarged picture of a stepwell (really big version here). How Escheresque!!!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A long-lost "classic" of television SF is coming to DVD (can Logan's Run and Max Headroom be far behind? And what of Salvage 1?). Sure hope I can find a better price, though!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The official Cordwainer Smith site has a new look. "Smith's" daughter is also doing a blog. His Instrumentality of Mankind stories are among my favorites, stop on by and maybe you'll get hooked as well!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well, the sickness continues so it is off to the doctor!

Update: Just getting back home. It turned into an emergency room visit. Seems there's a bug going around...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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'Don't you know what a tie-mate is, cully?' asked the seaman with tolerant scorn. The landsman shook his heavy head: there were already seventeen thousand things he did not know, and their number increased, daily. 'Well, you know what a pigtail is?' asked the seaman, showing his own, a massive queue that reached his buttocks, and speaking loud, as to a fool or a foreigner. The landsman nodded, looking a little more intelligent. 'Which it has to be unplaited, washed on account of the lice, combed, and plaited again for muster. And can you do it yourself, behind your back? Not in time for muster, mate. Not in time for Kingdom Come, neither. So you get a friend, like me and Billy Pitt, to do yours, you sitting on a cheese of wads at your ease, or maybe a bucket turned arsy-versy; and then you do his: for fair's fair, I say. And that is what we call tie-mates."

''I heard of that Billy Pitt of yours,' said the landsman, narrowing his eyes.

(Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The young lady is not feeling well, so no work (probably) for pay today.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm still alive. Summer is always a bad time for blogging for me. Something about the structure of the kids' school year helps me write more consistently.

We recently returned from a two-week vacation in Colorado. High point (literally): I bagged a 14er -- Quandary Peak -- with my two sons. That makes two Colorado 14ers in my life now (I climbed Red Cloud Mountain when I was 15).

More later.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution."

(The Supreme Being, Time Bandits)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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My wife just called to tell me that NewDog (Mark 4.0) pulled a leather-bound copy of The History of the Peloponnesian War (by Thucydides) off the shelf and proceeded to chow down on the leather cover. It was not in its usual place, I was referring to it as I read Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War (his one-volume "popular" treatment of his four-volume opus).

"...the first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable, that philosophers ought to abandon them, to the embellishments of poets and orators." (David Hume)

With this, she has joined a very exclusive club. OldDog (Mark 2.0, readers may recall that OldDog, Mark 3.0 passed away last may) chewed up a omnibus edition of The Lord of the Rings when she was roughly the same age.

I know I can get another copy, heck, I can get it for free from Project Gutenberg. But I had this one for about twenty-five years. Ah, NewDog, you're trying my patience!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 01:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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John D at SF Signal, probably in revenge for my nitpicking habits, has "tagged" me with a meme. Box Office Mojo has released a list of movies made from books...how's my SF movie rating, I guess.

Entries bolded are ones where I've read the book.
Entries italicized are ones where I couldn't make it through the book.
For giggles, entries underlined are ones where I couldn't make it through the movie.

And, I'm annoying five more people by tagging them at the end.

Jurassic Park
War of the Worlds
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
I, Robot
Contact
Congo
Cocoon
The Stepford Wives
The Time Machine
Starship Troopers
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
K-PAX
2010 (no 2001?)
The Running Man
Sphere
The Mothman Prophecies
Dreamcatcher
Blade Runner(Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
Dune
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Iron Giant(The Iron Man)Battlefield Earth
The Incredible Shrinking Woman (I've read The Shrinking Man)
Fire in the Sky
Altered States
Timeline
The Postman
Freejack (Immortality, Inc.)
Solaris
Memoirs of an Invisible Man
The Thing (Who Goes There?)
The Thirteenth Floor
Lifeforce (Space Vampires)
Deadly Friend
The Puppet Masters
1984
A Scanner Darkly
Creator
Monkey Shines
Solo (Weapon)
The Handmaid's Tale
Communion
Carnosaur
From Beyond
Nightflyers
Watchers
Body Snatchers

I tag: The Crotchety Old Fan, Dave Does the Blog, Flying Sauce, Ronzobot and StevenHartSite.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 12:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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When making coffee, it helps to put the filter and coffee into the machine before walking away; otherwise you're in for a disappointment.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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