My LiveJournal Sitcom fastfwd And Me ( QVC, 7:00 ): fastfwd (Vince Vaughn) uses coalescent (Omar Epps)'s water bottle. Nearby, del_c (Sir Ian McKellen) bakes 500 cookies for a bake sale, but mmarques (Mayim Bialik) eats them all. Soon afterwards, czarina69 (Warren Beatty) auditions for a movie starring opposite tregenza (Annette Bening). Later, billyabbott (Kathy Ireland) and...

ladymoonray and coalescent --I hope you didn't think you were really going to get away unscathed. It's late in the day but the Sparkly Paddle of Birthday Wonderfulness works at all hours and in all weather! So here''s your annual birthday spanking! Hope it's been a totally fabuloso day with an abundance of abundant goodness, to begin a year that will be the very definition of moreso...

I'm going to have to put my hand up on this one, and admit that I loved it while reading it, and felt that the absence of Native Americans in the alternate historical setting of Columbia might not be automatically wrong . For one thing, I thought it was an alternate enough world, and even more I suspected that there'd be a revelation about the peopling of the land in the second book which might undercut...

And the judges for the 2008 award are... , originally uploaded by abrinsky . coalescent : "This is all getting worryingly emo. At this rate we’re going to need a group hug, never mind individual hugs". For context and reaction to the shortlist for this years Arthur C Clarke Award see Torque Control .

coalescent has pointed out that one of the books on this year's shortlist is not eligible! I have updated the list to reflect this...

Deep down in the comments on the Clute review thread, coalescent , the reviews editor of Strange Horizons says: "I continue to wish that someone would go and articulate a defence of the book that convinces me of its merits as thoroughly as Clute's reviewed convinced me of its flaws, though." If anyone would care to, the review is here .

We've had some irritable discussions about quantum mechanics over the years (hard to believe I know). I thought some of you opinionated types might like to contribute to this discussion: coalescent writes: Earlier this week, I posted at torque_control about a short story, "Divining Light" by Ted Kosmatka , which is about the implications of a particular quantum-mechanical experiment...

Total comments: 283 1 palatinate 63 2 Anonymous 28 3 surliminal 23 4 debgeisler 22 5 watervole 11 6 fjm 10 7 hawkida 8 8 bohemiancoast 7 9 smofbabe 6 10 coalescent 6 11 the_magician 6 12 frandowdsofa 6...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've just spent a week in a 'cottage' in Wales with a bunch of fun people, with the explicit purpose of doing nothing but reading. Unimaginatively, we refer to this gathering as Reading Week. Disappointingly, we have yet to hold it in Reading . Nevertheless, it was great fun. While the 'reading only' rule was strictly enforced (i.e. people caught doing anything...

Take a picture of yourself right now. Don't change your clothes. Don't fix your hair. Just take a picture. Post that picture with no editing. Post these instructions with your picture. In the interests of full disclosure, I took this photo a few hours ago, when I first saw coalescent 's post. It just took me this long to get round to uploading it somewhere. This photo hightlights two...