[obsession] fourth chapter now posted

Chapter 4 [Aliya] is now posted and can be read by either clicking on the photo here or in the sidebar.

[society] how can we halt this malaise

Holmes said to Watson, in His Last Bow: The Englishman is a patient creature but at present his temper is a little inflamed and it would be as well not to try him too far. And what, pray, has caused it this time around? Political correctness [a curse be on its essence] and Izzadeenism [multiple expletives]. I do not possess the journalistic style to state this any better so here is Minette Marrin: These days, and not least last week, I often think that we as a society have lost the determination to hold the line in defence of common sense and shared values against stupidity, dishonesty and external threats. Do follow this link [I understand that you’re not usually taken with such things but please do it this one time].

[gartenbau] parasit ortet duft seines opfers

Teufelszwirne lieben den Duft von Tomaten. Liegt deren Aroma in der Luft, wachsen Teufelszwirn-Sprösslinge zur Tomatenpflanze hin. Die flüchtigen Substanzen sind aber nicht nur verlockend - sie weisen auch direkt den Weg. Pflanzen haben keine Nase - und doch können sie Düfte riechen.... mehr.

[sudan] best to skip over this post – it’s quite nasty

If you’re squeamish and don’t wish to spoil your Sunday lunch, best to pass over this one - it’s not very nice. Former US Marine officer, Brian Steidle believed that following orders and doing the right thing were one and the same. Then he went to Darfur. "I was a witness to genocide," he says. Steidle had heard reports of atrocities by nomadic Arab militias armed and supported by the Government against African farmers who supported Darfur's rebels. The raiders were called Janjaweed – "devils on horseback". He’d never seen anything like it – schoolgirls bound together and burned alive, babies with bullets in the back, eyes gouged out. That month he wrote an email to his sister, Gretchen: "This is not the doing of humans, this is the work of the devil." Continued.

[aaagh] just burnt the toast a second time

Does anyone remember my profoundly erudite piece last Saturday entitled [aaagh] just burnt the toast a second time? Possibly not but I’ve just gone and bl--dy done it again, haven’t I and this time it was Dale’s fault. The first time I was trying to get his 18 Doughty Street thing linked and the second time I was altering the text around it. The only conclusion I can come to is that blogging and toast don’t mix.

[sunday blogfocus] can this medium ever be viable

The Pedant-General-in-Ordinary

[Small note: This is not a blog round-up. It’s a piece on a certain topic each Sunday, utilizing what other bloggers [not all] have said about it during the last week.]

A non-blogger I know, the manager of Apple in this neck of the woods, yesterday asked about the conversion to hard cash of the blogging idea. He’d seen a programme on the explosion of blogging all over the world and how anyone with a PC was opening a blog and expecting instant traffic and ad-sense returns.

One estimate said there were 54 million blogs worldwide and the stats said that most of these would not rise much above a standard 50 visitors a day [hits being more of course]. Then there was an exponential leap into the thousand range and all sorts of deals and advertising making the idea viable. Some do make a semi-career of it. Read on here.