I didn’t even know I thought until I was nominated for this award. Didn’t even know that thinking was something to do. But I’d like to thank my agent, my loving wife, my wonderful children, and my mother. Also my earthly guardian angel Mary Wilkinson (also my childhood sweetheart), and my grandpa Donald who, if it hadn’t been for the stroke, would’ve almost made it here tonight. I’d like to remember my hairdresser. and other inspirational figures from real life. Most of all I’d like to thank God, without Him I might have been passed over and remained unrecognised and would never have received such a wonderful accolade.

Ilker Yoldas started a meme called the Thinking Blogger Award and set it free in the blogosphere. The 5 original nominees each nominated 5 others, and those 25 all nominated five others, which made 125, and they all nominated 5, which made 625, and then 3000, and then 15000, 75000, 400000 . . . well, there’s a lot of thinking bloggers out there.

It’s called link-love. Or website promotion. Or a chain letter. That little 7kb image that is displayed with every award, always linking back to Ilker’s site, means that Ilker can sell advertising space at premium rates.

Think about it.

On February 2, 2007, an internatonal panel of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments issued a report concluding:

“The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone.”[3]

It should be noted that these scientists are motivated by a need for grant money in their field of climatology. Therefore, their work can not be considered unbiased, though no more than any scientist in any other field .[4]. Also, these scientists are mostly liberal athiests, untroubled by the hubris that man can destroy the Earth which God gave him.[5]

Thanks to Maxine at Petrona for pointing that one out.

And this is from their entry on abortion:

The majority of scientific studies have shown that abortion causes an increase in breast cancer, including 16 out of 17 statistically significant studies. However, like the tobacco industry in the 1950s, the abortion industry has so far kept this important information away from much of the public. This may be due to the profitability of selling fetal parts for Chinese medicine.

Does anyone have a solution to the problem of mad people?

OK, the festival is over for another year. May the pap of Little Miss Sunshine and other films of the same ilk never bother us again (but don’t hold your breath).

Mediocrity is a real problem for us. Perhaps Hollywood will just fade away now, there are signs that that might happen, but will that solve our problem?
I don’t think so.

The approaching mediocrity (well, it’s already here) lies in the millions of blogs that are gathering around us like so many latter-day Triffids. Most everybody now thinks they’ve got an opinion and, worse, that we want to hear it. Very few filters to protect us, a red raw rash of plagearism, and thousands more promises of fledgling identity production every day.

Can it get worse? Or can it only get better?

This begs the question of the text with a life of its own, which has vexed writers, readers and critics for as long as words have been written down. The question of whether the writer writes the words or the words continually erase and re-write the writer.

Most writers will recognise this scenario, the realization that the act of writing, simply putting one word after another, brings about a kind of active memory in the writer. It allows the writer to ‘remember’ phenomena that he didn’t know before he sat down to write.

Ultimately there is only one question to be asked about any piece of writing. Is it alive or is it dead? That is the question that each reader asks, consciously or unconsciously. Can I interact with this work no matter how far away it is in time and space from its writer?

Neruda realizes that Mario’s stealing of his poems is in fact a compliment. It means that they are alive, that the texts are still growing and changing, quivering with life.