George Steinbrenner has an heir apparent

“Those who are responsible for training for the Olympics must take responsibility,” Mr. Medvedev said on Monday. “They must have the courage to submit their resignation,” he said. “And if they do not have this resolve, we will help them.”

Such language from the typically measured Mr. Medvedev underscores the extent of the frustration here with Russian athletics just four years before Russia hosts the next Winter Olympics in the resort town of Sochi.

Russian athletes took home just three gold medals from Vancouver, compared with eight in the last Winter games. Russia came in a disappointing sixth place in the overall medal count with 15, trailing far behind its former Cold War athletic rival, the United States, which led with 37.

For Russians used to seeing their athletes dominate international competitions, the last two weeks have been agonizing. Russian figure skaters fell, Russian bobsledders flipped, and in a final embarrassment, Russia’s much-vaunted hockey team was smacked by Canada 7-3, and left Vancouver without a medal.

“Let’s put up a bunch of guillotines and gallows,” Vyacheslav Bykov, the team’s coach was quoted as saying last week. “We have 35 people on the hockey team. Let’s go to Red Square and dispatch with them all.”

From the NY Times, here.

I was wondering who took the Olympics seriously . . .

Oh, OK . . .



The NY Dolls version . . .

Speaking of Courageous Cat . . .



A few tenuous moments with the sax, but in the end, even Mr. Frog would approve.

Snow storm dialogue

Her: But isn't it pretty when the sun comes through the clouds?

Him: (clearing snow-laden impeller from snowblower) Define pretty.

Final score

Thirty-four inches, three driveways, three (???) gallons of gas, two shovels, two India pale ales, one Maxx robusto, one La Floridita Premier robusto.

Saturday morning cartoons . . .

. . . Spanish style.

Future Marine Recon member . . .


And during the height of the storm, Joe's kid was out helping clear and move one of the cars so we could make a gas run.

In gym shorts, of course.

Beer and shoveling snow . . .



Two great American pastimes that go together.

(Thirty-four inches and counting. Took something in the area of eight hours to dig out.)

Fun with Telemarketers

Me: Hello.
Telemarketing Type: Hello, Mister DeeFulicious. I am calling –
Me: Did you know that your company entered a false number on the calling ID system?
Telemarketing Type: Well, sir, we are a non-profit organization –
Me: That’s a violation of the law. Do you know you could be held personally responsible?
T: Uh –
M: You could be sued. Do you own a house?
T: I do, but –
M: I feel really sorry for you. Your employer is putting you at risk like that. I’d never sue but maybe the next person would sue. You’d lose your house, your car –
T: I don’t have a car.
M: Well thank God for that.
T: Our charity helps Native Americans –
M: That’s why you’re calling from India?
T: Sir?
M: You know, I’m just about to blow something up in Delhi*.
T: Our charity is non-profit.
M: And illegal.
T: No sir.
M: Well, it’s breaking the law. Would you give money to a criminal?
T: I have to go, sir. Good day.

Next up on Torture a Telemarketer Today: The phone is answered by a psychotic madman sure that the twenty-five heads of lettuce in the bathtub with him are plotting to kill him.

* It'll be in the next Rogue Warrior. Maybe.

A foot and climbing . . .


Now I know what the low setting on the snow blower is for.

Never fear - the flamethrower is prepped for the morning. There's nothing like a little napalm with your coffee, especially at 30 below.

It's snowing . . . again


Work called on account of snowballs.

Life imitating fiction, except it's not . . .


The most interesting thing about Israel serving justice to the Hamas criminal in Dubai is how many people they sent in country to get him. Twenty-four have been identified - and you know that means there had to have been more.

You could never do that in fiction - too many people to handle in a scene.

The story so far bear some similarities to the plot of Soul of the Assassin, the last First Team book I did with Larry Bond before we started Red Dragon. Two differences, though - our guys weren't caught on video, and they had much better food.

And Ferg got to dance in that one, too. I think.

Read the latest on the case, here.

Chutzpah

“For 2010,” Ms. Braly said, “we expect hospital inpatient and outpatient costs in California to grow by over 10 percent, driven primarily by hospital reimbursement rates. Additionally, we expect pharmacy costs in California to grow by over 13 percent.”

Which is obviously why Ms. Braly's company, WellPoint, needed to raise rates 39 percent. (And no, you don't add 10 plus 13. But if you did, you'd still be a bit short of explaining the rate hike, eh?)

She did a lot of whining to congress today about older people costing health care more - without of course mentioning that those people are primarily covered by Medicare.

Oh, and then she had the gall to say that rising costs of health insurance mean that less people can afford individual policies . . . which means that those who are left, have to pay more. Because of the actuary tables.

Uh, here's a suggestion: rather than segregating individual policies from employer policies (and breaking those down according to group size), put them all in the same risk pool.

Oh beans, then we won't be able to make - what is that? Twenty-three percent overhead and profit?

Is it worse that WellPoint's roots lie in the nonprofit world, or does that explain why they're gouging now?

They're just vultures.

Why writers don't do book covers



So my editor, obviously campaigning for editor of the year, decided to ask if I had any ideas for a cover on the next Whiplash.

Shocked, I mean, gratified by the question, I fired up one of my drawing programs to supplement my descriptions with a crude sketch.

Even the damn program rebelled, however, coughing up the above and then unceremoniously crashing, taking the computer with it.

This is why publishers don't ask writers for input - they're afraid the result will be a worldwide power blackout.

Call him what he was - a murderer


What do you call a psychotic killer who flies an airplane into a building?

I call him - Joseph Stack - a terrorist or a would-be mass murderer. But because the psycho wrote that he was doing it in the name of taxation, some people are calling him a hero.

Get real.

Stack flew his Pipe into a Federal building Thursday in Texas, claiming that he was doing it to change government. A flood of stories appeared right after the news of the crash claiming that he had "a point" about the particular code of the tax law he cited in his suicidal ramble. They quieted a bit, but then today a new wave of "he's a hero" washed over the media, partly as a result of his daughter's saying that.

I guess it's understandable that his daughter wants to think well of her dad. But the rest of us shouldn't.

The initial stories showed how pathetically misinformed journalists are when it comes to a) the tax code and b) just about anything economic in this country. Many reporters brayed about the unfairness of the code section he cited - a change decades old that removed one excuse companies used to classify programmers as non-employees.

In other words, companies like IBM and Microsoft had to treat the programmers they hired like every other employee they hired, paying taxes, benefits, etc.

I'm not saying that the programmers didn't continue to get screwed. But it wasn't the tax law that screwed them.

Even if journalists didn't know the tax laws, there were plenty of things about the story that indicated the guy was - well not a hero, and not downtrodden regular guy caught in the grip of grinding poverty brought on by a faceless bureaucracy. By his own admission he'd been involved in a tax scam, and had failed to report considerable income even after that. He owned a plane and a house . . . which he set on fire before he set off to change the world by attacking an IRS office that tries to make sure companies aren't screwing around with people's pensions.

Some hero.

But it was the government that had somehow persecuted him.

People drink the Kool Aid without even knowing who made it.

Killer pastries

Everybody knows . . .

Iran may be working on secretly developing a nuclear warhead for a missile, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday in a draft report.

So what happens next?

(CNN story here.)

With our wings behind our backs . . .

Item:

American and NATO military leaders — worried by Taliban propaganda claiming that air strikes have killed an inordinate number of civilians, and persuaded by “hearts and minds” enthusiasts that the key to winning the war is the Afghan population’s goodwill — have largely relinquished the strategic advantage of American air dominance.

This has been a problem for about a year now, but it's potentially critical as thing ratchet up. There was a story in a recent Wired; the excerpt above comes from the Times, here.

An infatuation with . . . the vice president?

The story:

Man infatuated with U.S. VP breaches 2010 security

Forget about the security issues. Isn't this just wrong on so many levels?

(Story here.)

You think it's cold where you live . . .



Readers send the coolest pictures . . .

Tommy College

Tommy College got his name and a lot of his money running a diploma mill in the 1990s, just as the Internet got big. He left when competition became too fierce.

"I got a visit from these Libyans one day, and that steered me to greener pastures," he says.

He did some odds jobs in Vegas and then in Morocco. Now he makes a living smuggling flowers in Europe.

He was in town last week and we had some beers. He had plans to make money off the Greek debt crisis that I couldn't quite follow, so I pushed the conversation back to smuggling.

"You ever think of running guns instead of daisies?"

"I don't do daisies."

"You know what I mean."

"You mean become an arms dealer like your friend B*****?"

I shrugged. I wasn't really thinking about B*****, just trying to change the conversation.

"Not enough money in it," said Tommy College. "Let's get another round."

Boys and their toys . . .



They call it the joker. The Marines use it to grab and dispose of roadside bombs and the like.
I want one.

A big catch

The Taliban's top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

Full story here.

And yes, Karachi is Pakistan's largest city. The Taliban and al Qaeda operate with impunity there. Or have....

No more penis enhancers?

Months and months of blocking spam senders has finally whittled down the email on the website to a somewhat manageable level. I haven't had an unsolicited offer to enlarge a body part in over a week.

I should feel as I've won a major battle. And yet I feel somehow strangely . . . empty.

It'll pass, I'm sure.

Of course, now the filters are now refusing to allow many readers to get through. Always something to work on.

Saturday morning cartoons . . .

Don't you just love those days . . .


When you feel like you're in a Three Stooges sketch, trying to hang wallpaper with Curly?

The future of missile defense

A U.S. high-powered airborne laser weapon shot down a ballistic missile in a test Thursday . . . the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said.

Story from Reuters here.

Pink mist

Hell yeah, it snowed . . .



That's about midday. As good an excuse for an Excalibur as any . . .

What Brown can do for you . . .




Middle of a blizzard, who comes knocking at the door?

UPS guy, with a box of beer.

Go, Brown!

Coming soon to an infantry squad
near you . . .



The Army's new grenade launcher - the next must-have accessory.

(Full story here, among other places.)

Dialogue


Other writer: Check out these directions I got with my copy edit:

"Do not write notes to the copy editor on the ms. The manuscript is not going back to the copy editor. This is not a dialogue between author and copy editor . . . ."

Me: Wow. Does this mean I can't write "F*** yourself" on the copy edit any more?

Other writer: Kind of takes the fun out of it.

Me: Why bother going over the copy edit then?

Other writer: My point exactly.

Me: Well, the managing editor will see it, and know what you think of the copy editor's job.

Other writer: Which will just encourage him to assign him to you again.

Me: Point taken.

You want to talk about security issues at airports?

A body was found inside a wheel well of a Delta Airlines plane after it landed in Tokyo from New York Monday . . .

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/body_found_in_wheel_well_of_ny_to_EJsL6K3nmaFF2uoIlmNGNM#ixzz0eyk3IokG

Getting tough . . .

. . . . but not really.

SHANGHAI – China on Monday heralded a major bust of computer hackers to underscore its pledge to help enhance global online security, with state media saying had shut what they called the country's largest distributor of tools used in malicious Internet attacks.

Three people were arrested on suspicion of making hacking tools available online, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. Their business, known as Black Hawk Safety Net, operated through the now-shuttered Web site www.3800cc.com and generated around $1 million in income from its over 12,000 subscribers, the report said.

Obviously we're meant to think this is in reaction to the uproar over hacking/spying into Google and other U.S. companies. But the arrests were actually made back in November, and it's highly unlikely that these guys - slimers though they may be - had anything to do with them.

The Wall Street Journal story does put it into some perspective here. (You may need a subscription.)

It's just a matter of time . . .

News item:

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the nation’s atomic energy agency on Sunday to begin producing a special form of uranium that can be used to power a medical reactor in Tehran, but that could also move the country much closer to possessing fuel usable in nuclear weapons.

(NY Times story here.)

Why is he doing this now? Because he figures one of two things will happen:

a) Either a, Iran will get go ahead and make its bomb, or

b) Israel and-or the U.S. will attack to stop it.

Either way, his regime will be strengthened.

At least, that's the way he sees it.

I'd figure on an attack within the next six months.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Heaven Can Wait from Charlotte Gainsbourg on Vimeo.

If you need to measure how crazy things have become . . .

Here's the headline:

Goldman bows on CEO's pay

So what does that mean, exactly?

That besides his base pay of $600,000, the CEO will get only $9 million.

Only $9 million.

That's how out of whack things are.

From the Wall Street Journal:

People familiar with the situation said Goldman's board, which met Friday afternoon, wanted to demonstrate moderation on executive pay. Directors deliberated for weeks, hoping to find a middle ground between the popular anger over eye-popping Wall Street compensation and the board's belief that top employees deserve to be paid fairly. During the discussions, Goldman directors and executives began using the word "restraint," these people said.

Story here (subscription needed)

The latest on Amazon.com

From Publisher's Weekly

In an update on the status of negotiations between Macmillan and Amazon, Macmillan CEO John Sargent said he hoped it would be back to business as usual soon. Though he didn't indicate when the buy button on Macmillan titles would be restored on Amazon, he said "things have moved far enough that hopefully this is the last time I will be writing to you on this subject" and that, despite appearances, "Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us." Buy buttons were not restored as of Friday morning, though they could be back before the weekend.

Amazon bs continues

. . . more strike back:

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has removed all links to Amazon from their website . . .

Our authors depend on people buying their books and since a significant percentage of them publish through Macmillan or its subsidiaries, we would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased," the SFWA's site explained, adding that many of its member authors' sales were affected by the Macmillan takedown.

. . . And no, they still won't sell my books.

Warning signs . . .

So my agent has taken to signing his emails "cheers."

Should I worry?

Art lovers can breathe
a (heavy) sigh of relief . . .

News item:

(L.A.) - Health officials will not force actors to use condoms when making pornographic films, despite the urging of activist groups hoping to stop the spread of AIDS among porn industry workers.

For the opposition . . .



Today's question: Can Mongoose and Junior grab one of these geometric suckers and make it out alive?

(Yes, I know the Tamil Tigers were defeated in 2009. You'll have to read the next Rogue Warrior to get the connection . . . assuming the bit makes it to the final draft . . . never a sure thing. In the meantime, imagine one of those speedsters in your bathtub. That's pretty much the scene in a nutshell.)

Amazon still sucks

And you still can't buy (many of) my books from their website.

What's really interesting is the view, admittedly a minority, that they're somehow doing this to help consumers.

There's an easy way to lower prices - cut out Amazon.

Which is one of the things they're worried about.

Somethings just speak for themselves

Iran sends worms into space

. . . The scientific arena is where we could defeat the [West's] domination," said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who boasted [of] the launch on state television on Wednesday...

Then there's this:

Iran on Thursday executed two men accused of involvement in an armed anti-government group, as the public prosecutor announced that new death sentences have been issued against opposition activists involved in protests over June's disputed presidential election.

Trouble in JSF land . . .



From today's news . . .

On Monday [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates singled out the military's largest-ever aircraft development program -- the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- for stinging criticism. In an unusual move, Gates said he was removing the current program manager and replacing him with an as yet unnamed three-star general and withholding more than half a billion dollars in award fees from Lockheed Martin, which builds the aircraft....

Gates said a review of the fighter over the past several months made it "clear there were more problems than we were aware of."

Hopefully, that gets someone's attention. One thing you have to say for Gates - he is not afraid to knock heads together.

Tomorrow's tank today . . .



Drop the size by about a fifth, lose the men and add next generation armor, and you're looking at the utv* of 2020.

* UTV = unmanned terrestrial vehicle, formerly known as a tank.

Amazon.com sucks


At the moment, you can't buy many of my books from the Amazon website.*

No wait, that's not true - you can buy a book, but only if you buy it used - or supposedly used - which means that neither I nor my publisher will be paid for it.

Amazon has removed the "buy now" buttons from all books published by Macmillan, which includes Tor and St. Martin's, who publish Rogue Warrior and St. Martin's. They claim it's because they want the right to set very low discounts on ebooks, but what's really going on here is a power move by Amazon in an attempt to control the ebook market. Their idea is to use low priced ebooks to encourage the purchase of Kindle. Kind of the razor and blade theory backwards.

Amazon, by the way, gets a cut of all sales on its site, whether they're used or not. So they're still making money even when they're trying to squeeze publishers, and through them, writers.

Thanks, guys.

Not that it will matter to them, but I've deleted the links to their site. B&Ns and the locals remain.

Shotgun's new toy . . .



He uses it as a pistol, of course.

. . . in the next Rogue Warrior installment.

Enough winter!

How long before pitchers and catchers?

NASA's sorry state (??)

Item:

Obama Plan Privatizes Astronaut Launchings

Times story here.

I'm of two minds.

On the one hand, it's hard to disagree with critics who see this as the potential beginning of the end for the U.S manned space program, a move that will diminish the country's technological prowess as well as NASA. (How long before the rockets are built and launched in China, you ask, not unreasonably.)

On the other hand, while researching Helios* over the past year or so, I've spoken to a number of NASA scientists and others in the space community. The picture they gave me of the agency and our space program is not pretty. As a group, there are some pretty dispirited and depressed people working at the Space Agency right now.

The details of this new plan will be interesting.

*Helios is my next 'stand alone' novel. Check the website for details.

Russia's new stealth fighter



Actually, it's India's too. Projected ETA: 2020?

Doesn't look quite as radar evading as the F-22 or the F-35, but what do I know?

Stranger than real life, department . . .




That one was fiction; this one is real:

The Jihadist Next Door

On-line drinking

Finlandia wouldn't let me on its web site today, claiming I wasn't old enough.

Obviously they go by mental age.

IPad means IVideo



There's been a lot of talk that the iPad is going to mean big things for publishers of newspapers and magazines - and oh yeah, books.

But the real impact will be in personal video. Streaming to a personal screen is going to be as much of a killer ap for the slate as music was for the original iPod.

Not convinced? Try watching a movie on your laptop in bed tonight. Tell me it wouldn't be a lot easier if you were holding a tablet computer instead.

And yes, tablets have been around for a while, and there are a lot of good ones already available. But Apple just made it sexy.

Note to Tom:

Michelle's cigarettes are still out on the deck.

Seemed some how sacrilegious to move them. Kind of a bummer with the weather, though.

It's Monday . . .



Do you know where your helicopter is?

(That's the Battlehawk - latest version of the Blackhawk . . . look for a Russian/Indian version in the next Rogue Warrior.)

Whiplash



I was talking about Dreamland: Whiplash, the new series I'm doing with Dale Brown, and some people were wondering - why Whiplash, why not more 'straight' Dreamland?

Long story short - we were looking to refresh the series without totally walking away from it. Whiplash still stars many of the same characters, but now it's fifteen years later.

The first book came out in November and the reception has, thankfully, been pretty good. But inevitably we hear the question: Will you do more 'straight' Dreamlands?

I guess the answer is, it depends. We certainly have more plots. Whether we have time is another question.

One thing that the new series allowed us to do is move the time period where the story takes place up to the present/near future. That was always a problem with Dreamland, at least after the success of the first few books. Not realizing how successful it would become, we set it into a very small timeline - and most critically, in the past. The fact that it was taking place in the 1990s confused a lot of people.

Actually, most people just ignored it. Which is what you should do when authors make bad decisions . . .

Old New Jersey* . . .



BB-16, in full war paint. . .


*What, I gotta have a reason for posting a picture of a battleship?

Well actually I do have a reason . . . in a way . . .

Ages ago - last week?? - in one of the Dreamland books, I erroneously referred to the Pennsylvania when I meant the New Jersey. Or was it the other way around. Anyway, this isn't either ship.

Sometimes, it's better not to know the thought process.

(And for information on how the image was manipulated, go here.)

And speaking of Chinese hacking parties . . .

The top 10 Chinese cyber attacks (that we know of)

Bank heists: the next wave

From the AP:

Officials from the Duanesburg Central School District in Schenectady County on Jan. 5 announced computer hackers had drained about $3 million from a district bank account over several days in December.

According to the district's Web site, bank officials contacted the district Dec. 22 to question a request for an electronic transfer of $759,000 to multiple overseas accounts. The bank canceled the pending transaction, but officials dug deeper and discovered an additional $3 million in unauthorized transfers were executed before Dec. 22.

The FBI and state police were called in, and district officials said they were able to recover $2.5 million of the stolen funds with the help of several overseas financial institutions. To prevent further problems, district officials closed all the school system's bank accounts and established new ones with restricted online access.

There are literally thousands and thousands of vulnerable accounts.

At some point, the world is going to have to get very serious about electronic security. And that's going to have to include going after the perpetrators of thefts like these in a very aggressive way.

Speaking of Chisinau, and Whiplash . . .


Chisinau was the site of a massacre during World War II, one of many, unfortunately. That bit of history wasn't relevant to the new Whiplash story, so it's not in the book. Even an oblique link was lost when I cut some of the irrelevant parts of a scene down.

That happens a lot: Bits and pieces that mean a lot to the writer in the early stages or even pre-stages of a book get totally lost in the process. They may not make it onto the writer's screen, let alone the reader's.

But they do add something - or at least I think they do - to the texture of the book. They haunt it like ghosts in the walls, things you can sense but can't quite touch.

The Gates of Chisinau . . .


So after all that, I ended up cutting this part out of the book*.

Damn.

But I'll think of this scene every time I think of the book. Promise.

* Whiplash 2: Black Wolf. Due out this November. Some of it takes place in Moldova, though not as much as originally planned.

More copy editing

Me: Slime bag - one word or two?
Her: It depends. Are you using it as a noun or a verb?

U-S-A



File under: Miracles are still possible in Haiti...

The real cure




You know you've been playing Borderlands too much when someone tries to talk to you about the new health bill and you say, "What's the big deal? Just give everyone a reinforced health shield and there'll be no problem."

What it's coming to . . .

Best use of polar bears and F-16s

. . . in a video spot ever.



Even if you're not into hockey, this bear's a keeper.

Speaking of copy editors

Today I used my book version of Webster's (rather than the program or on-line editions). It felt so . . . old-fashioned.

But in a good way.

Tomorrow: one of the bound atlases instead of Google Earth.

Byzantine

So if Webster says it's often not capped, should you or shouldn't you?

Where's the copy editor when you need her?

Espionage more than censorship


The news stories about Chinese hacking into Google and other American companies are mostly missing the point. While email accounts are being broken into - and have been for quite a while - the real goal is industrial espionage and theft of technology.

I realize a full list of the companies that have been attacked is hard to find, but even a simple search will show it includes Dow Chemical and Adobe. Those companies have little to do with dissent in China.

The media loves to write stories about hackers who break into computer systems for giggles or spread viruses as malicious pranks, they're the tip of the iceberg. There are any number of espionage programs underway on the internet every day. Some are being conducted by "private" criminal groups; a lot of others are government run or sponsored. Some are targeted; a lot are just generic let's see what we come up with probes. More than likely your computer - or rather its internet "address" - has been probed at least once in the past month.

And the probers weren't asking for sex.

Just numbers


JP Morgan 2009 bonuses = $26.9 billion

Subprime chargeoffs at the bank (in other words, foreclosed mortgages - i.e., people kicked out of their homes) = $568 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Put another way, paying ten percent less bonuses could have stopped all sub-prime foreclosures in 2009. Without doing the math, it's easy to guess that shaving another, oh, five percent off the bonuses would have stopped ALL foreclosures.*

Wealth transfer, indeed.

* Even if you're still employed and paying off your mortgage, the rash of foreclosures affect all homeowners, further depressing housing prices. I suppose if you don't own a house but want one, that is a good thing - assuming, of course, that you can convince a bank to lend you money.
And no, I don't suggest that JPMorgan just give those houses away, nor do I think it's a good idea to buy something you can't afford. But if you think the banks are doing any of us a favor, you're nuts.

You knew this, right?


Wondering why foreclosures are increasing when there's supposedly a government program to stop them?

Click here for one reason. (The short answer: contrary to popular belief, in some circumstances banks can make more money on the foreclosure than they can reworking the lone. It has to do with government guarantees and reimbursements.)

The link:

http://iamfacingforeclosure.com/blog/2009/12/01/anatomy-of-a-government-abetteded-fraud-why-indymaconewest-always-forecloses/

China? Really?

VeriSign's iDefense security lab has published a report with technical details about the recent cyberattack that hit Google and over 30 other companies. The iDefense researchers traced the attack back to its origin and also identified the command-and-control servers that were used to manage the malware.
. . .

Citing sources in the defense contracting and intelligence consulting community, the iDefense report unambiguously declares that the Chinese government was, in fact, behind the effort. The report also says that the malicious code was deployed in PDF files that were crafted to exploit a vulnerability in Adobe's software.

. . .

If the report's findings are correct, it suggest that the government of China has been engaged for months in a massive campaign of industrial espionage against US companies.

Shocking . . . not.

Full storty and links here.

The perils of grenades

All I seem to be doing these days is talking about grenades and explosions.

Today (well, almost - time blurs together when you're blowing things up) I had a long seminar with Larry about the fine points of shaped charges and large metal objects. Which ultimately led us to a change in a scene at the end of our next book.

Only when I was rewriting it did I realize that the changes meant we'd lose the thing I most enjoyed about that little bit - blowing up a hundred-year-old smokestack* that has haunted me since I was a kid.

Unfortunately, there's no way to do that now. It has more to do with the story than the shaped charge, but at this point I'd have to bend reality to get it in. And we can't quite get a way with it there.

Ah, well. Maybe next time.

*If you ever use the 59th St. Bridge in NYC, you've seen it. Yes, part of the next Red Dragon Rising will take place in NYC.

The banks

There's this:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01082010/transcript3.html

and this:

http://www.slate.com/id/2241251/?from=rss

They still don't get it.

But we have. In the usual place.

Truth as strange as fiction

Literally ripped from the headlines:

Allegations fly over Iranian scientist's assassination

Even for a country deep in political ­turmoil, the killing of Massoud Ali ­Mohammadi in Tehran today came as a shock. There have been arrests, disappearances and occasional shootings, but the manner of his death was as meticulous as it was disturbing.

Mohammadi was blown up outside his home in an smart northern suburb of Tehran by a remote-control bomb that had been attached to a motorcycle parked on the street. As his stunned neighbours cleared up the rubble they struggled to understand why a little-known ­academic would have fallen victim to such a highly professional assassination.

Mossad? Or the Iranians afraid he was going to Mossad (or the CIA)?

Either way, reminds me of a Deep Black plot . . . in fact, I think it was . . .

(If you're looking for background, this story's pretty good, at least as of now.)

Why should Americans have all the fun?



The Brits can blow stuff up, too.

(The missile is the Brimstone*. The small size and ability to volleyfire is truly impressive.)

Here's a url with action in Afghanistan:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/sep/26/brimstone-missile-raf-afghanistan


* Typo in the video head. Man, I hate when that happens.

More on that Ebook thing*


Someone commented to me that my $11.41 royalty on sales of nearly 40,000 "units" was really an example of a terrible contract.

They're right, but the truth is that the ebook clause in that contract is probably the best most authors can negotiate - I (and my coauthor) get fully fifty percent of the $$ the publisher gets. The current standard, at least in many boilerplate contracts, is 25 percent, and there are some publishers that that push 15. (We're talking about net. Yeah, this stuff is a lot more complicated up close.)

The problem is that the publisher negotiated a bad deal. (There are reasons for that I won't go into here.) Suffice to say, $11.41 isn't going to pay my mortgage - or theirs either. The ebook sales on this book over its lifetime won't pay for coffee service there for a day.

But hey, there's always foreign sales. Like in Japan . . .

Seventy-three "units" sold in Japan during that period. (Hard cover, I believe, though no one seems able to get me a copy.) My cut?

$15.17.

Love that exchange rate.

* Go back a day or two for the original post. And an update or clarification - the figure only covered a 3-month period. The next 3 months saw another 39,903 "units" sold, for $16.42. Keep this up, and I may be able to buy a box of cigars . . .

These guys are sick . . .



. . . but you gotta love them anyway.

The downside of Ebooks


The good news: the book sold 39,813 ebook copies in a six month period this year.

The bad news: my share came to $11.41.

True story.

We were deabting this . . .



Thing is, an airbag works, too.

And then there was the guy who had one impale him in the leg, but not explode. (Presumably, he was too close for it to arm, or maybe it was just defective. Not a serious defense strategy, that.)

New Doug Preston book out today. Check it out.

Sorry to miss the party, guys...

Disaster



So I'm working on the latest Dreamland/Whiplash, and just as I get to the part where things fall apart in Czech Republic, the coffeemaker dies.

The coffeemaker that was made in the Czech Republic.

Coincidence? I think not.

Even hangovers cost more in 2010


Bad news for our Russian friends . . .

Russia sets minimum price for vodka

The Russian government has set a minimum price for vodka that more than doubles the cost of the cheapest vodka on the market.
The minimum price of 89 rubles ($3) for a half liter of vodka (17 ounces) went into effect Friday, the start of the 12-day New Year's and Orthodox Christmas holiday, when alcohol consumption is at its highest.

Sorry, Ivan, Dimitri, Little Dog . . . But you guys should have been drinking the expensive stuff anyway.

Item: Khost Province suicide bomber kills self, eight Americans

The fight will continue . . .

More on that . . .

So now it turns out that the Christians In Action* were onto the Christmas plot . . . but were just a little , uh, behind the curve.

Some of my friends in Virginia are going to have a rough new year's.

Don't you wish things worked as well in real life as they do in books?

* As the Rogue Warrior likes to put it. . .

About Chisinau

Explain, Jim . . . or at least connect the dots . . .

I'm working on the next Dreamland Whiplash . . . A lot of the next Whiplash takes place in Moldova . . . Chisinau is the capital of the country . . .

. . . The "gates" in the picture are an apartment complex, or rather a pair of them . . . you see the "gates" as you come up from the south from the airport.

Why does Whiplash take place there? And what's the next book about?

Too soon to tell... but if you read Dreamland: Revolution, you'll get a headstart.

Chisinau, Moldova



Where I'm at . . .

The attack . . .

Amid all the uproar over the failed Christmas Day terror attack, one thing no one seems to be noting is that the incident is a goldmine of information for American intelligence agencies. Capturing the would-be mass murderer alive - all credit to the passengers and crew - is an intelligence coup, albeit one that no one's going to brag about.

It'd be nice to see it pay off with a midnight raid in Yemen in a few weeks, though the odds are that if it does we won't hear about it. I know a few SEALs whom I'm sure are literally salivating at the chance to get the call.

Meanwhile, the problems with Homeland Insecurity aren't exactly new; many people have been writing about them for years now. (Shameless plug department: Check out Rogue Warrior: Vengeance for a long but only partial list.) Fixing things will take . . . a lot more than I can outline here.

Fortunately, the terrorists are generally more psychotic than skilled. The media makes them out to be supermen; that's nonsense. This whole brouhaha is starting to look a little like Tet - the bad guys lost, but the media makes them look like winners.

I mean think about it. This asshole set his balls on fire, and the media is making him and the dickheads that set him up look like Osama bin Einsteins. Come on.

The Christmas Day plan, like a lot of terrorist plans, was seriously flawed. And here's another thing you won't hear: Part of the reason the plan didn't work - admittedly only part - has to do with the restrictions and procedures that make it slightly harder to blow up an airliner than it used to be. Take those away, and the outcome here would have been different.

Probably. Like I say, these guys aren't necessarily the most effective paranoid schizo crazies in the world, just the blood-thirstiest.

If we really want to do something about the problem, we have to attack it at the source, again and again. Hello Yemen, hello other armpit capitals of the world.

In the meantime, I'll be wearing freshly laundered boxers every time I travel.

More Iran



Tehran, perhaps a Basij militia (the thug police force) office.

Iran today

Why thriller writers don't do Xmas cards very well . . .

From the inside of the Christmas card I didn't send this year:

Care deeply
think kindly,
act gently,
and be at peace
with the world.

Then blow the whole
damn thing up.

Maybe for 2010.

Hope yours was a good one.

Say it ain't so!



Ah, Melkman, the outfield won't be the same without you . . .

Joke for today . . .

Iran Leader Says U.S. Forged Report

Reuters . . . [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad was asked by ABC News about a report in London's Times newspaper last week on what it said was a confidential Iranian technical document describing a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the part of a warhead that sets off an explosion.

"They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government," he told the U.S. network in an interview broadcast on Monday.

And when Israel blows up the plant where these are fabricated, the destruction will be a figment of Iran's imagination.