Stupidity Has a Price

Fortunately, in the current case, the price of stupidity will be $170 installed to replace the broken left-side mirror on the big red minivan. Since the price of this particular stupidity could have been as high as "dead", $170 seems really, really cheap.

For those of you who didn't hear the story, the short form is that I found myself in a very bad place in a construction zone on the way to FilKONtario and the best alternative was to knock over several construction barrels. God was apparently looking out for fools and small children, because the only thing that was damaged was the mirror.

And my voice for the weekend, from shouting and screaming afterwards, but that was just a different kind of stupidity.

Stupidity Has a Price

Fortunately, in the current case, the price of stupidity will be $170 installed to replace the broken left-side mirror on the big red minivan. Since the price of this particular stupidity could have been as high as "dead", $170 seems really, really cheap.

For those of you who didn't hear the story, the short form is that I found myself in a very bad place in a construction zone on the way to FilKONtario and the best alternative was to knock over several construction barrels. God was apparently looking out for fools and small children, because the only thing that was damaged was the mirror.

And my voice for the weekend, from shouting and screaming afterwards, but that was just a different kind of stupidity.

A Matter of Time

I'll have more to say on FilKONtario later, but one of the things that happened was that I won the songwriting contest! I'm always a bit surprised when that happens.

The topic for this year was "Time Travel". I looked at the topic last week and said to myself, "That's one of your favorite themes -- you should be able to do something with it." The problem with a favorite theme is that you tend to have gone to that particular well a lot, so I needed a new plot.

As I cast about for ideas, I recalled Larry Niven's argument (possibly borrowed from someone else) that if it were possible to travel back in time and change history, then history would be changed until a time machine was no longer invented in that universe. It's a fairly reasonable argument, so the trick was to find a way to make sure that it was false for the purpose of the song. And that led me to the plot -- although Niven's argument has vanished somewhere into the back story of the song -- of what I suspect might make a decent little Analog-style story.

Or I like to think so. :)
( Lyrics inside... )

A Matter of Time

I'll have more to say on FilKONtario later, but one of the things that happened was that I won the songwriting contest! I'm always a bit surprised when that happens.

The topic for this year was "Time Travel". I looked at the topic last week and said to myself, "That's one of your favorite themes -- you should be able to do something with it." The problem with a favorite theme is that you tend to have gone to that particular well a lot, so I needed a new plot.

As I cast about for ideas, I recalled Larry Niven's argument (possibly borrowed from someone else) that if it were possible to travel back in time and change history, then history would be changed until a time machine was no longer invented in that universe. It's a fairly reasonable argument, so the trick was to find a way to make sure that it was false for the purpose of the song. And that led me to the plot -- although Niven's argument has vanished somewhere into the back story of the song -- of what I suspect might make a decent little Analog-style story.

Or I like to think so. :)
( Lyrics inside... )