it’s a great big universe, and we’re all really puny.

So there’s a potentially Earth-like planet orbiting Gliese 581, which is about twenty light-years from us.

The Rare Earth theory just took it in the pants big time.  For scale: our galaxy is about a hundred thousand light years across, and it has billions of stars in it.  And our Milky Way galaxy is just a backwater galaxy on the ass end of the observable universe, which has a few dozen billion galaxies in it.  The article states that Gliese 581 is in our neighborhood, but that’s not quite accurate.  On the galactic scale, it’s in our cosmic driveway, so to speak.  If we already have an Earth-like planet orbiting in the Goldilocks zone of a star so close by, then the statistical chances for our little blue pebble being the only life-supporting planet in the universe are about as great as the statistical chances of Kate Beckinsale coming up our driveway in the next ten minutes, wearing her skin-tight Underworld leather outfit, piloting a Ferrari with the suitcase compartment full of $100 bills, and bearing a note from my wife saying “Have A Fun Vacation, Honey.”

autumnal interlude.

I’m working on some edits and a new chapter for That Awesome Paranormal Detective Novel, and watching the leaves fall outside.

Autumn is my favorite season by far. One of the many nice things about New England is the very defined change between seasons. We have a snowy winter, a muddy spring, a mild summer…but the fall is the prime event here, seasonally speaking.

Colorful leaves aside, I love autumn because of the elegiac and slightly melancholic mood of it. My temperament matches this season best, I think. I get something out of walking among all the falling leaves on a brisk and windy autumn day that I don’t feel in any other season. I just love the days when it gets cool enough to finally start a fire, and then sit and have some hot cider while watching all the colors go kablooie outside.

I realize this blog entry reads like some sort of emo journal entry, but that’s how it goes here at the incredibly multifaceted Munchkin Wrangler Prose Factory and Magic Daycare Center. I’m all complex and layered and stuff.

how to make a geeky thing even geekier.

Full of Win: the Etch-A-Sketch iPad case.

I’m using the Apple case, which is functional but doesn’t have much in the way of nerd cachet.  One thing that it does do better than the Etch-A-Sketch case is screen protection.  But still–Etch-A-Sketch iPad.

joe haldeman on technology and scribbling by hand.

Mitch Wagner at Copper Robot has an audio interview with SF author Joe Haldeman (“The Forever War”) about writing habits and unplugging from technology to create. 

Joe Haldeman works in longhand with a fountain pen, using spiral-bound blank books.  He doesn’t write on the computer for the same reason I’ve turned my back on it for writing: the temptation to goof off and “just check email for a second” when the writing slows down is just too great, and writing in longhand is physically more enjoyable.

(I don’t use spiral-bound books, though, because I dislike the hump of the spiral binding in the middle of the book…it’s always in the way of my hand somehow.  I like bound books that lie flat when opened.)

Poll a hundred writers, and you’ll get a hundred different processes and work habits…

another poll on a matter of vital importance.

fueling your private jet with pure hypocrisy.

Bono’s charity, ONE, is the poster child for feel-good limousine liberal activism.  In 2008, they took in $14 million in donations, and disbursed a mere $184,000 (or 1%) to charities.  A whopping $8 million (or 57%) of those donations went to executive and employee salaries.  Meanwhile, ONE spends a bunch of cash sending expensive schwag to New York newsrooms to make them help convince the government to cough up $6 billion of taxpayer cash to fight AIDS and tuberculosis in Africa.

That’s the Berkeley Way right there: take in donations, take a sixty percent cut for yourself off the top, and spend most of the rest on stuff Starbucks coffee and Moleskine notebooks to woo reporters.  Focus your efforts on convincing the government to write out checks.  Ask for money that has to be confiscated from other people’s paychecks, people who are so greedy and cold-hearted that they simply don’t care to shell out those $6 billion voluntarily.  Meanwhile, you tour the world in private jets, and carry your nose high because you’re running a non-profit charity.

Now, I’m not slamming charity here.  But what Boner and the other limousine liberals just like him are practicing isn’t charity.  It’s self-congratulatory (and lucrative) grandstanding.

what we’re up to this weekend.

We’re currently taking a family weekend at the Scottish Highland Games in Lincoln, NH.  I brought some single malt, but it turns out that’s pretty much like carrying owls to Athens.

The kids are having a blast:

There’s wireless Internets at the hotel, so I may post a few updates.  Our connection at home has been going up and down like a yo-yo for the last few days, which is not very conducive to bloggenings and such.

More later.  Now we have to go stuff ourselves with Scottish food for dinner, and then sample the variety of distilled offerings from that lovely country.

your brain on paper.

Since I’m an admitted pen & paper addict, it should come as no surprise that I liked this article:

The Pocket Notebooks of 20 Famous Men

I’ve mentioned before that I write my first drafts in notebooks, but I also carry around a small Moleskine-type notebook, to hold brain scraps that would be lost otherwise.  I’m not the most organized person in the world, so I need a repository for all the information that would be lost to entropy otherwise.  This little notebook isn’t for first drafts–instead, it holds ideas, notes, lists of stuff, phone numbers and addresses of friends, ink and nib writing samples, and bits of research for novels.  It’s sort of my outboard brain, and whatever else I’m working on, the little notebook is nearby for reference or to put down ideas that need offloading.

Now, I’m nobody famous, and I don’t expect to be asked to donate my notebooks to the archives at Really Expensive University some day, but it’s still interesting to see that a bunch of smart and famous people had the same habit…and that they used their notebooks for much the same purpose.  There’s something about writing down an idea on paper that makes the mind get a hold of it better.  Fixing it with a pen lets the brain consider it in more dimensions, like plopping down a blob of clay on a pottery wheel.  You can look at it from all angles, prod it, and slowly form it into shape.

that sky-blue ribbon.

For the first time in forty-some years, the Medal of Honor will be awarded to a living recipient who is still in active service.  Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta will receive it for his actions in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley on October 25, 2007.  He will be only the second active member of the Armed Forces with that ribbon on top of his fruit salad, the other one being Colonel Gordon Roberts.

much bigger on the inside than you’d think.

Some writers have little writing shacks tucked into tranquil corners of their properties.  I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of a detached writing office without distractions, only to be used for cranking out pages.  Every time I go to Home Depot, I check out their pre-fabricated tool sheds, some of which are almost like houses in their own right.  I’ve also been browsing the Interwebs for inspiration and ideas.

Well, I think I’ve finally settled on the perfect design for the writing shack I want to build at the far end of the garden:

Construction will begin as soon as I can get my hands on a schematic for a 1950s English police box, and I figure out the exact Pantone value for the light blue color.  Oh, and I should probably level up my woodworking skills a bit…