Meme from Erin, because if there's one thing I can't resist, it's talking about my damned characters. (And reading about other people's, in many cases.)

1. Choose up to five of your own characters.
2. Make them answer the following questions.

read more...

Grans, not grandpas, 'extend life'

More than half the story is frantic iterations of "but grandpas are really cool; they're valued societally if not genetically". Yeah. We get it. We can make our own minds up. Sheesh.

This is all we can get funding for nowadays. Depressing.

'Space arrow' to map Earth's gravity

Medici hunks for Zenbie.

Instant steam could banish MRSA

World owes the USA a debt, says Brown

We certainly owe 'em something, after all their contribution to how safe the world is these days.

Many Asians 'do not feel British'

Talking about instant steaming, here's an issue that gets me to boiling point pretty quickly. 'Britishness' - professionalism, manners, English accent and so on, which is what I assume it to mean here - is not a white preserve. It is a characteristic of people who live in the UK, rather than South Asia, which this isn't. I really dislike the term "coconut"; it's frigging racist against both whites and Asians, hateful and more than a little bitter (I know someone who gets called a coconut because she - gasp - went to uni, did journalism and wants to work for the BBC).

In a completely irrelevant aside, it's also a damned confusing term given that coconut meat is one of my recent snacking favourites. I'm tetchy about eating things that are named after, or look like, people. We used to have a dog called Apricot, and I still don't eat apricots very often. As for eggs Benedict...

In pictures: aeroplane race along the Thames

I officially object to having to include this kitten story, but I've gotta keep my ratings up somehow... ;)

It's honestly hard to argue with this criticism. (Yeah, says the individual who spent two years in South Wales doing Science Fiction. Shut up.)

Sick as I am of Shambo the bull, I'm equally annoyed that this story refers to him as "it" (before his slaughter, at which point he became beef, albeit inedible).

This picture of him being taken for slaughter is a little voyeuristic. (Hey, warned you.)