Excerpts from dinnertime conversation with a retired investment banker: Angela Merkel emerges from a meeting with Donald Trump. “Yes,” she says in answer to a reporter’s question, “we had a provocative but productive discussion.” She rolls her eyes. The market soars on hearing the good news. It soars because once again, after a brief hiatus […]
Incorruptible, Indeed.
Category: writing newsSo I wake up in a stranger’s apartment in Montreal, reset routers and flush/re-register dns caches and do all those other should-be-unnecessary things this piece-of-shit Lenovo demands I do before it spins some internal roulette wheel to decide whether or not I’ll have internet access this morning, and— What do you know. The X-Prize people […]
A Tale of Two Cities (or, I Think I’ll Wait Another Year)
Category: On the Road, public interface, UncategorizedThe first city is Montreal, to which I’ll be returning next week: Concordia once more, this time to deliver a lecture entitled “The Best-Case Apocalypse: Why Reality Is Worse Than Fiction.” (I was going to call it “My Dinner With Daniel”, but I figured the reference might be too obscure.) It’s part of a longer […]
Offred of Dune.
Category: ink on artFor a writer who grew up in an age when his chosen genre was routinely derided in polite company— when even impolite company could be forgiven for thinking that SF boiled down to megablockbusters about snarky sapient raccoons and alien-punching fighter pilots— it doesn’t get much better than waking up to find that a big […]
The 600.
Category: On the Road, public interfaceWhen a pop science symposium takes place in Bulgaria’s premiere, state-of-the-art convention hall— when past speakers include bestselling authors and actual scientists talking about their own cutting-edge research— and when they ask you to give a talk on a profoundly difficult branch of science in which you have no formal expertise whatsoever— it’s reasonable to […]
Promises, Promises
Category: art on ink, ink on art, writing newsYeah, it’s been a while. There’ve been deadlines: stories to complete, talks to give. Mostly met now, for the time being. I’m never deadline-free but the pressure’s off for a month or so. I’m back. There’s Bulgaria to report on, the usual crunchy science if I can get caught up. Today, though, I’m going to […]
Proof of Principle
Category: ink on art, On the Road, writing newsDateline Munich. Scribbled in a near-coma while sitting in a chair which has been designed by aliens who obviously never looked at a human body. Which is to say, at an airport… Something slipped under my radar last week. I was nose-deep in “Freeze-Frame Revolution” and the upcoming Ratio talk, and when I looked up […]
An X-Prize for Irony.
Category: UncategorizedYou may have heard of these things called “X Prizes”: big cash awards, handed out by the non-profit Xprize Foundation to encourage advances in everything from spaceflight to genomics to undersea exploration. It’s run by some pretty big names; Craig Venter may ring a bell with some of you. Or Ray Kurzweil. Or, um, Arianna […]
“You Tried So Hard”, The Toilet of Poking, and Other Tales of Adrenaline Week.
Category: On the Road, public interfaceThree days in Warsaw. Three in Poznań. Four days in Berlin. Fifteen hours travel time stapled to either end. It rained the whole time. I’m typing this 15000 meters over the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Behind us, Europe is turning bright and sunny after its long deluge. Ahead of us, Toronto braces to evacuate waterfront homes […]
Noms and Cons and Metal Alms
Category: On the Road, public interface, writing newsStuff’s been piling up in the wings as a side-effect of my ongoing battle against ego creep— enough now, as it turns out, to warrant a whole catch-all catch-up post in its own right. And since some of the following travel plans might intersect with the occasional fan, I should probably outline where I’m going […]