tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-188833592008-05-24T02:13:25.839-07:00scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comBlogger116125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-34767151781573440482008-05-24T02:02:00.000-07:002008-05-24T02:13:25.872-07:00

I have to admit a love of stories about new species being developed, as well as being reminded of some of the rare oddities in the world around us. Here's one that's probably endangered, though it's sighted so rarely it's hard to know what's going on ... the Giant Oregon earthworm. They grow up to 3 feet long and an inch thick, and smell like flowers. And they can dig up to 15 feet deep. They

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-24214372498164621102008-05-24T01:56:00.000-07:002008-05-24T02:01:06.165-07:00

Archaeologists studying a cave in Oregon have found fossilized dung (probably human) dating to 14,300 years ago. If the human DNA detected was real, and not a result of contamination, this is evidence for people in North America 1,000 years before current scholarship says they arrived. LINK: Seattle Times, 3 Apr 2008

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-89964767419225970672008-05-01T19:35:00.000-07:002008-05-01T19:36:21.765-07:00

As if global warming by greenhouse gases (human or volcanic) isn't enough, throw in some not-quite-periodic ice ages, a slightly variable sun, and now ... global wobbling. You just can't trust the climate anymore. The Earth doesn't spin with perfect precision. The pole is known to wobble in a variety of ways. Most of these changes are a few meters or less, but we now have the tools to measure

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-87270622474687938552008-02-14T13:47:00.000-08:002008-02-14T13:52:46.279-08:00

This blog was going in a few directions, and while I still like the title, I have spun off a few more focused projects. One is The Unlikely Times -- "A journal of the hard-to-believe and the not quite believable." Another is Dark Windows -- an email newsletter of dark fiction, poetry and odd clips from old factual and fictional sources. Plus some dreams, to completely muddy the line between

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-81935675590492136102007-11-04T23:41:00.000-08:002007-11-04T23:56:59.075-08:00

A recent article on ScienceNow says that the cat genome has been about 80% deciphered. Interesting result: cats are more closely related to humans than any of our other common pets are (dogs, hamsters, etc). Of course, "cat people" would not be surprised by this. Cats are like weird little children, with or without a genetic reason. Of course, I have one looking over my shoulder (sleeping on

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-21869300996428545592007-11-02T11:56:00.001-07:002007-11-02T12:00:14.464-07:00

Well, 2 days after I said the spider was doing fine, it vanished completely. Probably starved. I sifted through the leaves beneath its lair, hoping for a closer look (I do have a cheap USB microscope), but it was gone. On the fun side, there's a bright comet in Perseus now. About 2 weeks ago it was a faint 17th-magnitude thing, far off and easily forgotten. But then it got a million times

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-11739283082142108502007-10-26T16:31:00.000-07:002007-10-26T16:49:37.578-07:00

We got smoked out by the firestorm, and evacuated for a day. But rather than focus on that, here's a bizarre naturalist note: We have a big spider living in a classic circular web just outside my office window. It only eats bees, sometimes two a day. When it doesn't catch anything, its abdomen shrinks back down to where it looks like a huge tick. After eating a few bees, it balloons up again

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-87681414970740621132007-09-13T22:46:00.000-07:002007-09-13T22:52:32.377-07:00

Here's a "real life sci-fi" story worth sharing. You might have heard on the news that Steve Fossett (aviator, adventurer) is missing. His plane went down somewhere near Powell Canyon, Nevada and hasn't be found, after over a week of searching. Well, you can actually help look for him online. A fresh satellite image of the area is available, and they set up a very easy-to-use site on Amazon

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-25768850151201073402007-08-24T14:58:00.000-07:002007-08-24T15:10:04.155-07:00

If you noticed a gap in entries, it came from pondering things. One night I zoomed through and tried to update every site, and a few projects wove themselves together. I launched an email newsletter called "Dark Windows." It is taking a book-length collection of dark poetry and stories and serializing it in 2,000-word chunks. With some extra features. You can find it here: http://

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-40433107142637983622007-08-11T11:13:00.000-07:002007-08-11T11:15:54.646-07:00

Strange how dreams come and go. Maybe one night a road rally, the next Elysian Fields, a plane crash or some kind of Westworld with the bald gunslinger chasing us across a broken desert. So real at the time, sometimes TOO real (where we have to get up and walk around the house at 4 a.m. wishing the images will go away), yet at the same time they're less than vapor, gone in the flash burn of our

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-4616304458926845772007-07-08T13:55:00.000-07:002007-07-08T13:57:33.680-07:00

After seeing the Transformers movie just for fun, I figured I could expect some fairly odd dreams. In the movie, a teenager's car comes to life, turns into a giant robot, blah blah. In the dream ... My car didn't come to life, not like in the movies. Instead, the transmission got a mind of its own, kept switching gears at awkward moments, kept trying to crash me into things. It popped into

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-86137139468812012482007-06-15T14:21:00.000-07:002007-06-15T14:30:09.477-07:00

I was looking for markets to send a new batch of stories and poems to, and stumbled across this classic story: "Fluff and Buttons on the Teddy Bear Range" by Matthew Sanborn Smith published at Chiaroscuro Check it out. It's the perfect blend of being dead serious about the absurd. It reminded me of my first sale to Analog -- "Last of the Soft Things," about how stuffed animals indirectly

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-15155825549455545522007-06-12T23:21:00.000-07:002007-06-12T23:22:10.816-07:00

We got back to the hotel at midnight, and Carmen went to sleep in the first two minutes. But I couldn't shake the feeling that we'd forgot something. I hope we made it clear that we were going back to the hotel, not staying at the house. And now it was too late to call. I couldn't sleep. It reminded me of other possible lapses. Not closing out magazines 100% right - someone out there would

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-19459496338815371582007-06-06T02:04:00.001-07:002007-06-06T02:05:02.434-07:00

Studying bees. Cages, hives, mazes and transmitters, and the everpresent smell of honey. Yummy research, really. But still, I couldn't eat my peanut butter and honey sandwiches instead of the little critters. But one night as I was turning off the lights, and there was a plastic crash, and I was quickly surrounded by a buzzing swarm. They went down my shirt, and stopped, stingers ready ...

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-14140372530504439432007-05-14T13:18:00.000-07:002007-05-14T13:20:05.121-07:00

I had no trouble parking my boat. My friends all brought theirs. We took over Ridge 30 and overflowed into 29. I jumped to the pier and let the mooring boy do the rest. But none of my friends got off their boats. I waited for hours, until morning, when all the boats were gone, including mine. In a state of great displeasure, I set out across town to find the one guy I did know. After

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-31948142754642203962007-05-11T23:14:00.000-07:002007-05-11T23:16:25.163-07:00

Looks like my tale "Jimmy the Box" will be in the July issue of Analog. Complete contents here: http://www.analogsf.com/0707/issue_07.shtml I hope you'll check it out -- it's a fun little romp. I've been working on some new tales, and a series of nonfiction -- mock science articles on seemingly pointless topics. Hard to explain. I hope to get them "out there" soon. I will avoid littering

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-64980986027567033442007-04-28T19:44:00.000-07:002007-05-14T13:20:49.015-07:00

Hi again, I hope everyone's doing well out there. Seems like most of my writing these days is describing things I'm selling on eBay, but I've managed a bit of real writing, including selling another offbeat story to Analog and posting some of my short films and outtakes on YouTube. =====> BOOKS & CHAPBOOKS: Poetry chapbook "Peripheral Visions" (NEW) now available from Assume Nothing Press

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-56932093396876602512007-04-26T21:35:00.000-07:002007-04-26T21:45:36.890-07:00

The Unfuture quote of the week comes from the show "Futureweapons:" "Anything can happen when you give a machine gun to a robot." I have to agree with the military guys who want little combat robots they can run by remote control. Never send men into a crossfire or a building full of hostile forces when you can send a little metal thing loaded with weapons. We're already programmed to play

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-91911900612942915172007-04-25T22:28:00.000-07:002007-04-25T22:37:00.501-07:00

Right now there are bees dying. They go out from their nests but never come back. There seems to be an outbreak of what entomologists are calling "colony collapse disorder," and a growing buzz over what's causing it. Possible culprits are cell phone signals, disease, and pesticides. We've got a definite "unfuture" coming if the problem gets out of control. After all, without bees, plants

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-88168514798307914382007-04-21T00:47:00.000-07:002007-04-21T00:48:23.072-07:00

First there was a guy who tried to tune his guitar using the Doppler Effect. He figured that at some delta velocity the thing would sound right. Trouble is, he would never know. It sounded different to everyone he passed on the freeway, always different from the way he himself heard it, standing still with respect to the thnig in his hand. Still, he played in the half-shell house on the

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-87278328820119675452007-04-20T19:12:00.000-07:002007-04-20T19:13:24.812-07:00

Lots of vivid dreams lately... I had a car with a 9-speed stick shift, where the very last gear will teleport the car up to a mile away in a random direction. The non-space bubble would float up or down to the surface of the earth before collapsing and bringing the car back to reality. Someone stole the car when I was in the city looking for clues ... I saw her go around a corner, engine

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-59972734845186174642007-04-17T01:39:00.000-07:002007-04-17T01:41:20.470-07:00

day after day of pushing buttons. never knowing which one will start the reaction, the mixing of fuel, the runaway implosion that forces the core inwards. he sees the gauges behind closed eyes, glowing. they will not let him sleep. the stress in unbearable. alarms go off. temperatures rise, the damned gauges react, the all-or-nothing pressure reaches ALL then releases its rage reducing the

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-74188885113477141822007-04-17T01:19:00.000-07:002007-04-17T01:25:05.887-07:00

I just saw a short piece on CNN about some sex offenders in Miami who are forced to live under a bridge and actually had a parole officer who went under the bridge at 5 a.m. every morning to check up on them. The laws which said they couldn't live within half a mile of any place that "children might congregate" meant there was no place left for them to go. Link here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-52613376308762563612007-04-14T02:16:00.000-07:002007-04-14T02:17:17.153-07:00

I was hiking somewhere near Globe, AZ and got caught in a sudden sandstorm. Any building looked good through dirt-crusted eyes. I felt my way around the corrugated structure, found an opening and slipped inside. It was pitch black and there was a giant cartoon dog on the wall. At first I thought it was talking to me, but then I saw the three children sitting on the couch in the darkness, lit

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18883359.post-83261576054378448472007-04-13T00:30:00.000-07:002007-04-13T00:31:05.721-07:00

Craiglist hoax --- Here's a strange technology hoax ... someone posted on CraigsList that everything in a certain house in Washington was up for grabs. You could go take whatever you wanted for free. So people showed up, stole everything and gutted the place. They ripped out the water heater, sinks, even light fixtures, probably leaving dangerous bare wires sticking out. Some visitors filled

scott veehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11132284269256727955noreply@blogger.com