h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh I've just remembered what I was going to say!
Conrats to Witty and Mr Moniker on your wedding aniversary

Morning all *hugs all quickly*

The reading scheme we have at our local school is The Oxford Reading Tree, and concerns a small boy called Kipper, his dog Floppy, his siblings whose names escape me, and various friends.

We have now read the whole set twice, as Second-In-Command worked her way through them.

Once the stories get past the "Everyone got wet" stage (these ones have fun illustrations, simple repetitive text, and generally a good punchline at the end), the children discover a "magic key" which can whisk them off for adventures with giants and spacemen. Those stories are good fun too - unexpected things happen with the plot, which I think is quite impressive for a what is probably only a 300 word story.

They wouldn't work without the illustrations and the first stage books have only pictures - the teacher has text which she will read with the class while they follow the pictures, and the children then re-tell the story by following visual clues in the pictures. When text is introduced, the pictures are essential to flesh it out and tell the story.

All of my kids spent last night at my mum's (I was hosting a reunion for my Guide company, which is 10 years old this year ). I miss them, it's time to bring them home.

Mol

Congratulations to yourself and Mr M, Witty

That's worth celebrating.

I'm feeling a bit befuddled this morning and can't remember what else I was going to comment on - except I miss Ben.

Z - we need a report from you on how things are going for B.

[Sol]

[Lentilla puts on her Z mask, although for some strange reason she's spray-painted it white.]

Last I heard Ben was residing in a hotel, and just starting at her new job. She's trying to make a good impression, so she's avoiding getting online at work.

[Takes off mask and throws it in a dark corner.]

[] - for Witty

I'm not a liberal I'm a Socialist, Ben's a Liberal.

Ben's fine, very busy with flat hunting, though she thinks she's found somewhere to rent and will be online again soon.

Woo HOooooooooo

I think I'm a sort of liberal environmental conservative internationalist socialist. One of my firmest political views is that, although I moan about what those in power do, if I were put in charge of the country it'd probably fall apart within weeks.

for Witty and Co.

I look forward to the Return of the Ben

S and I had a vigorous discussion this morning over literary criticism and the morals of presenting your opinion as a given fact. Must be sunspots or something.

Hmm... well, I've taken a Uni module in Politics and Political Science and another one in Thinking Critically within the past year, so I should be well qualified to make sense; and I am a card-carrying, leaflet-delivering Liberal Democrat (in the UK sense).

I think that much of the misunderstanding on h2g2 stems from the fact that, to we Europeans, the American right often seems incomprehensibly shrill, irrational and extreme. We're just not use to hearing such views. Mercifully, there is no equally influential equivalent of Rush Limbaugh in the British media. So I'm horrified when I see opinions like this: http://mediamatters.org/items/200507070005 - a couple of Fox News pundits apparently arguing that it was good that London should be bombed while the G8 was meeting in Britain, because it would get the G8 discussing the War On Terror rather than being 'distracted' by 'trivial' matters like poverty in Africa and changes to the planet's climate.

Hello everyone.

I've read two or three pages of backlog, and Z is tidying my kitchen, (well he made most of the mess) while we wait for my Visitors to arrive. A guy I worked with and his wife are coming to visit, which will be nice.

Regarding the London bombings my reaction was mixed - I am afraid that having worked out that it was unlikely that my sister or her family would be in the area I assumed they'd call me if there was anything I should know about. If it had been Waterloo and a No 36 bus I'd have been on the phone straight away.

My initial reaction was 'oh no not again', though the IRA's focus (in London at least) was to maximise destruction to property while giving warnings so that the majority of English/Welsh/Scottish opinion didn't become too critical. If you discount the assassinations of course. Like StrangelyStrange, I have been waiting for this boot to drop for a very long time - certainly since 9/11, and to some extent since the Berlin Wall came down.

Blair infurated me by leaving the summit. The goddess knows I had my differences with the sainted Margaret, but Thatcher would have stuck to her guns there on the grounds that disrupting the summit was the whole purpose of the attack.

Livingston impressed me, but he has constantly impressed me since I saw him speak at University in the early 1980s.

The medics, of course, were wonderful, and I found it encouraging that the emergency plans worked so well.

I was also encouraged that the BBC last night, on the radio at least, were asking why this had happened and listening to the answers.

........ oh, Ben and Beth have arrived.....

see you later

B

*waves to Ben*

SC, I agree that Molly may have another home. But someone sure eats a lot of cat food over night. I have cat flaps so they can come and go at will. She may just be lurking, sulking nearby and waiting until night to come in and fill up. But I was very relieved to actually see her and know she's ok.

We are having a Scholastic book fair at the library this weekend. It's a BOGO - buy one get one free. Scholastic owns the copyright to the Harry Potter books in the US. I decided to get the set so far to put aside for the great nephews. They aren't old enough yet, but the oldest will be in a couple of years. By using the BOGO, I got the whole set (paperback) for $17. And I got a big bag full of books for their Christmas presents. Made out like a bandit.

Ormy said, "I think that much of the misunderstanding on h2g2 stems from the fact that, to we Europeans, the American right often seems incomprehensibly shrill, irrational and extreme."

*shrilly* Seems? SEEMS??? Actually, if I recollect, one of the shrillest and most extremly right-wing trolls on Hootoo comes from New Zealand, doesn't it? But really, there's no seemliness about it.

CAUTION - PREJUDICED OPINION FOLLOWS - CAUTION
They're shrill because they're under great tension from sexual repression, sex being the only real sin under their pantheon of cut-and-paste morality, and they have been unable to stem the flow of popular culture in which images of sex wash around their thighs without letup. They're irrational because they've decided to cherry-pick certain statements from a certain document and use those statements to replace science, which science they downplay as being only a theory.

Having thus destroyed their own bases for rational thinking, they have wandered into extremity to the extent of planning to replace the US Constitution with a theocracy patterned after their own precious and supremely important selves. But they believe it will continue to be a democracy because other Americans will be allowed to keep shopping, after the shelves have been emptied of things that offend them personally.


And happy anniversary to the Monikers.

At midnight on Friday, I'll be queueing up outside Waterstone's bookshop in Bradford waiting for their special nocturnal opening to mark the release of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'. I pre-ordered my copy months ago. I'm going to the seaside for a week the next day, and I want to have the to read on holiday.

I hope to be in line Friday night for the release of Half Blood Prince. Not sure if that is going to happen as I am leaving for a week the next morning.

As for the political spectrum. In Utah, I could practically be called a Socialist. Anywhere else in the USA I would be liberal to moderate.

Ormy, I ordered 6 copies of HP and the Half Blood Prince. I have never ordered 6 copies of any book before. A friend at a hugh multi-branch library told me they have ordered 240 copies.

<> Lil isn't trying to be funny here. This is absolutely a true statement.

For those of you who like to pre-order books, you might like "How the Republicans Stole Christmas: The Republican Party's Declared Monopoly on Religion and What the Democrats Can Do to Take it Back" by Bill Press. It is due out in October.

[GD]

[d'E]
[]

[MTG]

*rings for the gardenerbot to come clean up the calling cards and take them to the compost heap*

OK, let's not just talk about art, let's do some. A free program has just been recommended to me by a bunch of artists, and it's at http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html

In the next thread we'll have a showing of salonista art. All of you ~will~ contribute.