Tag: science

The first five chapters of EXPIRATION DATE are waiting for you!

The good folks at Arbor Teas have now released the first fifth chapter of my latest ExpirationDatenovella, Expiration Date. (All current chapters are available for free online in both a lovely web versions and nice, tidy PDFs, perfect for offline, ebook, and tablet reading—click on the chapter’s “Print” button to open and save that PDF).

What’s more, the good folks at the Ann Arbor District Library have included Expiration Date in this year’s Summer Games: You can earn points and badges by sussing out clues found in each chapter (scroll down to the “Expiration Date” section of the badge list to get started).

We have four chapters to go, oh my Best Beloved—and, trust me, you have no frikkin’ clue where this one is going (but, SPOILER ALERT!: Bram and Lizzie do indeed die on October 10, 2017, around 8am.)

BONUS: Wanna know more about how the sausage gets made?  You can check out this interview with Gabie at Tea End blog.

Your EXPIRATION DATE has arrived! **UPDATE**

(UPDATE: Same great post, now with the correct date for the event: June 28, 7pm)

ExpieDate-banner

Good news, everyone:  My latest novella—Expiration Date—is available free online this summer!  Here’s the official blurb:

This science fiction “till death do we part” story follows young Lizzie and Bram in a relationship on fast-forward. Armed with the knowledge of her scientific discovery, Granny Gin burdens the couple with the question “What would you do, if you knew your end was near?”

First chapter went live early this morning; check it out!  New chapters every week.

But wait!  There’s more: The official book-release kick-off party is next week:

  • WHEN: June 28 @ 7pm
  • WHERE:  Ann Arbor District Library Pittsfield Branch, 2359 Oak Valley Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48103
  • WHAT: A reading, some chit-chat, free tea and snackies from the sponsors, Arbor Teas, and free high-fives from me! 
  • DETAILS: Expiration Date Book Launch Event

See you there!

Experience the Power of the Slinky Sound Forest at Penguicon 2017

I’ll be at Penguicon again this year (April 28–30).  But instead of just sitting on a few panels and mooching a lot of free drinks, I wanted to do something extra special.  So this year I’m spending the entire weekend building something extra special for you to experience and interact with—and for the Slinkies to finally be heard.

Won’t you join me—and the Slinkies—before it’s too late?

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Elon Musk’s “Hyperloop” is a Load of Snake Oil and Bullshit

I don’t give a shit about Elon Musk, so I’d largely ignored Hyperloop, but now that I’ve taken even a cursory gander—

😂

Y’all are shitting me, right?

Just to punch one hole in this mess:

The train will take folks from LA to San Francisco (~350 miles) in 30 minutes.  It can reach these hella crazy high-speeds because it’s a bullet train traveling through a vacuum maintained in an unbroken, direct-shot tube.  Based on their own experience with their ~1 mile long test track, we can expect that it would take 200 to 300 hours to evacuate the air from this LA-SF bullet train tube[1].  i.e., it could make the run between those two cities in 30 minutes, but only do it once every 10 days?  And how much energy does it take to create that vacuum?  And how much money to maintain a pressure vessel orders of magnitude larger than any other ever created?

(Also, FYI, in their test track they expected to hit maybe 80—not 800—miles per hour, but actually maxed out at 60mph.  My dying Prius—henceforth, the HyperCar!™—exceeds that every single day on Michigan’s crumbling roads.)

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s “Hyperloop” is a Load of Snake Oil and Bullshit”