U.S. Warns About Canadian Spy Coins, says the headline, and the gist is: In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside. The government said the mysterious coins were …
Category: Blog
Stuck in the middle with who?
Sometimes I mention that I feel very much stuck in the middle when it comes to political questions. Well, now I have proof that I am right (er, sorry, I mean correct) to feel that way! I took the Political Compass Questionnaire, and came up with these scores: Economic Left/Right: -0.13Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.46 On the …
Electrifying development:
Ball lighting may have been explained at last–and created artificially in the laboratory! Key segment: A more down-to-earth theory, proposed by John Abrahamson and James Dinniss at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, is that ball lightning forms when lightning strikes soil, turning any silica in the soil into pure silicon vapour. As …
Nebula Awards preliminary ballot announced
The Preliminary Ballot for the Nebula Awards® for 2006 have been announced. If the Hugo Awards, voted on my members of the World Science Fiction Convention each year, are science fiction’s equivalent of the People’s Choice Awards (which are on TV tonight, I just learned. Who knew? Oh, I suppose people who watch any TV …
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and dissimilar major histocompatibility complexes
The candlelight is gleaming, soft jazz is playing, the fireplace is crackling, and you’re snuggled on the couch with the woman you love. You finger the diamond ring in your pocket. There’ll never be a better time to pop the question. You look deep into her eyes and say, “My darling, why don’t we get …
Self-publishing has never been easier…
…than it is with Blurb.com. Traditional publishers won’t be quaking in their boots, but traditional vanity presses–and bottom-feeding writer-scamming con artists–ought to be. Design your book today and have it in a few days, one copy or as many as you want. Nothing could be simpler.
I’ve never liked milk in my tea…
…so this doesn’t bother me at all. Reading the Swallows and Amazons books as a kid, the one thing that drove home to me the utter alienness of the culture depicted therein (1920s England) was the putting of milk in tea. Yuck!
What does a writer owe his readers?
I’ve been reading very interesting thread over at Paperback Writer about what an author “owes” a reader. Paperback Writer wrote: I don’t know what, if anything, writers actually “owe” readers. I always feel a responsibility to do my best work for the reader; that goes without saying. No one can write something that makes everyone …
The Viking probes 30 years ago may have found life on Mars..
…and then promptly killed it.
Maybe I’m just a contrarian, but…
…when people start preaching inevitable doom and gloom climate-wise due to global warming, it puts my back up. Yet, when people try to tell me there is no such thing as climate change, it annoys me just as much. Where’s a middle-of-the-road, yes-there’s-a-problem-but-it-ain’t-the-end-of-the-world-yet kind of guy to do? Turns out there’s a whole middle ground …
You go, professor!
Stephen Hawking is planning a trip into space for 2009, courtesy of Richard Branson at Virgin Galactic. I can’t think of anyone who deserves a free trip more.
Football overtakes flying reindeer…
…as seasonal search terms start to fade among those bringing people to edwardwillett.com. Here are the top 15 as of today, with links to where they lead: 35 physics of football 0.9% 35 how to make french fries 0.9% 28 flying reindeer 0.7% 27 hamoukar 0.7% 25 wine glasses 0.6% 24 time perception 0.6% 24 …
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