something that really made me laugh today:
from moreover java news headlines and actually pointing to an article in the independent. the screw up in the independent’s rss feed made the article sound much more interesting though. definitely the last thing the nhs needs.
battleground god is one of the more interesting online quizzes i’ve seen and definitely gave me some food for thought. it examines the logical contradictions in your religious beliefs or lack of them. it seems equally amenable to those with faith and those without, it’s agnostics like me who get scuppered i expect.
[found via plasticbag.org]
the aa have published a survey of the most (and least) dangerous roads in britain. the most dangerous english road (it gets beaten by a bit of the a9 in scotland) is the A537 from macclesfield to buxton. i drove this road for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I’d just bought my new shiny car and was whizzing around twisty peak district roads to try it out. the survey ratings are based on the accidents/vehicle miles ratio for a stretch of road.
i’m not entirely convinced by the “what makes a dangerous road” page linked from the bbc page. it moves the responsibility for road safety onto the people who erect crash barriers, design junctions and choose where to put the traffic lights. nothing makes a road dangerous, it’s the drivers on the roads that endanger themselves and those who share the roads with them.
I read this under the alternative title Charisma and it's a struggle to decide which reads more like a bad romance novel. The book however does not read like any kind of bad novel. This is the second in the Castlemere series and the fifth in my out of order reading order.
I think this is probably the weakest of the series that I've read so far. It didn't get under my skin the way some of the other books have. The characters continue to be wonderful and realistic but the inability of Bannister to let them get through the book without putting at least one of them in mortal danger is getting a bit wearing.
In this book a welsh evangalist preacher comes to town and does very well there in the wake of the obligatory murder. One of the parts of the book I had trouble with was when the preacher unwittingly fired up a lynch mob. I could believe in the preacher and in people's reactions to him but something in the herd mentality seemed off key. I was also concerned that the lynch mob seemed to be forgotten very fast with neither the victim or the participants afforded much time in the rest of the book.
I had some misgivings when the IRA entered the story for a time, they are so easily villanified that it seems an author is cheating when they appear in fiction. This part of the story played out well without concurring with stereotypes though.
In summary the characters are enough to keep this series going and though the plots are rather outsize for the town concerned I'm still enjoying them.
Purchased on 15th February 2002.
Theme: DePo Square by Derek Powazek, generally messed up by Kirsty Darbyshire.
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