Category: Blog

At least, according to the accidental discovery that stimulating a part of the brain called the left temporoparietal junction caused a young woman to believe a strange, shadowy young man was standing just behind her…when there was really no one there at all. Or was there? says the science-fiction/fantasy writer part of my brain, which, …

Continue reading

…and so we can expect to see them on the battlefield soon. This batch is entirely remotely controlled by a soldier. In another 10 years, though…maybe not. (*Geeky Arrogant Worms reference.)

…says a new study, which I blog about mainly because on the very day this study was published, my daughter, age 5, started piano lessons. Am I a hip, with-it Daddy-o or what, man?

People eat a lot of chicken (which is surprising, considering, as Ogden Nash once pointed out in a poem, chicken tastes just like rattlesnake). According to the latest available figures, total domestic consumption in Canada 2003 was 964,576,000 kg, or 30.5 kg per capita. In the U.S., per capita consumption was 43 kg in 2003, …

Continue reading

“Black Hole Factory Will Not Destroy Earth.” Well, that’s a relief.

More photos here. Meanwhile, here in Regina, as midnight approaches on September 18 (still late summer, the calendar would have us believe), the temperature is 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), a.k.a. “freezing”–and falling.

First, though, there was the matter of what the Grand Deacon wanted. Current word count: 25,168New words this session: 1,956Percentage of novel completed: 25.1 A quarter of the way to the requisite 100,000 words!

Martin Waugh takes high-speed photographs of water drops to produce what he calls “Liquid Sculpture.” I just call them cool! (Via Drawn!.)

For 30 years, Christopher Tolkien has been editing The Children of Hurin, a story his father J.R.R. Tolkien began in 1918 but later abandoned. The Children of Hurin will finally be released as a new, stand-alone work next spring.

More photos here.

California winemakers are probably more amenable than most of the world’s vintners to using the latest technological advances, as we discovered at the International Wine and Food Festival in Banff last fall listening to a presentation from Cakebread Cellars outlining their use of remote sensing and other technology. Here’s another example (the “Modesto winemaker” in …

Continue reading

After which, of course, there was only one more thing to say: “Take me to your leader,” Chris commanded. Current word count: 23,212New words this session: 1,492Percentage of novel completed: 23.2