Fiction comes to life

Via Making Light’s Particles comes this astonishing list: A Timeline of Science Fiction Inventions (I’d have called it Imaginations), from weightlessness in 1638 (Francis Godwin) to Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (in 2000 — Larry Niven, and under development even now). It’s damned amazing. Heinlein thought of a cellphone in 1953 in Assignment in Eternity. “How …

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A suggestion for the Clinton/Obama campaigns

If I were a speechwriter for either Democratic candidate tasked with writing a short text to be delivered on this President’s Day, I’d give a few bullet points about Bush’s depradations (wiretapping, signing statements, the destruction of habeas corpus, the national security state), and then I would be sure to work in something along these …

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