Browsing all posts in Asides.
Ground The Airbus A380: Not sky-worthy, say engineers
This is not Die By Wire’s precise reason for calling fly-by-wire aircraft “death traps.” But it does emphasize that we should not be gullible when it comes to accepting the airline industry’s assurances Ground The Airbus A380: Not sky-worthy, say engineers “Australian aircraft engineers have called for Airbus A380 – the world’s biggest passenger aircraft […]
Software bug fingered as cause of Aussie A330 plunge
In Die By Wire, I talk about the software and hardware vulnerablities inherent in fly-by-wire computer systems. In that book, the villain, through a series of corporate shells, buys a reliability testing company that services airliner computer systems. His aim: even if you can’t eliminate all the bugs (like the Aussie A330’s) you can exploit […]
John Orser: The English Professor Who Changed My Life
Die By Wire is dedicated to John Orser, my freshman English professor at Corning Community College. John was first person ever to tell me I had a future as a writer. This was bizarre. After all, I was a science and math geek. What’s more, I had always been a weird science wonk (International Science […]
Quantum Theories Of Consciousness Get More Likely (And The Idea Of Determinism Less Likely)
In Perfect Killer, I write about the emerging theories of consciousness being rooted in the quantum levels of the brain. One of the issues that the “meat is everything scientists have with this is their belief (belief — not scientific evidence, mind you) that quantum coherence cannot exist at the temperatures where organic cells function. […]
Don’t Buy My Book If …
If you’re going to buy only one book this holiday season, don’t buy any of mine. Buy one from Peter Winkler who makes me ashamed ever to think again that writing us a struggle for me. In fact, you should buy a lot of copies of his book and give them as gifts. From the […]
First Non-Racist Gov. Of Mississippi & My Former Boss Dies
From the New York Times today: “William L. Waller, who as a prosecutor in 1964 twice tried to convict the segregationist Byron De La Beckwith of murdering the civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and who in 1971 forged a coalition of poor whites and newly enfranchised blacks to become governor of Mississippi, died Wednesday in […]
The New Cyber Gatekeepers of the Book World – Same Old, Same Old
From tech blog Gigaom comes a techno-view of publishing’s future” Hot on the heels of Amazon signing publishing deals with authors, and thus doing an end-run around their publisher partners, another major e-reader company says it plans to do the same: Kobo is launching its own publishing arm and looking to sign deals with authors […]
Used Book Stores: The Only Survivors Of The E-Book Wars?
I’ve got a house full of books. I love books, the feel of them, the smell of them as they age. They are like old friends, to be held and read again and again. As a writer, most of my books are not there for pure enjoyment, but as research. I know them. I know […]
The Help – Wonderful, Evocative, Authentic
The Help rang true for me as an author (Perfect Killer) and as the scion of a Mississippi Delta cotton plantation family, born in Greenwood, raised in Jackson during this book’s time period and kicked out of Ole Miss in 1967 for leading a civil rights march. If Katheryn Stockett had added every possible thing […]
Michael Hart – The Father of E-Books, R.I.P.
A belated send-off for Michael Hart who created and sent the world’s first e-book, way back in the mainframe computing days of 1971 and went on to found Project Gutenberg. He died September 6 at the relatively young age of 64. A full obituary is here in the Economist.
