Jack Henderson

He was a founder (and the first chairman) of the Federation of American Scientists, but there’s a footnote in the distinguished career of physicist William Higinbotham. In a bid to make science exhibits more interesting and interactive, in 1958 he came up with what many believe to be the first video game, Tennis for Two. [...]

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The first headline that caught my eye this morning was George Carlin, 71, Irreverent Standup Comedian at the New York Times. I thought it was a PR piece promoting a new tour or some other project, or maybe an induction into some hall of fame somewhere. Nope. Dead. (The NYT headline has since been corrected.) [...]

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It’s been a while since the last post. The fact is I’ve been writing a lot more than I’ve been researching these days, and that’s a good thing. The second book is coming along nicely, but work there has meant that updates here have been a lot less frequent. So, let’s catch up for a [...]

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Sir Arthur C. Clarke died the other day at 90. There are some great obits out there, and if you’re a fan of Clarke’s work I’m sure you’ve already read them, so I’ll make no attempt here for one of my own. I’ll just say that his Nine Billion Names of God is the first [...]

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University student Emil Ernerfeldt has written a truly amazing, PC-based physics playground for his Master’s thesis, and it’s free to download and try. If you’re anything close to my age you probably played Mousetrap when you were a kid. And I don’t know about you, but I hardly ever played the game as it was [...]

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Update: No crashes, not even a hiccup, after 3 weeks of continuous running following this fix. This subject matter is a little out of character for this site, I know. I had so much trouble finding an answer to this problem that I wanted to post my solution here, in the hopes that it would [...]

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I’ve been a little busy over the past several days, and I’ve neglected to post here as a result. This seems like an apt article for a gentle slide back into daily attention to this place. I tend to fall into the Tesla camp when it comes to the greatest-inventor-of-this-era argument, and Tesla people tend [...]

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I’ve been fondly accused of chronic paranoia in the past, and I’m sure that’ll continue. In my defense, I spend 12 or 14 hours per day in a fictional world a lot like our own; trouble is, it’s getting more and more like our world every day. It’s a great place to read about, but [...]

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No one among the ’08 presidential hopefuls has asked for my advice on campaign strategy, and that’s probably for the best. Frankly, I think the kinds of strategies and tactics we’ve seen in past national elections aren’t going to cut the mustard this time. Because times are tough now, and they’re about to get much, [...]

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Dear Reader, It’s common in modern book shopping to get a preview of a chapter or two, but that’s never seemed like quite enough for me. So, I decided this past weekend to throw caution to the wind with my own novel and put 27 free chapters out into the tubes for your evaluation. That’s [...]

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The paperback edition of Circumference of Darkness is now available. Bantam is running ads on the radio in support of the launch, and you can listen to one of them using the player below: [Audio clip: view full post to listen] And you can buy the book here…

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Slowly but surely, the Ron Paul campaign continues to gain ground. Many in the mainstream media are still doing their obvious best to marginalize, obscure or ignore him, but that’s now the exception and not the rule. The news people have a problem; even if their corporate owners would prefer we all forgot about Ron [...]

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