Blogging on

Well, it seems my blogging buddies have been caught cramming to get their novels done on their time as well as everything else, and I seem to be in the unusual position of keeping the flame burning with reasonably regular content here. This gets me thinking, I should really catch on to this Nanowrimo for a couple of reasons. My friends etc. seem to think their novels weak, when the evidence I've seen seems to indicate that they should give up their day jobs and write full time. I didn't do well in High school english at all, and not just because I learnt the language later, and that I'm native Italian speaker. My writing, especially my creative writing is complete crap. If I went into Nanowrimo, I would redefine crap in everybody elses eyes.
Speaking of Nanowrimo novels, I finished reading "The Fork" last week and I haven't written any comments about it yet. I did rather enjoy reading it, especially the first few chapters and the concept of the fork itself. I guess I could describe it as going from "Alice in the looking glass" to "Sliding doors" and moved on until it had the strange complexity of "Multiplicity", or even that Kylie Minogue clip where she starts off as one and somehow, her and everybody on the clip gets multiplied. Of course, I was thinking half way through "Hah, write your way out of this mess you've got yourself into". Of course, just like a series of episodes of "Doctor who", it ends dramatically but neatly, ready to move on to the next episode. One thing that to me distinguishes a "great" novel from just a good one, is whether it makes me dream, or visualise a concept in the book. That is the case with this book, where I'm constantly thinking back to the moment of the first fork, and the dicovery of how it worked. Perhaps this fabulous and original concept is a little wasted on a doctor Who novel, because it could stand up on its own merit, I'm sure. However, I think a doctor Who afficionado like lexifab would be a better source of critique on this novel than I. My thoughts would be, to keep the main novel structure as is, peer review from Doctor Who fans would be the ideal way forward to market it. If, however, you would want to write him out of it completely, I'm not sure of your ideas on reworking the plot, but my instinct would be on simplification, and perhaps dwelling more on the detailed intricacies of mirror image chemistry and sliding doors concepts of following just two paths of the fork in more detail.

Alan Jones

I was listening to Alan Jones on TV on "Today", and he talked a little about Australia's current account deficit blowout, and how it relates to trade policy. Click here to his radio site I give this editorial an MII of 2. The only reason he didn't get a one is because he sort of qualified his statement by saying it wasn't as simple as this. The reason I give it such a low impartiality score is because I believe spin is the greatest threat to truth, much greater than outright lies. He makes quite a lot of assertions as if they were statements of fact, mixing it in with some figures and statistics for good measure. He then goes straight from these assertions and makes a case for his conclusion as if it is the only possible conclusion to make starting from his "facts". Its not because I disagree with him (in this case I do), but he is perpetuating a conclusion that experts have debunked hundreds of years ago and are still debunking, the conclusion that tariffs are good for the country putting them up. However, I made the call long ago not to listen to him because whether I agree with him or not, I have never seen him make a balanced argument, or a case for moderation, or put things into their proper perspective. He serves only to influence the uncommitted to a "populist" style argument, something I like to think other countries do too often, but Australia doesn't. If anyone out there is reading, why not put a comment in just to let me know :)