Category: Blog

My most recent Futurismic posts

I haven’t been as bloggingly active as usual this week due to the press of other commitments, but I have managed to keep up regular posts at Futurismic. Looking for some recent science news? Here’s what I’ve blogged about over there in the past few days: Scientists envision growing human eyeballs. Top 87 Bad Predictions …

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Sometimes being a freelancer sucks

Take today, for instance. I just found out that a major project I thought I would be writing has fallen through…and it was one I was really looking forward to. (No, I hasten to reassure you, not the sequel to Marseguro: as far as I know, Terra Insegura is still a go.) And it’s not …

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O, Canada…

…you’re in trouble now. As of yesterday afternoon, I’m officially a Canadian citizen. And that means (ominous musical chords) I can vote! Bwa-ha-ha! At last I can exercise my evil plan to subvert Canada to my hard-line middle-of-the-road position, one vote at a time!

Is today a good day to ask for a raise?

Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. **** As a full-time freelancer, I’m in the enviable position of being on intimate terms with my employer. “I need a raise,” I tell myself. “Sure,” I always reply. Of course, then I get all heavy-handed and I’m-in-charge-here and say hurtful things like “So …

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Witches and vampires and ghosts, oh, my!

This week’s CBC Web column… Download the audio version. ***** Orange leaf bags with grinning jack-o’-lantern faces cover the lawns. The drugstore shelves are groaning under the weight of grinning skulls, leering witches, and dancing robot mummies, and you can hardly buy groceries without getting a dangling plastic bat caught in your hair. That must …

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Beautiful singing starts with science

Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. As I mentioned last column, I spent last week singing with the Canadian Chamber Choir in southern Ontario. In addition to concerts, we also took part in several workshops with musicians ranging in age from eight to 80. Our director, Dr. Julia Davids, who …

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Aurora Awards announced

I’m back! I’ll post more about my exploits with the Canadian Chamber Choir (which is what kept me away from the computer and hence from this blog for the last week) soon, but in the meantime, let’s get things rolling forward again with this list of the Aurora Award winners for the best Canadian SF …

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The left brain vs. right brain test

Visit this page. Which way does the figure appear to be turning? I instantly saw her as turning clockwise, which supposedly makes me more right-brained. However, if I close my eyes for one second and tell myself she’s turning counter-clockwise, when I open my eyes I see her turning the other way. I’m not sure …

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Gadget blogs

Today’s CBC web column… I love gadgets. I wrote my last novel on a gadget, my Pocket PC cell phone, using a fold-out wireless keyboard. The only thing that keeps me from drowning in gadgets is that I can’t afford them all. But I can do the next best thing, and read about them on …

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She hates it, she really hates it!

Just to prove I don’t only point you to positive reviews of my stuff, here’s someone who really, really didn’t like Lost in Translation. On the other hand, she did finish it…so I guess I could say she found it “un-put-downable,” couldn’t I?

A quiz with only one possible answer

Q. Which former guest of honor at the World Science Fiction Convention (in 1987) went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? A. Dorothy Lessing.

The 2007 Ig Nobel Prizes

Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. Every fall the leaves fall from the trees, and the Ig Nobel Prizes fall from on high (well, from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research) upon the grateful—usually—heads of researchers whose achievements “make people laugh—then think.” My favorite this year (probably because I read …

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