Discoveries

Roborats, TNG: John Horgan has an excellent article, The Myth of Mind Control in Discover magazine's October issue. Personally I'd love to see someone decode the human brain; I'm assuming, of course, we still have them. Also snagged a link to Puzzle Master Scott Kim's excellent website from this issue.

All in the Family: My granddad, a constable for Ann Arundle County, MD, was also a volunteer fire fighter in Riviera Beach for more than twenty years. On December 19, 1944, he was visiting someone at University of Maryland's University Hospital and personally put out a fire while in the building. I was not aware of any of this until last week. After I mentioned my admiration for the real fire fighters who inspired my last two JH books, Mom told me sent me copies of letters about all this that she's saved since his death in 1968.

Oh, That Landmark: Having a million books in print is a big landmark, according to all the other kids on my playground, and evidently, I'm very close. Unless the universe unexpectedly collapses, I should hit it sometime in March 2005. Go ahead, hate me. Thousands do. :)