Musings of an aging fan

Driver blames UFO for failure to pay parking fine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8614134.stm

Doctor Who regeneration was "modelled on LSD trips"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8616413.stm

Doctor Who "was behind UK space agency logo"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/doctor-who/7518521/Doctor-Who-was-behind-UK-space-agency-logo.html

Year of the Plank: remembering Douglas Adams
http://yearoftheplank.com/

Tolkien linguistics draws praise from best seller Martin
http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2010/04/13/36166-tolkien-linguistics-draws-praise-from-best-seller-martin/
http://grrm.livejournal.com/148593.html

Blog them out of the Stone Age: WWII counter-factuals
http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/?p=2336

HarperCollins have re-launched their Tolkien website
http://www.tolkien.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's.

http://www.paulkidby.com/news/index.html

"Children’s books are being sanitised to a “crazy” extent by publishers, authors claim. Lindsey Gardiner said that editors opposed her depiction of a dragon toasting marshmallows on flames from his nostrils in one of her books because “it looked dangerous and went against health and safety”."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2896715.ece

... who somehow didn't really enjoy "Deathly Hallows"?

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117957532.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

From asklepia

Warning: may contain spoilers (but probably only small ones)

My thoughts on these subjects, in slightly more detail; but I'm writing from memory here, and I'll need to check the book to confirm some of this.

On rank, Naomi Novik seems to have made two mistakes. The first is having no rank between Lieutenant and post-Captain. Now, I do not think that the modern naval rank structure (with, I think, Lieutenant-Commander and Commander) necessarily applied two hundred years ago. However, I did think that not every (ship) captain necessarily had the exalted rank of (post) captain.

On weapons, she has her dragon-borne "men at arms" armed with rifles. Rifles were *very* new in those days, and I wonder if such new technology would have been adopted by the air force so quickly. Secondly, rifles then were very slow to load and fire; even if some were armed with rifles, it would make sense to also have some armed with the quicker, if less accurate, muskets.

Of course, there's nothing to say that her fictional world is just like the Real World, with added dragons; but these points do have the feel fo mistakes, rather than deliberate changes.

Comments from those better-versed in such matters would be welcome!

And while talking about the book - the blurb is so horrible as to make us suspect that it was written from an earlier draft of the book.