Gee Whillickers

Okay, now you know it's serious: The NHL hockey game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Ottawa Senators has been postponed. Now the rest of the nation will notice what's going on....

Boy, heavily armed police and soldiers are everywhere on the street. Especially around public buildings and subways.

As many of you know, it was recently Canadian Thanksgiving. As is often the case at these events, large dinners with extended family can be a bit of a minefield, with the conversation than can and does often occur. I've been involved in enough of these myself to have learned some painful lessons. Well, there we were, sitting there filling up with turkey and mashed potatoes, and my niece announced that her 14 year old stepson had finally got up the nerve to ask another boy to the upcoming Halloween dance. 'Oh boy, here we go...' I remember thinking, taking a quick look at some of the more senior, and more conservative, members of the gathering. And then I was pleasantly surprised. The reaction ranged from, "He's dating already? Oh my, they grow up so fast!" to, "Well good for him for having the courage to do that. I could barely look at prospective dates when I was that age, never mind ask them out." I just sat back and scooped some more stuffing onto my plate. A very nice Thanksgiving dinner it was.

This is still an ongoing situation, but most of the nation's capital and all MP offices across the country are in lockdown. Several armed men (conflicting reports about number, possibly three) have engaged in live fire with police and soldiers at several locations throughout Ottawa. A gunman approached an almost unarmed, mostly ceremonial, soldier (one of the guys that stands there and looks pretty while answering tourist's questions) in front of the War Memorial and shot the soldier. It is unconfirmed if he has survived. At roughly the same time, another gunman was firing shots in Parliament. The Sergeant-At-Arms on duty (and the winner of multiple sharp-shooting competitions) took the gunman down. There are also reports of shots fired at nearby Rideau Shopping Mall. Also, less than two days ago a suspected jihadist man ran over two off duty soldiers with his car in Quebec, killing one. The man was shot and killed by police. Schools, universities, government buildings, and many other buildings throughout the Ottawa core are in lockdown. The Prime Minister is sequestered. There is no official word on the source of these shootings. However, the timing is interesting in that a squadron of F18's, support aircraft, and surveillance aircraft were sent over to join in anti-ISIS operations yesterday. Several days ago ISIS has made several calls for attacks against Canada. The situation is ongoing and still developing. Things aren't pleasant in the Great White North at the moment, folks..... Here's some of the coverage. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/parliament-hill-attack-1-gunman-dead-after-soldier-shot-at-national-war-memorial-1.2808710 Edit: The soldier at the National War Memorial has been confirmed to have been killed. This man was a reservist from Hamilton, who was spending a week of his vacation to stand guard and answer questions at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial. His name has not yet been released until family and next-of-kin can be talked to. The gunman shot in Parliament by the Sergeant-at-arms has been confirmed killed. The situation continues to evolve. Edit 2: Here's video captured by Global News of the shooting incident in Parliament: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/breaking-news-oct-22/article21217602/?click=sf_globe#dashboard/follows/ Here's the youtube video of the parliament shooting, in case the news video is taken off the page: The RCMP are expected to brief the public shortly. The Prime Minister is expected to address the nation sometime later today. Edit 3: All Canadian soldiers have been ordered to stay in civilian clothes when off-duty in public. This is a remarkable and unprecedented occurrence. Many consulates and embassies in Ottawa are closed and have massively increased security, including the Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Isreali, US, and British embassies. Edit 4: Word now is that the shooter of the soldier at the War Memorial and the shooter in parliament may have been the same individual, who simply ran across the street into parliament after the War Memorial shooting. This is unconfirmed. Kevin Vickers, the sergeant-at-arms in parliament, is being considered a hero. At one point, after running out of ammunition, he ran back into his office, reloaded, than ran back into the fray.

And here I was expecting a new Star Trek story. This was much better though! Well done!

HIgh school QB switches teams at half-time when opposing team's QB unable to continue. http://www.kait8.com/story/26679638/sportsmanship-transcends-rankin-co-football-rivalry?clienttype=generic

Who's writing the story?!

Oh to be a fly on the wall during the drive home that evening... Must've been quite the conversation.

And if you do, for god's sake don't sit in the front row!

I just read this story. This is an amazing story. Just brilliant writing. Definitely one of the best I've read for some time, a masterful job of placing me in the head of someone who thinks, reacts, and understands in a way that is very different from myself. It's takes a real talent to do that kind of writing and you handled it wonderfully. Congratulations on an excellent story, and thanks.

This is wonderful.

Very impressive.

I have the same thoughts about GA, wonderful content, horrible site design (and they are, for some reason, reluctant to accept the feedback they get on this). I saw that discussion as well. I re-read the Lord of the Rings every few years, and I love Cole's inclusion of To Kill A Mockingbird. I've been a science fiction reader since I knew how to read, and fell in love with the genre back when I was still in elementary school, so included on the list are Asimov, Bradbury, early Heinlein, and a few others. A novel the struck a chord with me as a teen, and that not many have ever heard of I'm sure, is one I pick up and re-read every once in a while, just because it reminds me so much of how I felt the first time I read it. Emergence by David Palmer is that novel. Despite its relative obscurity, it won or was nominated for a number of awards, including a Hugo, a Nebula, a couple of Locus awards, the Philip K Dick award and it won the Compton Crook Award.

Brandon Sanderson lecture on writing and the importance of the try-fail cycle. He also touches on foreshadowing.

You're conflating two issues, I think. Yes, maximum bandwidth for a given user, for a given area, is dependent on the technology being used there. Others may have better technology. In my electricity analogy, that would be akin to having a higher amperage feed. But that wasn't what I was getting at. I'm talking about the false argument that using the available bandwidth of a given technology requires a fictional 'higher teir' of service for unexplained reasons. Again, with my electricity analogy, I shouldn't have to pay more than my neighbour when we both have exactly the same wiring, just because I may, at some point, want to run my arc welder. I should only pay for the electricty used by my arc welder when I run it. If I choose to upgrade my wiring, that's on me. If I already know it can support it, but the electric company is throttling it purely for profit, that's dishonest. Even worse, when the electric company has a deal with Acme Arc Welders but not with Ajax Arc Welders, and charges you less for electricty when using your Acme machine than with your Ajax machine. That's what net neutrality is all about. They want to charge you more for watching movies with, for example, Netflix than for watching movies with their own pet company. They do this by throttling connections to a particular IP. That's not what the internet should be about. That's just wrong.

"She told him that she loved him." Now try putting the word 'only' at every different position in that sentence, and see how the meaning changes and what it implies outside of that sentence.

Toronto school board trustee Sam Sotiropoulos in an interview regarding his hateful and bigoted comments and tweets. This is an official responsible for public school policy, folks. (From the same city that brought mayor Rob Ford to the world.) This is a man who claims that 'Canada is under attack by "homosexism,"' and describes disseminators as "maliciously rabid." He also describes himself as, "A victim of that homosexism," and further states as a response to people standing up for their rights, "I will not be bullied." Read the article and watch the video. Be aware, the interviewer seems to be extremely inexperienced, and does a poor job as she allows herself to be drawn into a debate rather than simply asking question. She also repeats questions and seems flustered, though I give her kudos for not letting him off the hook when he becomes evasive. Have patience and watch the video all the way through. The worst part is at the end. http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2014/09/09/3565154/watch-a-toronto-school-board-member-squirm-when-his-anti-lgbt-views-are-called-out/

Yup. It's a few large corporations thinking this is a good way to pad the profit line. Charge for regular internet, but make is craptacularly slow. Charge excessive and ridiculous amounts extra to get decent speeds, so you can watch your movie without it stalling, so you can download something without waiting all day. There is no technological reason at all, period, for this to happen, despite the lies they are propagating. I urge everyone to educate themselves on the issue so they are less likely to be convinced by deceptive and erroneous slick marketing. Imagine if other utilities worked this way. "Oh yes, it's fifty dollars a month for your electricity connection, plus kw/hs used. What's that? You want to run your stove? Your clothes dryer? Do you have any idea how much bandwidth that takes?! That'll put you on the triple extra gold tier if you want that. $200.00 a month plus kw/hs used, please."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lesbian-couple-alice-dubes-and-vivian-boyack-finally-marry-after-72-years-together-9719942.html I can't help wonder how long it takes for the homophobic pundits to declare that, "Like all gay relationships, it won't last."

Ray Comfort is a rather bizarre Christian evangelist known for not understanding even the most basic facts science, much to the amusement of many who have heard his hilarious and erroneous rants. Unfortunately, far too many take what he says seriously. Now he's planning a new movie. This one to help explain to the public how to help the poor, sad, homosexuals see the error of their ways. Sigh. I really, really hope there are no questioning teens dragged to this by their bigoted parents. This kind of thing is the very last thing they need. http://stillsmallvoices.net/ray-comfort-crowd-funding-audacity-movie-homosexuality/

If it wasn't so slippery, it would've been the greatest ride of his life.

Floating in his life vest, he watched the bubbles rise, the last of the boat sinking beneath the waves. "Well," he thought to himself as the sun set over the water, "that turned out better than expected."

I'm in. Sounds like fun.

I think people watching is a big part of it, I like how a couple of people mentioned that. Even just a facial expression or an overheard one-line reply to something can be interesting. One of my stories (you'l have to guess which one) was written mostly around a single overhead comment like this, and I remember thinking 'I wonder what he meant by that, and I wonder why his expression was like that'. Hot water is another thing that seems to get my mind working on plot ideas and twists. Under the shower, sitting in my hot tub or the bath, there's something about hot water that makes my mind wander in this direction.

Excellent beginning. I had some ideas after the prologue that turned out to be a bit prophetic, but the meeting of the two characters surprised me. I love Colton's attitude and moxie. This is just excellent so far, grabbed my attention and held it, and it's making me very impatient for the next chapters. Somehow I don't think I'll be waiting until the final chapter is posted before reading any more of this one. I don't think I'll have the patience.