Journal

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

in which you lot do most of the work...

Back in December someone asked me to define Chutzpah. And I did.

Now, if you need an example of real life Chutzpah...

Having been caught plagiarising on your final exams, and told you would get no marks, chutzpah is then announcing that you would be sueing the University, because you'd been plagiarising your way through the last four years of higher aducation and they should have caught you earlier.


"I hold my hands up. I did plagiarise. I never dreamt it was a problem.

"I can see there is evidence I have gone against the rules, but they have taken all my money for three years and pulled me up the day before I finished.

"If they had pulled me up with my first essay at the beginning and warned me of the problems and consequences, it would be fair enough.

"But all my essays were handed back with good marks and no one spotted it."


At least, I hope it's chutzpah. It could just be whining twitdom. It's a bit hard to tell.


Neil, glad to hear Anansi Boys is shaping up well.

I don't recall you mentioning any sports, ever, but this piece by the always-excellent Harry Pearson might raise a smile: http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,4284,1222292,00.htmlBy an odd coincidence I read "Lord of Light" two weeks ago, that still leaves about 50 of the "SF Masterworks" series to look forward to. It's a great list. "The Forever War" remains my favourite.

Cheers

Chris


Now that's quite wonderful -- funny and solid and tonally just right.

Hi Neil,

I am currently experiencing a heightened interest in werewolf history/lore. Are there any books you might suggest that would give a good overview...or possibly a site which might be helpful?

Any information you can provide would be great!

thanks

Ed McLelland


I googled the names of some of my favourite werewolf books -- the Sabine Gould, and the Otten Lycanthropy Reader and found myself looking at an excellent werewolf bibliography: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/biblio_lycanthropes.html.

Thought you'd like to know that in a head-on crash, the Cooper Mini does significantly better than the Ford F150 pickup.

http://www.bridger.us/2002/12/16/CrashTestingMINICooperVsFordF150

[insert fannish rambles of thanks, appreciation and joy at your work] -Peg.


Oh good. I do love my Mini. And those are impressive photos.

Here's a pretty good article on the Kansas Goth Elimination Program. Let's see, they got $273,000 to counter goth culture, and gave back $132,000, having established that there was nothing there to be countered. I would have told them that for a lot less than $140,000...

Maddy and I have been having too much fun working our way through http://www.mtgplanet.com/riddleplanet/index.php. If you have a nearly ten year old who's into riddles, it's a real delight.

You may be wondering about 1940s telephone etiquette. Wonder no more: http://contactsheet.org/archives/000047.html

As for Australia, for the several dozen of you who've written in asking for dates and locations, I don't think it's my place to announce a convention, so I'll wait until the convention organisers are ready to tell the world about it. It'll be in July 2005, I believe.