Professor of Marketing at the University of Mary Washington. All opinions are my own. Proof that, while rare, there are conservative academics.
Joined September 2012
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If you are thinking about following me, here is a small sample of my thoughts to help you decide.
First, a partial list of my favorite science fiction books (A-V):
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The list continues (W-Z) here:
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Next, is a list of my favorite fantasy novels.
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My perspective on how affirmative action has impacted my life as a white male:
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In general, I am very happy to respectfully engage with people even when their opinions are much different than my own. I sometimes fall short with people who are willfully ignorant, and the rude and crude. I usually block these people to clean up my feed and to not waste time with trolls.
Weber, David – The Excalibur Alternative is a great standalone book (although it takes place in the universe created by David Drake, in Ranks of Bronze – read that first). If you like detailed and involved space operate, his Honorverse is pretty good (over 30 books) although I think he should have killed off the protagonist long ago and his Heirs of Empire (three books) is fun. Weber also co-writes with others, including the four-book Empire of Man series (with John Ringo, highly recommended) and some of the Starfire books (with Steve White). His ambitious Safehold series is ongoing; my only hesitation about recommending it is my concern that he may not finish it. It will be a masterpiece if satisfactorily completed. If you like my recommendations, do NOT read Out of the Dark (one of the worst books by an established author I’ve ever read, you’ll want your time back and will be mad at the ending) or Path of the Fury (protagonist wins simply because she gets mad, science fiction version of she-hulk).
Wells, Martha — I discovered her Murderbot Dairies a few years ago when I was painting my last house to put it on the market and borrowed the audio version of the first novel (All Systems Red). It was wonderful and Kevin Free did an excellent job narrating it. I listened to a few more stories and read the rest. If you enjoy audiobooks, Free narrated all of them so the voice is consistent. Both the writing and the narration of the stories are highly recommended. They are told from the point of view of a sarcastic cyborg (a futuristic RoboCop when humanity travels the stars). The eighth book in the series was published in May and is the best science fiction book I’ve read this year.
White, Steve — For military science fiction fans, I recommend his Starfire series, which he wrote with a variety of co-authors (initially with David Weber, one with Shirley Meier, and the rest with Charles Gannon). I also enjoyed his Disinherited series and his Lokaran duology (Eagle Against the Stars and Wolf Among the Stars). After a few decades of enjoying time travel novels, I tired of the genre, so I haven’t read his Temporal Regulatory Authority series.
Williams, Walter — I recommend the Dread Empire’s Fall books for anyone who appreciated the Babylon 5 TV series. It’s a space opera with multiple alien races and complex alien politics. Start with The Praxix.
Williamson, Jack — The Humanoids stories (at least the original novel) should be a must read by anyone who likes science fiction. His Legion of Space books are a bit dated, but still entertaining.
Willis, Connie — Connie is a rare author who has yet to write a book I didn’t enjoy. Start with the Doomsday Book, if you enjoy it, read everything else she wrote.
Wren, M.K. — Pseudonym of Martha Kay Renfroe, an early female science fiction writer. She wrote a fun space opera trilogy, The Phoenix Legacy consisting of Sword of the Lamb, Shadow of the Swan, and House of the Wolf.
Zahn, Timothy — One of my favorite living authors. The Icarus Hunt is terrific, and he’s written several more in the same series. The Quadrail series is good. He has a great series for younger readers (the Dragonback series), that helped my kids get into science fiction. His early works include a good series about cybernetic soldiers (the Cobra novels). I also recommend his Conquerors trilogy. My least favorite book of his would be The Green and the Gray, but even that is better than most modern books. The Manticore Ascendant series he cowrote with David Weber (and sometimes Thomas Pope) are also good.
Zelazny, Roger — Lord of Light is a great standalone novel about a colony whose scientists use advanced technology to mimic Hindu gods. I also recommend This Immortal and The Dream Master.
Lance Gentry retweeted
The Supreme Court’s Houchins v. KQED 1978 ruling said media has no greater access rights to government facilities than the public, and Zemel v. Rusk 1965 ruling said White House entry is not a First Amendment right and the press lacks an unrestrained right to gather information.
Lance Gentry retweeted
NASA punched five holes into Mars, and learned some cool things about our rusty neighbor as a result.
When Perseverance arrived at Mars in 2021, parts of its entry hardware were discarded before landing, including two 77 kg tungsten ballast masses and fragments of the cruise stage. They hit the surface at roughly 4.7 km/s, blasting five small artificial craters northwest of Jezero.
That gave researchers an unusual opportunity. With natural craters, you usually have to estimate the impactor’s mass, density, speed and trajectory. With these, NASA knew them almost exactly.
In effect, Perseverance had accidentally created a controlled hypervelocity impact experiment.
Researchers compared the resulting craters with standard crater scaling models and found something surprising: under these conditions, the models substantially overpredicted crater size. The best fit simulations suggest the Martian surface material in the area was extremely weak, with a cohesion more like loosely consolidated sand than hard ground.
That lines up rather nicely with another Martian mishap. InSight’s self-hammering “mole” struggled to burrow because the soil behaved differently than engineers expected and did not provide enough friction.
There is also a useful lesson here for future missions. Spacecraft routinely discard ballast and other hardware during arrival. If we know an object’s mass, density, velocity and trajectory before deliberately crashing it into another world, the crater itself can become a geological experiment.
We already do intentional impacts with missions like DART and Hayabusa2. This suggests even ordinary spacecraft hardware could be designed to pull double duty.
I love this kind of science. Sometimes you explore another world with a sophisticated spectrometer. And sometimes you learn something by throwing a chunk of tungsten at a planet.
It also makes me laugh at how some people freaked out about an old SpaceX rocket stage hitting the Moon a while back. We've been whacking rocks big and small in space for a while. This is nothing new, except that each one is a new opportunity for some great science!
@DrPhiltill do these events help you with your work?
📸 @NASAJPL/@Caltech, Sokołowska et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 2026
Source: sciencealert.com/nasa-punche…
@TheMarsSociety
Jalapeño bear salami.
Three words I would not have put together, but a pleasant snack at my wife's family reunion.
This is disturbing.
F-35 stealth parts, including a classified radar-absorbing canopy, were rerouted from Australia to Hong Kong this summer. The Pentagon says some components are missing.
Politico reports the shipment was traveling from Australia to the US for repair when an intermediary handling logistics for Lockheed Martin diverted it across the Pacific to Hong Kong instead. Nobody has publicly explained why. Nobody knows who currently has the parts.
The canopy matters specifically. It's coated with a classified radar-absorbent material that makes the F-35 invisible to radar. That coating is available only to the US and its partners. A physical canopy lets an adversary study and potentially reverse-engineer the material, something stolen digital blueprints alone can't fully replicate.
Congress has been receiving briefings since June. The Pentagon confirmed the incident and said it's working to retrieve the parts and add safeguards. Lockheed said it follows all regulations but won't discuss specific shipments. The Chinese Embassy said it wasn't familiar with the matter.
For context: a 2023 GAO report found over 1 million F-35 spare parts had gone missing over five years, and the Pentagon couldn't audit the losses because Lockheed holds the data.
The most advanced stealth fighter ever built. A classified coating that makes it invisible. Last seen in Hong Kong.
Lance Gentry retweeted
California has shut down 4 large conventional gasoline-producing plants
Phillips 66 - late 2025.
Valero Benicia - April 2026.
Marathon Martinez and Phillips 66 Rodeo converted to renewable fuels
Those 4 large gas refineries GONE because of California policies
So stop trying to blame the high gas prices on what's going on in Iran
Much of it stems from problems caused by Democrats right here at home
Lance Gentry retweeted
It would be really interesting to see SpaceX try magnetohydrodynamic aerobraking for Starship.
As many of you probably already know, reentering spacecraft hit the atmosphere at several kilometres per second, creating a shock layer heated to thousands of degrees. This is largely dealt with this by building spacecraft tough enough to survive it: heat resistant tiles, ablative materials, and substantial thermal protection systems. They work, but they add mass, wear out, and require inspection and refurbishment.
Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University are testing a rather more interesting approach: use magnetic fields to help control the reentry plasma itself.
The technique is called magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) aerobraking. During reentry, the gas around a spacecraft becomes partially ionized. A sufficiently powerful magnetic field can interact with this plasma, pushing the extremely hot shock layer farther away from the spacecraft. In principle, this could reduce heating while simultaneously increasing aerodynamic drag, helping slow the spacecraft down.
The more powerful the magnet, the bigger the effect.
The researchers built a miniature spacecraft containing a pulsed electromagnet and blasted it with a shock wave travelling at more than 7 km/s. Their system generated magnetic fields of 1.24 and 1.58 tesla. The stronger field was more than twice that achievable with the permanent neodymium magnets used in earlier experiments.
More importantly, when the magnetic field was switched on, the observed hot shock layer became more than 15% thicker, evidence that the magnetic field was indeed altering the plasma surrounding the vehicle.
This is still a laboratory experiment, not a magnetic heat shield ready to bolt onto Starship. But it would be so epic to test it during actual atmospheric reentry.
If it works in the field, then instead of relying entirely on massive thermal protection systems to endure the violence of reentry, future spacecraft might actively reshape the plasma around themselves.
Less heating. More braking. Potentially less wear and refurbishment between flights, which is important for a rapid turnaround of Starship in particular.
Reusable spacecraft become much more useful when “reusable” starts to mean something closer to aircraft like operations rather than rebuilding parts of the vehicle after every trip. Even if it is just parts of the heat shield.
And there is something wonderfully futuristic about solving atmospheric reentry not simply with tougher materials, but by wrapping a spacecraft in a powerful magnetic field and physically pushing the fiery plasma away.
📸 Tokyo Metropolitan University
Source: phys.org/news/2026-08-method…
Lance Gentry retweeted
Democrats Promise That If Elected, Every Voter Will Give Them $5,000 buff.ly/KfyEpkU
Progress. I still believe we should eliminate job visas entirely to protect American workers, but this is at least an improvement.
🚨 BREAKING: THIS IS HUGE. THE WHITE HOUSE JUST PUT AMERICAN LAYOFFS DIRECTLY INTO THE H-1B REVIEW PROCESS.
President Trump signed a new executive order TODAY.
Federal agencies are now directed to consider whether an H-1B sponsoring employer:
Laid off similarly situated American workers during the previous year
OR
Plans to lay them off in the future.
And there’s more.
The Labor Department has 30 DAYS to begin reviewing previously submitted H-1B Labor Condition Applications to determine whether action against sponsoring employers is warranted.
Think about the implications.
A company lays off thousands of American tech workers.
Then turns around and says it needs H-1B workers.
The government is now explicitly being told:
LOOK AT THE LAYOFFS.
This is exactly the question companies should have been forced to answer all along.
whitehouse.gov/presidential-…
Lance Gentry retweeted
“Trump’s new deal with Greenland is exactly the same as the old one!”
Not true at all. Key new details:
Duration: The 1951 deal lasted only as long as NATO existed and Greenland remained part of NATO. Trump’s 2026 deal lasts indefinitely, even if NATO implodes or Greenland becomes independent.
New Military Bases: In the 1951 deal, the U.S. could establish “defense areas” in Greenland only if Denmark gave the go-ahead. In Trump’s 2026 deal, the U.S. can establish military installations as it sees fit, with or without Denmark’s approval.
Third Countries: In the 1951 deal, Denmark retained the right to allow foreign nations, like China, to establish a presence in Greenland. Trump’s 2026 deal explicitly forbids foreign nations from doing anything in Greenland without U.S. approval.
Foreign Investments: The 1951 deal placed no restrictions on foreign nations making investments in Greenland, such as port build-outs, critical mineral mining, or undersea cable installations. Trump’s 2026 deal requires U.S. approval before foreign nations can invest in Greenland.
Simply put, Trump’s new Greenland deal is an absolutely massive geopolitical accomplishment, further establishing America’s dominance over the Western Hemisphere.
Lance Gentry retweeted
Not a single MSM outlet has even mentioned Exxon’s Joliet refinery being offline since last Sunday.
If you even google “Joliet” or “Exxon refinery” the story is buried
You’d think that among soaring fuel costs, a 11 million gallon/day refinery being shut down would be newsworthy
The media is the enemy of the people.
They want people to blame Trump for high gas prices.
Lance Gentry retweeted
Here’s something absolutely fascinating.
Researchers have been studying the idea of using deer themselves as part of the tick-control system for decades.
The concept is deceptively simple.
Deer eat corn treated with ivermectin. The ivermectin enters the deer’s bloodstream. A tick attaches, takes a blood meal, and now the tick is ingesting the antiparasitic drug too.
This is not some brand-new internet concoction.
Research involving whitetail deer goes back to the 1990s. One published study using ivermectin-treated corn reported complete control at the target dose, measured by whether exposed ticks were able to successfully produce larvae.
South Texas later used ivermectin-treated corn through deer feeders as part of cattle fever tick eradication efforts. That matters because free-ranging whitetails can carry those ticks across the landscape, making the deer both part of the problem and potentially part of the solution.
Then researchers in Connecticut took the idea further.
During 2021 and 2022, they fed wild deer corn treated with moxidectin, a closely related antiparasitic drug. While treated corn was available, 24 of 29 deer tested, roughly 83%, had blood concentrations considered high enough to target ticks.
And here is the interesting biological mechanism.
The tick does not necessarily have to be prevented from attaching.
It attaches.
It feeds.
Then it encounters the drug circulating through the deer.
The tick can subsequently die, fail to feed normally, or fail to reproduce successfully.
Think about the implications of that for a moment.
Instead of trying to spray thousands of acres of woods, you potentially turn one of the tick’s primary hosts into part of the control mechanism.
That is an elegant bit of biological jiu-jitsu.
But nobody should read this and immediately start dumping ivermectin into a deer feeder.
Wildlife regulations differ by jurisdiction. Drug residues matter. Withdrawal periods matter if the animal may eventually become venison. Researchers also have to consider possible effects on dung beetles, insects, scavengers, other wildlife and the ecological ramifications nobody has discovered yet.
The science is intriguing.
The implementation requires circumspection.
Still, the idea that the animal carrying the ticks could simultaneously become the mechanism that suppresses them is exactly the kind of environmental biology that gets my attention.
Sometimes the most interesting solutions are not about fighting nature.
They are about understanding it well enough to make biology work for you.
#AStoneGroove #SilentMajoritySpeaks
Lance Gentry retweeted
Milton Friedman: “I am not a conservative. I’ve never been a conservative. Hayek was not a conservative.”
“We are liberals in the true meaning of that term: concerned with freedom. We are not liberals in the current distorted sense—those liberal with other people’s money.”
Lance Gentry retweeted
American mining is back with a BOOM! 💥🇺🇸 Red, white, and blue filled the Minnesota sky as EXIM and @MesabiMetallics marked the opening of America’s first iron ore mine in nearly 50 years! A historic milestone under the @POTUS Administration.
Lance Gentry retweeted
I'm guessing that Trump fixed the reflecting pool because I haven't heard the media say a word about it for months.
Lance Gentry retweeted
Here’s why beef is so expensive in America, says Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms.
He said:
“The biggest enemy right now keeping beef prices high … is the subsidies to the corn and soybean farmers.”
“Half the soybeans America produces are exported. We don’t even use them. Almost half the corn goes into ethanol.”
“A huge percentage of American agriculture is not in the food business.”
“The average soybean farmer lost $100 an acre last year…Instead of having to face the reality that the world doesn’t need soybeans.”
His alternative: take 1,000 acres of Nebraska soybeans, convert them to grass, and begin grazing cows.
“My hypothetical 1,000 acres,” Joel says, “costs $300,000 to convert from soybeans to grass… That’s exactly what it costs annually to grow soybeans.”
Joel says that either “It’s going to cost me $300,000 of annual expense to put that crop in and harvest it,” or “I can do a once in a century $300,000 investment and return it to perennial prairie polyculture.”
“Today’s farmer only gets 5.8 cents of the retail dollar.”
“Today, we have four companies controlling 85% of the meat market.”
“It’s not free enterprise…It’s capital cronyism.”
@JoelSalatin
Private schools aren't about rigor, academics, better teachers, or college prospects.
Its literally just to get away from disruptive students. That's 95% of what makes a private school better.
A single disruptive kid in a class drops lifetime earnings for every other student!
Lance Gentry retweeted
Diesel exhaust fluid mandates have cut the life of a truck engine in HALF.
Trucks that should reach 1 million miles are now lasting 500,000. These mandates are about forced scarcity hurting Wyoming's truckers, ranchers, and small businesses. 🚜
Lance Gentry retweeted
They said it was transitory. It was 21.44%.
Trump I: 7.72%.
Twenty months into Trump II and it’s already tied for the lowest on the board.
Not close.
You save up $5,000 of your own post-tax income, buy lumber, and spend three weekends building a deck in your back yard.
A county assessor drives past your house, notices the wood, and re-evaluates your property.
Your property tax bill goes up by $500 a year. Forever.
Did your new deck put $500 more wear and tear on the county roads? Did the fire department need a new engine because you have a place to put a grill? Did the local police deploy an extra cruiser to your street?
No.
You paid for the materials. You did the labor. You improved the neighborhood.
We don’t talk enough about how outrageous property taxes can be!