A few mid-October links.

1. Aydin of the consistently interesting SnailTails blog (recent posts on a beaver dam and the way museums prepare animal skeletons are particularly fascinating) tells me that the Steve Jones lecture is available as a podcast from the Royal Academy.

2. Also from the Royal Academy on Monday night is a live webcam broadcast of Douwe Draaisma's lecture on memory called 'Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older' (the same title as his latest book which is a collection of essays. It starts at 6.30pm here.

3. Science Book Blog has an interesting list of favourite science books.

4. Jonathan at Connaissances has produced another couple of fascinating posts - this time on the language of food and 'the raw and the cooked'.

5. Pete Wild has another 10 chapters of Espionage published at Dogmatika.

6. While Lee's MORTAL GHOST continues to fascinate with chapter 13.

7. On the subject of competitions Skint Writer's second competiton is in full swing and

8. Minx's book, COVEN OF ONE is launched in Cardiff on hallowe'en which is very appropriate with a blogmoot (which is sounds like it could be an ancient Welsh heathen sacrifical gathering) to follow;

9. while at the same time, and most importantly, my BAFAB competition to find the best mis-spelt 101 word short story comes to an end too. So please do keep those entries er...flooding in, because I am finding it hard to keep up, frankly.