Just got an email from JJ who runs my favorite Bistro (Le Select) with a URL to an article in The Wine Spectator saying that Study Finds Red Wine Destroys Bacteria That Cause Lung Infections, Heart Disease.
No wonder Yuka and I never tend to get sick in the winter.
My iPod's been broken for months. Can't play music without holding the headphone jack at a funny angle. Tried to look at it 6 weeks ago and severed the harddrive cable while opening it. Spent $75 on a new cable and then got it back to its previously broken state. This morning, I figured I'd have another look at it. NO sharp knives. Opened it with two plastic toothpicks from my swiss army knives. Turns out that the cover to the headphone jack enclosure is soldered tight. Puzzled and proded inside with bits of plastic, and realized that all the solders are bad, but one specifically was a problem. Used a tiny screwdriver for fixing eyeglasses, and realized this connection is for the ground. Wheeeee... Went through a couple of boxes until I found some old wire, stripped it of it's plastic cover, and then poked it in and around bits of the iPod, and twisted it tight, and voila. Fixed. Nothing you can't do with a bit of wire and a couple of hours without distractions. Tune time!
Globe and Mail and a number of other rags have articles about the ongoing foolishness of Kevin Sullivan.
An Ontario Superior Court judge yesterday tossed out a $55-million libel action launched by Sullivan Entertainment Group Inc. against the heirs of Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery, signalling the end of the first round of a bitter, 15-year battle.
She called Sullivan's accounting of the wildly successful Anne of Green GablesTV movies of 1984 and 1985 "a joke." (Sullivan claimed it has never recouped its production costs for the programs, the highest-rated in Canadian history). The judge also wrote in her decision that Sullivan's bookkeeping "is creative accounting at its very best and very worst -- depending on your perspective."
In her decision, Judge MacFarland wrote that Kevin Sullivan, who with his wife, Trudy Grant, owns the company, was "one of the most evasive witnesses I have encountered. When cross-examined, he could not answer a question directly. The most simple of questions elicited a long, complex and essentially evasive response in many, many instances."
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 23:51:52 +0100
From: "Rhonna J. Robbins-Sponaas"
Subject: Net Author is Recruiting!
Or, in other words . . . . . .HELP! :-)
Hei, folks! As always whenever we need help, we're starting with our list membership. And right now we definitely need help.
As much as possible, Net Author uses a blind review process for submissions sent to the journal, *E2K*. For those of you who aren't familiar with the process, it means that the readers don't know who actually wrote the work, and therefore cannot be influenced by name or credentials. The problem, however, is that we've recently had one of those periods of attrition every organization has; we've lost folks to illness or professional moves as they step out into new challenges. And that means that we're searching for new readers for fiction, creative nonfiction, and writing-related nonfiction. Historically, our reviewers have often moved into associate editor or editor at large positions, and submission reading is one of the requirements for that status. Likewise, it's part of any training program we offer toward editorial status, and while we don't have one open at the moment, any current reader activity would be applied to that training program.
In other words, we're looking for folks who are willing to work with us as readers. It's a purely volunteer function--as are all our positions--so there's no money involved. We average some 17 fiction and nonfiction submissions per month, but not all submissions need reviewing, so neither are we talking about huge amounts of time. The difficulty is that we need a handful of experienced writers/readers; it would be difficult for novice writers to evaluate the works with the level of discernment and sophistication we need, and at the moment, we're so short staffed that we don't have time for training. At a later time we can certainly open that possibility up for some of the younger troops, but right now we need folks who can go right to work with only a basic orientation.
What you'd do . . . Basically, this is the easy part. As I receive the submissions, I'strip all identifying info from them and forward them to the reviewers. Those reviewers then read the work and send a short (less than 200 words) response back to me, following the guidelines and format I'd give you, and those reviews would then be used toward making a final decision on the work and responding to the writer.
And there you have it. We need readers. Wanna help? If you think you're up for it, PLEASE check in with me. Just send me a mail with a statement of interest and a brief summary of your own experience and credentials so we can get a sense of your background, and we'll go from there.
Rhonna (crossing her fingers and waiting with bated breath)
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Rhonna J. Robbins-Sponaas
Editor in Chief,
Net Author http://www.netauthor.org
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