William Safire, on why CBS needs to track down the source of the forgeries: Conservatives should stop slavering over Dan Rather’s scalp, and liberals should stop pretending that noble ends justify fake-evidence means. Both should focus on the lesson of the early 70’s: from third-rate burglaries to fourth-rate forgeries, nobody gets away with trying to… Continue reading

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Yep. The Iraqis are playing baseball.

(note to Harvey Weinstein: my agent is Susan Schulman, and all rights for this script are available.) A while back…meaning about 13 years ago…I started writing a romantic road comedy about some thirty-somethings heading up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire for a Memorial Day wedding and all the misadventures that befall them on… Continue reading

It’s remarkable to me that in this month’s Special Issue of Scientific American on the work of Einstein, the feature article on the Cosmological Constant and the development of cosmology using Einstein’s field equations for General Relativity, the authors mention the contributions of Belgian physicist Georges Lemaitre…without ever once giving him credit. Just one example… Continue reading

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, excellent teacher as well as editor for Tor Books, has more good advice for writers: Certain words and phrases are like little genetic markers for scammers. Here’s a non-exhaustive list, non-exhaustively explained: 1. “Giving new writers a chance.” Also: “Helping new writers.” While agents and publishers frequently do just this thing, they… Continue reading