My story "The Van Helsing Women's Shelter" now published on Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE

I'm very pleased to announce that a short story of mine, "The Van Helsing Women's Shelter," is now available on the Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE website, just in time for Halloween. In a world where vampires are real, you could hope we might create a few institutions to deal with the problem.

This story was something of a response to one called "Bitten Women's Shelter" in Daily Science Fiction...a story whose premise I loved but whose take on the situation bugged me. So thanks to author Sean Vivier for blazing that trail.

You can find my complete list of publications here.

Colorado having great success with long-term birth control methods to reduce teen pregnancies

...but funding is apparently drying up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/science/colorados-push-against-teenage-pregnancies-is-a-startling-success.html?_r=0

Why people choose violence

I thought this article on Aeon was striking for its evidence-based approach to trying to answer the question of why people commit violent acts.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/people-do-violence-because-their-moral-codes-demand-it/

It has ramifications for our justice system and for attempts to reduce things like gang violence, and in general for understanding other cultures.

Beating a chess master with a queen sacrifice

Wow, long time no post. Here's a fun piece about how having good chess AIs available to all can change the way people train for chess. In it, the author describes how he prepared for a queen sacrifice gambit and then executed it against a much more highly rated player.

http://magazine.storycollider.org/2012/features/the-departed-queen/view-all/