On the road again: San Francisco, day 5 (and an appearance announcement)

The conference I'm attending is the Intel Developer Forum (aka IDF) at the Moscone Center. It's always an interesting event, and it makes enough news in techie circles that you can follow it easily enough online. That, though, is about all I can say about that.

Dinner tonight was at Oola, a fun little restaurant where the food was tasty and the portions on the large side.

I promised an announcement: In about fourteen months, on the weekend of November 4, 2011, I will be the Toastmaster at CONTRAflow, a new science fiction convention in (well, technically, near) New Orleans. I'm already looking forward to visiting New Orleans again!

Escaping Austin: The Failure

Friday morning, I awoke before eight a.m. to begin what I thought would be the usual trip home from Austin.  I turned on the TV and selected my usual channel (NBC, because I hate the sound of The Today Show, so having it on encourages me to hurry).

A weatherman was speaking loudly and urgently.  "Repeat, we have a confirmed tornado sighting and flash flooding all around the greater Austin area."

These are not words you want to hear first thing in the morning.

The good news was that the tornado had touched down well south of Austin.  The bad news was that it was moving north.

I considered going right back to bed, but if the storm faded and flights were on time, I would have lost a ticket we'd already purchased.  So, I showered, checked out, and walked into the rain to load the rental car.

Just that short time in the rain left me damp, but the rainfall was still mild, so I was heartened.

Off we went to the airport.

What followed was about 45 minutes of some of the most harrowing rain driving I've ever done.  I took the most direct route--the toll road, which features an 80-mph speed limit--and hoped for the best.  I started out able to sustain 70, but by the end the rain was a thick gray wall so dense I was barely able to hold 35.  Giant trucks going 80 slalomed by me, their drivers apparently willing to risk it all to reach their destinations sooner.  Sections of different lanes proved to be flooded with a foot or more of standing water.  My rental's lights were no match for the falling water, so I couldn't see more than a few car lengths ahead.

We did ultimately reach the airport safely, for which I was very grateful.  After getting soaked walking from the rental car facility into the terminal, we stood in a long line, got our boarding passes, and headed through security.  We'd left early enough that we still were 45 minutes from departure time.

That time, however, no longer mattered, because the flight had slipped from 10:45 a.m. to noon.

No problem.  When stuck in AUS, do the sensible thing:  Have Salt Lick lunch and some ice cream from Amy's.  We did, and both were delicious.

From there, we headed to the Admirals Club, where I learned they had delayed the flight again.  No problem; I can work in an Admirals Club.

I settled into a chair just in time to hear the announcement that American had canceled our flight.

I then commenced a ritual that dominated the next many hours:  Queue up.  Wait in a slow line.  Get a new flight and new boarding passes.  Settle down to work.  Hear the next cancellation announcement.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

At this point, the Admirals Club team delivered the news that prospects for anyone's departure had turned grim.  It seems, as best I could gather, that the tornado's path had changed so that it was headed toward the airport's tower.  They consequently and sensibly evacuated the tower.  The tower then flooded, so that by the time the tornado was no longer a tornado and no longer headed for the tower, no one could get into the tower.

Then the ramps to the runways flooded.

At this point, the Admirals Club folks announced that the airport would be closed for departures until at least three o'clock.

At least I then got some work done.

Sometime after three, they canceled my last flight, I did the queue/wait dance, and I learned that I was not going home that day.  Instead, I was on an eight a.m. flight the next day.

I'd been coordinating with Gina back in the office, so she got us rooms in a great downtown hotel (the Westin) and a rental car.

We collected our luggage, walked to the rental car center, and learned we had no car yet.  No people were on staff to help, because, as we later learned, most of their staff had called to say they would not be able to make it to work.

We found a young man who was in his fourteenth hour of work but who was still running hard and being extraordinarily pleasant.  He got us a car, the confirming email hit my phone, and off to the car--which was, of course, on the far side of the facility--we went.

I had just opened the car's trunk when a wild-eyed man ran at me, waving a contract, screaming, "That's my car!"  I also had an email contract for the car, but he looked crazier than I felt, so I told him by all means to take the car.  He immediately calmed and was polite and grateful.

The same young man who had helped us before happened to witness this exchange, so he pulled a car from a line, drove it over to us, and then arranged for the contract to be waiting by the time we reached the exit.

That dude deserves a bonus.  I wish I'd caught his name, but his badge had blown off.

At the checkout line, the guy helping us said, "I just clean the cars.  I don't know how to use this thing, so this'll take a while.  Me and this other guy are the only ones here."

The tablet rebooted.  Our helper ran to the other person on duty--the omnipresent helpful young man--and learned how to log on and to check us out.

We exited the airport, drove through a far milder but still annoying rain, and eventually reached the Westin.  I settled down to work not quite nine hours after I'd left my previous hotel room.

Sometimes, you just don't get to leave town.

Those announcements I mentioned

Did you think I'd forgotten?

Neither of these is earth-shattering, but both will, I think, be fun for me and for other readers.

Announcement #1: I've signed the contracts for my first work in the urban fantasy area. I'm entering this realm cautiously: I'll be editing for Baen an original anthology, The Wild Side (think Lou Reed singing, "Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side"), of urban fantasy stories with a racy edge. This book is likely to push Baen's boundaries a bit, and it will definitely be new ground for me. I will be writing a story for the book, and my goal is to make that piece serve as the starting point for a novel. That said, the story will, of course, stand alone as a complete work.

Announcement #2: David Drake and I will be editing a reprint anthology, The Baen Big Book of Pulp SF Adventures. Every noun and adjective in that working title is important:

* Baen, not only because it's the publisher but also because of the emphasis on story values the company represents

* Big, because we're aiming for 150K to 200K words

* Pulp, because that's where we're going for source materials (though for those truly into old magazines I should note we may stretch the definition a bit and include tales from digests and bedsheets)

* SF, because we're sticking to that category

* Adventures, because that's the emphasis of this volume

If the book does well--unlikely, but we can hope--then other collections could always follow.

I don't have dates for either of these books yet, but we have about eleven months to finish them, give or take. I'm looking forward to them!

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENTBuy a book, help save a child in war

I've been teasing for a while that I had a big announcement to make. This is it. I'll start with the simplest statement of it:

I'm donating every cent I receive (including the advance) from the sale of copies of the Children No More hardcover to help rehabilitate children in the war. To that end, I'm partnering with Falling Whistles.

Now, a little background.

Back in February, on the first day of TEDActive, during a break in the sessions, I realized that I wanted to do more than just participate in conversations about improving the world; I wanted to do something, something potentially large. Though none of the sessions were about child soldiers, Children No More is--and I was deep into the third pass of it at that point. The novel is, I believe, a page-turner of a good story, as it should be, but it is also at another level a discussion of some of the challenges of rehabilitating and reintegrating child soldiers.

Though I have never been a child in war, this topic is near and dear to my heart. For more on why, let me quote from my own afterword to Children No More.

The use of children as soldiers is one of those topics that few people like to discuss. Depending on what you read and watch, you can go a very long time without bumping into it. Do a Web search on the subject, however, and you’ll find that children are fighting and dying every day. Hard numbers are, as you might expect, difficult to come by, but groups such as The International Rescue Committee (www.theirc.org) estimate about 300,000 boys and girls are involved today in this horrific practice.

I find this deeply disturbing. I think everyone should.

I understand that in the catalog of the world’s woes, a cause with only a few hundred thousand sufferers may seem like a small thing. Numerically, it certainly falls way below hunger, disease, poverty, and many other vital issues humanity must address. But these are children, children whom adults are turning into soldiers, and that is simply wrong.

I must confess to a special connection to this cause because of personal experience—not, I hasten to note, as a child soldier. I have never experienced anything as bad as what these boys and girls undergo.

I did, however, spend three years in a youth group that trained young boys to be soldiers. The group’s intentions were good: To use military conventions and structures to teach discipline, fitness, teamwork, and many other valuable lessons. It certainly accomplished many of those goals with me.

The year I joined, however, was 1965, and war was ramping up in Viet Nam. I was ten years old. On my first day, an active soldier on leave showed up and acted as our drill sergeant. That day, I saw my first—but not my last—necklace of human ears and learned the ethics of collecting them. That afternoon, I stood at attention in the hot Florida sun while this grown man screamed at me and, when I cried, punched me in the stomach so hard that I fell to the ground and threw up. He put his boot on my head and ground the side of my face into my vomit.

That was not the worst day I had in those three years. It wasn’t even close.

My worst days with that group were nothing compared to what the child soldiers endure. Nothing.

That day in Palm Springs, I realized that I didn't need to rely on anyone else--not my publisher, not the bookstores, not anyone--to do this. I just had to do it.

Of course, that didn't mean I had to do it stupidly, or on a small scale.

So, I talked with Publisher Toni, who was supportive. Gina and I started researching charities who help child soldiers and other children in war. After a few months of conversations and negotiations, we agreed to partner with the fine folks at Falling Whistles, people who work on this cause every day.

A small group of friends and co-workers agreed to lend their talents to the cause. You'll see the results of their labor over the next two months. The Falling Whistles people are going to be doing a lot of promotional work as well; more on that later.

Some of our activities are already starting to appear:

* A placeholder Web site, childrennomore.com, is already up. We'll be turning it into a far richer site over the next few weeks.

* Publisher Toni let us flag the cause on the back of the book, which now includes a nifty graphic and some text about what we're doing.

* A Flash ad for Children No More is running for all of June on the Publishers Weekly Web site. That ad notes the donation.

Many more bits of promotion, including a press release, will follow soon.

My goal is simple: To raise as much money as possible for this great cause by selling as many hardbacks as possible--and keeping none of the proceeds.

I hope to do it by making gift-giving painless--no, not painless, enjoyable. You don't have to pay anything extra to get the book; in fact, Publisher Toni has made it the cheapest of my hardback novels ever. All you have to do is buy it, have a good read, and in the process you'll be doing a good deed.

Of course, if you'd like to do more, tell your friends. Spread the word. If you really want to work on this cause, we'd love to have you join our little band. Email me via the form on the Web site and let me know your ideas.

As Sarah said tonight, when we were discussing possible tag lines for this simple process,

Lose yourself in another world,
and help save a child in this one.

Remember that big announcement I promised?

No, I can't make it yet, but very soon--this coming week, I hope.

I'm excited.

More soon.

On the road again: World Fantasy Con, Washington, D.C., day 4

Today the convention held its annual banquet and announcement of the winners of this year's World Fantasy Awards.  I enjoyed the ceremony, which is one of the more important yearly gatherings of the SF&F clan.  The food was even decent, which is both a bonus and a surprise at a banquet.

I worked for a time, chatted with some friends, worked some more, and then a small group of us headed off to see Interstellar.  I'll write a full review of it later--I now owe you two long entries--but the bottom line is that I very much enjoyed it.

I have to get up at six a.m., so I'm heading offline now. 

When I next write, I'll be in Portland, OR!

On the road again: Balticon, day 7

After much driving, including a detour that took us off I-85 for half an hour, I'm home. (My theory on the detour is that a secret government convoy was transporting an alien leader to the White House for a conference with President Obama when a terrorist group kidnapped the alien--but that's just one possibility.)

Simply settling in and dealing with the accumulated mail and so on has taken most of the evening, so I'm going to keep this short. Tomorrow, I hope to write up the big announcement.

Until then, enjoy a little Southside Johnny and the Boss.

On the road again: Austin, day 1

For quite a while, today's travels looked to be as perfect as they could be.

Rain was pattering the skylights and darkening the world when I awoke, so I grabbed an extra fifteen minutes of sleep--quite a luxury for me. I still made the airport in plenty of time without rushing. Awaiting me were upgrades on both legs.

Work in the Admiral's Club went well.

Work on the plane went well, thanks to the available bandwidth.

In DFW, I grabbed a Red Mango parfait to accompany my earlier salad as lunch.

My arrival gate was only two gates from my departure area.

As I was waiting to board the plane to Austin--a plane that had arrived early--and finishing my Red Mango, I said to myself that one could not ask for better business travel.

Mistake.

As I was throwing away the cup, the announcement came over the loudspeakers: Our plane had "maintenance issues" that they could not quickly repair. We all had to hustle to a new gate, one two terminals away, to board a new plane.

You don't appreciate how many people are on a plane until you share an escalator and an airport tram with them.

I boarded, went to my seat--a window, but in first class, so I couldn't complain.

The person in the aisle seat appeared. She was tall, 5'11" or so, and she was large, at least 350 pounds, probably more. She was wearing a t-shirt stretched so tight you could bounce coins off it and low-rise jeans.

Not my problem, of course. I just read my book--a new Lee Child, another treat--and worked.

After the short flight and as we were preparing to leave, she stood but had to stay stooped because the aisle was crowded. This act exposed about four inches of butt crack. When she started to move forward, I turned toward the aisle and leaned forward to follow her. She straightened a bit, which exposed another few inches of butt crack, and then stumbled and fell backward slightly...

...wedging my nose momentarily into that vast expanse of butt crack.

She tittered, apologized, and left.

I stopped in the nearest airport bathroom and scrubbed my nose with soap.

When I made it to the rental car window, they were out of cars. They proposed to give me a minivan, but I am traveling alone and did not want a van. After some discussion, they found me an alternative, a car they described only as smaller.

Mind you, I'm in Texas, where bigger is better, so of course this is the rental car I ended up driving.


A Fiat! Really?

Yes.

This POS reeks of new car smell but at the same time stinks of impending decay. Driving it is like dating a zombie spackled with air-brush make-up. The car itself looks like the bastard child of a 1967 Oldsmobile and a first-gen Mini Cooper, but uglier.

Kyle and I proudly drove it to the County Line by the Lake, where the day was healed by the power of barbecue and then perfected by Amy's ice cream.

I am grateful that neither exists in Raleigh, because I couldn't afford the weight gain.

Two moments in a long travel day

Sitting on the increasingly hot plane today, we received an unpleasant announcement from the pilot: the airplane had an offline AP, which meant that its air conditioning wouldn't work until the engines were running. So, of course, we sat on the tarmac for quite a while, stewing in our own juices.

Eventually, the plane took off, and cold, dry air flooded into the moist, hot space.

Click an image to see a larger version.

If you look closely at the vents, you'll see the mist that rolled across the upper walls of the plane cabin. I loved watching it--though not as much as I loved the cold air.

Tonight, in a break from work, I made my usual run downtown for dinner at Cooper's BBQ.

I sampled the brisket, the sausage, a few bites of steak, and part of a beef rib, as well as the mac-and-cheese. All of it was delicious, though the brisket's edges were entirely too salty, a rare misstep for Cooper's.

Most of the day went to work, which is still eating my time, so back to it.

Jon & Lobo will return

When I was young, I was a huge fan of the James Bond movies. (I still am.) When each movie ended, I would sit in the theater as the credits scrolled and anxiously await the magic moment when the screen would light up with the words

James Bond will return in

As long-time readers of this blog will know, my contract for the Jon & Lobo series ended with Children No More. You may also remember that I am far from done with the series; CNM was book four, and my current rough outline requires about eighteen books to complete.

I'm happy to be able to announce that Publisher Toni and I have agreed to terms on a new three-book contract, the first of which will be another Jon & Lobo book. (The others may, too, or not--we haven't worried about that yet.) I owe it next May, and you should be able to buy it about the first of November, 2011--in time for the holiday gift-giving season!

I know that's a bit more than a year between the books, which is not perfect, but it's the best I could manage.

I'm psyched to write the next one and already know its basics. I hope you're happy at the prospect of getting more Jon & Lobo stories.

Oh, yeah: This is not the big announcement I mentioned yesterday. That will follow.

But not today.

Up In the Air

A group of us headed out Wednesday to see Avatar in Dolby 3D. For some of us, it was to be the second viewing; for others, the first. When I was four from the front of the ticket line, a sold-out announcement blasted over the loudspeakers.

Rather than turn around and go home, we chose the movie that was both interesting to us and at about the same showtime: Up In the Air. I'd wanted to see it, but for no particular reason I still entered it with relatively low expectations.

I left having liked it very much indeed. I found myself identifying far too much with some of Clooney's travel patterns, something I suspect most frequent fliers will do. Though he occasionally smirked when he should not have done so, overall his performance was wonderful and moving.

Vera Farmiga, as Alex, a woman for whom Clooney falls, was a revelation to me: sexy and hot and intelligent and incredibly attractive in a wonderful performance worthy of all the possible supporting actress nominations. I wasn't familiar with her work before, but I will watch for her now.

The movie's biggest fault was its ending, which was not satisfying precisely because it could not be given the characters involved. I've talked with friends who said they felt Clooney's character did not learn anything, but after much thought I've decided that I disagree with them. He did learn, and he was a different man, at least inside, at the end--or so, perhaps, I choose to believe.

I definitely recommend this one, and I'll be surprised if Clooney and Farmiga don't earn Oscar nominations (they're already up for the Golden Globes).

Why does that man have such a goofy expression?

Because he finished Children No More, of course!

Okay, enough talking about myself in the third person. I hate that crap.

Anyway, this morning, I put the final touches on the book and sent it off to Publisher Toni.

Man, am I tired. This was a very hard book, but I believe the work was worth it. I also suspect this is the best thing I've ever written by a fair bit, though of course I can never be sure, and what is best for each of us is highly variable.

I then spent a considerable amount of time fighting the massive hair creature that had grown on my face. I had gotten far hairier than I had realized.

I'm happy to report that I was ultimately victorious, and the hair beast is no more.

For those interested, here are a few fun facts about Children No More:

* The complete manuscript--cover page, dedication, novel, afterword, acknowledgments, about the author--weighed in at a tasty 121,940 words.

* That makes it my second longest book, a good 4K words longer than Slanted Jack but about 13K words shorter than Overthrowing Heaven.

* This is the first book to include an afterword. I felt it was necessary.

* Five--count 'em, five!--characters from past novels return in this one.

* It took me a bit over fourteen months of plotting and writing, by far the longest time of any of my books.

That's enough for now.

I'll get to the big announcement sometime in the next month or so. Please believe me that on this one I'm not teasing; there are good reasons for the delay. I think, though, that you'll find it worth the wait.

Now, on to the new material for Jump Gate Twist!

Some Jon and Lobo news

I've been working hard to stop myself from talking about works in progress, because I believe that doing so is one of the ways I create crazy noise in my head. (Many of my friends disagree with this decision, but so it goes.) Despite that inclination, I thought it might be nice to give you two fun facts about the next book, the fifth in the series.

First, it now seems fairly certain that it will appear in February, 2012. I know that's a long time--18 months--between books, but I got busy with some other stuff, including editing and writing an original story for The Wild Side. That anthology, with my contribution, "The Long Dark Night of Diego Chan," will appear this coming summer, as I've noted in earlier posts, so you'll at least have a nice chunk of new fiction from me in 2011.

Next, after more than than the usual amount of thought on the topic, I finally settled on a title for the novel, one that makes me happy because it works on multiple levels.

No, I won't tell you what those levels are; you'll just have to read the book.

So, in true James Bond style, I will close with this end-of-the-credits announcement:

Jon and Lobo will return in

No Going Back

The all-time worst photo of me

appeared in the July issue of Locus alongside the announcement of One Jump Ahead winning the Compton Crook award. Being a glutton for punishment, I showed the photo to everyone at home when I saw it. I felt the love:

"You look like the Compton Care Bear."

"Give that man a purple carnation."

"Oh my God!"

"It's not that bad, it's [breaks down laughing and snorting and finally runs away]"

You get the idea.

To bookend my day, I got up this morning at 5:15 a.m. after a nearly useless two hours in bed, and took Kyle to the airport. Along the way, we spotted a kitten eating some roadkill. Unfortunately, we spotted the kitten too late to swerve, so I went over it and feared I had killed it. After I dropped off Kyle, I retraced my route, pulled over at the scene of the possible crime, and checked the whole area for traces of ex-kitten. To my great relief, I had not killed the kitten--and it had even managed to take the last of the roadkill with it. One great big softie, yes I am.

On the road again: Spain, day 8

Note to self: Always carry a reliable alarm clock, maybe two, to international locations. Why? Because our room lacked a single visible clock. Thus, I had to rely on the hotel for an early morning wake-up call. Never mind that the hotel had been completely reliable in all previous such calls; I'm too paranoid to trust anything I don't control the night before a plane. Take that fact, add too much late-night caffeine, and mix with a full measure of my usual nighttime demons, and you have a sure-fire no-sleep cocktail. I might have gotten an hour of slumber, but I doubt it was that much.

So, morning came entirely too early, and with it the long transit process began. Everything proceeded as one would expect, though I was amazed to find the same woman who always seems to be in the check-in line in front of me, her travel woes requiring infinite explanation, to be in Barcelona as well as U.S. airports.

The least pleasant surprise of the morning was the additional security for U.S. passengers: A man with almost no English searched me manually (and I must say was rather gentle, perhaps too much so; did he wink?), and then completely unpacked my briefcase. This latter act may not sound like much, but that would be only because you've never seen how much I carry in my briefcase.

I was never so happy to have allowed the full three hours in the airport for an international flight.

I'm on the plane now, working after a brief doze. No airplane bandwidth is on offer on American's transatlantic flights, and I consider that to be a great loss. Still, it is not anything I can affect, so I will deal with the accumulated work later.

Every time I get to fly First Class, which we're doing this trip thanks to my many accumulated frequent flier miles, I wish again that I was wealthy enough to do this all the time.

No flight status, however, will save you from a late plane, an altered departure time, and huge lines at Immigration. We had all of those, which led to a lot of fast, sweaty walks and frustrating waits in queues. By the time our plane from Barcelona landed, our initial two-hour window to take-off was down to 90 minutes. We hit every kind of delay, including bad information from airline officials, but we still made it to our plane before they closed the door.

As frequent fliers will guess, what happened next was both frustrating and common: an announcement that we'd have to sit on the tarmac for quite a while due to a taxiing delay.

Still, when the plane leapt into the air, we were on it, and that's what counts in the end.

We arrived smelling like 23 hours of baked ass, but long showers--in my case, first hot and then several cold minutes to wake me fully--fixed that.

My plans for the evening are simple: a little food, a little socializing, a little work (which all too frequently turns into a ton of work), and then a lot of sleep.

I shall enjoy my 37 hours at home.

Good on you, Tesla

I was happy to read this announcement from Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, which Lynn brought to my attention.  Though the move is neither entirely altruistic--see this analysis for more on why--nor a surrender of control--"Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology."--it is still a good move for the world.  We need more electric, zero-emissions vehicles, and Tesla's action may help us reach that goal.

I don't expect to see a flood of EVs, but I am hoping this will help other companies create more of them.

I also like it when a company does something that both makes good business sense and helps the world.  In this case, Tesla may well be trying to create a bigger market for the batteries it will one day produce, but in doing so it is helping others.

Well done, Tesla.

In case I forget later

please remind me, when the time is right, to give you the details on the following cool things:

* a nifty announcement about Children No More. I mentioned this one before, but it is, if I may say so myself, something genuinely good that you don't see every day.

* a cool new thing that will appear in Jump Gate Twist (and, no, I'm not just talking the introductions or the amazing John Picacio cover)

What, me tease?

Never.

In the meantime, because The Hold Steady is bringing out a new album in early May, I'm sure you'll want to join me in making sure we're current on all their music. There's no place like this song to start. Enjoy.

Buy a shirt. Start a conversation. Change the world.

I’ve been teasing for a while now that today I would announce one of the odder things I’ve done. I’m happy to deliver on that promise by introducing you to Limit Your Greed (formally LYG, LLC), a new company that my business partner, Bill Catchings and I are starting. You can visit its site here.

As friends and long-time readers know, Bill and I are the founders and co-owners of Principled Technologies, Inc. PT is the leading fact-based marketing and learning services provider, but it is also — and always has been — a social experiment.  Bill and I started PT in part to see if it was possible to build a business that follows very different principles from traditional businesses and yet still does well and makes a profit.

With PT now in its 15th year, we’re happy to report that the experiment is a success. You can run a business very differently and still do well.

Now, we want to take that lesson to a broader audience—in fact, to everyone—and try to change the world. We want to do so by persuading business owners and executives to choose to do something both simple and radical: to take less so that others can have more. To limit their greed.

Our goal is not new government legislation; instead, we’re hoping to help start a movement in which folks choose to build different businesses and help make the world better for a lot of people.

One way in which we hope to do that is by selling a book, Limit Your Greed, which we’re still working on but should finish soon.

Another is today’s announcement.

As the site says, “Philosophically, LYG is a movement. Practically, it’s a clothing company.”

The idea is simple: Buy shirts that contain challenging and conversation-worthy slogans. The first is “Limit your greed.” Another is “Nobody wins unless everyone wins.” Each shirt comes with talking points. When someone asks what your shirt means, you have a chance to show them a better way for businesses large and small to behave.

I don’t want to repeat all of the material on the site, so let me instead point you to its Practice page for answers to the questions about how to make this happen.

Of course, you could just buy the shirts because they’re cool—and they are. They’re made in North Carolina, where we’re based, from cotton grown here, and they’re soft and lovely to the touch. The designs are nifty, both visually appealing and conversation-worthy.

You could also buy the shirts in the hopes LYG makes a profit, because if it does, half of all profits will go to charity.

What we most hope, though, is that you will buy the shirts—Get ‘em all! Collect the whole set!—and help us change the world.

I have to warn you that you can’t buy the shirts quite yet. That’s intentional. Bill and I will be wearing one of these shirts each day at TED, which we’re attending this week. To help make sure no one felt we were flogging products—a TED no-no we take seriously—we didn’t want them available for sale yet.

So no, we’re not wearing the shirts at TED to sell them. We’re wearing them to do what we hope you will join us in doing: start conversations, and change the world.

I promised odd, and I think that me going into the movement and clothing business is odd enough to make that promise real.

Odd or not, though, I hope you join us in this movement. Together, we can make the world better.

On the road again: TEDActive, Whistler, day 4

We'll start again with the health report:  I'm not dead yet.  I'm also not well yet.  Each day, I seem to be getting a tiny bit better, so I'm going to hope that trend continues.

Now, on to the conference.

Each day, I've said I was going to write only a short piece, and each day, I've failed to do that.  Tonight, I intend to stick to that goal and hit only some highlights of the day.

The thing is, though, at TED there are a lot of highlights.

After trying to come on first and then encountering technical difficulties, Rick Ledgett, Deputy Director of the NSA, ended the morning session with a long video conversation with Chris Anderson.  Ledgett did his best to answer Anderson's questions, but to my taste he kept coming across as the not entirely trustworthy head of a major intelligence operation--the latter of which, of course, he is.  I doubt he changed anyone's mind on the Snowden issues, but I have to applaud him to joining the discussion at TED.

Earlier in that session, I enjoyed Keren Elazari's defense of the positive role hackers can and often do play in world of the Internet. 

David Epstein's discussion of what has really changed in sports and how much technology is shaping sports records was consistently fascinating.  I am definitely going to pick up his book, The Sports Gene.

Science writer Ed Yong shared with us his passion for parasites, and I learned a great deal. 

In a short talk, Seth Godin argued that we should learn not to hold anything back, at least on occasion. 

A high point of the afternoon was a roundtable discussion, which Kelly and Rives hosted on the stage here in Whistler, with six TED speakers:  Ron Finley, TED Prize winner Charmian Gooch, Raghava KK, Chris Kluwe, Geena Rocerco, and Stefan Sagmeister.

Click on an image to see a larger version.

As it turns out, Sagmeister had originally planned to give his TED talk this week on the importance of beauty but decided to talk instead about the TED intros he had designed.  The audience's applause persuaded him to give us the talk, which left me with a lot to consider.  

The final session of the day opened with Sara Lewis teaching us just how fascinating fireflies really are. 

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins recited two poems from dogs.  The one in the voice of a dog talking the master who had just put him to sleep was lovely, angry, and touching. 

In an entertaining and frequently funny talk, xkcd creator Randall Munroe told us about the questions he gets and the energy he puts into answering some of them.

Andrew Connolly talked a bit about the big-data problems the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will bring us--but with those problems will come amazing pictures of the universe.

Continuing the space theme, in one of the more endearing presentations, Will Marshall, a co-founder of Planet Labs, talked about the cheap imaging satellites his company was launching and the quality and quantity of data those satellites will soon make available to us all.  I love his ambition and mission, but at no point in the talk could I figure out how the company would make money.

Director Louie Schwartzberg showed bits from his 3D IMAX film, Mysteries of the Unseen World.  I definitely want to see this one, ideally in IMAX.

The last act of today was the announcement by XPRIZE co-founder Peter Diamandis and Chris Anderson of the new A.I. XPRIZE, presented by TED.  The challenge is to have an A.I. come on stage (in any way) at TED and give a talk that earns a standing ovation.  The TED community will help create the rules for the talk.  I look forward to seeing this effort play out. 

In the evening, for the first time since arriving at the hotel, I went outside.  I've been avoiding doing that because of my health, but I had to do it to attend tonight's celebration dinner at the top of the mountain.

Did I mention it's beautiful here?  Check out the ski slope that ends at the hotel.

I loved this stream, which we crossed on foot on a wooden bridge.

We rode in gondola cars in groups of six up the mountain for a dinner and party. 

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman came over from TED in Vancouver to do a short, post-dinner show for us. Palmer started by joining a local cover band in the Violent Femmes' "Blister In the Sun," a song I quite like.

Palmer sang a few songs, one without a mic.

Gaiman read a very short story from his Blackberry calendar project; he chose the tale for October.

On the gondola ride down, the town spread out before us like a magic village.

Another fine TED day.

On the road again: Balticon, day 1

Balticon doesn't start in earnest until Friday, but my trip this time will run Wednesday to late Tuesday. After work today, we headed north by car, both to avoid the heavier traffic of Thursday and to minimize my offline time. In general, I have to call this travel strategy a success, but it's probably good only for night-owls.

When I arrived, I was already mostly caught up on work email thanks to my 3G iPad's ability to let me do email while in the car. (No, I didn't do email when I was driving, tempting as that prospect was.)

We stopped at the Silver Diner at Potomac Mills for a late-ish breakfast-for-dinner meal. I quite enjoyed myself, particularly because someone cranked up Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons twice on the jukebox. I have no excuse for that weakness, but I do enjoy some Frankie now and again. I suspect the sight of me lip-synching "Sherry" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" is, however, enough to put most people off their feed.

Over the next few days, I plan to give you a look at the new show shirt, tell you the big news, report on some strange art, and tell you about the con.

Did I mention I'll make the big announcement?

For now, though, it's back to work!