Revisionism

 For anyone who hasn’t noticed, Paul Litterick at The Fundy Post has changed his blog’s description, or sub-heading or whatever these things are called, to: 

Shot a life coach in Reno, just to watch him re-evaluate personal goals.

Outstanding.

Three hours of hell

Eight excited small girls at the six-year-old’s birthday party. In my house, today.

Evil power-hungry villains

This letter to the editor – of the week? month? – is in the Economist, 2 April edition:

A dog’s tale

SIR – It was lovely to see your reference to a New Yorker cartoon from 1993 of one canine saying to his pooch pal that “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” (“Anonymous no more”, March 12th). Recently, my dog Ursa set up a Facebook account. She has acquired more than 30 friends now, including several of my kid’s acquaintances who would never friend me directly. They all know that Ursa is a dog. Mostly my wife and I post things that we think Ursa would say, and she has entered several provocative discussions.

My point is that the web has become a much more sophisticated place since 1993. Now people on the internet know you are a dog but they still treat you as an equal. Of course cats are still excluded as they continue to be evil power-hungry villains.

TOM-ROBBINS MILNE

New York

“We have superbly honed defences for this type of insult”

In which George Monbiot fisks Helen Caldicott. About time someone did.

The consolations of philosophy

We are told that we should encourage our children to grow vegetables and learn to cook. I discourage my children from growing vegetables because my garden is my shed, my man-cave, my man-alone time.

Cooking, yes. Excellent, a great idea. But when the nine-year-old wanted to make carrot muffins at the weekend her mother who usually (i.e. always) does this was tired so I volunteered. Do you know how long it takes to grate that many carrots? I do. The nine-year-old doesn’t. Apparently the muffins were a success. I wouldn’t know. They were all eaten by others.

This afternoon the nine-year-old decided to make French toast for visiting friends. She can crack an egg, get milk and butter out of the fridge, cut bread, all the basics. But guess who actually made the six slices of French toast?

While I was doing this, I thought back to my days at Auckland University doing maths and philosophy and reading Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Marx and Popper – not the fun stuff like The Open Society but the hard stuff, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

And I thought, how did I get here from there? Where did it all go right?

Listener online

The all-new, singing and dancing Listener website is now open for viewing.

Looks good.

Books & Arts editor Guy Somerset has a blog there. He writes:

Listening In comes to you as part of the Listener’s new-look website, a place where you can join in the cultural conversation that takes place each week in the print edition of the magazine. As well as being able to read and comment on reviews and interviews from the print edition, you will be able to do so with additional online-only content, including this blog, our film critic David Larsen’s blog, Romeo Must Not Live, interviews and DVD reviews.
I’m particularly looking forward to the discussions to be had in our new comment threads. Arts and books are there to be talked about – and here is a place you can do that talking.

Sounds good.

Retail sentence of the day

Damian Thompson in the Spectator, on the Classical Exchange, one of London’s three remaining specialist classical CD shops:

It’s true that relations between the staff could be a bit strained – unsurprising, when you consider that the deputy manager was the gay ex-husband of the manager’s bisexual girlfriend.

Blog comment of the year, so far

Of course, it’s at the Dim-Post. Danyl asked for suggestions for a name for Hone Harawira’s new party. First up was “dave” with:

The Te Party.

I don’t know why anyone bothered trying after that.

Auckland thought of the day

A London poster quoted in the latest Word magazine:

You are not “stuck in traffic”. You are traffic.

Sentence of the day

Winner will be randomly selected by Penguin.

OK, it’s a publishing in-joke. I’m allowed to. It’s Friday.