MaW's Musings
Created | Updated Jul 11, 2003
Well, the week has progressed much as weeks can be expected to, with some success in the area of the Juggling Society, in that I'm now almost got the 3 ball reverse cascade working right, and I've also learned a couple of basic but highly useful Poi tricks. If you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, visit My Space and find the appropriate section, which contains some useful links that I won't repeat here in order to be kind to the Moderators who have to keep checking the things over and over and over again...
Of course, the big news this week has been the commencement of military attacks on various targets in Afghanistan. I can only hope that things are resolved as soon as possible before too many more people are killed. I'm not planning on commenting on the validity of the action being taken, although I cannot believe that the action Osama Bin Laden is urging Muslims around the world to take against the USA in the name of Islam is the kind of action which the Koran is meant to encourage. One billion followers of Islam cannot all be anti-American terrorists, can they? That is, after all, about one sixth of the human population of the planet. Religion brings great comfort to people around the world, but unfortunately it can also be used to bring great suffering1.
The world, it seems, needs some more respect - people need more respect for each other, for the planet, for everything including themselves, and especially for other people's opinions.
Therefore it is clear that the world needs to spend more time on h2g2. Perfect justification for skipping boring lectures if ever I heard it - and I do have a boring lecture today, given by a lecturer who's New Zealand accent wouldn't be a problem if he was able to inject any life or enthusiasm into it. Unfortunately, as it is, he reads in a near monotone from his notes, displays slides on the screen and lulls people to sleep talking about "daatabases". As I said, his accent wouldn't be a problem if the words weren't so dull that it makes people pay attention to it.
I'm having a hard time decided if it's the lecturer's fault or not. I think the boring lecturing style has to be his fault - the accent clearly isn't. In the mean time, the prospect of buying a text book becomes more and more attractive for that particular course, which I was expecting to be dull (but not as dull as it's turned out to be, and we've only had three lectures so far). So, people out there who aren't at University yet, be warned - it's not all mindless fun. Just most of it 
Music
After mentioning Kylie Minogue's new album last week, I went and bought it, and I can confirm that it's as good as I was told. For those who don't remember or didn't read last week's column, the album is entitled Fever, and contains twelve tracks of musical goodness. The title track, which appears immediately after track three, the successful single Can't Get You Out Of My Head is particularly good2.
At the other end of the musical scale (here I display my eclectic taste once again), the news recently reached me that the Mediaeval Baebes have finished recording their fourth album, The Rose. The track list and ordering has been finalised, the disk has been mastered and the Baebes are now taking a well-earned break before they begin their promotional tour. The album is to be released in February 2002 in the UK and Europe, and in the USA shortly afterwards. I will of course tell you if it's good or not when the time comes.
Books
I haven't read any new books lately. Shocked? Astounded? If you're not, you don't know me well enough. Instead, I'm re-reading Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time which I believe I have mentioned before. As always, I definitely recommend it to fantasy fans, although it's certain some of you won't like it.
Chocolate
As always, chocolate is to be recommended. Try lots of different kinds, find your favourite and then eat lots of it! If you're worried about your waistline, you can always do more exercise to make up for it - then you get fit and you get chocolate too!3
That's it for this week. See you next time, when with any luck I might actually have something interesting to say. You never know - miracles do happen occasionally.
