Tag: news

I’m the next Saskatoon Public Library Writer in Residence!

I’ve known about this for a while, obviously, but it just became official today with the sending out of a press release by the library. Which I humbly (or, possibly not-so-humbly) copy below: SPL announces Edward Willett as 2019/20 Writer in Residence One of Saskatchewan’s most prolific authors, Edward Willett, is looking forward to sharing …

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The end of an era: my science column leaves the newspaper

Roughly two decades of writing a science column that appeared in print in Regina came to an end today when I received a letter from the Regina LeaderPost that said: It is with regret that I inform you today that effective March 11, 2009, we will no longer be in a position to publish your Science …

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I make the news in Meadow Lake!

The Meadow Lake Progress has posted an article about my visit to that community the weekend before last for a library reading. It’s a good article, although I wouldn’t take the quotation marks around what I supposedly said very literally… You can read the whole thing here, but here’s how it starts: Regina-based science fiction …

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Election thoughts

Well, I’m glad that’s over. Congratulations to President-Elect Obama. He seems like a smart guy, so I hope he’s smart enough to govern from a more centrist position than some of his background might indicate. (Remember, I’m as centrist as they come, according to those I’m-sure-entirely-accurate quizzes you can take.) We’ll see. It’d be nice …

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Who can I sue?

Oh, brother: A prize-winning novelist has won a settlement of more than £100,000 after she claimed to have become so intoxicated by fumes from a nearby shoe factory that she was reduced to writing thrillers. I’m looking around my neighborhood, trying to find out what environmental factors have driven me to the sad state of …

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There’s a book in this tale for someone…

“11 Rescued 3 months after Russian shipwreck”

There’s a book in this tale for someone…

“11 Rescued 3 months after Russian shipwreck”

A 737 hitchhiker?

This is literally unbelievable: MOSCOW, September 24 (RIA Novosti) – A 15-year-old boy from the Urals suffered acute frostbite after riding the wing of a Boeing-737 plane on a two-hour flight from Perm to Moscow, Russian radio station Mayak reported on Monday. After clinging on for the entire 1300-kilometer (808-mile) flight to Vnukovo Airport, the …

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CBC moves Moose Jaw to Alberta!

From a CBC.ca arts story this morning (here’s the link, but I would suspect this will be corrected soon, which is why I’ve appended the screen shot below)*: Vancouver writer Ivan E. Coyote, Moose Jaw, Alta.-based poet Daniel Scott Tysdal and Victoria’s Bill Gaston have won ReLit awards. Moose Jaw, Alta.? The whole town up …

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Self-contradictory headline:

“Study: Abstinence doesn’t delay sex.” Hint to headline writers: even though you’ve got limited space, there are certain words you cannot leave out. Like the subject of the sentence, for example. In this case, “abstinence” is actually an adjective modifying the word “programs.” Leave out “programs” and abstinence becomes the subject of the sentence itself, …

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BIblical illiteracy at the CBC

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 …

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This sounds like the setup for a science fiction story…

…but it’s real: A web-based “expert system” that helped users prepare bankruptcy filings for a fee made too many decisions to be considered a clerical tool, an appeals court said last week, ruling that the software was effectively practicing law without a license. (Via KurzweilAI.Net.)

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