Shooting The Moon



The Hubble took an extreme close up of the moon, for reasons explained here.

Now this is a Series. I remember saying last year what enormous effect the Red Sox overcoming the 'curse' would have on the psychology of baseball -- there's no pro sport that relies on it more -- and look: we've got the White Sox in their first Series in 45 years, and the Astros in their first ever, after overcoming one of the worst suck-outs in the history of the game in Game 5 of the NLCS. If that had been the Cubs - well, we know what happened to the Cubs in that situation. But would it now? Are curses cursed? The Bambino spins in his grave.

And lastly, the new Powell's interview is Zadie Smith. There's a lady who rides the bus who looks kind of like her. But anyways, she had this to say about endings: 'My husband and I used to joke that if you get a novel in the post you should always check the last page. There's always a looking-out-to-sea scene at the end of a novel. If we see that at the end, we know we're not going to read the book. I don't want to read a book that ends with someone looking out to sea in that kind of contemplative manner.'

It made me laugh, because Sugu told me his sister does this, and then it made me cringe, because I realized this is essentially what happens at the end of the second book in the sci-fi trilogy. He isn't looking out to sea (it's disappearing before his eyes) but there's the faintest hint, so I literally dropped everything and revised it, because I hate those kind of endings too.

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