Merkin

I'm very interested in seeing how the occupant of the Oval Office plays this. Does she even know where the Moon is?

Umm. I don't know about that, Cole. That young sibdorn polishing his groat seems pretty English to me.

I thought all of Chaucer's works had already been found and published. Seriously, though, these are lovely sounds that resonate deliciously. Especially in the mouth of a well-schooled speaker of English, as demonstrated by your audio clip.

Actually, I did. (Damned cheek...)

Impudence Day? Change the spelling a bit and a lot of us will join the parade.

I want that laptop. Anything that goes from limp to stiff that fast has got my attention.

Ah Willy, sweet Willy Shakespeare Did his best to seduce us by ear But our teachers conspire To stamp out his fire And make Willy someone to fear

Loved it. Reminds me of Bujold's treecats. I hope Raja is just as sassy, and I hope we get to read more about these two adventurers.

Ah, wasn't it actually some of your smaller simian cousins locked in a room with typewriters that wrote the works of William Shakespeare?

It is an awesome opportunity to download some very notable fantasy and science fiction writers. Between the Baen site, the Tor.com site, and Project Gutenberg ( http://www.gutenberg.org/ ) I have dozens of great free titles on my Nook reader. Of course the greatest one of all is Midnight Dude... James

Heap on the wood! The wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still! --Sir Walter Scott Happy holiday to all. Cole, please save me some of that pie. James

Chapter 5 is up, and it's moving right along. Of course, the other shoe still has to drop.

Now that you've become a demographic profile, Blue, there's no escape. Those lists are for sale and swap, mon petite.

Many thanks to Rick for his lasting, loving Christmas gift to all of us. Posted today on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, this tender tale is especially poignant. James

What was? Pyramid Building 101? Laying the Roman Road?

Thanks for fixing the link. What a lovely, robust, well thought-out blog! James

So, the Pope is not the only one with the power to utter Bull.

This boy's face is so expressive. Makes you just want to reach out and hug him.

I would say that this is absolutely charming but bad boy Jason probably won't like that. So I'll say instead that it belies everything I've come to believe of Jason's in-your-face prose style, and I for one would love to see more of how this one unwinds.

Camy, you spent the previous two months doing heroic service on our behalf with Midnight Dude. Little wonder that you are burnt out. And what's up with berating yourself for not writing the novel you've always wanted to write in order to meet someone else's deadline for it? C'mon. Write it on your own terms, at your own pace, for your own satisfaction. How possibly could the NaNo pressure cooker be the proper setting for that? James

Could we have reached the point where a person with scruples, looking at the nest of vipers the Congress has become, can no longer see a compelling reason to serve?

Learning how to fake a competency is an all-too-human reflex if it avoids doing something perceived to be distasteful or difficult. In fact, it's a kid's ace-in-the-hole. When I was a kid I managed to hide the fact that I couldn't see the classroom blackboard for nearly two years because I dreaded getting eyeglasses. I even memorized the eyechart on the way into the doctor's examining room. It was a lot of work, but it seemed necessary at the time. James

(I've met a few guys from Oz who looked like that.)

She was indeed quite a lady. A thumb-nail glimpse of her career, freely excerpted from her Wiki article, tells us that she wrote nearly 100 published books. Once established, she was known for her willingness to collaborate with many other writers in view of supporting and developing their careers, including Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Margaret Ball, Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth Moon, Jody Lynne Nye, and S.M. Stirling. Her latest collaboration was with her son Todd, continuing the Pern saga for which she is probably most famous. In 1968 she became the first woman to win a Hugo Award, and in 1969 became the first woman to win a Nebula Award. She was also the first woman with a science fiction title on The New York Times Best Seller list (1978, The White Dragon).

Urban Fish Farming, Wave of the Future?