Journal Entries
Backlog Frenzy!
Posted Apr 18, 2005
This h2g2 thing truly is a monkey on one's back! I vanish for a week to do the Center Parcs thing ('Butlins for the Middle Classes' - cycling, flumes and red squirrels), and when I get back I find my Conversations deluged with all sorts of interesting stuff. I'd be lying if I said that I'd get around to all of you - so apologies in advance and thank you all.
Also in my absence - my very first Entry has finally been accepted: A3059255
And I've just polished off this magnum opus and submitted it to Peer Review: A3826217
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: Apr 18, 2005
Yay!
Posted Mar 16, 2005
My Vonnegut A3724823 is on the front page - with a blob of the man himself. Very speedy.
Also...my entry on Youth Resistance in Wartime Germany A2943452 has been languishing since last August (!!!!). I think it was abandoned by two separate subs. I've managed to kick it up to the italics (peace be upon them). So..watch this space.
Discuss this Journal entry [14]
Latest reply: Mar 16, 2005
Child rearing.
Posted Mar 9, 2005
My seven year old son came home the other day and said that some bullies at school had called him 'gay' and asking what it meant. I'd been wondering when he'd first encounter it. Well, here's my wife's report of the conversation:
'Well, you know how some men marry ladies and some marry men?'
'You mean like James and Andy in Germany?'
'Yes. Well, that's what gay means - only some people think it's bad.'
'They must be really stupid, then!'
Isn't parenting a doddle?
Discuss this Journal entry [10]
Latest reply: Mar 9, 2005
Mainly for Americans...
Posted Mar 2, 2005
(Advance warnings: Please don't take any implications of reflex anti-Americanism from this).
There has been a lot of attention paid in Britain recently to the torture of detainees in Guantanamo, Bagram and elsewhere (eg Egypt and Syria to where the FBI and US military send their latest detainees to be tortured). Channel 4 (our commercial franchise with a government requirement to include quality programming) is currently running a week of programmes on it. There have also been several programmes on BBC radio, and the more reputable papers are full of it. The coverage really took off after the various British detainees were released without charge recently. Their stories were widely believed and confirmed much of what had already been said.
The thing is...we in the UK are now using the word 'torture' to describe the prisoners' treatment...and the starting assumption is that torture is wrong (for various reasons: it doesn't deliver useful information; it gives the enemy an excuse; it's just plain wrong).
Now - I haven't been following the US press and TV recently. Is the T-word in regular use over your way? Is there any kind of debate? (Other than amongst the irrelevant liberal elite).
Of course...we're not actually *doing* anything about it...
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Mar 2, 2005
New entry.
Posted Feb 15, 2005
Well...it was about time I wrote something else. I've taken the chance of a sickie (recovering from the aftershocks of a migraine) to get around to my entry on Kurt Vonnegut. A3667269
Come around and have a swadge, even if you've never heard of him.
Hmm. 28 footnotes. A tad extreme, maybe.
Discuss this Journal entry [5]
Latest reply: Feb 15, 2005
Edward the Bonobo - Gone.
Researcher U803114
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