Here’s a product you don’t see in grocery stores any more: shredded suet, supplanted, I guess, by lard and Crisco, even though shreeded Atora was “fresh beef suet, thoroughly refined after the skin and impurities” had been removed (well, that’s a relief) and was “the most wholesome and digestible of all fats,” which did not …
…this time at SF Site, and, alas, rather lukewarm. But at least she thought it was “capably written,” “brisk-paced”, had a “neatly-constructed plot,” and that “many readers will enjoy it.” So it isn’t all bad.
…is one of many interesting things I’ve found in my mother-in-law’s house, now my house. This 1915 housewives’ hanbook, which belonged to my wife’s grandmother, is (as you can see from the title page) “A Guide to Cookery in All Branches,” plus “Daily Duties, Mistress & Servant, Hostess & Guest, Marketing, Trussing & Carving, Menu …
This sounds promising: An international team of academic and industry scientists has come up with a feasible way of making universal red blood cells that are stripped of their blood type. The hope is that it can be developed into a viable way of relieving blood bank shortages.(Via Austin Bay Blog.)
…and other April Fool’s “stories” are at Locus Online. Apparently it is not an April Fool’s story, however, that here has been a correction to the Hugo Award nominees I listed recently: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest has been replaced on the long-form dramatic presentation ballot by Pan’s Labyrinth.
I just discovered that I share a name with one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen (you have to register with the Dayton Daily News to follow that first link, by the way; if you do, you’ll see Edward Willett of Yellow Springs, Ohio, is mentioned as one of the other pilots from the Dayton area …
From a story about a controversial new Victoria production of the George Frederic Handel oratorio Samson that casts Samson as a suicide bomber in 1946 Jerusalem, we get this nugget about the original story: He (Samson) is chained in the temple by the Philistines and forced to witness a sacreligious act. He pulls down the …
The Hugo Awards, for those who don’t know, are roughly equivalent to science fiction’s People’s Choice Awards. Nominees are nominated and voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention, and the Hugo Awards Ceremony is always a centrepiece of said convention, which this year is being held in Yokohama, Japan. Here are this …
A while back Andrea Bellerive, the daughter of a friend of mine, chose me (me!) to focus on for an Authors’ Fair at her school, St. Pius X, here in Regina. I popped by this afternoon to see the finished result, and was quite thrilled. (My apologies for the poor quality of this photo–I only …
I love airships, and I’m not alone. Award-winning children’s author Kenneth Oppel, for example, obviously loves them: his recent novels Airborn and Skybreaker are set in an alternate world where airships, not airplanes, rule the skies. Canadian science fiction writer Karl Schroeder must love them, too: his novels Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce, …
…though not technically a “new” review, since it’s a review of the hardcover edition. Nevertheless, I missed it until now. It’s by Don D’Ammassa: The only previous work I’ve read by this author was some young adult fantasy, so I was curious about this science fiction novel for more mature audiences. Humanity and an alien …
Here’s an interesting interview on that topic with Dr. Malcom Davis, a lecturer in Defence Studies with the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. Dr. Davis says current games certainly have some realistic elements, but: I think that consumer military simulations are never going to be totally realistic because ultimately people don’t really die …
