Yesterday we travelled down to Weyburn for the 50-40 celebration, marking the 50th anniversary of the move of Western Christian College from Radville to Weyburn, and the 40th anniversary of the construction of the Weyburn Church of Christ’s current building. That building was brand-new when my parents moved our family to Weyburn for my father …
…this time from the Wall Street Journal.
This is hilarious if you recognize even half of the names, and really hilarious if you recognize them all. And since I’m in the midst of teaching the Sage Hill Teen Writing Experience, and many of my actual high school students show an interest in speculative fiction, it’s even funnier. Me? No, you won’t see …
In Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Have Space Suit, Will Travel, his teenaged hero, Kip, enters an advertising jingle writing contest for Skyway Soap, for which the first prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to the Moon. Kip doesn’t win, but instead gets a consolation prize, a used space suit, and ends up having incredibly adventures that …
Opera seems to be making a comeback. The Metropolitan Opera’s simulcast of productions to movie theatres around North America has been selling out. If you see an opera in the movie theatre or on television, you probably take it for granted that you can hear the singers over the orchestra, because everything on television is …
My interview on Newsworld regarding the science of soccer did indeed air today at 11:15 a.m. I captured it and YouTubed it for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
Ever wonder where the Mackenzie Art Gallery keeps its collection when it’s not on display? Here: For my 48th birthday yesterday we made use of an opportunity to have some food and wine and tour the vault at the Mackenzie Art Gallery. (We bought the opportunity at a gallery fundraiser last year.) It made for …
Moller International has started production of a hovercar, a small two-passenger saucer-shaped vehicle designed to take off and land vertically. It’s going to be priced at $90,000 to $125,000 U.S.
Yesterday CBC Newsworld contacted me about doing a short segment on the science of soccer, in honour of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup now being played in Canada. (If you google “The Science of Soccer,” the column I wrote in 2002 is the first hit.) I did the interview this morning on the lawn outside …
Well, it looks like this fall I’ll be part of the Canadian Chamber Choir as it conducts workshops and tours out of Vineland, Ontario. Very exciting–I haven’t had the chance to sing with a top-notch choir since my last year in the University of Regina Chamber Singers, then conducted by Kathryn Laurin, and that was …
Today’s CBC Web column… ******* Once upon a time, a computer programmer named Ward Cunningham visited Honolulu, where a Honolulu International Airport counter employee told him to take the a particular shuttle bus line between terminals, nicknamed the “WikiWiki” line: wiki is a Hawaiian-language word for “fast.” I don’t know whether Cunningham took the WikiWiki …
Computer scientists at the University of Alberta have solved the ancient game of checkers: After 18-and-a-half years and sifting through 500 billion billion (a five followed by 20 zeroes) checkers positions, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer and colleagues have built a checkers-playing computer program that cannot be beaten. Completed in late April this year, the program, Chinook, …
