Category Archives: Miscellany

Speculations Reading with Naomi Kritzer

Dreamhaven Books is a very cool place. Looking for a Doctor Who action figure?  You’ll find it there.  That’s not to mention a plethora of books and zines with a focus on the Twin Cities’ local literary scene.

Friday I was lucky enough to go to a reading there with Naomi Kritzer, author of Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm, and the Dead Rivers trilogy.  She recently self-published a collection of short stories, Comrade Grandmother, on Kindle.  She read from one of her current novels on illegal immigrants from another dimension and everybody had a good time.  Check out Dreamhaven Books at http://www.dreamhavenbooks.com/ and Naomi’s work at http://www.naomikritzer.com/.

The XKCD hypothesis

According to a recent XKCD post, if you pick any page on Wikipedia and click on the first link not in parentheses or italics, you will eventually wind up on the page for Philosophy.  As an experimental scientist, naturally I had to try this out.

Leeroy Jenkins > Internet Phenomenon > Internet > Computer Network > Computers > Machine > Energy > Physics > Natural Sciences > Science > Knowledge > Facts > Information > Sequence > Mathematics > Quantity > Property > Modern Philosophy > Philosophy

Well, what do you know.

The Confederacy of Heaven Ch. 35

When Nasan came to, she was back in the tent, lying on the meaningless-pattern blankets.  She felt all over like she’d been tenderized, but to her relief, she was herself again.  No more shiny armor skin.  Nice. Menkar sat cross-legged across from her.

“I’m sorry.  I forgot how hard our dimension is on humans.  I shouldn’t have let your testimony go on for so long.”

She sat up painfully.  “I feel terrible.”

Continue reading →

Happy Spring, Everybody!

“I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed,” by Emily Dickinson:

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

 

WHOOOP WHOOOP WHOOOP!   EEEEEEE!