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Are electromagnetic pulses (EMP) a threat to us all? Newt Gingrich thinks so. An EMP could knock out electrical devices all over, knocking out computers, electrical power, cellphones, etc. etc.

But the New York Times says, "Yousaf M. Butt, a consultant with Federation of American Scientists, who last year did a lengthy analysis of EMP for The Space Review, a weekly online journal, said, “If terrorists want to do something serious, they’ll use a weapon of mass destruction — not mass disruption.” He said, “They don’t want to depend on complicated secondary effects in which the physics is not very clear.”"

Read more about Gingrich's beliefs here.

Back in 2009, I read One Second After, mostly because our books were within spitting distance of each other on the NYT bestseller's list. Gingrich wrote the foreword. It was a very clunky book, with major scenes (like a climatic battle scene) taking completely off stage. Plus the things that happened (roving bands of raping cannibals, anyone?) are so overdone they're cliche.

An EMP also starts of Ashes by Ilsa Bick, but that's about all the two books have in common. In this book, an EMP also turns some people into something like a zombie. And there were some twists and turns I did not see coming AT ALL.

This was the week that was... Brain draining.

Oh my goodness, work expected me to actually work this week. I swear I can still hear the phone's buzzing in my ear. Seriously, not a second to process a single thought. And worse, I developed the let's call it the 'don't want to diet and am determined to eat chocolate because I deserve it' attitude and pretty much decided early on each day that I shouldn't force myself to write that night because I was soooooooo tired. Hope next week perks up... Maybe I should start consuming jugs of coffee or at least increase from my one cup for the day at 7:30.

Anyhow, I did manage to send out a few submissions (for my 10bythen twitter gang). I'm up to five now (Lightspeed, Thackery D. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, The Zombie Feed, IGMS, Clarkesworld) or in other words, how to pick places guaranteed to reject and give me an easy five more submissions. And began work on a new short story that my ego is convinced is a winner, but my brain hasn't figured out how to write. It's there, just behind my eyeballs - does anyone have a hook to yank it out? Anyway we have a delicious title and an almost delicious first paragraph and that is it. I'm also up to 4,000 words of notes for my Mad Escapade project that I'm hoping will be a novella.

Kotex looks to 'Break the Cycle' (of embarrassment associated with feminine care products by skewering traditional ads in a campaign for its new "bold:" line "U by Kotex." Watch the first spot here. Also Sears and Macy's drive prom sales with... Read the rest of this post