"Next in Sick Sad World."

I would like to submit, for your amusement, the following news headlines. I'm not even going to explain them, although I will give links for your ultimate satisfaction:

"Capsicum spray empties McDonalds."

"Unwanted granny thrown on garbage dump."

"Cow-eating pigs spark scare."

Now honestly, don't they brighten your day?

(Bonus points if you get the reference in the entry title!)

There really is nothing new under the sun.

And I say "sun" advisedy.

This seems like an eco-utopia SF novel coming true right before your very eyes. It's also a really cool demonstration of just how fantastically the processes of evolution have created powerful, efficient systems that rival or better anything we'd been able to do so far.

A new generation of solar cells will use photosynthystic (I'm truly sorry if that's the wrong word, I believe it's made up) processes instead of the photovoltaic effect.

I've been waiting years for this. I would like to have a moss-covered roof that powers my air-conditioning and stereo system.

Now there's a completely unrelated thought: How about putting a small electricity-generating water turbine in the downpipe from your roof to your water tank, so that you get free water and generate electricity during every downpour?

Surely it's possible to....

Make a credit card with a magnetic strip that lasts the life of the card?

Shoddy, shoddy, SHODDY journalism

This is rather a worry:

THE British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archeology - proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament.

Excuse me, what? A clay tablet has been found which names a figure mentioned in the Old Testament from five centuries before the-person-who-may-have-existed-called-Christ. Now the report doesn't even make it clear that the figure is identifiably the same as that mentioned in the Old Testament, or just the same name (and, lets to be clear on this, "Jesus" was such a common name in old Jerusalem that tombs containing a Jesus are ten-a-penny), plus the particular incident mentioned in the Old Testament was a fairly ordinary war, from the looks of things.

At what point did someone say "Hey look! We have one figure confirmed from another historical source! That must mean that the whole book is correct, including the bits of divine intervention and biblical hellfire and the Ark of the Covenant killing people!"

Here's a radical suggestion: It's possible for a document to be partly historical and partly complete fabricated lying-through-your-ceremonial-hat.

Lucifer or Memnoc?

My hearty thanks to, um, whoever bought this to my attention. I'm very sorry, I forgot where the link came from.

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

What is particularly interesting about this is that this is the second test to call me the devil, after Which Johnny The Homicidal Maniac character are you? I feel that this is more than just a coincidence. Okay, okay, statistically speaking twice is meaningless, even when considering the range of other options available in each test. But it certainly says something about me, even if it just actually says something about the sort of people who design these quizes!

The single simplest and most effective technique known to improve fiction writing and journalism

Remove adjectives.

I'm serious about this. Often the single most destructive thing to do to a piece of writing is to litter it with adjectives. Nouns, verbs, the occasional adverb, all necessary. But adjectives are put on this earth to make life easy for writers who have no talent or for readers who have no imagination.

Consider the following tag line, as presented to me this morning by the Courier Mail's news feeds: "The drug ice is killing innocent babies". Now, the first thing you will notice is that this sentence screams of supermarket tabloid trash sensationalist "Today Tonight" journalism. (Okay, I will admit that superfluous adjectives are sometimes fun to use).

Now consider this alternative, made with one simple deletion: "The drug ice is killing babies."

Still a bit sensationalist, but this time it's to the point and allows room for less emotive journalism to follow. The actual article states that amphetamine-using mothers are delivering pre-term, stillborn and frequently nonviable foetuses.

Now, there could be many reasons for this, including poor health related more to behaviour connected to drug usage than to the actual drug, or abuse by other individuals in the drug-using woman's life, and so the headline is still poor journalism and sensationalism. But I'd be much more likely to take this particular rag seriously if they had used headline 2.

It's crazy, but it might just work

It's a truism, isn't it: You can shout until you're blue in the face, but if you want to get something done, get an important person involved. Like, say, a gay high-court judge who wants to look after his partner.

Good on him, I say. May there be more like him out there.