Month: October 2005

Hello all,

Many of you know that I’m an F&SF writer and have expressed an interest in my work. By happy coincidence I just got a note on my latest short story publication.

It’s humorous SF and it’s in the latest issue of Cosmic SF. Unlike most of the venues that buy my stuff, Cosmic is an electronic magazine and currently available for free in PDF format via the above link. It’s one my older stories, written in 1997, but I’m still quite fond of it.

For people who are interested in a completely different sort of SF, currently also free, a cycle of stories that I wrote as part of a middle school science curriculum is available in PDF format. These stories are primarily designed to convey specific ideas in physical science and scientific reasoning. I think they’re fun, but they’re not what you’d call representative of my wider body of work.

In order to get there, go to http://interactionste.net/ then click on the link http://cipskids.sdsu.edu/ and fill in the username and password visible on the bottom of that first page (http://interactionste.net/) then one more click on the link labeled “Chronicles of the Wandering Star” and there you are.

Are they starting to crawl out of their bunkers and take a stand?  Have they finally realized that it has gone too far?  Have they finally had enough?  

No conspiracy theory here.  No tinfoil hats.  Just a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College who served as Chief of Staff for the Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005.  The man has something to say and I hope America listens.

Secretary of State Colin Powell’s former chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal,” and that President Bush has made the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises. …

“I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita – and I could go on back,” he said. “We haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time.”

Mr. Wilkerson suggested that the dysfunction within the administration was so grave that “if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.”

Mr. Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College, said that in his years in or close to government, he had seen its national security apparatus twisted in many ways. But what he saw in Mr. Bush’s first term “was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations” and “perturbations.”

Recommend you read the whole article here:

NYTimes Article

I couldn’t find this written up anywhere else here.  Please let me know if I missed it.

Yesterday, Marty Bahamonde testified before the Senate Homeland Security Comittee.  Included with his testimony were several emails sent from his blackberry.  These emails are quite damning, to say the least.

Like many of you, I sat watching my television in horror on that Sunday night, wondering why I was seeing people streaming into the Superdome, but no supplies.

It turns out that Marty Bahamonde, the ‘eyes and ears on the ground’ for Mike Brown, was in the SuperDome at that time.  And he was extremely concerned as well.

The PlameGate Project Do you love the suspense of listening intently for Karl Rove’s Swan Song? Are your search skills honed and ready to go? Do you enjoy getting involved in our BooMan Tribune community? Do we have an offer for you! We are about to begin the PlameGate Project: a comprehensive web reference to the players involved in the scandal that may bring down arguably the most corrupt American administration ever. Interested intrepid BooTribbers? Follow below the fold for details.

Update [2005-10-22 9:38:13 by PlameGate]: Thank you all for the overwhelming response. Now that we know we will have your support, this project is really going to fly. All comments will be scoured today for hints, hot tips, and names to be added to the email list. Feel free to continue adding comments. You will hear from us very soon. Thanks again, BooTribbers!

The grand strategy of the Iraqi Army assuming national security duties is the centerpiece of the Bush strategy (as it were) for eventual U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Unfortunately but realistically, when and if the Iraqi Army is supposedly ‘ready’ somewhere down the line, it appears that the absence of U.S. forces will faciliate an even greater debacle than the current Sunni-Shiite-Kurd blood bath.