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December 01, 2004 - 05:39 PM

Updatage

My life is, as you know, a helterskelter whirlwind of frantic activity. One day it might be sitting for several hours at a time staring blankly into space; another day it might be descaling the kettle (though, to be fair, I've not actually done that in quite some time, because we have no C.L.R. and vinegar isn't quite up to the task of removing the quarter-inch-thick layer of limescale clinging tenaciously to the element).

Following are the most interesting things to happen in my life recently:

  • I got a commission to write a story for Urban Male Magazine, Canada's answer to Maxim. The pay isn't great (which is to say really, really quite bad) but it's planned to be a double-page spread so it'll look good in my portfolio.
  • I called the travel editor of the National Post to find out if she read the story I sent to her over a week ago, and it turns out she's been away and couldn't find the email. Greatly relieved. So I sent it again. Hopefully I'll hear back from her this time, along the lines of: "Dear Ross, You're the most fantastic writer the world has ever seen, bar none. I will pay you one half of one million dollars for this story."
  • I am still distressingly close to the beginning of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. The time I take to finish it might itself be measured on a geological scale.
  • I found a new(ish) browser that I'm very partial too. It's called Camino and it's based around the same rendering engine as Firefox, but is much more lightweight. This means new windows open pretty much instantly instead of taking a couple of seconds like they did in Firefox, page loading is quicker, and I can once again boast that I use an obscure browser. Also, it's only for Macs. Suckers.

As you can tell, the last few days have been unusually exciting. I realize this post strayed wildly into "uninteresting personal diary" territory, but I intend to make up for that with a scintillating post after I've made supper. Whirlwind, I tells ya.

Ross Thomas

Comments and trackbacks

Here are the erudite, piercing and profoundly arousing comments and trackbacks left so far by my alert readers regarding this entry (you too can make me tumescent by leaving a comment of your own):

You don't havta leave out what the religious nuts think, but you shouldn't teach that their beliefs are facts, either.
Nor should evolution be taught as fact.
Nor should one religion be included but not another religion. That's a bit discriminatory, no? Where do we draw the line?

Marina – December 1, 2004 09:30 PM

Evolution is as much a faith as any religion. Science is faith, too.

And suggesting that schools be required to teach that an alternative point of view to evolution is intelligent design is not teaching religion, per se. It's teaching that there is an alternative. So we don't need to be concerned about being inclusive, we're just presenting a more open-minded perspective...

Ross Thomas – December 1, 2004 10:35 PM

I need to descale my kettle. Does that CLR stuff really work?

Davey – December 5, 2004 12:12 PM

Yes.

Ross Thomas – December 5, 2004 01:46 PM