Prediction confirmed! What do you reckon John Howard’s reaction was to reading that news over his Wheaties?

I love reading popular science books about physics, chaos theory, string theory and all that sort of stuff. I’m not very smart in these areas but I know just enough to be dangerous and love the Dummies Guide To-style explanations that these books provide.

Since it’s school holidays and I have both the time and energy to read for pleasure I’m currently working my way through Atom by Lawrence M. Krauss. Something that I’ve noticed in Atom and previously in other similar books is the authors’ love of a good exclamation mark! I mean, they sometimes cram two or three into a single paragraph! If somebody had the time and the inclination they could do a study into the ratio of exclamation marks to full stops in popular science books versus non-popular science books. Wouldn’t that be a riveting research project?

Here are a couple of choice exclamation mark samples from Atom.

At a certain point, if it collapses by a factor of 50 in size, then the density will have increased by a factor of 125,000!

The number of collisions of the atoms in this volume of air during the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth is about 10^45, about 10 billion times smaller still!

Current estimates in supersymmetric models are in the range from 10^34 to 10^35 years, well beyond the current limits!

I’ve decided that the exclamation mark in popular science books is like the laugh track in American sitcoms. The laugh track tells you when to laugh because it’s usually not obvious that the “joke” is meant to be funny, and the exclamation mark tells you when to be amazed because the scales are so small or large that it’s sometimes not obvious that the subject of the sentence is amazing.

Sally Morrell writes the most bland, vacant guff, full of motherhood statements and celeb-obs, yet the Herald Sun sees fit to give her a weekly column (probably because she’s Mrs Bolta). She’s also trying to break new ground on paragraph size, some formed from just three or four words. To relieve my abject boredom I skimmed through the last five of her columns, harvested all paras of <12 words, and jumbled ‘em up to make my own Sally (TM) poem. It reads like something from Wallace Stevens, or Ern Malley-meets-Richard Wilkins:

Madonna became a mother at 38 and had her second child at 42.
So congratulations, Nicole.
After all, she’ll be representing Australia on the world stage.
Give the woman a break. Didn’t someone tell these guys superwoman is dead?
Go girl.

Take Germaine Greer.
It was easy to think it was just a publicity stunt.
They’d better do something sweaty soon.
They only make us wonder why they bothered opening their mouth.
But I think Terri genuinely does crave a message from Steve.

I don’t believe in John Edward.
But why does John Laws want us to know his secrets?
Deep down he just wants us to like him.
And knowing you, we’re not necessarily liking you.

Maybe that’s why we still like them.
Or, rather, by the blokes hanging off them.
Ignore them, Therese.
Why must your love die with their body?
Think Jeannie Little on a bad day.

An extreme makeover was urgently needed, he said.
Trust me, Therese. You won’t be looking at Armani.
Go work on your putting or pasting.
Usually there’s a look-at-me reason behind all the revelations.
Oh, and yes, she has a new album coming out.

Well if anything it’s just as meaningful as the original source.

Sick of boring old Dick and Jane readers? Stuck for Christmas stocking-fillers? Fed up with the fascist media / Maoist teachers? Why not try some ‘political education texts for kids’. Reminiscent of those What’s Happening to Me? sex-ed books we sniggered at back in the 80s, all are cute, informative and (of course) thoroughly objective. There’s wonderful titles such as Why Mommy is a Democrat, Why War is a never a Good Idea and The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming.

Our conservative friends shouldn’t feel left out. Also available is Help Mom! There are Liberals under My Bed (a possible crossover into the horror genre Down Under). For Bolt and Blair, there’s The Sky is Not Falling: Why it’s OK to chill about Global Warming (it’s blurb claims to give “kids the scoop, not just about global warming, but the real-world consequences of the Left’s responses to it”). At least we now know what’s on the coffee table at AWH headquarters.

The children of Australia are missing out and need their own titles, like Mummy, When’s the Election? and Why Kevin says Executing People is Wrong, except in Other Countries, Unless they are Australians. Suggestions?

The secret behind Iain Hall:

Thanks for the kind words about my writing; I take to heart what Stephen King said in “The Danse Macabre” when he said that any one who wants to write, in any genre, should set out to write everyday and treat writing like a job, because only then do you have a chance of mastering the craft, and finding your own authorial voice.

No wonder he’s a shit writer, he takes advice from Stephen King, another shit writer. But I don’t think King had quite the way with semi-colons Iain has. He’s really made those things his own, and is possibly in line for a “semi-colon” award. The prize? I’ll give him a free semi-colonoscopy.

I contributed some work (along with 4 other colleagues) some time ago to a technical book that was recently published. Today the 5 of us each received cheques for 21 pounds and 80 pence for our efforts. Awesome… it’s going to cost me 20 odd bucks to cash the thing, leaving me approximately 30AUD for my trouble. I think I will get it laminated for posterity instead. We actually asked for a single cheque so we could maximise the amount of hookers and blow we could acquire but they did not oblige.

Obviously I didn’t work on it for the money, rather because it would look good on the C.V. However this book is so expensive (400 Euro) that I can’t even afford a copy to put on my bookshelf….. so my dear friends, you won’t be getting signed copies of this riveting tome any time soon.

J-lo’s parting gift before she fled the country were two books on how to be a super heroine and and ‘How to be President‘ (of the United States). I think she rightly thought we’d have trouble coping in her absence.

The ‘How to be a POTUS’ book is fascinating. It contains really useful information like each POTUS gets to design their own special rug for the Oval Office ‘with the aid of knowledgeable White House staff’ - Dubya aptly went with a ‘lone star’ design. It also answers pressing questions like can have a pet? (You can!)

I personally found the ‘how do I get a snack’ section the most useful. Apparently ‘Coca-cola’ and ‘Pepsi-cola’ companies stock the White House fridges for free. You can also get free M&Ms which come in boxes with the Presidential Seal, as well as potato chips and pretzels (I’m guessing Dubya is keeping well clear of these). However, proving that even the POTUS can’t survive on corporate largesse alone, if you take snacks back to your private quarters you have to pay for them.

How come I don’t remember this stuff from The West Wing?