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Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Science Fiction Author
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Sep 25, 2016
Mister Robot, a recollection of Chomsky, and a reflection on Robespierre
And the award for pretension in blog post titles goes to ... yeah, bear with me on this one. I recently binge watched the first two...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Aug 25, 2016
"Everything's up to date in Kansas City," and now my blog will be too.
Yeah, I certainly could have started with a cheesy quotation from Wizard of Oz, but the Rogers and Hammerstein lyrics were running...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Aug 14, 2016
Sanity is relative, reality is consensual, and SF readers and writers are the only ones who notice
A colleague in my non-writer, day job, a Moroccan immigrant, delights in discoveries of American pop culture that I had encountered so...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Aug 4, 2016
My Schedule for WorldCon
Okay, at this point, I've seen lots of other folks on panels putting their schedule for MidAmericon II, August 17 - 21 in Kansas City,...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Jul 28, 2016
Broken or still fighting?
A enthusiastic young woman phoned me recently, reciting from a canned script that I knew would culminate in a request for money. An...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Jul 10, 2016
Writing about racism: ignoring white people who told me I didn't know what I was talking about
I have one short story that has been an absolute bear to write for various reasons. It has undergone multiple revisions. However, I...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Jun 10, 2016
If the Witness exists, is he God, or is time the only deity: thoughts from SF television
This week's 12 Monkeys delved very deeply into philosophy, with Cole as the week's prophet. He reminisces about a boyhood scuffle when he...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
May 15, 2016
Meltwater and Overturning Circulation: Allan digests James Hansen's latest paper
A few weeks ago, I linked on my author Facebook profile (do friend me via the link at the bottom of this page) to the latest paper from...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Apr 30, 2016
Taking notes as an intellectual holds court: cool ideas Ben Bova shared on an OASIS Panel
Ben Bova was one of the great authors from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, back when all was spaceships and scientists saving the...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Apr 15, 2016
Allan does a taste test: Evaluating Beyond Beef Beefy Crumbles and Beast Burgers
I really wanted to like this stuff. It sounded like a great idea: extract protein and other components from pea and other vegetables,...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Apr 14, 2016
Climate change and corals: the link the newspapers didn't give you
The combination of global climate change, an unusually strong El Niño event, and other factors affecting water temperature was recently...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Apr 8, 2016
The next big viral epidemic--science and science fiction
It was the beginning of the new millennium, and an expatriate Russian passionately expounded on the tragedy his new company was set up to...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Apr 4, 2016
Remembering Kirby, an elegy in prose for one most prosaic
Noted clarinetist Kirby Miller passed away last night at his home in Provo, Utah. Miller was best known as the founder of the Catatonic...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Apr 3, 2016
Navigating between Scylla and Charybdis: How do you avoid cultural appropriation and white-washing
The late Columbia professor Edward Said introduced a useful term with his publication of Orientalism in 1978. To quote this work,...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Apr 1, 2016
On the Everglades part 4: Sulfate and methylmercury
Back in my scientist days, I had a colleague at the U. of Georgia with a fascinating and important idea. He had been told of a genetic...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Mar 20, 2016
On the Everglades Part 3: the science behind the salty language
To the Buddha's proverb, "A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Mar 13, 2016
Update: science is now free
Last week, I posted, comparing/contrasting the situation in science with that in fiction in terms of freedom of information. The position...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Mar 11, 2016
On the Everglades Part 2: What's wrong with Lake O water?
The tagline of New Yorker writer and comedian Andy Borowitz used to be that there's a fine line between social media marketing and...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Mar 10, 2016
Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. On the undervaluing of writing and information
Information wants to be free. Information deserves to be free. So sayeth the Hacker's Code. And yet, when one tries to apply this in...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Feb 26, 2016
Toward a new theory of value
Stephen Hawking, world-renown physicist and truly funny Big Bang Theory guest star, said the following yesterday: "If machines produce...
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