Owner: Gary William Murning Online URL:http://garymurning.wordpress.com/ Join Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 05:22:10 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A blog for lovers of books, writing, literature, science and the rational approach to life. Site statistics:Click here
Brillante! 2008-08-25 05:01:30 It seems I am once again honoured with a blogging award — this time from the wonderful thebeadden! It’s always nice to have one’s efforts appreciated. Thank you!
Over the next few days I will be passing the award along to eight of my favourite blogs. So… now might be a good time to start sucking [...]
They Didn’t Let Boris Speak! 2008-08-24 12:32:47 This is, officially, my first London 2012 Olympics post! Just think, you’ve got four whole years of me vacillating between optimism and pessimism on the subject to look forward to! Doesn’t it make you glad you discovered Gary William Murning Online?
The handover has taken place. The Olympic flag was given to Boris
, who waved it [...]
Grayson Perry. 2008-08-24 11:41:15 Now, I have nothing against crossdressing. As far as self-expression goes, it’s as valid as anything else and whilst it doesn’t do it from me, I can fully appreciate how it might (and indeed does!) for others.
Grayson Perry
, the 2003 Turner prize winner and fairly famous cross-dresser always perplexes me somewhat, though. I look at [...]
Man in the Dark. 2008-08-24 04:59:22 I have a love-hate relationship with the work of Paul Auster. Books like Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions and, most recently, The Brooklyn Follies — as patchy as they in places were — worked on a number of levels for me, pulling me into worlds that were at once crisply real and yet postmodern [...]
Looking Back… 2008-08-23 05:01:44 It seems I’m pulling in quite a few new readers at the moment. My daily page hit count has been around 184 over the past week or so, jumping up to 233 on one occasion. Not exactly in the same league as some out there, but a definite improvement and rather gratifying nonetheless.
So, I’d just [...] Read more:Looking Back
Richard Feynman and His Bongos. 2008-08-22 12:23:06 Never let it be said that Nobel prize-winning physicists haven’t got rhythm!
Richard
Feynman. I’m a fan, as many of you will already know. He was an exceptionally talented man in so many respects.
This clip makes me want to have a go myself but, well… I’m not a physicist
(I was going to post the [...]
Data Loss and Government. 2008-08-22 04:20:07 “Ministers have been accused of a “massive failure of duty” after thousands of criminals’ details, stored on a computer memory stick, were lost.”
It shouldn’t really be a surprise, by now. We have been faced with so many similar stories over recent months that it is difficult to know what more can be said on [...] Read more:Government
Biting the Bullet. 2008-08-21 12:01:01 Today I finally got round to admitting to myself that the outline for The Yesterday Tree isn’t firing me up as much as I would have hoped. I’ve tiptoed up to the edge of this a number of times over the past few weeks, but today — whilst it was developing quite nicely, with many [...]
Creative Freedom. 2008-09-17 12:18:32 I realised today, whilst out in the country, that I have complete creative freedom. I don’t have to be tied to any particular kind of novel — as long as it’s fairly “literary” (I’m not good at genre fiction, and publishers like Legend wouldn’t be interested, anyway.) I can play with ideas, with form, with [...] Read more:Freedom
Back in the Saddle. 2008-09-16 05:17:26 It occurred to me last night that maybe writing about my rejections here was not such a good idea. After all, every email I send to agents/editors has my website address on it. They can read everything that you can read, and seeing that others have already rejected a certain piece of work could be [...] Read more:Saddle
Children of the Resolution — Agent Reaction. 2008-09-15 12:28:12 This probably isn’t the best idea. Blogging shortly after receiving a quite perfunctory rejection makes a rant rather too tempting. So I’ll keep it short; Children
of the Resolution
“undoubtedly has merit”, but it isn’t for them. Once again, the phrase “This business is so subjective” was tagged on the end — and whilst I [...] Read more:Agent
My Secret (Well Almost) Vice. 2008-09-14 12:14:07 From September to the back end of December, you will find me every Saturday evening pursuing one of my favourite and possibly quite nefarious (hey, I’m trying to make it interesting, okay?) pastimes. I don’t talk about it often, preferring to keep it secret, concealed behind a veil — a parallel existence far removed from [...] Read more:Almost
Sarah Palin and Her Bible. 2008-09-13 11:38:38 Yet again I find myself thinking, if only she’d left her Bible at home…
Peter Brookes –Times Online. Read more:Sarah
Gordon Brown faces mutiny as whip calls for leadership contest - Times Online 2008-09-12 12:36:22 Gordon Brown
suffered a shattering blow to his authority today as one of his own whips called for a contest to replace him as Labour leader.
Siobhain McDonagh confirmed that she was among a growing band of Labour MPs seeking to trigger a leadership election in the party’s conference in a little over a week. [...] Read more:Gordon
, faces
, calls
, Times
, Gordon Brown
My Current Reading List. 2008-09-12 12:12:54 Having finally completed Tolstoy’s War and Peace — I approached it with much trepidation, paced myself far more sensibly than I normally would, found some of the final battle sections and philosophising rather tedious and unnecessary, but, on the whole, thoroughly enjoyed it — I today started reading By the River Piedra, I Sat Down [...] Read more:Current
, Reading
Sarah Palin’s “Task from God”. 2008-09-12 05:19:22 Have you ever seen a worm wriggling on a hook? In this particular case, it’s oddly satisfying.
And for crying out loud, Sarah
, stop saying “Charlie” so much. It smacks of desperation in so many ways!
Random Writing Quote. 2008-09-11 12:35:56 “I love deadlines. I especially love the whoosh-ing sound they make as they fly by.”
—Douglas Adams Read more:Random
, Quote
The Lull After the Storm. 2008-09-11 12:20:00 After ten days or so of, for Gary William Murning Online, at least, extremely high hit rates (close on 7,000 a day at its peak), everything seems to be finally calming down. The world didn’t end (it was never going to, even if there had been a problem with the experiment — which there isn’t [...] Read more:Storm
When Satire Becomes Too Easy — Or, What Are We Going to Do with Sarah Palin? 2008-10-05 11:35:37 I’ve only just seen the CNN clip below and I have to admit it gave me a chuckle or two. Nonetheless, it begs the question, “Should an easy target be shown a little leniency?” Do we reach a point where we should say, “Okay, this is getting rather too easy — let’s cut this individual [...] Read more:Going
, Sarah
The Lagoon Nebula. 2008-10-05 05:08:05 There are many beautiful things in this universe of ours (if you don’t believe me, you could start by looking at my new picture on the About page… well, maybe not!), but the LagoonNebula
has to be up there — literally — with the best of them.
In the constellation of Sagittarius, this classic deep-sky [...]
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Publishers set for Christmas rush 2008-10-04 11:52:36 “People who buy books only buy an average of seven books a year, and a lot of those are for Christmas
,” said Mr Roberts.
via BBC NEWS | Entertainment
| Publishers
set for Christmas rush.
I think what Mr Roberts actually means is that when you take into account readers who buy books by celebrity authors etc., the [...]
From Pavlov’s Dogs to Bacteria? 2008-10-03 12:14:51 Today I came across an interesting article concerning claims by researchers that single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, can be trained using associative learning in a similar way to that used with Pavlov’s dogs. Once I’d stopped amusing myself with the subtitle (”Single-celled organisms could be ‘trained’ to deliver drugs”), imagining multitudes of bacteria Read more:Bacteria
Where Thursday Finds Me. 2008-10-02 11:56:24 After careful consideration, and much vacillating, I’ve decided not to publish The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts through the YouWriteOn.com “publish 5000 writers” scheme. Some of you are already aware of my reasons but for those who aren’t, briefly, I feel that the lack of editorial input and author control over the finished product isn’t [...] Read more:Thursday
Everyone’s a Critic. 2008-09-29 12:25:52 Now, there’s a lot of bad shit written about the Taleban. There’s the whole treatment of women issue, ethnic massacres and persecution — and, yes, they were a bit too pally with Osama bin Laden for most people’s taste. But having today read the article quoted below, I’m beginning to wonder if, perhaps, they don’t actually [...] Read more:Critic
BBC NEWS | Politics | Boris terminates cyborg Arnie 2008-09-29 05:00:04 It has taken a whole year - but London mayor Boris
Johnson has finally got his own back on Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As he was waiting to address last year’s Tory conference via video link, the California Governor seemed highly amused by Mr Johnson’s speaking style.
In a a clip which became a hit on YouTube, [...]
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