Dear NSA, GCHQ, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other government agencies and multinational corporations that are data-gathering and spying on us: Gosh, you must be tired! All those texts and email messages and tweets to read, phone calls to monitor, webcam...
“Trump’s butler, reputedly one of the people closest to the business mogul (yes, a modern presidential candidate actually has a butler), posted Facebook rants urging the lynching of President Obama.” – from “Make America hate again” by Sasha Abramsky, New Statesman,...
Put brown rice on to cook. Start chopping onions for stir-fry. Sniffle. (Allergies.) Get tissue to blow nose. Ponder existence of friends who don't keep a box of tissues in every room. Decide they must have superpowers undreamt of by mere mortals such as self. Start...
Sometimes I read too many Golden Age mystery novels and start writing them myself. And whoops, I did it again! In Scotland. Setting: Hamish MacHaggis’s estate in Glencambell, in the Highlands. Occasion: a house party. Guests are Lord and Lady Scrymshawe, a...
When people ask about my “writing process,” I long to give them the kind of answers I've heard from other writers. Things like, “I rise before dawn, eat a slice of whole-wheat bread with organic fig jam, and write for two hours. Then I take up my duties as a state...
“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency may temporarily resume its once-secret program that systematically collects records of Americans’ domestic phone calls in bulk.” – New York Times, June 30, 2015 [Dials the...