These symbols have meanings
* did an interview with Paul Sinha (who I've previously reviewed here). My second phone interview ever. The first one was fine: I read through my list of questions, he gave pithy answers, job done in five minutes. I ran away at work to sit in a corner expecting much the same experience, and half an hour later I found myself having to make an excuse to get off the phone. A really lovely and interesting man and I would have spoken to him for hours if I didn't have a fulltime job to attend to. When I got off the phone, I discovered that the call recorder on my phone had failed. Nightmare. Fortunately I had semi-anticipated this and taken lots of notes while we talked. I belted out the piece a few hours later while the conversation was still fresh in my mind. Verdict: doing a real live interview with a real live human being is fascinating, especially if that human being is interesting. But copying and pasting from email interviews is way easier.
* decided to get angry about American politics. Note the use of the word "decided" there. I had to be selective because there seems to be so much stuff happening in the world at the moment to get upset by. On Twitter alone there's Frankie Boyle V Mark Watson and the quack selling "medically controlled anorexia" solutions and that's just the stuff that's not happening anywhere outside of Twitter! I'm not getting more right-wing in my old age, but I'm definitely getting more curmudgeonly. Anyway, there seemed to be a lot of American 2nd amendment fans on the web yesterday, roaming around message boards like armed, digital Hare Krisnas and trying to spread the following piece of wisdom: it is unfair to deny people the right to protect themselves with firearms. If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. I responded to them all by, without being aggresive, pointing out the very simple difference in murder rates between the US and the unarmed UK (I worked it out as 3.044:1 per capita). I was almost universally ignored. Not shouted down, just ignored. And of course I'm long in the tooth enough to know that that's how the internet works, but this time it made me a little sad. I think it's because it was one of the rare times that I was able to use humble numbers rather than opinion. I expect my opinions to be shouted down and/or ignored on the internet.
*enrolled Joey for school which I really should have done in November, although I'm assured it will be fine. Wow. School. And she's four on Sunday. I'm planning on spending the rest of the night listening to Cat Stevens while staring wistfully out of the window.
* decided to get angry about American politics. Note the use of the word "decided" there. I had to be selective because there seems to be so much stuff happening in the world at the moment to get upset by. On Twitter alone there's Frankie Boyle V Mark Watson and the quack selling "medically controlled anorexia" solutions and that's just the stuff that's not happening anywhere outside of Twitter! I'm not getting more right-wing in my old age, but I'm definitely getting more curmudgeonly. Anyway, there seemed to be a lot of American 2nd amendment fans on the web yesterday, roaming around message boards like armed, digital Hare Krisnas and trying to spread the following piece of wisdom: it is unfair to deny people the right to protect themselves with firearms. If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. I responded to them all by, without being aggresive, pointing out the very simple difference in murder rates between the US and the unarmed UK (I worked it out as 3.044:1 per capita). I was almost universally ignored. Not shouted down, just ignored. And of course I'm long in the tooth enough to know that that's how the internet works, but this time it made me a little sad. I think it's because it was one of the rare times that I was able to use humble numbers rather than opinion. I expect my opinions to be shouted down and/or ignored on the internet.
*enrolled Joey for school which I really should have done in November, although I'm assured it will be fine. Wow. School. And she's four on Sunday. I'm planning on spending the rest of the night listening to Cat Stevens while staring wistfully out of the window.