The Economist has pretty much endorsed Barack Obama, which usually means something bad will happen. Heh. I’m for Barack Obama myself, mostly because he is certain he doesn’t have all the answers and will try to find the best compromise among competing solutions. John McCain (well, his backers) and Sarah Palin should not get to the White House because they’re certain they’re right.
Um, thanks for the nomination, but I live in Scotland now. Have been for over two years.
Dear Richard Dawkins,
I enjoyed The God Delusion, although, ironically, you’re a little bit too preachy.
Please stop interfering with developing children’s imaginations by positing the hypothesis that reading fantasy fiction has a negative effect on children.
There are always going to be overly impressionable people — not just kids — who believe exactly what they read in what is clearly marked fiction. If we were to only read fiction that bases itself on (currently) established scientific fact, how in Deity’s name (see what I did there) are we going to be able to think beyond what is possible and innovate in the name of science?
Trying to attack fairy tales and myth (the genres are pretty explicit in that they are not attempting to pass themselves off as fact or history) as anti-science makes you seem like kind of a paranoid nutter. Please stop.
Yours in hope,
Andrea
Actually, I do have a story about children. We were babysitting my cousin’s kids one night in the summer. Neil was getting the older kids ready for bed and I was changing the baby’s nappy, when I heard Neil say, “There’s a naked kid out here!” Then said naked kid — who was wearing only his pyjama top — corrected him, saying, “That’s not naked! This is naked!”, and proceeded to fling his pyjama top off and then run around the hallway.
And here’s another story. Same kid made us pause a cartoon on Sky+ because, he announced, he had to go to the toilet. He then proceeded to report his every (bowel) movement, “I’m not done yet… No, I’m not done yet… Wait… Not done… Almost done… *flush*… Okay I’m done, wait for me to come back!”
Unlike other bloggers who have stories about children or pets with which to entertain the Ingterneck masses, the most exciting thing to happen to us this week is the exhaust falling off the car. It’s a good thing it didn’t happen when I was driving, because I think I would’ve shit myself. Instead, dear old Neil — who is experienced with vehicular issues — took it very calmly indeed.
Of course the weather was also absolutely horrible last night, and when we went back to get the car, Neil had to lie down on the wet ground to completely remove the exhaust, but I guess he was protected from the wind. Then I had to drive the car back without an exhaust or muffler.
I did not know that driving without a muffler would make me feel as though I was going at 80 when I was only going 40. And that it would be so damn loud I think I’ve sustained some hearing damage. But we got the car back home and Neil’s taking it to get a new muffler on the weekend.
And this is why I don’t write much about home life, because nothing. ever. freakin’. happens.
Just heard the new GNR single, Chinese Democracy (the Chinese characters make sense, by the way). Um, it’s okay I guess, which is a vast improvement over what I’d anticipated.
Thank the good Deity someone’s said it on a big weblog: weblogs are so, like, over. It’s not the place for ego-boosting and ad revenue it once was, and for that I am grateful. In the long run, weblogs and weblog networks will not pay if they are written solely for advertising revenue or Google pagerank.
Our broth is pretty much spoiled, so maybe the aspiring cooks will now leave the food preparation to the chefs who are truly dedicated to the kitchen, and how many more ways can I mutilate that saying so that it can only be identified by its DNA?
I say to the fame-seekers: take to Web 3.0, embrace the explosion of multimedia conversations on the Web and leave the tedious task of HTML-based journalling to us, the real navel-gazers.