[The mother of one of the victims] warned parents to keep a close eye on their children's internet use. She said: "I think the problem is they do not know how to speak like adults about serious issues like this. They can speak to each other on the computer but do not know how to express their emotions in other ways."
"Thomas would spend about three hours a night on the computer, talking to his friends. The thing is that most parents don't understand what they are doing or what they are talking about.
Any teenager who's ever tried to talk to their parents about depression or suicide will know just how impossible it is. Spying on internet use is just going to exacerbate the problem. As for the copper in charge:
"There is a growing trend for young people to communicate through telephone text messaging and also over the internet whether it's email or within chat room forums."
There is a growing trend for young people to communicate, so how about duck taping their mouths and chopping their fingers off at birth?
Or maybe we could address this problem in a more realistic way?
I'm not sure how much longer I can cope with this. My brain won't function. I can't write, I can't concentrate, I can't string two ideas together and I can't keep my temper for longer than half an hour. All I want to do is sleep, drink and take up smoking again. And all I really want to do is find a razor blade and carve my arms up.
The food sources charged up the robots' batteries while the poison drained them, and by using the genes of the most successful feeders in 50 successive generations, the team was hoping to select the fittest.
Three colonies of bots in the 50th generation learned to signal to other robots in the group when then found food or poison. But the fourth colony included lying cheats that signaled food when they found poison and then calmly rolled over to the real food while other robots went to their battery-death. Eerily wicked, to say the least. Saving the robots' honor, luckily, there were also a few "hero robots" that signalled danger and then rolled to their death to save the others.
Reading Problogger's list of ten great WP themes, I am struck by how same-y they look. With the exception of #4 (whose yumminess I commented on upon its release) and #10 (whose cunning layout is not dissimilar to my own intentions for TB's new incarnation), they are all remarkably similar. Monochrome. Boxy. Clean. It's about time WP skinning got drrrty.
... I'm sending two books back to Amazon. I've never, ever returned a book to a store before (which explains why my house is overrun with dozens of boxes which *still* need to be unpacked), but The Didymus Contingency is just so appalling, I can't bear to have it in the house any longer, nor Antarktos Rising by the same author, which I bought at the same time. Didymus reminds me of nothing so much as Left Behind: the moment I read in the opening paragraph that 'he was a nuclear physicist with an IQ of 167', my heart sank. It's LaJenkins' tell-not-show method all over again. Then we have the bitchy woman-boss who, having granted our brilliant scientists doubled funding for their time travel machine, manages to smile as one of them gropes her hand. Pass me a bucket. And just like LaJenkins, one feels that the author's attention isn't on his story: sacrifice and science alike are jumped over because he's rushing to get to the main part of his story which is that JESUS IS REAL!!!1!
Honestly, born-again atheist though I am, I really wanted to see what someone other than Garry Kilworth would make of this idea. Wasn't it C.S.Lewis who said that, to be a good Christian novelist, one has an obligation not only to be a good Christian, but a good novelist too? And yet even Lewis, the more overt his religion becomes, the less good his novels are: how preachy does That Hideous Strength feel in comparison to Out of the Silent Planet? If anyone's found any religious fiction that's good as fiction, rather than as a validation of one's own beliefs, I'd be very interested to hear about it.
This is only still on Blogger because I'm too lazy to move it
How to write a simple WP plugin. Because I'll lose the link *and* the thinking if I don't write it down. Plugins I want to write:
A nice simple one that will replace instances of words (e.g. eBay) with affiliate links.
A horrible complicated thing that will allow WP posts to sell things: with PayPal buy it now buttons, and a stock control list so you can't sell the same item twice.
The comments thing I promised Lynne today which will have comment previewing *and* editing, and BBCode in comments. And infinitely extensible extra fields (I want it for eBay Shop vs. website, but why not let people do whatever they want with it.)
[I will do this one first] A very simple thing to turn tags to lower case, seeing as with three authors on TB, we seem to be incapable of adopting any kind of standard :-D Will then amend this so that "eBay" is spelt like that.
Something for the posting console so that we can input a URL and have a properly-formatted eBay affiliate link output.
Something that will add (maybe to the post metadata) a link to guest posters' own websites.
Schools should be forced to give impartial advice on further education courses, say MPs. Heh heh, they can try. I remember having the most enormous row with our school careers advisor because I said there was no way on earth I was prepared to consider the YTS scheme, and my only question was whether to do Latin or Maths alongside my other A'levels. He said I was bigotted and prejudiced: I said, no, I just wasn't going to pretend that I wasn't academically capable, just for the sake of his numpty class. The people who *were* headed for the YTS scheme weren't, after all, being asked to pretend they were considering A'levels.
Anyone who's ever lived with Alzheimer's has hoped for a miracle: now it seems they found one:
Before the drug, they measured his performance on cognitive tests, and performed poorly, unable to remember the name of the doctor treating him, the date, or the state in which he lived. He could not perform simple mental arithmetic, or name more than two animals. Ten minutes after a dose of etanercept, he was noticeably calmer, more attentive, and less frustrated. He knew he lived in California, and knew the day of the week, and the month. He could name five animals, and performed better at the arithmetic test. Interviewed at that point, his wife said that the improvement was "like some kind of science fiction story".
Of course, one patient over ten minutes doesn't make a cure. Not yet.
M. Sarkozy has reassured net users that the tax will be "infinitessimal". So why bother with it then? France's public service television is appalling: so appalling in fact that TF1, the main channel, has the distinction of having shown a programme that garnered no viewers at all*
I suspect the reason that M. Sarko is introducing this tax is that advertisers have also realised that most of France is busy watching dubbed American drama series on channels 6 and 9, and so he needs to do something to replace some lost revenue.
*It was, iirc, about an old Algerian woman talking about her life... If I can find an online source, I'll post it.
I've just spent an hour looking through Creative Latitude's graphic makeovers: before and after shots of a huge range of logos from schools to investment bankers. It makes me want to go off and redesign everything I've ever done, but I think I'll start with TameBay.
In other webbery-related news, the professors have approved their new site, so now I just have to wade back into the mire of craziness that is attempting to register an .ac.uk domain name. Joy.
My heart won't let my feet do things they should do
I found this quoted on the Velveteen Rabbi (which has to be one of the best-named blogs I've ever read):
The soul knows things the body can never know: joy, sorrow, anticipation, yetzirah [the world of emotion] and briyah [the world of intellect]. But the soul is liable to sickness for that very reason, in a way the body is not; the soul can become depressed, forgetful, closed-off. So the soul's constant duty is to teach the body the habitual ways of dancing -- so that when the soul becomes sorrowful, the body can remind the soul of how to pull itself out of that.
Once upon a time I read 'Left Behind' to see what all the fuss was about: I bought it for 1p plus postage from Amazon Marketplace, just so I could be sure that LaHaye and Jenkins weren't benefitting by even one lousy cent by my purchase. No one, least of all me, was surprised that I hated it, but thanks to Forest, I did at least discover Left Behind Fridays: if blogging had given us nothing else, LBF would have been worth it all.
Today's post contains this piece of especial genius:
The spiritual warfare gurus love to cite the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness as though it were an introductory course in Defense Against the Dark Arts. The salient point of the story, for them, is not its profound contrast of love and power, but rather its demonstration of mystical defensive techniques. A magic trick. When tempted by Satan, Jesus quoted scripture. Thus, they believe, when confronted by the forces of darkness, Christians should follow suit by raising their wands and chanting "Expecto patronus!" ... er, I mean, by citing chapter and verse from the Bible to invoke divine protection.
Well... yes. I was maybe seven: I can't have been any older because we hadn't moved house, but I can't have been much younger because I was left entirely on my own in the house, and my parents just didn't do that. And I was watching Dr. Who on our old black and white portable, and my mother told me that if I got too scared, I should switch off the television and read the Bible. Not "Bible Stories for Children" or the rhyming Bible stories from which I taught myself to read. But the actual Bible.
No doubt the rest of the internet is doing this too, but
I had hoped to be able to finish A DANCE WITH DRAGONS during 2007. Way back around this time last year, I had even hoped that the book might be published during 2007. Neither of those happened, and to that extent the year was a disappointment... for me, as well as for my fans. ... For more about DANCE, see the Update page of my website, which I intend to update in the next day or so.
When A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is finished, I will post that news here. The moment I finish the book, I will log on and make the announcement. If this message is still here, that means the book is not done yet. Until such time as I can trumpet that news, however, this page will remain the same.
The next update will be the one that announces that the DANCE is done.
It's the first of January, upon which tradition dictates that I write a post about the old year and what I think of it, and the new year and what I hope for it.
People I care about seem split about equally as to whether 2007 was the most terrible year ever, or their most wonderful one. For me, it's the year when nothing much happened. It must be my Protestant work ethic coming out, because I am rather ashamed to say this. But equally, having a day in which my biggest achievement was a new badge in Kongregate does not make me happy. There were too many days like this.
In 2008, therefore, I will get off my fat arse and do more stuff. Specifically:
Work. There is a business plan (*faints*). I will do what it says.
I will spend 15 minutes every day organising the bead shed. I estimate that that will mean that by the end of January, it will be organised, at which point I will move onto the rest of the house.
I will read more. Honestly, I can't have read more than a dozen new books in 2007. I miss it. I actually miss having two hours a day on the tube to do nothing but read (though that *is* the only thing still that I miss about London). I will make at least one hour per day to read: I will do this by watching less crap television, and spending less time on internet forums.
I will write more. I used to be able to write, and that I can't any more distresses me more than I can say. I used to look forward to blogging: now even TameBay feels like a chore more often than it should, and I have almost nothing to say about my life elsewhere. Therefore:
I will blog here daily as well as TB. This is good exercise.
I will finish the first draft of novel I started for NaNoWriMo.
Name: Sue Bailey Home: Brittany, France About Me: I live in a part-restored farmhouse in Brittany in northern France, with a cat, two dogs and a man who keeps me sane. I run several eBay Shops and websites, and also do web design and web development work. Otherwise, I devote myself to the ordering of five thousand books. See my complete profile
