I was born and raised in Savannah. It will always be home in my mind, no matter where I live. Coastal Empire was the title of my first novel for a reason. Savannah is in my blood. But today, that blood is boiling. Last weekend I was back home, visiting friends, when an article in the Savannah Morning News caught my eye. The story was about a dog named Barkley, Savannah Chief of Police Willie Lovett, animal control, and a "volunteer" named Diane Abolt. I'll briefly summarize the salient details to be found in the article. Diane Abolt legitimately had first claim to adopting Barkley by virtue of being the first person to fill an application. No favoritism was shown. No argument from me on this point; she had dibs on the dog. However, Abolt failed to adopt Barkley within the standard time frame, forfeiting all claims under the shelter rules that apply to everybody else. This is pretty much universal, standard animal shelter procedure. As the saying goes: you snooze, you lose. People change their minds all the time, so you never hold a dog for one particular person. You certainly don't hold a dog after the waiting period has expired, especially when another fully qualified adopter is patiently waiting in line. The goal is to place as many healthy animals as possible into loving forever homes, not play favorites. A kennel run occupied by a dog that ought to be in its forever home takes up valuable space and could cause an otherwise adoptable dog to be euthanized simply due to overcrowding. It's how the animal rescue and adoption business … [Read more...]
Archives for 2013
Spam attacks with strange consistency
This is really weird. My inbox is under some bizarre form of a spam attack. I'm currently being inundated with emails that are marketing two vastly different style products. The only conceivable common denominator is that both provide some form of transportation, albeit two vastly different ones. The first set of emails come from Hoveround wheelchairs. Because I'm still ambulatory, I don't quite understand how I got on their prospective customer list. Perhaps some internet widget has somehow monitored my habits, identified my addiction to writing, and determined that I will soon follow in the wheelchair tracks of George R. R. Martin and become too unhealthy to even walk to the mailbox under my own power. The other barrage of advertising is offering to help me "find great rates on luxurious private jets." Since I can't even afford to buy a new luxury car at the moment, I can't imagine where this marketing spam attack is coming from, either. Now if I could afford my own private jet, I would have to support a local Savannah business and buy a Gulfstream G650. Hey, I can dream, can't I? But, this begs the question: what does the internet know about my future personal needs that I don't? … [Read more...]
The Lone Ranger
When I was a kid, my superheroes were mostly dark and troubled. Even my favorite Western crime fighter, the Lone Ranger, wore a mask. From those days of black-and-white television, there has been only one person who was The Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore. And one, and only one actor could play Tonto: Jay Silverheels. That was then; this is now. If the new Disney Lone Ranger movie starring Johnny Depp as Tonto proves to be half as good as the trailers suggest, I'll be a happy camper when it comes to theaters next month. Of course the trailer to Skyfall looked great, and that movie itself only mediocre. Hopefully, that won't be a problem with The Lone Ranger. It was a Ranger...riding a white horse. Got some lunatic Indian with him. They're coming for you... Yes, they are. I'm ready. After piquing her interest with a few priceless Johnny Depp scenes as Tonto, my wife has agreed that can be my birthday present, only a few days early. The last time Lisa watched a movie that was not on DVD it was the final installment of Lord of the Rings, so getting her to agree to go to the theater was no small achievement. In the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Johnny Depp was an absolute delight as Captain Jack Sparrow. In that movie, Depp single-handedly turned a somewhat mediocre script loosely based on the two minute ride at Disney World into a two hour movie that was actually worth watching, at least in his scenes, mainly using his uncanny talent as a comedic actor. I didn't bother with the sequels to Pirates; after all, the ride itself was … [Read more...]
DNA, put in perspective when compared to LEGOs
Behold, a life-size replica of a Star Wars X-Wing fighter, made out of LEGOs. According to this article in New York magazine, the full scale model required 5,335,200 LEGOs and took 32 master builders working more than 17,000 hours to complete. The LEGO X-Wing has a wing span of 44 feet, weighing 44,000 pounds. Any parent whose kids enjoyed LEGOs has a memory of stepping barefoot on one of the ubiquitous plastic blocks. But don't worry about the LEGO X-Wing; it's all glued together as one piece. Now whether or not you are a fan of the toy building blocks, you'll have to admit the LEGO X-Wing fighter is one impressive creation. Compared to the DNA molecule, however, the LEGO X-Wing is actually quite simple. Over five million building blocks were used? That's nothing compared to the six billion bits of information called nucleotides that comprise a DNA molecule, the "LEGO" of life. The complex instructions coded into DNA provide the blueprint for an organism that is produced through an ordered and specific process of development into a body plan. For abiogenesis to have occurred, either the enormously improbable event occurred in which DNA self-organized just in time for some fortuitous catalyst caused inanimate matter to come to life...or, some sort of help was somehow involved. In fact, two-time Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ilya Prigogine said, The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero. While I have tremendous respect for the … [Read more...]
The face of evil
It isn't every day that you get an email with "The Devil" as the subject. I almost didn't recognize that the source was the production company filming the commercial for Secondhand Sight. We're about to start an advertising campaign on Comcast, to see how things go. Until this point, the focus has primarily been kept on writing new books. Technically, my tenure as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner was both marketing and writing material for another book. After all, much of the content developed for the Examiner was also incorporated into Counterargument for God. Now, the focus is almost entirely on finishing Premonition, the sequel to Coastal Empire. There are even sketchy plans for a sequel to Secondhand Sight. I have plans for many future books. I only need to live long enough to write them all. However, we've decided that it's time to try to develop a readership. When it comes to the characters in my novels, I know my heroes. I can tell you exactly what, or more specifically who private detective Robert Mercer looks like -- actor Jim Caviezel. His sidekick Nick Mason reminds me of a young Johnny Depp, when I try to describe him for the reader. The first person that comes to mind when I think of John Sutlive will always be Denzel Washington. I also really like Anthony Mackie -- loved him as Harry in The Adjustment Bureau, but I think he might be a little too young to "be" John Sutlive. On … [Read more...]
