As a result of the devastating earthquake in Japan early this morning, National Geographic has received requests for maps that show the impacted region. Below is a complete list of titles that are currently available:

1. Japan and Korea Wall Map

2. World Ocean Floor Wall Map

3. Hawaii State Wall Map

4. Alaska State Wall Map

4. World Classic Pacific Centered

5. Oregon State Wall Map

6. California State Wall Map

7. Washington State Wall Map

As this event further unfolds, we shall update the map resources list accordingly.

I have been assigned the task of researching and compiling our forthcoming map of Cuba. During the early stages of my research, I hit the cartographic jackpot—the possibility of two new provinces forming in 2011. Not only were we going to be publishing a map of Cuba for the first time since 1906, we were also going to be among the first to showcase its new administrative structure. This is considered an exciting event for cartographers here at the National Geographic. Why? Because before any element is mapped, we need to assure that it portrays the most up-to-date information.

My first stop was Cuba’s official government website. Unfortunately, it was a bit difficult to navigate, especially since the English version of the site was “under construction.” My next stop was the Cuban Embassy—well, not exactly since Cuba and the U.S. have not had formal diplomatic relations since 1961. But there is the Cuban Interests Section embedded within the Embassy of Switzerland here in Washington. It was there that I was able to obtain the official document (Gaceta Oficial de la Republica de Cuba, No. 023) spelling out the upcoming changes to Cuba’s new administrative divisions—Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces.

As Cuba is organized administratively by province and municipality, we were able to delineate the new provincial boundaries pretty easily by using a map of municipalities contained in the most recent Nuevo Atlas Nacional de Cuba. In the latter stages of my research I was able to reconfirm the delineation of these boundaries with the Cuban statistics office, La Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, as they were now providing statistics for these two new provinces.

Now I have to keep abreast of the deepwater oil exploration off the northern coast of Cuba. If possible, we would like our map to also showcase the location of such prospective oil fields.

—Julie A. Ibinson
Map Researcher & Editor
National Geographic Maps

Federal Government Boosts Australian Cardiovascular Alliance’s Mission to Combat Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke  News Hub

Japanese encephalitis virus activity in the Kimberley  Government of Western Australia Department of Health

1. Streaks of fire are about to take over Australian skies during the Leonid meteor shower. Here’s how to see them  nbnnews.com.au
2. The Northern Taurid meteor shower could produce fireballs. Here’s how to watch  CNN
3. Northern Taurid meteor shower hits peak activity this week: When and where to watch  USA TODAY
4. Leonid Meteor Shower May Put on a Surprise Show This Week  ScienceAlert
5. Starwatch: Leonid meteor shower returns to skies in November  The Guardian

1. Right now, the Sun is far more active than predicted – and small satellites are paying the price  The Conversation
2. Unpredictable Solar Activity Sends Satellites Plummeting to Earth  ScienceAlert

1. North Melbourne announces three-year Western Australia agreement  North Melbourne Football Club
2. Roos end 14-year relationship amid bold new location for AFL games  Fox Sports
3. North Melbourne takes 'home' AFL matches to Western Australia  ABC News
4. Eagles set for extra WA game  West Coast Eagles

1. Brisbane Broncos star Ezra Mam charged over head-on collision, allegedly failing second drug test  ABC News
2. Brisbane news live: Broncos’ Ezra Mam charged over drug test result after crash | Stab victim’s widower wants knife checks in schools | Dog rescued near abandoned boat  Brisbane Times
3. Broncos player charged after car crash: 9News Latest Stories Season 2024, Short Video  9Now
4. Ezra Mam issued court notice after allegedly failing secondary drug test  Fox Sports
5. Club Statement: Ezra Mam  Broncos

1. Kate Middleton sparks doubts whether she even had cancer?  Geo News
2. ‘Played us all’: Vicious Kate theory takes hold  news.com.au
3. Kate Middleton Yet Again Trapped In Conspiracy Theories While Battling Cancer? Find Out As Royal Reporter Questions Princess’ Diagnosis  PINKVILLA

1. Trailer: "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"  Dark Horizons
2. Trailer for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy released  The Guardian
3. ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ Trailer: Renée Zellweger Falls for Leo Woodall in Final Installment of Rom-Com Franchise  Variety
4. What's happening in entertainment news today  TODAY Show
5. ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy’ Trailer Released By Peacock  Forbes

1. Dr Chris Brown’s shock career move  news.com.au
2. Fears for Dr Chris Brown's career as rumours emerge his Channel Seven show has been axed after he jumped ship  Daily Mail
3. Is this the beginning of the end of his career? Dr Chris Brown's new surprise show on Channel Seven announced  Daily Mail

McLaren 750S 2025 track review  Chasing Cars

1. Apple reportedly releasing a wall-mounted smart home tablet in 2025 - and yes, it does AI  Yahoo Finance Australia
2. Apple’s next device might make your home a lot smarter  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Apple's Next Big Move Could Be Home Security Cameras  PCMag AU

1. ASX falls as banks drop; MinRes sinks, James Hardie rallies  The Australian Financial Review
2. Wages growth slows, CBA logs flat first-quarter profit, ASX falls — as it happened  ABC News
3. Markets today: ASX slides as ‘Trump trade’ peters out on Wall Street; miners, banks fall  Sydney Morning Herald

1. Cop 29: Leaders to address summit after report finds climate pledges not kept – live updates  The Guardian
2. Live Briefing: Greta Thunberg calls site of COP29 climate summit ‘beyond absurd’  The Washington Post
3. COP29 gets underway in Azerbaijan  ABC News
4. Oil and gas are ‘a gift of God’: COP29 leader  The Australian Financial Review

1. Germany to hold snap election in February after government's coalition collapse  ABC News
2. The briefcase, the Porsche and the collapse of the German government – podcast  The Guardian
3. Germany set for snap election following collapse of Olaf Scholz’s coalition  The Conversation
4. President calls German early election plan 'realistic'  DW (English)

1. As it happened: Donald Trump ally taunts Kevin Rudd; WiseTech shareholders launch class action  Sydney Morning Herald
2. Ditching Rudd over Trump insults would be ‘worst possible signal’: Turnbull  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Senior Liberal calls for Rudd to be sacked after Trump advisor suggests US ambassador is on thin ice  9News

1. Murder charge after beloved Elvis impersonator found dead after karaoke night  9News
2. Beloved Elvis impersonator allegedly murdered after karaoke night  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Love Island winner's best mate is accused of killing beloved grandad - after the Good Samaritan had tried to h  Daily Mail
4. Video: Elvis impersonator named as alleged murder victim  WAtoday

1. Donald Trump picks Elon Musk to lead new government department  9News
2. Trump’s picks the clearest path yet to power consolidation  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Donald Trump announces key figures for 2025 administration after election victory  ABC News
4. Trump’s Cabinet: Here Are His Picks And Finalists For Key Roles—Mike Huckabee, Kristi Noem And More  Forbes
5. Trump rolls out his most MAGA picks for new White House term  CNN

1. Car crashes with another outside pub during police chase in Sydney’s southwest  7NEWS
2. ‘Flying past me’: Two hurt as car smashes into fence after police chase  Daily Telegraph
3. Critical incident investigation into crash following police pursuit  Sydney Morning Herald
4. Violent carjacking linked to Sydney crash that split car in two, police say  9News
5. Update on crash after police chase  news.com.au

1. Elon Musk’s job as Trump’s bureaucracy buster could be just the start  The Australian Financial Review
2. Elon Musk tapped for ‘government efficiency’ role by Donald Trump  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Evening News Bulletin 13 November 2024  SBS News
4. Donald Trump wants Elon Musk to slash regulations as he reveals his role  ABC News

1. Kristian White trial: CCTV reveals final moments before Clare Nowland Tasering in Cooma nursing home  Sydney Morning Herald
2. Jury shown footage of 95yo getting stuck in tree in weeks before being tasered by police officer  ABC News
3. Elderly woman 'unable to comply' before cop Tasered her, court hears  9News

Philanthropy online has recently published an article on the initial charitable response to the cyclone disaster in Burma. unfortunately bureaucratic red tape has slowed the initial response some; numerous organizations are preparing a herculean response that will save lives, and perhaps improve the domestic situation in Myanmar over the long term.

Events like these confirm the importance of fund-raising in general and telephone fund-raising specifically. Its one thing to hear about a tragedy on television and remind oneself to try and make a donation. Its quite another to receive a phone call as a situation is unfolding and have an opportunity to directly influence the outcome of that situation.

I participated in campaigns after hurricanes Rita and Katrina. I also worked on the campaign to provide relief to the victims of the Asian Tsunami, and issue of personal significance to me as I lived for many years in Indonesia. It is in times like this when innovative fund raising strategies can truly make a significant difference by fully funding humanitarian emergency relief efforts before a crisis can intensify.

There is nothing like a call to action.

When asking for a pledge, the fundraiser has many informational advantages over the donor. Simply asking for the proper amount ensures that a donor will consider giving at the level you request. Starting out with a sufficiently high donation request amount allows you to find your donors preferred level of giving as rather than targeting the amount which is the lowest possible amount that a donor can possibly give to your campaign.


If a donor could give more to their charity, they probably would. When donors who maintain a strict charitable budget and give a fixed amount annually hear requests for support that are above the amount which they are willing to give, they let fundraisers know just how much they are willing to give and when they intend to give it. In the rare event that a donor is offended by large or additional requests, a skilled fundraiser can apologize for the offense and leave the donor feeling good about the level of support which they do give.


There is no downside to “asking high”.




Becoming a better fundraiser is a continuing process. There is always more to learn and more skills to master.

The conclusion to this article will be posted here in the coming days.

Fundraisers come in all varieties. From aggressive to docile, from passionate to indifferent, there are many ways to bring money into a non-profit or political campaign. Just what is the best method of fundraising? The best method is the one that brings in the most money for the cause. There is only one caveat; donors must be respected at all times.

While fundraising happens in call centers, fundraising isn't a typical call center job. Most call centers don't require the depth of experience that fundraiser call center jobs require. A fund raiser can be expected to have a solid grasp of political, social and environmental issues. A telephone fundraiser can spend the morning trying to elect certain politicians and the afternoon trying to protect natural resources  The best telefundraisers have flexible minds and are gifted speakers.

Passion helps a lot but is certainly not the only way to get a donor to contribute. Knowing the issues you're calling about, even if you aren't as passionate about them as others, goes a long way to building credibility with donors. Rapport building is just as important, Donors give to people they like, Get to know your donors and they'll respond,

The next tip is counter-intuitive  Ask high. Most callers, and especially new callers, think donors will be insulted by large requests. In fact high asks have the opposite effect, Many donors are actually flattered to receive a large request, In other cases donors find these request to be humorous given their personal financial situation. Humor builds rapport and rapport secures donations.

The best fundraiser to be is the fundraiser that is most effective with the donor that's currently on the line. Be versatile  The more fundraising styles in your portfolio, the more money you'll raise.

Thank you for reading this. Please leave your comments below and check back often for new posts all about the world of telephone fundraising.

[This is a guest post by Michael Witzel] A few months ago you published a discussion of whimsical surnames. Since then I have paid attention and have found new ones in  almost every news broadcast. It is said that there are 1 million (!) surnames in the German speaking area of some 95 million people […]

In recent weeks and months, we've been having many posts and comments about Taiwanese language.  Today's post is quite different:  it's all about the difference between Mandarin as spoken on the mainland and as spoken on Taiwan. "Words of Influence: PRC terms and Taiwanese identity", by Karen Huang, Taiwan Insight (8 November 2024) What is […]

The first two panels of yesterday's SMBC: The last two: Back in 1979, David Macauley's Motel of the Mysteries had a much longer story to tell about archeologists' presuppositions. Macauley's plot loosely satirizes the work of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann in excavating Troy, and also echoes Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhamunn's tomb. It's 4022, and […]

[This is a guest post by Denis Mair]      Cai Xutie was a Taiwanese woman who ran a family farm with her husband in a village near Jiayi in central Taiwan. She was a rice farmer and had never attended a public school. After her husband died in middle age, she sold some of the land, […]

The U.S. Grand Lodge O.T.O. annual report for fiscal year 2022 has been published. This and all previous annual reports can be found here.

Here is the new content:

I've mentioned that I have been working on running a five-minute mile on the treadmill this year, a goal that at one point seemed in reach. I think I also complained that I got sick and that when I got back to it, they had swapped out all the treadmills for fancy treadmills with built-in Netflix and air conditioning and stuff like that, which I now refer to as "Bob's Tred Mill." There's some good things about these, and some things that make me crazy, but one thing that especially made me crazy is they felt significantly faster than the old Precor ones I was used to. It's definitely a real thing that treadmills are sometimes not calibrated correctly (or the tread stretches out or slips, etc.) but it was also possible that being sick set me back more than I thought. The important thing is to get The Data instead of just The Upset Feelings so I was shopping for things like those hand-held unicycles that you can wheel around to measure how long things (like streets) are, as it does seem like the kind of device that I would own, looking at like the world's most accurate hand-held unicycle thing, and then I noticed at the last thing that most of them have a MAX SPEED of something like 10mph, which would not do. I finally had the brain-stroke that I could use a laser tachometer to do it, since these have a max speed more like 99999 RPM. So I measured the tread length with some chalk marks and put reflective tape on there. The treadmill will go at different speeds when loaded (running on it) vs unloaded, which also depends on your weight and stride and stuff a little, so you also gotta engage in the dexterity-testing act of measuring while running on it, which looked like this:

POV: You are me

Pointing the laser at the reflective tape dot (visible right next to the laser dot here) as it flies by while running kinda fast is definitely tricky, although I must say that it was one of those times when I thought, "I've been training my whole life for this!" and you can see that I'm showing off a little bit here by also photographing it at the same time. But you are not impressed since it reports 0 RPM. The nice thing about the tachometer is that it only needs a pair of observations to give you a frequency, and you can easily tell if you missed the tape, which you do often on account of the shaking, because you get some integer multiple that's way off from the right answer. Anyway I dutifully took multiple readings unloaded and loaded at (nominally) 6mph, 7mph, ... 12mph and made a spreadsheet with all the results converted, and... found that the treadmill is just about 1% too fast loaded, all across the board. This would be just 3 seconds for a five-minute mile, which is not nothing, but it definitely does not vindicate my Upset Feelings (I was thinking it felt more like 10%). My best guess is that the old treadmills were (all?) actually too slow, which is annoying because now I doubt some of the unofficial 5k records I painfully set for myself during the summer. But, well, the thing about endeavoring to do challenging things is: No Cheating!

In project news, I feel I have a foothold now to get myself out of this math hole, as I've finally migrated this algorithm to work only with 64-bit integer arithmetic and so I can port it to GPU soon and then be out of ideas about how to make it faster. I have no idea if there's a good story to be told for this project, but I'll try (and also, it is okay if sometimes the hobby programming doesn't lead to a video or Sigbovik paper, you know?). And speaking of Sigbovik: Heroes have emerged quite on time this year, so it's certainly looking like there will be a proceedings and conference (perhaps with livestream), so start writing those papers now.

Aside from the math hole, I've been making some progress on two other concurrent projects. It's getting normal again (even quiet) at work and winter break is coming up, and I'm looking forward to having some several-day stretches to work on them.

I played through Golf Peaks (well, I haven't beat all the bonus levels yet but I've been working back to front so it's just a matter of a little time at this point), which was a very nice little puzzle game that does almost everything right. Other than the very irritating music in one world, I think my only disappointment was that it doesn't elegantly handle infinite-length puts. I'm also still working on Return to Monkey Island, which I do like, although it doesn't hold up to my memory of the first two. I think one of the problems with modern point-and-click adventure games is the voices, actually: Not because the voice acting bothers me, but because it goes so slow compared to reading. It's like when you just want to figure out the maximum speed of the hand-held unicycle and they're trying to get you to watch a video instead of just reading. Tears of the Kingdom (which I'm still savoring, but getting close to the end now) does a good job with this; you do hear snippets of voices, which helps with the characterization, but you can blow through the dialog at a pretty fast pace. Probably a lot cheaper, too!

Hello and happy Honda-days, Toyota-thon, etc.!

It's the tail end of winter break here, and we did a little traveling to see family, etc.. But I've been keeping the calendar light so that I have plenty of time for projects. There are too many in the works simultaneously, which is a bad sign, but during break I made significant progress on all of them. I also added a new one, with the idea that it would be a "small hack" so that I'd be sure to have something for SIGBOVIK (not everything needs to be epic, right?). It already works, but now I'm in the midst of writing a PDF file generator, which is also a bad sign.

Now that I'm nearly done going in and out of my attic so much, it seemed like good timing to attend to the dangerously acrobatic way that I always get in, which is to stand at the very top of a ladder and then mantle up using the floor joists. It's not actually that dangerous even though the ladder demands that you Never Stand Above This Line (how am I supposed to stand in the attic then, ladder?!), but I regularly lose my phone out of my pocket in the last leg-swinging step, which is at least dangerous to the phone. Without belaboring the tale, I ended up "having" to go to Harbor Freight to invest in some suspiciously cheap tools like a set of black pipe threading dies, pipe wrenches, pipe cutter, and while I was there I got a new vise. Worried that the vise would be too easy to install, I wisely purchased carriage bolts with square necks, so I had to file down the mounting holes of this thing:

JPEG File

This provided a good occasion to listen to some albums in the basement and order some new files. It is now very firmly and satisfyingly bolted to that satisfyingly timeworn workbench. Not pictured is how I needed to grind down the bolts so that the cabinet door below could open and close again (I use this cabinet to store old vises).


Codename: Viseman

The only thing I have used the new vise for so far is to flatten one of the washers that was used to attach the old, crappy vise, so that I could weld that washer to the charging terminal on my Roomba so that it's able to charge again, so that I could vacuum up all the steel filings on my basement floor. Anyway, getting back now to the original task of making the entrance to the attic a similar amount of athletic but less fraught, I installed this pull-up bar:


workout

The only hard part of this was getting the pipe to be just the right length, and threaded, but I am now equipped to do such tasks.

Winter is also a time for hibernation. I played through The Talos Principle II. I really loved the first Talos Principle, which had no business being as good as it was (the team was mainly known for Serious Sam, an over-the-top first-person shooter). Talos is a puzzle game with a pretty interesting story and fairly thoughtful writing. The sequel is good and definitely worth playing if you liked the original. It has a bit of the "Portal 2" effect where they clearly had a bigger budget and wanted to add all this polish, but did miss some of what made the original magic along the way. As you know I love to play games "the wrong way," and so I'm always looking for ways to break the puzzles in this game. I felt like the first one let me get away with more hijinks, like you'd stack items to make your way up somewhere, and a third of the time it'd be a Star (expected for 100%), a third of the time it'd be an Easter egg (acknowledging your prowess), and a third of the time you'd just fall out of the map forever and have to reset (true victory). I did fall out of the level several times on this sequel, but it seemed to me that the puzzles were more tightly constrained. Then again, I watched the current world record speedruns and there's certainly a lot of hijinks possible, so maybe I'm just losing my edge! I also played through Party Hard. It's a "murder all the people in 2D" game very similar to the Hotline Miami games, and not as good, but its absurd mood and unfair chaotic difficulty did grow on me. Right now I am "playing" (the) Gnorp Apologue, an idle game that has its charms, but, well, it's an idle game and I think it is cruel to ever recommend those. It was written in Rust!

Hello again,

This month I've been plugging away on the project I mentioned in the previous post which involves among other things a PDF generator and now an implementation of ML (as in Standard ML, but also the other one). This is probably the 10th "compiler" I've written in my life, and it's kind of fun to revisit these problems that you've done many times and try out different approaches, although this time one of the approaches is "Use C++" (for reasons of making good on a joke, but also for reasons of mlton doesn't work on my computer any more). And although C++ is a fine tool for many applications, it does have some deficiencies for the task of writing a compiler (one of the most irritating: a very modest limit on the stack depth? Like my computer has 256 Gigabytes of RAM and 2^64 virtual addresses and somehow it can only manage 1 megabyte for the stack and there's no standard way to increase it? Get off my lawn). But then you can also experience new ways of struggling with C++, like: A middle of the night power failure wrecked my computer's GPT (as in GUID Partition Table, but also the other one) and I was deep in the depths of taking the computer apart to reset its parts, its BIOS (its Basic In/Out System, which is where it stores its biography) and its hard drives were everywhere on the floor, and it could not be saved, and this after I already broke my computer this year by trying to put the world's biggest video card in it, too hard. And I could not merely perform recovery because of Unknown Error, so I had to begin anew again and restore from backups. But when you restore from backup and you're in the mood of "why is this so complicated and I don't understand how computers work any more?" it occurs to you (me) to also change your underlying development environment instead of reinstalling the devil you know. So I ended my friendship with Cygwin64 and switched to new best friend MSYS2. Both of these things are different ways of wishing that you were using Linux while you're using Windows. The main reason I tried this new way of struggling is that Cygwin is very behind on its version of x86_64 clang (C++ compiler), which I wanted to try because it supports AddressSanitizer and clangd on Windows, and I wanted to give LSP in emacs a shot (it's finally good!). There were a few growing pains, but I think MSYS2 is what I would recommend now. One of the nice things they did was create multiple different environments depending on what you want to do (e.g. "I want to use clang to compile x86_64 code" or "I want to do 32-bit cross compilation for ARM") and in that environment, you just say "g++" and it invokes the compiler you want, instead of the weird contortions I've been doing for years with manually invoking x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++. I was also able to get clblast working before being too filled with rage to continue, so that is nice for the ML inference on the world's biggest graphics card. I made these graphics to help me tune the correct settings of GPU layers (y axis) and number of threads (x axis):

tune-single
tune-batch

In some sense the results are obvious (more threads and more layers is faster) but it was interesting to me how the cliff of performance drops off at a different number of layers for single and batch mode (I guess because the batch needs some memory itself?) and how it's clearly better to use fewer threads than cores for batch as well. I was not surprised to see performance drop off for >32 threads (everybody knows that hyper-threads kinda suck) but I was very surprised to see performance pick up again when it gets back up to 64? And only for single mode? I wish I understood that better. But mostly I'm a sucker for the custom visualizations.

Right but when writing this compiler I realized that I wanted to use some Greek letters, and I can't handle it when some characters are in a different font in my source code, so I finally made some space for those in my programming font FixederSys. These certainly still need some tweaks, but it's already better than just being in some other weird font:


{{{caption}}}

You can also see that I have been adding some "useful" emoji at the top. It is an interesting puzzle to try to make these things recognizable (especially for the 1x version, whose charboxes are 8x16 pixels). I am pretty sure I will not try to do all of the emoji (like, the flags are totally hopeless at 8x16), but it is tempting to round out the Unicode support somewhat. Like I was trying to make a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ today and had to settle for ~\_( :) )_/~ which is pretty much (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻.

Also: Adam revived our old game jam game Headcat, which I described in post 927, now over 16 years ago. You can play it online at Headcat.org. It is harder than I remember, perhaps explaining why it did not reach #1 on the One Appstore Per Child charts.

Also: I started and finished (true ending, but just with one character) Slay the Spire. Good game, but you don't need me to tell you that. Same for Alwa's Legacy, which is the sequel to Alwa's Awakening. Both of these are very true-to-form "8-bit" and "16-bit" platformers that I enjoyed and would recommend for genre fans, though I did not try to 100% them. The graphics are the highlight and I thought it was very cute how these could easily have been a pair of games from the NES and SNES. The good old days. And speaking of good-old days, I am now playing Katamari Damacy, which I had played at a friend's house many years ago, and always wanted to spend more time with. It totally holds up (aside from stuff like: You have to play through the tutorial and first level before you can access the menus at all, like to make the game fullscreen?) and it's honestly inspiring how unhinged the game design and writing are, and how fun it manages to be. What an accomplishment!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Tarot: Headless Horseman edition Nick Lawyer REDFeather (October 28, 2023) Reviewed by N. Richards What a wonderful way to honour the Irving Washington classic gothic story of 1822, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and the season of autumn as well as the art of Tarot all in one hit of […]

The post Card Deck Review: THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW TAROT first appeared on Hellnotes.

The right-wing fanatic who is accused of the murder of Jo Cox MP has opted not to give evidence nor to call any witnesses in his defence. The jury will be directed by the judge as to how to deal with this.

He is of course perfectly entitled to remain silent, just as the jury is perfectly entitled to draw the inferences that it finds proper from his decision. In times past courts sometimes had to decide whether the accused was 'mute of Malice' or 'mute by Visitation of God'.

This is a situation that I have only faced a few times in court. We gravely retired to consider, and I took the bench carefully through the decision making process as if we were assessing a real defence. We then took great care to prepare our reasons for our blindingly obvious decision, reading them out slowly and carefully before handing them down to the Clerk for the file. It all felt a bit unreal, but it is in odd cases such as these that everything has to be done just so.

Guilty it was then, to no one's great surprise.

Ski Sunday presenter Ed Leigh is wowed by Sochi two years ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics

Great Britain's Elizabeth Yarnold wins a bronze medal at the women's skeleton World Championship.

Sevenoaks slider Lizzy Yarnold says the fact Britain has no real purpose built tracks is the main reason behind British success in the sport

UK Sport announces a large investment in British Ski and Snowboarding to be spent in the run-up to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

A few years back, when Cynthia Leitich Smith was off to Vermont for the VCFA residency, I undertook an exploration of Austin pizza joints and pizza blogging: the rules were these: aside from a dinner salad prior to the pizza, my meals were pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  For ten days.  For the record, the first time I did it, I lost five pounds; the second time, two and a half.

Here's the inaugural post from 2009:  A Pizza a Day and Other Weird Activities.

I tried this again January 2015, but posted only to my Facebook account (I'll be reproducing the posts here along with this edition, with the term "archive" in the header).  I also did it in July 2015.

To view the entire line-ups, just click the "pizza a day" label.

This time, I decided to do something a little different, since I'm on the verge of exhausting Austin's specialty pizza places:  I'm going to see how many pizzas I can make using various techniques.  I'll also take a look at some of the places I've missed or have recently opened.

And, for Christmas, I received this nifty little item:

Yes, it is a starship Enterprise pizza cutter.  So of course I had to make a couple Star Trek-inspired pizzas:
(You can see the Enterprise if you squint real hard).  The saucer section was Canadian bacon with an olive for the bridge.  The nacelles were scallions and the engineering section Belgian endive.  The pizza didn't turn out so great but the cutter worked fantastically.

I also made a pizza in honor of our Klingon allies:

This one sort of drifted apart due to migration of the mozzarella, but it is a Klingon D7 class battlecruiser.  The main hull was a green pepper, while the nacelle supports were red onion.  The nacelles themselves, and the neck section, were scallions, and the bridge was a mushroom slice.

Q'apla!

This is a post I originally put only on Facebook in January 2015.  Click here for background.

And the first pizza of the January 2015 #PizzaADayDiet comes from Hoboken Pie! A thin crust sausage, mushroom, and green pepper -- all the ingredients were fresh and in abundance. The sausage and sauce were slightly spicy and the crust was really thin. It could have had a tad more body, but I liked the fact that it didn't feel like I was filling up on bread. Delivery was prompt and the pizza was warm out of the box. I will definitely order from them again.

Today's pizza a day diet pizza came from the Austin Beer Garden Brewing Co. at 1305 W. Oltorf (right next to the train tracks).

I hit the place in mid-afternoon, so it was pretty empty (Happy hour is from 3 pm to 7 pm, though, so it filled quickly :-)).  You order food and beer at the bar and they bring it to your table.  Inside are long wooden tables with benches, for social/communal beer-gardening in the Bavarian tradition.  Outside are round tables under the live oaks for beer gardening in the Austin tradition. :-).

I ordered a sausage pizza (boring, I know :-), but I like to try new places out on the basics).  It was delivered hot and fresh; the crust was somewhat soft but firmed up after I let it cool a little.  It had a nice chew and stood up to the ingredients.  The sausage had a more subtle flavor than I was expecting, but I really liked it and its freshness.  The cheese and sauce were also quite good.


One of their "by the slice" choices had also caught my eye, so I ordered it as well.  This was venison, spinach, pesto, white bean, roasted tomato, roasted garlic, and ricotta.  This one was amazing (not that the sausage was bad).  The crust had just the right amount of crispness and chew, but the combination of toppings really made it.  It had a richness from the venison without being gamy or overwhelming, and the remaining ingredients provided a terrifically contrasting texture in every bite.


Oh, and the beer was darn good, too. :-).

Day 8 of ‪#‎PizzaADayDiet‬ is another thin crust, this one from Southside Flying Pizza. They call it “Neapolitan style,” which I guess is a really thin crust. I chose the whole wheat crust and it was pretty good – it stood up to the ingredients but I wouldn't have minded if it had been a tad crisper. The cheese was thoroughly melted and excellent, though, as were the toppings. The sausage had a good flavor and the peppers were nicely al dente. And the side salad was really good, as well.

Today's ‪#‎PizzaADayDiet‬ occurred at Home Slice Pizza -- Don Tate joined me for the sausage, mushroom, and green pepper pie! This was the thickest thin crust I've had so far, and was sufficient to be not -floppy, yet not doughy, with a good, chewy texture. The cheese was flavorful and the toppings were each present in every bite.


Altogether, a most excellent pizza -- and they put the leftovers in a tinfoil swan (I've never seen that before in real life :-)).

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of being one of the authors at the inaugural Lone Star Book Festival in Kingwood, Texas (just outside Houston)!

Here are some pics:

Edward Carey, Emma Virjan, Jennifer Ziegler, Bethany Hegedus, Carmen Oliver, and me

Carmen Oliver presents BEARS MAKE THE BEST READING BUDDIES

Jennifer Ziegler and Jo Whittemore discuss encouraging reading

I present CHRONAL ENGINE and BORROWED TIME

 Thanks to all the organizers, sponsors, and attendees! It's on its way to becoming a grand, annual tradition!

Just back from the Texas Library Association Conference in Houston! 

As always, it was great to see fellow authors and illustrators, as well as the librarians who've supported our books through the years.  And I always enjoy seeing what's new at the publisher booths.

We had a great time for my panel Tuesday afternoon, "What's New with Texas Middle Grade and YA Authors," organized by Susie Kralovansky, featuring Jessica Lee Anderson moderating, and fellow panelists Paige Britt, Cory Putnam Oakes, P.J. Hoover, Cynthia Levinson, Liz Garton Scanlon, Jennifer Mckissack, and Joy Preble.  Conversation was entertaining and enlightening.  

Many thanks to everyone who puts in the work to make TLA the best state library conference in the country!

Here are some pics:

Hitting the road

Rainy Houston from the hotel

Me, Cynthia Levinson, PJ Hoover

Carmen Oliver signs

Jennifer McKissack, Jennifer Ziegler, Joy Preble

Paige Britt and Donna Janell Bowman

Me and the world in the lobby of the Hilton

Signing BORROWED TIME

Janet Fox and Jennifer Ziegler

PJ, Jessica, and Joy

Me and Elaine Scott

Buffalo Bayou on my early morning run

Back in Austin!

Ever since November 2, 2016, I've been meaning to blog about the Cubs winning the World Series, and I may yet, but I think my post about their getting into the World Series ("Every Cubs Fan is Ten Years Old Tonight") pretty much sums things up (though obviously it didn't cover their blowing the lead in game 7, extra innings, and that rain delay...).

But for now, I thought I'd blog about what happened this year, between January 9 and 15, when I boarded a very large ship for the first time and set sail with some 2000+ like-minded individuals for the first annual Star Trek Cruise.

All the elevators were decorated like this

Many of the restaurants and bars were similarly themed...

It was an absolutely fantastic and fun experience: the cruise ship was decorated (as much as possible on a finite budget) to recreate Federation technology and decor and there were activities and performances and autograph and photo opportunities by and with the likes of William Shatner, John deLancie, Denise Crosby, Marina Sirtis, Terry Farrell, Ethan Phillips, Max Grodenchik, Robert O'Reilly, Casey Biggs, and Chase Masterson.

My mess dress uniform for the formal

There were also four official theme nights: (i) A Night in the Holodeck, where you were supposed to dress as your favorite holodeck/holosuite character; (ii) Q's Masquerade Ball, where the sky was the limit; (iii) the Captain's Formal Gala; and (iv) an Evening on Risa.

I first heard about the cruise back in August of 2015 or so, when it was first announced, and decided that I really had to go. Now, although I've been a Star Trek fan since I was a kid, I've never been to a con or on a cruise, but there was just something about this idea that I found fascinating. 

So I decided I'd go, and I made the affirmative decision that I was going to embrace the cosplay.  Granted, I didn't have to, and there were a significant number of folks who ended up wearing Star Trek-related garb or generically appropriate clothing, but I decided that I would dive in, as it were (In part, I did so because half the fun of a vacation is anticipating it, and preparing the cosplay was an engaging extension.

At first, I debated doing makeup and going all out as a Trill or a Vulcan (and took the appropriate

Go Niners!

accoutrements onto the ship, but ended up not going that extra step for logistical reasons).  And there were a couple costume ideas I considered and then discarded as either too unwieldy or just not right.

Eventually, though, I decided to do costumes not based on individual particular characters per se, but ones that would evoke an episode or the world of an episode (Incidentally, I tend to think this is one of the reasons for the appeal of books like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Readers who like imaginative play like to imagine themselves in those worlds, perhaps more so than they imagine themselves as Harry Potter or Frodo).

So, what were my favorite episodes that lent themselves to cosplay? Well, for the favorite holodeck character, I decided early on that I wanted to do something related to baseball, since it was the favorite game of Captain Sisko on Deep Space Nine and the subject of one of the more goofily charming episodes, "Take Me Out to the Holosuite," in which a Vulcan captain challenges Sisko and the crew of DS9 to a baseball game.  Both sides had their own uniforms and the DS9 crew were the "Niners."

I ended up having problems figuring out how to do the uniform in a screen accurate manner, so decided to wing it and do what I ended up calling a "Deep Space Nine throwback uniform," complete with Terok Nor (the former name of Deep Space Nine) logo. :-). As you can see, though, there were a number of people who had less difficulty than I did in getting a screen accurate uniform :-):
  

And people were already pulling out the stops for the evening. Here are a couple pics:

The Q Continuum made an appearance

Really creative holodeck no. 1

A transport in progress. The photo doesn't really do it justice

Really creative holodeck no. 2

A very nice historical look

For Q's Masquerade, I found myself with a dilemma: the idea was that it would be a masked ball, but when you wear eyeglasses, masks can prove to be a bit difficult.  In the end, I went with a wild west outfit, because I figured I could wear an "outlaw bandana" as the mask.

The costume is based on the worlds of either the Original Series episode "Spectre of the Gun" or the Next Generation episode "Fistful of Datas." Ultimately, I kept the mask in my pocket since it interfered with the eating and drinking.

As you can see, there were a number of folks who had similar ideas:


They had to change the venue for the masquerade due to weather, so I didn't get as many shots as I'd've liked, but here are a few:



For the Captain's Formal Gala, I decided that I could wear my tux, but I'd always liked the formal dress uniform that was introduced in Star Trek: Insurrection and also appeared in DS9, so I went with that.  I confess that at first I had thought it would be the most boring night of cosplay, since everyone would be in Star Fleet formal uniforms.  And people did that, but there was a bit of variety as well...

The last official theme night, an evening and barbecue ("Targ-BQ") on Risa, seemed to be the most troublesome costume-wise, or at least the one that stretched people's creativity, especially since the only really distinctive Risan outfit was Picard's infamous "silver speedo."  There actually were brave folks who went with that, but one of my favorites was the couple who dressed up as George and Gracie, the humpback whales from Star Trek IV.

And what am I wearing? A conventional pair of board shorts and a garment called a "sleeveless hoodie." It's actually off the rack, but I did have someone ask me if I'd made it myself. I bought it because I'd never heard of such a thing before and the idea of a sleeveless hoodie seemed kind of bizarre to me and therefore suitably Risan :-).

Another of my favorites of the night was The Game headsets (from the eponymous Next Gen episode) that a couple of guys brought:
And then there were these guys whose three hour tour seemed to have gotten a bit sidetracked:

There was a lot of other stuff going on, as well, including the chance to randomly encounter the actors...

...pictures and autographs...

The Grand Nagus signed my novel! :-)

...shore excursions...
...on board lectures, panels, and performances...

William Shatner "christens" the cruise

Terry Farrell leads yoga

Lolita Fatjo discusses script coordinating...

Terry Farrell, Chase Masterson, and James Darren

Casey Biggs leads a wine tasting

...and, of course, the great tribble hunt:
There was way too much going on for me to have caught even a fraction of it, but you can see a ton of pictures at the 2017 Star Trek Cruise photo gallery and there's a great video here.

You can also check out the blog reports from StarTrek.com here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6.

Live long and prosper!

If passed, it would be the first standalone NASA authorization since 2017.

One rocket could decide how soon humanity returns to the Moon — and maybe one day sets foot on Mars.