Daily archives: September 27, 2010

links for 2010-09-27

This entry was posted in Links on by
  • Elevated city in Abu Dhabi will feel "70 degrees cooler" because of wind engineering
    People have just started moving into Abu Dhabi's planned eco-city Masdar, whose layout modeled on ancient Arab cities means it can withstand the region's heat while keeping its carbon footprint tiny.

    Buildings like the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology are elevated off the ground so that winds can pass beneath it and keep it cool. Elsewhere, vast fields of photovoltaics will provide solar energy to the city. And no cars will be allowed. All transportation will be via electric vehicles in tunnels beneath the city, which is supposed to eventually house up to 45 thousand people

    (tags: ecobuilding)

Not Ashamed? You should be 4

This entry was posted in Carvath Religion on by

Not Ashamed is a campaign which would like to sideline anyone who doesn’t adhere to a narrowly defined version of Christianity. I found out about it because Salford’s wannabe holy politico Richard Carvath signed up to the campaign, which was an automatic black mark against it. On December 1st the Not Ashamed crew are going to present a petition to ‘leading figures in public life’ which will say-

WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ is good news for our nation. He is the only true hope and solid foundation for our society.

WE CALL on government, employers and other leaders in our country to protect the freedom of Christians to participate in public life without compromising biblical teaching and to promote in our society the values that are revealed through Jesus Christ and that have so shaped our nation, for the good of all.

In other words they don’t think the opinion of anyone who doesn’t namecheck Jesus is valid and they want the right to be law breaking hypocrites. The freedom they seek will be to do whatever they can to restrict the freedoms of others, even when those freedoms are legally protected. One or two bigoted registrars refusing to perform civil partnership ceremonies isn’t going to stop them happening, but when they feel empowered to spit the dummy every time the subject comes up they will add unnecessary stress to the proceedings. And the suffering inflicted upon children awaiting adoption but denied perfectly capable parents because they didn’t conform to an agency’s ideal would be even worse.

No metaphysical entity should be used as the foundation for our society. The people behind this campaign should be ashamed for pretending that their beliefs automatically make them better than followers of other, or no, religions.

Post and Unpublish

This entry was posted in Global Weirding Lulu Post and Publish Sounds of Soldiers on by

I’ve unpublished Post and Publish, the novella bundle on the Kindle. It wasn’t selling. Actually, worse than not selling- the two times anyone bought copies they turned around and cancelled the order.

There’s no feedback to tell me why the collection proved so unpopular. I wasn’t happy with the cover, I don’t think it is attention grabbing enough. And the contents were a mixed bag- everything from technothriller satire to romance/sex comedy. I can just republish some of the contents in different formats and see what works. I’ve already done that with So Much To Answer For, even before I’d killed the anthology.

Sounds of Soldiers will be published as a stand alone on the Kindle at the end of October/ start of November. The current version- still available from Lulu– has another cover I’m not happy with. I’ve got a concept for the new cover and will begin putting it together when I have all the elements.

I’ve also removed Global Weirding from publication. It had a cover I really liked, the premise was quite neat and I enjoyed writing it (who wouldn’t with all those sex scenes?), but it just didn’t work as a published book.