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Physics

The Long View 2003-02-05: Powell at the UN; Columbia; Impossibilities

In a followup to Sunday's repost of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, here is a newsgroup post detailing why you couldn't have possibly matched the orbit of the shuttle to the ISS, among other things. John wasn't a physicist or an aerospace engineer, so

The Long View 2003-02-03: The Columbia Disaster

It isn't hard to be critical of NASA for the Columbia disaster, no one is going to make a movie about how well the space agency handled the situation. However, the bit about spending lots of money to design a pen that worked in space is half-true. We

The World at the End of Time Book Review

The World at the End of Time Book Review

The World at the End of Time by Frederik Pohl Del Rey 1990 $12.95; 393 pages ISBN 978-0345339768 I was lent this book by a friend. I had never read anything by Frederik Pohl before, but I knew of him because he wrote the introduction to the collection of

Mistborn Book Review

MistbornMistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson Tor Fantasy 2007 $7.99; 658 pages ISBN 978-0-7653-5038-1 Sometimes, I worry that I'm not the hero everyone thinks I am. The philosophers assure me that this is the time, that the signs have been met. But I still wonder if

His Share of Glory Book Review

His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth NESFA Press 1997 $27.00; 670 pages ISBN 0-915368-60-9 I picked up this volume because I had read the [almost] titular short story "That Share of Glory" in Jerry Pournelle's Imperial Stars: The

The Long View: Science and Cosmology

John was not a scientist. He never pretended to be one. I think that gave him a certain clarity of vision. I always respected his views on science, because he approached it as an interested outsider. This may be the shortest of his topical collections, but one of my favorites.

The Long View 2002-06-02: The Menace in South Asia

NagasakiEven now that the Cold War is long past, most Westerners feel horror and shame at the thought of nuclear war. This is understandable, but the possibility of mutual assured destruction, and the intensive cultural revulsion that possibility engenders in us, are the products of a particular time, place, and