You can read the whole thing here, but here’s how it starts:

Regina-based science fiction author Edward Willett isn’t your average writer. Actually he’s not average at all.

The literary dynamo and actor stopped by the Meadow Lake Library during the evening of November 15. He did a reading from one of his books, but also interacted with the crowd and answered questions.

Willett has been a freelance writer for several years, and has been living in Saskatchewan for nearly three decades.

He said he got into science fiction after following in his older brothers’ footsteps.

“I always liked to read, and they kind of got me into reading science fiction,” he said to the crowd of people assembled in chairs at the library.

“They say ‘write what you know,’ and I really had a keen interest, so that’s where I set my sites. I wrote my first science fiction story as a teen.”

Congratulations to President-Elect Obama. He seems like a smart guy, so I hope he’s smart enough to govern from a more centrist position than some of his background might indicate. (Remember, I’m as centrist as they come, according to those I’m-sure-entirely-accurate quizzes you can take.) We’ll see.

It’d be nice to think this will squelch some of the deranged nuttiness that’s been coming from the left side of the political spectrum recently (overheard recently: “If Obama loses there’ll be blood in the streets! And that’s what we need! Blood in the streets!” followed closely thereafter by the claim that “It’s scary! Bush has established a private militia!”, though I didn’t hear exactly what he was expected to do with it), but I suppose that’s too much to ask.

I hope the right side of the spectrum doesn’t descend fully into a similar derangement over the next four years, but I suspect that’s too much to ask, as well, political animals being what they are. (Although the right-leaning sites I visit generally were very gracious in defeat last night…far more so than the left-leaning ones were in 2004. Which is why I tend to read [selected] right-leaning sites instead of left-leaning ones [although I read those, too]: I find the level of discourse more civil.)

To my fellow Canadians: try to be just a little less condescending (“The Americans have finally come to their senses!”) and sanctimonious: it sometimes seems Not Being American–along with socialized medicine, however badly it operates–is all that defines some people’s Canadianness.

And to the more fervant Obama supporters: please remember, he’s a politician, not the Messiah, and his election, while significant, is not the most important event in all of human history.

Supporting a politician is one thing: falling down and worshipping at his feet is something else, something…icky.

Best thing about Obama’s win: it’s made a lot of friends and colleagues of mine in the literary and acting communities very happy today. That’s worth a lot right there.

A prize-winning novelist has won a settlement of more than £100,000 after she claimed to have become so intoxicated by fumes from a nearby shoe factory that she was reduced to writing thrillers.

I’m looking around my neighborhood, trying to find out what environmental factors have driven me to the sad state of writing science fiction…there must be someone I can sue…

MOSCOW, September 24 (RIA Novosti) – A 15-year-old boy from the Urals suffered acute frostbite after riding the wing of a Boeing-737 plane on a two-hour flight from Perm to Moscow, Russian radio station Mayak reported on Monday.

After clinging on for the entire 1300-kilometer (808-mile) flight to Vnukovo Airport, the boy, named Andrei, collapsed onto the tarmac. His arms and legs were so severely frozen that rescuers were at first unable to remove his coat and shoes, the radio station said.

What on Earth is there to hold on to on a 737′s wing? At 900 kph?

More likely he was in the wheel well, if this incident really happened at all.

(Via Transterrestrial Musings.)

Vancouver writer Ivan E. Coyote, Moose Jaw, Alta.-based poet Daniel Scott Tysdal and Victoria’s Bill Gaston have won ReLit awards.

Moose Jaw, Alta.? The whole town up and left Saskatchewan? You’d think it would have been in the papers…

*UPDATE: Yes, it’s been corrected.

Hint to headline writers: even though you’ve got limited space, there are certain words you cannot leave out. Like the subject of the sentence, for example. In this case, “abstinence” is actually an adjective modifying the word “programs.” Leave out “programs” and abstinence becomes the subject of the sentence itself, leaving you with a headline that says, in effect, “Not having sex doesn’t delay sex,” when, obviously, it does. Why, if you remain abstinent, you could go your whole life without having sex. Remarkable, but true.

(But maybe I’m being too hard on the headline-writer, considering the first paragraph of the story proper begins “A long-term study of abstinence ordered by Congress …”, again leaving out the necessary word “programs,” which doesn’t appear until later on.)

Where’s an editor when you need one?

He (Samson) is chained in the temple by the Philistines and forced to witness a sacreligious act. He pulls down the temple, killing himself and thousands of others in the process.

Um, no. Samson doesn’t witness anything in the temple; he’d had his eyes gouged out by that point, as anyone who attended (and paid attention) in Sunday School ought to know.

Here’s the story as told in the New International Version, Judges 16:21-30, picking it up after Samson is captured, thanks to Delilah having had his head shaved and thus robbing him of his superhuman strength:

Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Bnding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

When they stood him among the pillars, Samson said to the servant who held his hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.” Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “O Sovereign Lord, remember me. O God, please strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philstines for my two eyes.” Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left on the other, Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.

I confess I have a hard time seeing how this story can be twisted to make Samson a suicide bomber, since he’s presumably a prisoner of the Philistines–er, the British?–and blind to boot when he blows himself up–where’d he get the explosives? Or, since the Bible makes clear Samson’s strength was a gift from God, does God magically materialize explosives on him while he’s in the King David Hotel (which takes the place of the temple in this new version)? And how about the whole hair thing? How does that work in 1946 Jerusalem?

It’s not that I mind weird interpretations of classic stories so much, it’s just…well, shouldn’t they, you know, make sense? And since the music and words of the original oratorio haven’t changed, it’s hard to see how any of this can be more than a half-baked mess whose logical inconsistencies you’re simply supposed to overlook for the sake of some kind of weird geopolitical frisson. In fact, it’s not clear to me how they change the time and setting in an oratorio anyway, which is usually simply sung, not staged. Does this all just amount to a poster image and a program note?

Well, never mind. The merits (or lack thereof) of the oratorio weren’t really my point when I started this post: my point was (and is) that, once again, I’ve run into that disturbingly commonplace phenomena of discovering that when someone in the media writes a story about something I actually know something about first-hand, they make a simple and easily avoidable mistake. (I mean, there must be a Bible somehwere in the CBC newsroom…mustn’t there?…and if not, various versions are readily available online.)

It’s these kinds of errors that make you question the accuracy of everything in the media…and wonder what else they’re getting wrong.