The Gray Monk has revealed that he has published a work of fiction recently, and Guido, being a good anarchist, went out and searched for it. It took a bit of finding, but it is available if you order it from W H Smith or from Waterstones! It is also available from Amazon and from the publisher Author House online.

Set in a Sci-Fi background it is essentially an adventure story, one the author has used to explore a number of concepts rather well. He has come up with the unusual premise of three young people being dragged from the past into the future and explored how they coped with everyday things we now take for granted – but more importantly, the things we have forgotten and which they bring with them. Simple things like writing letters and making sketches to illustrate them. Like using logarithm tables instead of calculators, or pencil and paper instead of a keyboard. Or how they instinctively respond to a threat with the weapons they are most familiar with – to the surpise and discomfort of their attackers.

There are some surprises in the book which draw heavily on some aspects of history many would rather forget, and on the human ability to survive. The final pages of the book are rather poignant as the young men return to their roots, but not their time period.

The book is entitled “Out of Time” by Patrick G Cox and can be found on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Author House’s sites in the UK and the US.

Enjoy the read, it’s worth it and it is a fun adventure story with a number of smiley moments among the more serious thoughts buried in its pages!

This week the word was interesting and challenging for all but me. It involves tentacles so not a stretch.

You know it’s getting bad when even staunch Democrats are criticizing the DNC for its decisions in regards to the upcoming 2008 Presidential Primary schedule.

Changes in the process made by the DNC has forced more front loading of the primary schedule, which in turn will seriously cripple that process by giving an even bigger advantage to the wealthier, more well financed candidates.

“If the DNC had any real courage, if (DNC Chairman) Howard Dean really wanted to solve the problem, he would stand up to Michigan, he would stand up to California, he would stand up to Florida and say, ‘No, you’ve got to go further back in the process so that all states are important,’” [New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathy] Sullivan said. “He hasn’t done that, the DNC hasn’t done that. Frankly, I’m a little bit fed up with the DNC at this point and how they’ve addressed this.”

Incentives offered by the DNC to larger states in an effort to get the larger states to push back their primaries may not work, according to New Hampshire State Republicans.

“We had a rule like that in the (Republican National Committee) maybe three cycles ago,” New Hampshire RNC committee member Tom Rath said. “Everybody said, ‘We don’t need the delegates. What we want is to participate in a meaningful way in the process.’”

I’m not sure how the DNC will be able to promote something that has been proven not to work, unless somehow they’ve taken up an attitude of Just because they couldn’t make it work doesn’t mean that we can’t. They are intent on proving the saying Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting the results to be different this time.

It seems that far too often the DNC chooses to overlook a major factor when making some of their policies, that factor being human nature. (I’m not saying the RNC doesn’t do that, too. But they aren’t doing it this time.) The various states will do what is to their advantage, regardless of the incentives to do otherwise.

Unless the DNC decides to step up and tell the larger states ‘Back off!’, the primary schedule will become skewed and there will be a huge gap between the last primary and the party convention. That rarely works well under any circumstances. All one needs to do is look at the 2004 campaign as an example John Kerry ended up with the nomination when he was the worst possible candidate the Democrats could have chosen. Kerry’s advantage was the large campaign war chest he had, much of it his wife’s money. He bought his way into the nomination, something made possible by the front loaded primary schedule. Better candidates were crushed by his financial superiority. That’s no way to choose a possible president.

I can think of a good case to trouce this piece in the Spectator. The writer doesn’t even have the decency to name the blogs which he criticises. What I suspect he is talking about is the comments on some of the right-of-centre & left-of-centre blogs not the actual content on the blog itself.

With the upward spiral of house prices in the US and the UK an easy and inexpensive way to find out how much your house or flat is worth is something that many would find very valuable indeed including me. There are lots of things that can be affected by your house value whether its how much you can borrow with a remortgage to how much it will be worth when you come to sell and move up or on. There are lot of people, including real estate agents who claim to be able to give you the correct value but from my experience this can vary widely indeed. Check out eppraisal.com with its database of over 70,000,000 homes (in the US) and see what your place is really worth.

Sunday at 2000 GMT which is 3pm est. You need to have Skype naturally and you access through the Skypecast site.

Come an enjoy the third version of the show using bleeding edge technology. Now with less technical problems! Our producer Lance and I have been practicing with the technology to tweak our knowledge.

Well you knew it was coming but those of you that are jealous of the British government with their title and most about of Close Circuit TV cameras in the world you can now have you own spy camera for your house. Don’t trust the maid, your significant other or your children why not spy on them? I mean its not like we don’t live in a paranoid enough society why don’t we spy on each other. To be honest if I found my significant other had placed spy cameras around the house to spy on me I would be out the door so fast her eyes would spin. Relationships whether with employees, children or significant others is based on trust and having a spy camera certainly isn’t a way of showing it.

Yes, of course, there will be those of you that believe if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about bollocks but I certainly don’t share that philosophy. It assumes that everyone is guilty and that no one has a right to privacy or the freedom of movement. In one sentence you have all you need to know about the philosophy of an authoritarian nee crypto fascist. Go after the guilty rather than limiting the freedom of us all.

AFP/Yahoo:

Japanese pianist Maiko Ichiyanagi poses with the world’s smallest grand piano produced by Japan’s toy maker Sega Toys. The “Grand Pianist,” which has 88 working keys and can automatically play 100 pre-installed music songs, will go on sale 01 April 2007 with a price of 47,000 yen (400 USD).

the blog québécois

Update from Andrew: I haven’t recently praised my good blogging mate Gnotalex and thanked him for quirky, nutty and sometimes downright disturbing discoveries on the internet. His stuff is good at breaking up the sometimes rantlike output of yours truly on this blog. I enjoy getting up in the morning only to find that Gnotalex has the first post of the day up on the blog. What would I do without him?

Life coaching is one of those things that divides people and opinion. There are even shows that try to expose the good from the bad. Well if you are interested in life coaches and what they do, why not read a bio of a coach and make up you own mind. I suspect life coaches are rather like management consultants.: some are very good, some are ok and the rest hover around useless and are a total waste of money. And as with anything you get what pay for.

As you all probably know I am not entirely enamored of athletes otherwise known as jocks. Well it probably does not surprise anyone to knw there is a site called Bad Jocks which details the stupid, moronic and downright criminal behaviour of those involved in sports. And this site does not just pick on American jocks but covers the dolts all over the world including their sometime equally dimwitted fans.