Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Red State Blue State

Dr David Brin, an author of power and imagination, as well as being a real live scientist, wrote recently of the dangers we face if a severe solar storm, similar to the Carrington Event, were to strike today. Essentially, civilization as we know it would fall to a mid-nineteenth-century level, at best, and millions would starve, unable to escape the cities when their cars failed and the water was shut off. The danger is real. Click the title to read the whole article.
Red State Blue State

Monday, April 11, 2011

Simple Easy Fishing Techniques That Work

I love fishing, but I don't like to drive far to do it, nor spend piles of money. One time last summer I caught a few dozen fish, using just about the simplest possible tackle and methods. Only a stick, line and bent pin would be cheaper.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Tale Of Jon Handshaker Chapter 45

Click here to read from Chapter One.

Chapter Forty Five

Jorjah: The Arming

Black smoke filled the skies. Hammering, loud in the icy air. In the south, the snow was off the land, but here icy drifts, melted and refrozen remained. The Iron Mountain was alive with people, more folk than Jorjah had ever imagined in any one place, more than in the largest town of the south that she had dared to enter in her year-long journey in search of the King.

Spear, sword and gun flowed out of the workshops, made from the accumulated iron stock of hundreds of years of slow and patient mining and smelting. The Eldest had been alive that long, planning, plotting. No one knew how long. No one could remember when the Eldest hadn't been eldest, old when grannies were girls. Jorjah avoided her.


The Tale Of Jon Handshaker Chapter 45

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Tale Of Jon Handshaker Chapter 44

Here is the beginning of The Tale Of Jon Handshaker.

Chapter Forty Three

Memory, Like A Tiny Crystal

"I've been shot," Jon said, and reached across to touch his wounded arm.

Max nodded.

"I have seen men killed with guns, and wounded," Max said. "In the last war the King finally had to bring out his old weapons. He slaughtered us. But those guns fired many times. This one only fired once, and the King's old guns didn't make clouds of smoke. This was a gun, but something new, not old Mars tech. The gunman fired it then charged with his sword."


The Tale Of Jon Handshaker Chapter 44

Sunday, April 3, 2011

The Tale Of Jon Handshaker Chapter 43

Click here to read from Chapter One. Here is the beginning of The Tale Of Jon Handshaker.

Chapter Forty Three

An Element Of Danger

Shan Shen stared out over the city, barely visible through the heavy haze of wood-smoke. Rebels had burned the factory that produced the clean-burning coal oil, and now the city was reduced to cooking over primitive wood fires, like any farm village.

There was a small element of danger, standing here exposed. There were guns loose in the city, Mother Earth alone knew where they had come from. Shan suspected the petty Blood had emptied out their cellars and attics for family relics, and were using them to stir up trouble against the Kings.

The Tale Of Jon Handshaker Chapter 43