topical – Page 36 – don't confuse the narrator

in Guadalajara

Well, OK, I’m not saying I’m in Guadalajara.

I’m not even saying My editor is in Guadalajara at what was described in El País as “the biggest event of its kind in the Spanish language.”

But my editor – don’t you love that phrase! – tells me that a colleague from a Madrid bookshop has taken Topka book samples with her to the Book Fair. So Bubbles is in Guadalajara.

Which has to be a step in the right direction.

In these days of economic recession, credit crunch, financial crisis, or whatever term the media are using today, it’s logical that we should look back to the Wall Street crash of ’29 in an attempt to make comparisons and perhaps find solutions.

However, in these days of electronic media, blogs, wikis, archives and resources written by “the unwashed masses”, it’s all too easy to get confused by what’s real and what isn’t. Continue reading “reader, beware”

e-phemera

While designing course content recently, I’ve been looking at some of the implications of email and blogging. One thing that particularly strikes me is the lack of realisation among most people that what is written on-line is automatically archived long term, perhaps even permanently.

I’ve been posting to usenet news groups for nearly ten years now, and one of my initial concerns was the fact that my thoughts and ideas could appear on millions of screens around the world. Fortunately, that thought bothered me a lot, Continue reading “e-phemera”

un hand-washing day

I was taken aback to read the following headline on the BBC:
Millions mark UN hand-washing day.

In fact, if you click through, you’ll find it is not, as I first suspected, a day of non-handwashing, to save the world’s limited soap and water resources, but a “campaign and pledge to embrace more hygienic practices by the simple act of washing [your] hands.”