Let she who is without pen:

Browing Yahoo today let me know that Margaret Atwood, bemused fan of David Orchard, hater of free trade, took a bit of a run at long distance autographing through her robotics company.

Intrigued, I popped by for a visit, and read briefly through Canadian Press' typically pedestrian and underly-ambitious prose.

But yeah, parodies of pompous former Harry Ainlay Presidents aside, Margaret Atwood has invented, with the help of a couple of engineers, a real-time long-distance autographing machine that lets author and fan communicate over long distances via web cam. This is a pretty cool invention with a lot of commercial possibilities, including 24 hour legal services, and the elimination of British author jet lag and the even greater fear of British Authors going abroad on a book tour: American Beer.