Private Mars Rocket II

The Night Prophet by Joanne E. Zienty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I purchased my copy of this book from the author at a book fair. I've read the previous book in the series so I was very interested in seeing where she took the story next.

The book opens with Angel and her toddler, Lark, on the run in a future version of rural Wisconsin. Angel is approached by a stranger offering that which she does not want, namely to expand on her act of rebellion against the Galt Corporation. She's eventually persuaded, and well, things get interesting.

Zienty's prose is dense, but maybe I'm getting used to it because this was a quicker read. Overall, a very strong second entry in the series.



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Much like ole' Doc Frankenstein, we've created a monster: A long read - the short version is that we (the US) repeatedly stuck our nose into Iran's domestic affairs, thus creating the monster we now face.

Here's a quick review of Bixby Bluebottle & The Wizards' Bane:

Full disclosure: I am a member of the author's writing group and read this in draft. Having said that, I found this a delightful book. It's YA and aimed at the age group 10 to 16, but kids at heart can enjoy it too!

I'm not obsessed about Mars - I can stop thinking about it at any time. I just don't want to. (umm) An interesting article on a potential problem - low level radiation. (Posted here so I can find it later.)

MAGA remains stuck on stupid. Herewith, two examples.

1) Greenland:

Comes news today that Denmark sent troops to Greenland in January with orders to (among other things) blow up runways to prevent an American invasion. The idiots in MAGA (but I repeat myself) said "Denmark is telling us they don’t understand how aircraft carriers work." My reply. "it’s extremely obvious who’s operated (or tried to operate) ships in the North Atlantic in January and who has not.

I was part of a carrier battlegroup operating off of the coast of Maine in January. During a 5-day exercise, the carrier was only able to launch and recover planes twice due to weather. Both times, the cruiser escorts were not able to keep station due to weather. (Carrier would turn into the wind, slow to 5 knots, and the cruisers had to break off.) The carrier spent a full day just de-icing the deck after sitting out the storm.

The coast of Greenland in January is ice-bound. No way for amphibs to make a landing and again due to weather flight ops are challenging."

2) ICE Concentration Warehouses:

ICE was in the news recently trying to buy warehouses to use as concentration camps for illegal immigrants. A lot of local (conservative, Republican) governments are pushing back. The reason? A warehouse may have physical room for a thousand or so prisoners, but the water and sewer supply were sized to support the bathroom breaks of a dozen or so workers. There's simply not enough water in or sewer out to support the daily living needs of a large population.

We are being ruled by stupid people.

Object permanence is the understanding that whether an object can be sensed has no effect on whether it continues to exist. In humans, at least, it's something we have to learn - we're not born with it.

Evidence that MAGA has not yet developed object permanence:

1) Whatever happened to that hospital ship Trump was going to send to Greenland? (Answer: One's in drydock and the other's on the way to a drydock on the US west coast.)

2) Epstein files anybody?

3) Didn't we like totally destroy Iran's military twice now? If so, why do we need NATO to help open the Straits of Hormuz?

4) Regarding item #3, wasn't Trump telling everybody how weak and useless NATO was just a month ago?

Evidence that MAGA (or individual MAGA-tians) MAY yet develop object permanence:

1) Joe Kent, the former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He's no prize, but he's a Trump appointee who resigned because he (correctly) noted that the current war with Iran was at the behest of and for the benefit of Israel, not the US.

2) Marjorie Taylor Green - again no prize, but she resigned after correctly noting that Trump did not give a damn about Epstein and was letting Israel run US foreign policy to their benefit, not ours.

There's a clip making the rounds in which Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones) says, "I'm a slow learner, it's true. But I learn." Hopefully, MAGA can take a note from Sansa Stark.

I find Trump to be exhausting. The constant twists and turns of "policy" drive me nuts. Example:

1) Go to war with Iran, apparently because Israel thinks it's a good idea.
2) Iran starts blowing our shit up because that's what you do when you're at war.
3) Oil prices spike because some of that shit what's blowing up is oil or the infrastructure needed to move it.
4) Trump says "we'll protect oil" (from the threat we created).
5) Oil money-people call bullshit, largely because they know how hard it would be to provide said protection.
6) Gas prices go up.
7) Now Trump is hinting that he'll just declare victory and go home. I guess that's easy if you have no idea why you went to war in the first damn place.

The problem is that Iran is now being led by the son of the guy we killed. Oh, we also killed his wife and a son. So now your gas prices depend on his charity.

Here's a quick thought on the sinking of the Iranian frigate Dena as it relates to the US Navy's frigate program. One of the drivers of the latest plan to Get More Ships Yesterday is the FF(X), which is basically a modestly-up-gunned Coast Guard cutter. The theory is that these ships can go operate in "low threat" environments, freeing up more-capable ships to operate in "high threat" environments.

Well, from the perspective of what's left of the Iranian Navy, IRIS Dena was operating in a very low-threat environment, namely the east coast of India, returning from an exercise hosted by India. I'll leave others to argue about the legality of the US attack (I could argue either way) but clearly, "low threat" environments can quickly become "high threat." Or, if you paint it gray, somebody may just take a shot at it.

On the occasion of yet another episode of "let's bomb Iran" I have thoughts.

* Iran is a bad actor (to say the least) and a general problem for the world.

* The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a wart on the ass of progress and will not be missed.

* This war is illegal. Back in the day, kings used to start wars for their own gain and then demand that their people support said wars.

* We have no apparent plan for how to end it.

* I have no confidence in the current leadership to not fuck things up.

* I hope that casualties, especially on our side, are light.

Shared here and elsewhere so I can find it later - the making of cranks. Money quote:

1) Cranks tend to be isolated from the scientific community.
2) Cranks tend to be paranoids with delusions of grandeur.
3) Cranks almost never settle for a single eccentric belief.