7/28/07     I just served on jury duty. It was an interesting exercise--even the newspaper articles about it.

6/14/07     I wrote this four days ago, but a combination of a hardware glitch on my computer, and problems with my ISP not letting me online kept me from posting it until now. Fortunately, Paris Hilton's jail sentence found its way back into the headlines.

5/20/07     The "Illegal Immigration" fuss is in full bray. I think our national leaders are missing a very salient point.

5/4/07     Iraq is an emotional topic for me, and I accidentally left something out a couple of days ago. Here it is.

5/2/07     When I first came up with the idea of having an "Opinions" section on my website, I had something on the order of what's come to be called "blogs" in mind. Ahem. No two ways about it, I'm a lousy blogger.
Anyhow, here's a subject I haven't touched upon in more than four years, though I've had a lot to say on it. You got it; Iraq.

12/7/05     Ouch. It's really been a long time now since my last posting here. Well, I moved from Philadelphia to South Florida early last year. It's been a difficult transition to life in Paradise, I guess that has a lot to do with it. But whatever, I've got something I've been wanting to write about for a long time. We're into the silly season again.

11/18/03     It's been awhile since I wrote anything for the "opinion" page. It was a tough year. During the past year I wrote DemonTech 3; Gulf Run, and Dan and I had both Starfist 10; A World of Hurt and Star Wars, Clone Wars III, Jedi Trial to write, and I had neither the time nor the energy to do any side-writing. And for the first half of that year, the thing I most wanted to give an opinion on was a rapidly evolving situation in which almost anything I said might be obsolete by the time I got it posted. And that thing (the Iraq war) is still evolving.
Now that those books are done and in, I decided to answer a couple of questions I get asked every now and again: Why does it take so long for a book to be published after it's written? and, Why don't authors publish their books themselves?

10/23/02     I'm doing something I haven't done before in these "Opinions," changing something I've written. Someone pointed out to me that I made a factual error in my 10/8/02 opinion. I checked it out, and yes, I goofed, so I corrected it. Wish I could remember where I originally got the bad information.

10/8/02     You just know I couldn't leave it alone. Here's more on our coming war with Iraq -- only this time, I'm saying let's go ahead and declare war. Complete with short sidebars on two other military actions over the past couple of decades.

9/28/02     I look at the date below and realize I've been quiet for quite awhile. Maybe I've had too many books to write to go shooting off at the lip. Now there's something I can't keep quiet about. We're going to war. Here's my take on it.

12/29/01     I got a number of responses to my essay on the 9/11 attacks. Here's a follow up of sorts to that piece.

12/16/01     How starving artists are perceived varies according to the age of the starving artist. There's a clear progression, as you will see. I've lived through several of these classes, so I know far too well about the progression of the Starving Artist.

11/2/01     It took awhile for me to write this. At first I was simply overwhelmed by the enormity of the attack on the World Trade Center, then I had to crunch to finish up Starfist; book 8 so I could get to work on my next deadline. And, of course, I wanted to say something that hadn't already been said by twenty gazillion other people. Here are my comments on the September 11th attack.

10/17/01     I had this item ready to post more than a month ago, but the terrorists attacked America, and it didn't seem appropriate to put up then. It's long enough now that I can come up with something coherent to say about the attack, so I probably will over the next few days. In the meantime, here's the piece I was going to post five weeks ago.
     I have a radio next to my desk and usually have it playing softly as I work. It's normally just agreeable background noise, but once in awhile something catches my ear and I have to pay attention. I've come to the conclusion that radio can be bad for the language. Take a look.

     7/24/01     I have two nieces and two nephews, all but the youngest of whom have graduated from high school within the past year and a half. Their plight in trying to find decent jobs has made me think about the state of education today. Here's what I came up with.

1/15/01     I'm old enough that when I look about I see major changes in the world of business and industry from when I was younger. Most of them are good. Some of them only benefit the bottom line of the companies, their customers pay the price. Here, in brief, are a few examples of why deregulation and just-in-time inventory aren't necessarily good.

9/19/00     A friend once forwarded to me an amusing little thing titled, "Sometimes I Want to Hurt My Computer." I wish I still had it. After I tell you about my hardware problems, I'll take on some software pet peeves.

     Actually, these two items make me think I should change the name of this section to "Opinions, Rants, and Beefs."

11/27/99     I got a letter from a reader who said he thought STARFIST should have mixed-gender units. Hey, everybody else who writes military SF has them. Howcomeforwhy Sherman and Cragg gotta be different? My reply.