Well, Analog rejected "Shepherds". So now it goes to Asimov's. Haven't decided where to send "Public Assistance". If I just go with my established order I should send it to Analog now. I think I might send it to Interzone instead. Oh well. This is the business.

Pondering the current schism in the world between faith and science. I found myself wishing yesterday that there could be a means to separate those who believe in each with some sort of concrete border like the Berlin Wall. I don't want to deal with them, they don't want to deal with me, fine, you go there, we'll go here, and we'll each make our own perfect worlds. Each of us will think we're living in perfectly ordered, rational, logical societies and everybody will be happy. I won't have to rail against anyone's ignorance and you won't have to tell me I'm a godless heathen. "The meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us will go to the stars."

They go on and on about eternity, so why are they afraid of the future?

I've got to die someday. I just don't want to do it until I've seen Earth from orbit.

Another thought for those few days off: to go down to Huntsville.

Pondering abnormal orbital mechanics ... we can have trojan planets and moons, but can you have three instead of two? I'd like to see a computer model of that. And imagine living on one of them. Oy!

(sorry, may have used a term you're not familiar with there. A trojan planet system is where you have two planets (or moons) that are both on the same orbit, but both of them are orbiting around a common center that is moving along that orbit. Not like us and the Moon, where Earth is moving in its orbit and the Moon is orbiting around us. The other way, where the planets/moons are spinning equally together like a yin-yang symbol, the center of which is the actual orbit.)

(ye gads, can you imagine the tidal forces?)