And, as if to emphasize the point of Westfahl’s piece below, comes now the news that Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. For me his best book remains Rendezvous With Rama.

I’ve always been a fan of space travel, if not a huge fan of space travel fiction (because so little of it is really exceptional), but I think Gary Westfahl makes a good point: Just over five years ago, on the date of the Columbia disaster — February 1, 2003 — I wrote an essay… Continue reading

Book NotesI’ve just finished reading Philip Lawler’s new book, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture. It’s an excellent overview of the clergy-abuse scandal, specifically in the degree to which it documents and strongly condemns the corruption of the American hierarchy. But it’s more ambitious, stepping back to take a wider view of… Continue reading

Michael Barone on the removal of Admiral William Fallon from Central Command: Tough questions remain about how civilian commanders should choose and interact with military professionals. Bush’s record, in my view, has been far from ideal. He has seemed content with letting others choose military commanders and then accepting their advice with little of the… Continue reading

Friday ThoughtsSince I spend most of my spare time outside of work either producing videos or working on stories, articles and proposals that I hope to sell to publishers of books and journals, I think of my media log here as just that: nothing ambitious, just a log to quickly reference links to articles, sites… Continue reading