Monthly Archives: February 2016

If you love finding the write English word when writing stories, I definitely recommend using this thesaurus. There is no real on-line equivalent, for either it’s synopsis of categories or the vast number of available words. For the real wordsmith!

Most of the pathogens of the Empty Quarter are not particularly sophisticated, so – in an emergency situation – it’s a useful technique to kill off the bacteria. There may well be other threats though that just boiling the water … Continue reading →

From Don Bourdeaux This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago.  (HT Warren Smith)  By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous.  (Only a few years later – in 1924 – the 16-year-old … Continue reading →

The future – in civilian and military life – is going to be very unusual…

There are not many planetary militarizes within the Imperial Empty Quarter who can pull such a feat of sniping. Local Arab armies are the same as always, with the usual distrust, hatred of initiative, disinterest in excellence, officer bullying, rampant … Continue reading →

A most impressive image from the latest Large Area Survey of the Galaxy. Sadly, it’s going to take a while before the more granular and tactile surveys get going.

From Matt Gallagher, author of Swarm Troopers: How Small Drones will Conquer the World… in response to the Quora question How Deadly is new Russian Uran-9 Drone Tank? It’s extremely dangerous — but not for the reasons you might think. The … Continue reading →

The Madness of Airline Élite Status …last month, when my United Airlines app told me that my status—as a customer, as a flier, as a man—had changed, I did a delighted double take. United had made me a member of … Continue reading →

An interesting perspective on lore and exploration. I’m interested in the concept of every artifact having a meaning – even if it is not explicitly explained. It’s a single-player experience, so you can be a armed trader type… or just … Continue reading →

I have to admit, simply clamping down on a crimelord-allied PC’s starship boat and imprisoning them until they decide ‘of their own free will’ to assist a set of renegade Imperial/Corporate officers take down a beloved hero (who has hidden … Continue reading →