Right, I've put a third video up on YouTube -- it's another talking head, I'm afraid, this time about fairies.
I used to keep this sort of stuff quiet (like the ghost story posted earlier) because it embarrassed me to admit to personal paranormal experiences however much I was interested in the reports of others.
But one day I woke up and thought: this is really dumb -- if you can't trust your own judgement on these things, who can you trust? After that I started talking to anybody who'd listen without worrying whether they believed me.
The story is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EclmR01xSds.
Enjoy.
That'll be the last video for a while. I have to stop this nonsense and get back to more serious things, like editing my fourth faerie novel. Comments from the publisher arrived yesterday. If I can get the work done to deadline, publication in both the UK and US is scheduled for autumn 2007.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
New Movie
I'm having such fun with YouTube. When I should definitely have been doing other things, I've been making more movies. The first, called 'The Ghost' has just been uploaded and is viewable at ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKWsIiGDZ6Y
There's another (about fairies) in the pipeline. If I can get it cut to a reasonable length, it should be uploaded by the end of this week. I'll let you know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKWsIiGDZ6Y
There's another (about fairies) in the pipeline. If I can get it cut to a reasonable length, it should be uploaded by the end of this week. I'll let you know.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
YouTube
You lot have probably known about this for years, but I've only just discovered YouTube.com. It's a Web site that lets you post your own videos (free) up to a max of 10 minutes length or 100 MB size. There's some of the most amazing rubbish you've ever watched in there, including one of mine at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOFUhw1aZhA
Have fun.
(And let me know what you think of the movie.)
Have fun.
(And let me know what you think of the movie.)
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The Fear Factor
One of the things I discovered when I started to write non-fiction books was the huge difficulty there is in finding the truth about anything.
For example, I'm old enough to remember a time when full-fat milk was not only good for you, but actually compulsory. They supplied it free in my school and made all the pupils drink it. Just a few years later, somebody decided it wasn't good for you at all. Whole milk, along with other delicious dairy things like butter, cream and cheese, helped make you fat, gave you cholesterol and raised your risk of a heart attack. Later still, a medical practitioner told me the amount of cholesterol attributed to diet was tiny compared to the cholesterol manufactured by your liver and high cholesterol was generally caused by worry rather than foodstuffs. When I eventually discovered my own cholesterol was raised (possibly caused by worrying about my fondness for whole milk, butter and cream) the technician who took the blood sample mentioned that according to latest research, high cholesterol wasn't always bad for you. When I did some research myself, I found there were two different types of cholesterol and one of them was positively good for you. (The other, unfortunately, was still considered lethal.) Then a friend of mine told me on her ninetieth birthday that she'd lived to her disgustingly healthy old age by drinking milk and eating lots of butter and cream. The day after, my wife, who's training to be a Master Herbalist, told me milk products are mucus-forming (which sounds revolting) and thus to be avoided.
I can also remember a time when flouride added to drinking water was wholly beneficial, when Saddam Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction, when the CIA did not have secret prisons scattered throughout the world. Now I'm reliably told it wasn't, he didn't and they have.
Once I clung to the idea that if truth was sometimes buried or distorted by the popular media, you could at least trust the scientific community. That was before I discovered scientists sometimes falsify their experiments, misinterpret their data, follow career paths dictated by current fashions and fear to rock the boat with new ideas because that might cost them their grants. Not all scientists: some. But some is enough. In fact, some is too much.
Once I listened to the experts, who interpret difficult scientific findings and political events for the rest of us. I especially listened to the experts who confirmed my own prejudices. Now it seems to me that the vast majority of experts consider it their duty to convert raw data into fear. So on top of my concerns about whole milk, I've been variously told I should worry about the Communist Menace, nuclear warfare, the exhaustion of fossil fuels, Satanic child abuse, the resurgence of Fascism, the Millennium Bug, anthrax, the Terrorist Threat, the abuse of our civil liberties, bird flu, global warming, young people in hoods and Armageddon.
I sometimes yearn for simpler days.
For example, I'm old enough to remember a time when full-fat milk was not only good for you, but actually compulsory. They supplied it free in my school and made all the pupils drink it. Just a few years later, somebody decided it wasn't good for you at all. Whole milk, along with other delicious dairy things like butter, cream and cheese, helped make you fat, gave you cholesterol and raised your risk of a heart attack. Later still, a medical practitioner told me the amount of cholesterol attributed to diet was tiny compared to the cholesterol manufactured by your liver and high cholesterol was generally caused by worry rather than foodstuffs. When I eventually discovered my own cholesterol was raised (possibly caused by worrying about my fondness for whole milk, butter and cream) the technician who took the blood sample mentioned that according to latest research, high cholesterol wasn't always bad for you. When I did some research myself, I found there were two different types of cholesterol and one of them was positively good for you. (The other, unfortunately, was still considered lethal.) Then a friend of mine told me on her ninetieth birthday that she'd lived to her disgustingly healthy old age by drinking milk and eating lots of butter and cream. The day after, my wife, who's training to be a Master Herbalist, told me milk products are mucus-forming (which sounds revolting) and thus to be avoided.
I can also remember a time when flouride added to drinking water was wholly beneficial, when Saddam Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction, when the CIA did not have secret prisons scattered throughout the world. Now I'm reliably told it wasn't, he didn't and they have.
Once I clung to the idea that if truth was sometimes buried or distorted by the popular media, you could at least trust the scientific community. That was before I discovered scientists sometimes falsify their experiments, misinterpret their data, follow career paths dictated by current fashions and fear to rock the boat with new ideas because that might cost them their grants. Not all scientists: some. But some is enough. In fact, some is too much.
Once I listened to the experts, who interpret difficult scientific findings and political events for the rest of us. I especially listened to the experts who confirmed my own prejudices. Now it seems to me that the vast majority of experts consider it their duty to convert raw data into fear. So on top of my concerns about whole milk, I've been variously told I should worry about the Communist Menace, nuclear warfare, the exhaustion of fossil fuels, Satanic child abuse, the resurgence of Fascism, the Millennium Bug, anthrax, the Terrorist Threat, the abuse of our civil liberties, bird flu, global warming, young people in hoods and Armageddon.
I sometimes yearn for simpler days.
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