300 Million could die

Not wanting to be alarmist, but the result of a high-mortality global influenza pandemic would be a death toll of about 0.5 per cent, which if there are an estimated 6000 - 7000 Million people on Earth, means that 300 to 350 Million could die -- why is everyone sitting around on the frigging hands?

Disband the W.H.O

Another shower of useless bastards if the news reports are anything to go by -- if indeed their reaction to the Mexico Pig Flu outbreak was along the lines of "Oh Well, its too late to do anything about it" then being total fatalists they wont mind being fired without a pension. Some countries at least are instituting quarentines, and even if it doesnt work at least something is being done -- apparently some isolated spots managed to avoid the 1918 flu epidemic by having a tight quarentine, we are a hundred years on, with chemical warfare suits and so on, surely we can do better

Writing is Rewriting

Indeed it is. I have been concentrating on getting to my million words to throw away, so I havent paid that much attention up to now. But over the last couple of weeks I had a bit of writing for somebody else to finish, and I had some difficulty. I found myself staring at the screen and then at paper (usually printing stuff out gets the juices flowing) but the words just sat there, limp and about as responsive and inspiring as a shopping trolley with three stuck wheels. I have a funny feeling I actually now understand what Hemmingway was on about with his talk about 'a one true sentence' -- it could be that he meant that you could sit (in his case stand) there all day wrestlng with awful words and get one working sentence out of it all at the end of the day ... oh dear

Oh dear. We're all doomed I tell ye!

Paul Krugman mentioned the irisheconomy.ie blog, and mentioned Ireland as being ' like us only worse' and said something ominous along the lines of small countries being a canary in the coal mine type indicator of bad stuff down the tracks

the horror of fake bell-towers

Architecturally and aesthetically speaking of course -- nothing really bad, its not life and death!
But really, they lost the run of themselves at one stage -- two of my least favourites -- Milltown shopping Centre, and the Goat pub -- what were they thinking. At least the Milltown one now has a use -- it holds up some microwave transmitters for mobile phones.
I may do a photo-blog on hideous public/private buildings at some stage

Write to throw away

This is a discipline also recommended in of all places, the computer programming field.
I am only reluctantly coming around to doing it. Jerry Pournelle's advice was aim to throw away a million words before you become a writer. I hope he meant 'over many drafts', because throwing away a million words of first draft would take a very long time -- as in, at three hundred words an hour, it would take you three thousand three hundred and thirty three hours -- which is 416 8-hour working days, which if you could afford not to starve would put you back less than two years of 5 day weeks, but it amounts to a hell of a lot of Saturday afternoons (about 22 years worth, give or take some change:-)

Should we enjoy aging?

Its a strange question. Recently a friend of all of thirty-two said that she actually enjoyed the aging process. Being about eleven years further along the curve, I thought that was rich coming from someone so young who didnt even appear to have a grey hair.
My own reaction is that there is nothing enjoyable about the aging process, its more something you have to endure. Certainly, people gain in experience and wisdom and patience and other things over time, but that happens at the same time as aging does, and even though some of them are part of it, they are the only welcome parts of it.

a more topical idea

A musical called "The Great Depression of Zoo Nine" -- this title being in itself being a side-swipe at semi-illiterate "designers" who rendered the year 2000 as Z000.
The show would be a modern day updating of "42nd Street".
And why not they have a stage show of The Shawshank Redemption now, gawd help us...

Ideas are cheap

My scenario for a comedy musical to be launched before the year 2000 --
"The Naz" -- the story of a gay Hollywood celebrity Lawyer who discovers to his horror that he is The Nazarene Re-incarnated, that is to say, Jesus of Nazareth's Second Coming. It would have been a great idea for a satire, but tricky -- would probably have offended just about everyone on the planet with religious sensibilities of any sort!