Read this fascinating account of the discovery of a very early submarine, the Sub Marine Explorere.

More photos here.

Anton looked horrified. “You’re talking about human sacrifice!”

The table decorated by Beverley Bennett for this year’s Art in Bloom event at the MacKenzie Art Gallery here in Regina. Photo by guest photographer Margaret Anne Hodges, a.k.a. “my wife.”

“We won’t be needing your help,” Anton snarled at her. “We won’t be fixing the balloon after all.” Current word count: 34,728New words today: 889 (Slow but steady, and all that…that represents about 45 minutes of writing at the coffee shop this morning, which is about all the time I can spare on fiction right …

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Queen Elizabeth II accepts flowers from my daughter Alice during her visit to Saskatchewan last May. The Queen turns 80 today. Happy Birthday!

There’s going to be an 11th Star Trek movie, which will follow the Starfleet Academy years of Kirk and Spock! Yay! Author and scriptwriter Lee Goldberg (who, unlike me, has a Variety subscription and can read the whole story) posts some details.

More photos here.

A tiny chemical reactor that can convert vegetable oil directly into biodiesel could help farmers turn some of their crops into homegrown fuel to operate agricultural equipment instead of relying on costly imported oil.******** The device is small, but it can be stacked in banks to increase production levels to the volume required for commercial …

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Here’s a fascinating article on John Koza’s Invention Machine, which uses the principles of evolution to find solutions to problems. Does it work? Well, it’s the first non-human designer to receive a U.S. patent. It just out-designed two leading optics researchers. And it’s invented a specialized antenna that will soon fly in space. Fascinating. (Via …

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Perhaps because I’m working on two children’s books about the elements neon and magnesium, I found this “Periodic Chart of the Rejected Elements” particularly amusing. Let’s see, on this periodic table, neon, number 10, is hydrox, and magnesium, number 12, is pekingnese. The former is an Al Kaline metal and the latter is copyright Microsoft …

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Mother Northwind’s piercing blue eyes studied him for a long moment–long enough for him to feel thoroughly uncomfortable. He suspected she had stared precisely the same way at each specimen of butterfly just before pinning it to the board. “So,” she said. “On the other side of the Great Barrier, there is no magic? The …

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