Jump to content

Graeme

AD Author
  • Posts

    1,980
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Graeme

  1. A few months ago I considered Donald Trump to be a wildcard but not necessarily a bad potential president. He would be unpredictable, but he's not someone who fits the usual political model, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the longer this campaign goes on, the more I realise that I was wrong. I now agree with the USA Today editorial board who have declared Trump unfit to be president -- the first time in the 34 year history of the newspaper that the editorial board has taken sides in a presidential election.
  2. If similar statements can be obtained from other Trump-owned businesses, then this will be highly significant. Otherwise, it will probably be spun as over-zealous underlings imposing their views on what they think the boss wants. While I have little doubt as to what happened, most of those statements were about what managers said, and the number of serious statements from Donald Trump himself was limited. Similar statements from other parts of his business empire, however, will show a pattern of behaviour that would be hard to play down.
  3. Thank you It took me a long time to decide what to do about that incident.
  4. I don't believe there's any formal definition of what is an editing and what is beta-reading. From my point of view, the 'editing' processing spans everything from technical correctness (punctuation and spelling at one end) through to sentence construction and right up to addressing plot issues. It's all editing in my opinion. It is rare to find someone who is skilled at doing the full gamut, so having a technical editor for one end of the editing processing and a beta-reader for the other end is, I believe, common.
  5. You can find the original and the edited version here. However, after several board software version upgrades, the editing has been messed up (again). When I find the time, I'll fix it up so it looks it originally did. Currently, the colours aren't always correctly showing what was edited and what wasn't.
  6. I can still remember my grade 5 teacher telling my parents you needed a cryptologist to read my writing. After that, I was allowed to print rather than use cursive script. As a consequence, the only bit of cursive writing I still do is my signature. I've always appreciated my editors and try to acknowledge them in everything I post online. Some of the mistakes they find are cringe-worthy, so I'm glad that only a handful of people get to see them.
  7. I just came across an interested article on Samoa and how while homosexuality is still illegal, transgender individuals are an accepted part of the community. Indeed, the annual transgender beauty pageant is a mainstay of the islands social calendar.
  8. The only three words/phrases in that sentence that I immediately recognised were "budgie smugglers", "chardy" (which is actually short for chardonnay -- apparently other wines don't rate) and "arvo". The others are new to me.
  9. Australian's automatically get 100% on the Australian test. It's one of our citizenship perks...
  10. I got 8/10, too. One of the two I missed I had never heard before. The other one I recognised, but I couldn't remember the exact meaning. I tossed up on which of two answers...and I picked the wrong one.
  11. Here is one link: http://www.itv.com/news/2016-08-16/starving-boy-7-found-trying-to-sell-teddy-bear-for-food/ There were others, too. There were four other brothers, aged 11, 12, 15 and 17.
  12. I agree with Cole. The lack of punctuation in the first version seems to give it a stronger impact. A more "he said/she said" feel
  13. I have a (bad?) habit of using gender-neutral terminolgy in my writing. Happily, my editor fixes most of them, but there are times when a character wants to be deliberately misleading as to the gender of the person they are talking about. In that case, they'll use "they" rather than one of "he" or "she". They wouldn't use "he or she" because they know who it is and simply don't want to correct the assumption made by the person they are talking to as to the gender of the person to whom they are referring. Now try to write that paragraph without the singular they... I suspect it'll be a nightmare to read.
  14. My wife and I saw this show in Melbourne many years ago. I wouldn't mind seeing it again if it comes back here.
  15. A reader has just informed me that the link to the Mail Crew website in my stories isn't working. I've just checked and it looks like their domain license had expired :( The website is no longer there. I lost contact with the guys while I was on my writing hiatus so I don't know how to find out what's going on. Does anyone have an update? I presume they've all finished school and are working now.
  16. Stuart Kelly's death was (last time I looked) not deemed suspicious. However, prompted by Chris's comment, I've checked and, yes, there are unconfirmed news reports that he took his own life. There's background information in the above links, but those who are just skimming this thread, when Stuart was 14, his older brother was killed by a single punch from a dunk in Sydney. Some people blame the publicity from that incident for current laws affecting the nightclub crowds, and the second link above says that he was bullied online as a consequence.
  17. He's not a new conservative -- he's the same old conservative that we had before It will be interesting to see how much he's able to control his party. A lot of his policies were previously those of Tony Abbott (who Malcolm Turnbull replaced), even where he's known to disagree with them (eg. he doesn't want a plebiscite on same-sex marriage, but to gain the support of the right-wing of the party when he overthrew Abbott he needed to keep the policy that had been agreed by the party at an earlier caucus). I would like to see him stand up for some of his own policies.
  18. Graeme

    Graeme again

    I'm still giving it a lot of thought, but I haven't found an overall plot and ending that I'm happy with. I know what I'd like to do, but the ideas aren't gelling to my satisfaction. Sorry.
  19. We've had a similar thing here in Australia about our Safe Schools program which tries to teach kids (and teachers) about LGBTI kids. Opponents have dredged up anything they can (such as a link on the web site to another site that happens to include certain sexual material) in an effort to get funding removed. When it was reviewed and some small changes suggested, the opponents didn't think the review was satisfactory and want the whole program shut down until a review that they're happy with can be done.
  20. Congratulations! All the best for the future
  21. I probably have this wrong, but it's a poison (poisonous plant?), and Aristotle drank it as his way to die.
  22. That's great news, Addym! I can't wait to see this new story you're working on.
  23. Congratulations, Bi Janus! I really enjoyed the Goldendale series
×
×
  • Create New...