Science fiction great Ray Bradbury is 86 today.

First it was dolphins, now dogs: Chimpanzees and two-year-old children are as clever as each other but dogs are not as smart as previously thought, according to a University of Queensland study.

Last week Husky Energy Inc. announced that its ethanol plant in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, will be producing within weeks and should reach peak production by the end of the year. Ethanol, a.k.a. ethyl alcohol, is a renewable fuel source distilled from biomass—typically wheat, sugar, corn or soybeans. It can be blended with gasoline to reduce the …

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I’ve got lots of photos from this past weekend in southwestern Saskatchewan and the weekend (and week before) in Calgary–so many I’m going to forego the Photo of the Day for a while and post some of my recent favorites. Like this one, of my daughter Alice. More photos here.

So begins this post from Janet, blogger, SF fan and former Regina resident,at The Walrus Said. My crime? Posting the prologue and first chapter of my SF novel Lost in Translation online where anyone can read it. Apparently the book is neither in the Ottawa library system nor in the local Chapters (which goes a …

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Karen Hanock at Writing From the Edge does a nice roundup of the “good old days” when she, Kathy Tyers and myself exchanged and critiqued manuscripts regularly–and wrote long letters to each other (the kind you had to print on paper and put in a stamped envelope, too). It’s part of the August SF/F Blog …

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Southwestern Saskatchewan, somewhere south of Glentworth, where I spent the weekend attending my niece’s outdoor wedding (just down the coulee from this old beaver pond). Hence no blogging for the last few days. More photos here.

…is that of award-winning Christian fantasy writer Karen Hancock. Karen and I have corresponded and critiqued each other’s stuff for years–not so much recently, because we’re both pretty well-published at this point, but very regularly when we were both starting out. I just discovered her blog because she linked to my post about unreal science …

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If you haven’t seen them yet, you should. (Via The Speculist.)

A scientist in South Africa says dolphins are dimwits–their large brains are simply an adaptation to being a mammal who lives in cold water, and aren’t wired for advanced information processing at all.

You know that this means, don’t you? It means Regina Lyric Light Opera‘s production of Sweeney Todd was four or five years too early. Well, that’s what it means to me, Lyric’s publicity director, who faced the “Sweeney Todd? Never heard of it!” problem.

Photos of SF Canada members who attended Calgary’s ConVersion science fiction convention over the weekend, taken by me and my wife and naturally including a few of yours truly, are now online at the SF Canada site I maintain.