Bloody writers

It's not entirely their fault. After all, at least one senior looked at what they submitted and OKed it. However, when each unit you are writing is meant to be six pages, don't just write five! I know it's only one page, but that's quite a large proportion of six pages to be missing. One sixth, in fact.

This actually is sort of a big deal especially on this project, since each page is a worksheet designed to be photocopied and filled in by the pupils, so if you miss one, you're basically dropping up to a half-hour lesson's worth of stuff.

I don't normally post about this sort of thing, but I have to say I was genuinely shocked by this response online to the US's recent ruling on "partial birth" abortions:

"there are safer methods for late term abortions. this one only became popular because the fetus was a guaranteed dead delivery, where the other methods sometimes produced live (though usually dying) fetuses. this one does not require general or spinal anesthesia, which hysterotomy does require, but the prostaglandin and saline abortions do not require anesthesia either.

late term abortions are rare (likely cost is a major factor there, anything past 16 weeks is in the thousands of dollars). but that method truly is a bit gruesome, and lent a particularly nasty image to the concept of abortion in general (it was often the big poster image at rallies)."


Because God forbid something look bad, eh?

Dear Bill

So, I was on Wikipedia seeing if this new film called Scoop is based on the Waugh novel (it isn't, but an adaptation was made in 1987, it turns out) and then got distracted by reading the entry for the book itself. There I found this wonderfully deadpan statement:

"Waugh based his hapless protagonist, William Boot, on Bill Deedes, a junior reporter who arrived in Addis Ababa aged 22 with two tons of luggage."

Scoop, by the way, is an excellent novel and everyone should read it.
Although I must confess to not being familiar with the phrase "in a cleft stick" when I first read it and so had to look it up in a dictionary before getting the joke.

Had to collect my parcels from the post office today, which meant I had to be late for work. This is because the post office opens at 8.30 and closes at 4.00, and I normally get the ferry at eight.

Now, of course, that means I have more things to put away in the flat. I think I need more shelves.