An assignment for my creative writing class. Jeff lugged his suitcase off the train and set his foot down in Italy for the first time. He was in Rome: home of emperors and gladiators; locus of the Colisseum and the Forum. This was the planned highlight of his tour of Europe, the final historic destination for a student of ancient... read more »

This is not about the ten commandments monument in Alabama. It's a response to Eugene Volokh's post about religious freedom and homosexuals. The main thrust of his argument is this: ... oday, the general view, again, seemingly shared by a broad range of people, including many devout, conservative Christians, is that toleration is the more just approach. And, in particular,... read more »

Assignment for my creative writing class. "It is a bit of a fixer-upper, as you can see." The real estate agent pushed aside some of the creeping vines that intertwined with the curls of the wrought-iron gate so that he could unlock the padlock that chained it shut. "Who let it get like this?" asked Maureen, frowning at the unkempt... read more »

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Apparently some scientists have come up with a formula which is supposed to tell (with 80% accuracy) whether a passage of fiction was written by a male or a female. Someone then created a web page to run the analysis on any text that you cut and paste into a form. I ran... read more »

My cousin Scott and I went to see the movie S.W.A.T. last night, but the ticket guy told us the theater was almost full and we'd probably end up on the front row. So, instead we bought tickets for The Medallion. It was fun, but not really that great. A few good Jackie Chan action sequences, and some pretty funny... read more »

My short story "In Memory" was rejected by Analog. But the rejection letter from the editor, Stanley Schmidt, did include the following: "I rather like your style of writing and suggest you try us again." I can't believe that's a standard sentence they include in all their rejection letters, so I'm going to take that as a positive.

According to this story, theaters are going to be allowed to show The Fellowship of the Ring at 3pm, The Two Towers at 7pm, and then the first showing of The Return of the King at 11pm. I went to midnight showings of the first two, and was planning to see a midnight showing of the third. But this would... read more »

Well, this is not just a bid for traffic, but I'm going to take issue with one of Instapundit's trademark Indeeds. He's commenting on a Lowell Phillips column that points out: A cement truck laden with explosives plows into the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations and, presto-chango, there are "terrorists" in Iraq. That's right, not "guerrillas," not "resistance fighters,"... read more »

I'm glad the military is starting to do this. The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was built with the clear understanding that there will be better technology coming along, and makes it easy to upgrade. Several of the things are fairly simple, like having tubes for network wiring that have extra space for future expansion without having to tear out the walls.... read more »

Saying that someone is "to the right of Attila the Hun" is a figurative way of saying someone is extremely right-wing. Well, I'm not that extreme, so I figure that puts me neither to the left nor the right of Attila. I also wanted: 1. a name that would be fairly easy to remember, and 2. a name that had... read more »