Month: February 2010

The Unholy Tab Closing

OK, my open tab situation has got to the point where I was forced to research new Firefox plugins. I might talk about that soon, since that old “favourite plugins” post is waaaay out of date, and due for an updating. Right now, though, I want to run through a bunch of these things, attaching short, and hopefully pithy, comments… Read more →

Better Late Than Never: An Apology For Africville

Listening to tonight’s news I see that the city council in my just-recently-not-city have ratified a deal to formally apologize for the pretty shockingly racist destruction of Africville. If you’re not from Halifax, the odds are you don’t know what this is all about. A capsule summary would be that there once was a community, called Africville, on the Halifax… Read more →

Yes, I Was Reading That Powers Bibliography Today

Sphinx And Medusa Clark Ashton Smith The old constraint of an essential bond Hath linkt them in my mind: opposed they stare, Twin silences, that through Time’s Otherwhere, The ruinous past, thus each to each respond, One with mysterious gaze that sees beyond The straining suns, calm as the voidness there; And one with eyes like deserts of despair, Flameless… Read more →

Professor Membrane’s Modern Medicine Sideshow…

And the professor is back to lead us through the second in our series of posts looking at real, actual, modern science stories that illustrate the “we’re living in science fiction” notion. Last time we focused primarily on medicine, and specifically on different kinds of regeneration. We’re still working our way through modern mad medical science–I have a giant archive… Read more →

A Singular Discussion

Having just mentioned that I prefer transcript to video, let me cite another case where I would make an exception. Here’s a quote from an IM chat I was having with a Boston pal last week: (9:15:32 AM) Chris: Friday  7pm The Singularity: An Appraisal Alastair Reynolds Karl Schroeder Charles Stross Vernor Vinge Arguably the idea of the Singularity —… Read more →

Vaguely book-related

You know the drill: links with pithy comments. Let’s start off this list with Jo Walton costing me a pile of money. I’ve mentioned before enjoying her Tor.com reviews, and finding significant alignment between her tastes and mine… so when she reviews a series of spy novels that I somehow have never even heard of, and makes them sound very… Read more →

“Man is a substance clad in shadows”

Many things these days contribute to my lack of sleep–social activity, parent scheduling, social evenings in different cities, my stubborn refusal to go to sleep when I should, time spent playing with the world through this Internet thing, and–of course–things I start to read when I should go to bed that I just-can’t-put-down. Sometimes you can see this coming, so… Read more →

Aside

What does it say about me that when I followed a link to the website for the upcoming Naked Girls Reading Science Fiction show, I was frustrated that the site had lots of information about (and pictures of) the “girls” who would be reading, but no information about what science fiction they would be reading?

Paperback Alley

I mentioned that I’ve started the process of unpacking my books in the new house. I began with the mass-market paperbacks, for a few reasons: they’re the smallest bit of the collection, so they present a relatively undaunting place to start The place where I wanted to put them was ready–unlike the room that will be the “main” library, which… Read more →

Attn: Roach

For inside joke comedy reasons, I really want to bottle some beer (although I have no idea how to brew–as with fiction and music, I’m really excellent on audience, but not much on creator) just so I can label them something like this: Yeah, OK, I was just playing around with an online label designer from an Australian u-brew joint…… Read more →

Any Excuse For A Toast

As a former resident of Nova Scotia, I believe it is within my remit to raise a glass today and toast the 247th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years War. Among other things, the treaty essentially saw the French hand over claims to Canada–particularly Nova Scotia and Cape Breton (then called Ile… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.