Norris on Stafford

Kathleen Norris (in her book, Amazing Grace, pg 78) quotes William Stafford...."who once said that he never had writer's block, because when a poem failed to come, he simply lowered his standards and accepted whatever came along."

He also said: "Successful people cannot find poems, for you must kneel down and explore for them." Norris writes that she decided this applied to religious belief as well as to poetry.

Asbestos

I've more than once been asked to write something about Mesothelioma on this blog (no need to ask why, just accept the fact that's the case) and invariably fail to remember how to spell it. Never mind - accept the fact that the spelling above is correct. Just accept it!

Mesothelioma, as you'll know, is a cancer related to asbestos; that is, people who've worked with asbestos and inhaled the asbestos dust over a period of time are very susceptible to getting the illness. Just so you're really clear about this, mesothelioma is named from the mesothelium, which is a membrane that covers and protects most of the internal organs of the body. It's composed of two layers of cells: one layer immediately surrounds the organ; the other forms a sac around it. The mesothelium produces a lubricating fluid that is released between these layers, allowing moving organs (such as the beating heart and the expanding and contracting lungs) to glide easily against adjacent structures.

Now there's something you didn't know you'd find out when you came to read this blog today. Anyway, if you've contracted mesothelioma you may need a mesothelioma lawyer so that you don't find your employer or ex-employer trying to wriggle out of paying you money in compensation. That's another story. What I'm more interested in today is asbestos itself.

Asbestos is a Greek word meaning 'unquenchable' or 'inextinguishable' - a pretty scary sort of thought in itself, particulary if you've picked up the cancer connected to it. There are other other illnesses you can contract via asbestos: asbestostosis, which affects the lungs, for instance, and lung cancer itself.

Asbestos ain't fun to be around, even though it's very effective as a building material, with various qualities that make it useful. In fact, it's not so much its use in building that's the big problem (although there are hazards), it's what happens when you 'unbuild' it.

Now you might think we've only just discovered in the last couple of centuries that its use brought problems; nope, the ancient Greeks noticed that when their slaves mined asbestos they tended to get sick. Of course, there were always plenty more slaves around, so it didn't matter in those days. (Slaves were only there for use, like other tools and materials.)

There's a story that Charlemagne had a tablecloth made out of asbestos. Certainly it might have saved on the laundering, but you have to kind of wonder what it did to the food....

Mining of asbestos in modern times turned out to be not much better for the slaves - sorry, workers - than it had been in ancient days. Miners got sick just like their forebears and were probably treated only marginally better.

Strangely, asbestos is found naturally in the air outdoors, and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Most people's systems cope with the infinitesimal amounts that they come in contact with, but there have been studies done in which it was found that people living near to asbestos deposits got sick; increasingly, the closer they lived to the deposits. Mesothelioma was one of the main illnesses they contracted.

When the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11, millions of particles of asbestos were released into the air. That's pretty scary.

You look around the world some days and think: this is a pretty okay sort of a place. And then you discover that the Creator seems to have left some very strange things just kind of lying around. Equally, when you think that the ancient Greeks had a fairly good idea that asbestos, for all its useful properties, wasn't that healthy for humans, you have to wonder why we moderns have considered using it in such huge quantities.

Seemingly the only way we learn is when we find we have to fork out large sums of money in compensation.

Moustache-less

As someone who's worn a full beard (inclusive, of course, of a moustache) for many years, wearing a moustache for Movember is never much of an issue for me.

However, not having one makes quite a vital difference to a number of famous faces, as the Mustaches Make a Difference campaign shows. This campaign not only promotes Movember, but also de-promotes a number of famous faces, from Gandhi and Einstein to Dali and Queen. The 'renamed' character sans moustache shows that this most remarkable facial feature makes a huge difference to the look of a man - it always intrigued me how many NZ policeman wore the 'police moustache' as I called it. It had a certain regulatory look about it, was very formal, and added an element of threat to the police face (note how ordinary Stalin looks without his moustache - it's the same process).

Here's just one example of these clever pictures:

A song for atheists

Steve Martin provides atheists with a 'song' - well, sort of. Whether they'll appreciate it or not is another question.



It may not become top of the pops (although the close harmony is great) but at least it provides something humorous about what is often a deadly serious subject.

(Incidentally, Martin's movie, Leap of Faith, from 1992, still stands as a surprisingly good 'discussion' about faith, real and fake.)

Shotgun or NO Shotgun

Something called 'NO Shotgun' passed my way yesterday. At least I thought it was NO Shotgun, but it proved to be N.O. Shotgun. I came across it on a site relating to NO Shotgun reviews, and discovered that N.O. Shotgun is a kind of supplement you take it you're aiming to build your muscles up - big time. (Don't ask me what the N.O. stands for - I've missed out on that bit of info.)

NO Shotgun gives you increased energy - something I could do with about 2 pm most days, when my mind decides that a little nap wouldn't go amiss. It's one of a huge range of products available nowdays for those who think that building up strength and energy the old way - by working out - isn't sufficient.

There was a guy on TV recently who's dying because of the way he's treated his body in order to be able to look like the most muscular guy on the planet (you know, the kind of guys who seem to be all arms and legs and very little else). And yet he's still punishing his body; it's an addiction.

And on my way to work I notice that a shop has been opened just recently which sells these kinds of products and little else. The window display at present consists of large boxes containing stuff that's supposed to make you big and strong. Don't think I'm going to be trying any of them any time soon, not even to foist off a nap.

Apropos of the above not at all, we got a quote today for removing the laundry floor. Why would we want to do that, you ask? Well, when it starts off flat and then heads rapidly downhill as you go towards the back of the room, something has to change. The piles had always had an amateurish look about them, but they've survived longer than the thirty plus years we've been in the house. Until now. Some of the piles consist of a bundle of bricks stacked on top of each other with a bit of plaster to hold them in place, and a piece of wood shoved in at the top if the bricks didn't fit directly to the base of the floor.

Some of that wood has just given up the ghost. On the other side of the room, however, is something even more amazing - and this was put in by whoever built this part of the house. Instead of having a flat wall of bricks on that side, every so often there's a brick sticking out sideways, and these bits of brick are supposed to support the floor over there. Extraordinary. The builder who came to look at the floor the other day had never seen anything like it. One of the bricks isn't even touching the floor at all.

Anyway we're going to get some proper piles, and a new floor, and hopefully from then on when we enter the room, our first experience won't be of slightly queasy feeling as we see the floor lowering away before us.

Sorting out the world

Just something quirky that my son showed me the other night.

It's well known that the maps of the world we usually see are distorted, with the Northern hemisphere countries being out of proportion to their actual size. (Here's a map that gives a better indication of relative sizes.) But what's really intriguing is that the map of Africa (the whole continent) comfortably swallows up countries that we normally think of as huge: the US, China, and India.

Population size doesn't equate to land size, which is why, as I was told yesterday, the Chinese invaded India back in the 50s/60s (sorry, not just sure of the date), in order to have more space. If they'd really wanted space, they should have shifted some of their population to Africa. The Africans might not have even noticed. Or to central Australia. No one would have noticed if they'd been quiet about it.

Anyway, here's where to find the map of Africa with China, India, the US, Great Britain, and all of Europe laid over it.

Russia doesn't fit, because, in spite of our general thinking, Russia has the largest land mass of any country, with Canada in second place - even though it's almost half the size. The US comes next (although it's in 4th place on this page) with China in the actual fourth place. Brazil and Australia follow.

There we go. Got the world sorted out at last.

Dolphins and healthy families

And via Alan Jacobs:

For 25 years, the researchers have made detailed observations of bottlenose dolphins in the eastern gulf of Australia’s Shark Bay. That one-of-a-kind dataset allowed them to chart the relatedness of dolphin moms and map their habits of social association, then correlate these patterns to whether their offspring survived childhood.

As would be expected, calves born to moms from reproductively successful families tended to do well. But for dolphin moms from less-fit families, that lack of a pedigree was offset if they tended to hang out with successful moms. The researchers’ analysis suggested that keeping good company was just as important — even, at times, more important — than coming from good stock.

”

— Baby Dolphin Survival Depends on Mom’s Friends | Wired Science | Wired.com

Politicians and truth

We must communicate to politicians that we don’t expect 100% perfection but we do expect 100% truth. In this way we give politicians permission to tell the truth even when they might otherwise fear the public response. Making a case for a move away from the reigning assumption of spin towards a radical assumption of truth is very important, and a crucial one to democracy and just government.

Paul Chaplin
"The lie of perfection" in catapult magazine

Now that the exam is over

Over on one of my other blogs, Webitz.net, I've been celebrating the fact that geocities.com, the huge conglomerate of websites put together by enthusiastic amateurs like me, and then dumped from the Internet without much warning by Yahoo, has not only been rescued by reocites.com, but also ASCII and OoCities. Great job, guys!

Now that my exam is over, and the course finished, I can relax a bit and start reading books that aren't related to NZ history again. I've been reading one called Bottled and Sold - the story behind our obsession with bottled water, by Peter Gleick. It's interesting but a bit repetitious, so I may...not...finish...it...yet. On the other hand I finally started reading Half the Sky today, which I bought a month or more ago and couldn't allow myself to get into because of the study. It's an in-your-face look at the way women are treated around the world, not just in terms of forced prostitution, but slavery in general, and abuse of every kinds (and I mean abuse: beatings, eyes gouged out, having acid thrown at them and much more).

I did read some other non-study books over the last few months (impossible for me not to do so). One was a biography of Georgette Heyer, the historical romance novelist. My mother had practically every book she wrote, I think, and I've read some of them in the past myself. She was an excellent writer, a great humorist, and a somewhat indomitable human being. I also started reading the biography of jazz pianist Mike Nock called Serious Fun. It started off very interestingly but has become a bit of a list of who played with whom and who was taking drugs at the time and which album they recorded while they were together for a few months and so on. I'm supposed to review it, so I'll have to give it some more house room yet.

I haven't consciously heard a lot of Nock's music, as it happens. I know his name well, and I've no doubt heard tracks on which he's been playing in passing (usually on one of those jazz programmes on the Concert FM, or whatever it's currently called), but I've never really sat down and listened. Hmm. I got a CD out of the library the other day and was surprised at how dull it was. Nock's left hand went on and on playing the same thing, while his right hand wandered around with no apparent idea where it was going. That was the first two tracks. After that my mind had switched off and I didn't hear what came next. I gave the CD another go a day or so later, and the same thing happened.

I'll have to try a different album. It's unlikely that his reputation stands or falls on that particular CD.

And the other thing I'm doing, of course, is getting on with writing the music for the musical. The stuff I'd already written has been buzzing around in my brain every time I stopped thinking about anything else, so I need to get on and write some more (or go mad). I've been orchestrating some of the music I wrote a while back and it's been good to hear it - particularly now that I'm actually hearing what it's like rather than what my two dud speakers on the computer claimed it sounded like. A bit of adjustment on the Sibelius program itself, and the use of earphones, made a huge difference.

I've just noticed that there's some way to record music via a microphone using Sibelius. Once it's recorded and Sibelius has transcribed it, you can edit it - make it look like it should! I hope it's better than the scanning program Sibelius uses: I've given up on that because it's more work trying to edit than just transcribing the stuff straight into the computer in the first place. It doesn't seem to work any better with this latest version of Sibelius than it did with the old one. Of course, it possibly doesn't help that most music people want me to transcribe is elderly, often torn, scribbled over and various other things. But even clean copies don't seem to go too well.

It doesn't look as though I installed the microphone (audio score lite) program. Maybe I'll get onto that some time - although the way I write music doesn't really lend itself to that much. Still it may prove more of a bonus than I think!

By the way, the exam went far more smoothly than I expected, I felt pretty good about it, and hopefully the examiner will too. But three hours of typing took a fair amount of concentration (I can't even begin to imagine writing for three hours) and my bum also got tired of sitting in the same spot for so long. There were only two of us disabled people in the room - I don't know what was wrong with the young woman who was also doing an exam (probably a different one to me) - and there were two supervisors! All very friendly. Because there were so few of us we started a quarter of an hour early. Better than sitting around nervously.

Holocaust survivor

Short video (about 12 minutes) relating to the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world. At 106 she's still playing Bach and Beethoven on her piano, and receiving regular visitors....



This is the Official Trailer for a new documentary short about the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world Alice Herz-Sommer. If you want to see the finished film early next year please email: dancingunderthegallows@gmail.com

Directed by Oscar winning director Malcolm Clarke
Produced by Nick Reed, Malcolm Clarke, Chris Branch, Larry Abramson, Jasmine Daghighian

Exam, cats and dogs, correct views

Exam at 9.30 this morning. Enough said.

I think my head must be so full of 'stuff' for the exam at the moment that even though it was rather scary, I found I couldn't remember the name of one of my grandchildren this morning when I woke. There was this odd 'hole' in my brain where the name should have been. Having had two blood relatives who had Alzheimer's, it made me a bit uneasy.

I've been reading some of Alister McGrath's Mere Theology. In the book he mentions a writer Leszek Kolakowski, who was a Marxist but now writes from a much more philosophical point of view, as far as I can gather. (I must admit to having read this book with a little less than concentration, but I'll come back to it when I've got more time.)

The title of one of Kolakowski's books appealed to me greatly: My Correct Views on Everything. That's the way to go. It has some connections with the subtitle of this blog....

We now have a cat and a dog in the house, as I've no doubt mentioned before. I think we had that picture of the lion lying down with the lamb. Not quite. At first the cat was very wary of the dog (she'd arrived first as well), and he wanted to play...and chase!

Then there seemed to be a patch of mutual respect (it helped perhaps that the cat had cuffed the dog sharply enough to make him squeal.) They'll kind of circle each other, neither sure who's going to make the first move. And the cat has to be hoisted up and out of the dog's way on more than one occasion in order to 'rescue' her (although we don't use that word; she'd find it insulting). In time they may come to be mates. It isn't looking like it'll happen tomorrow.

To bet or not to bet

I think there's something in most of us that fancies the idea of getting rich quickly, even when we know that being well-off isn't necessarily as great as it's cut out to be. And I guess it's something that often comes to mind when we're worse off than usual; we may not want to be a millionaire, but a few extra dollars a week wouldn't go amiss. And yes, I know Jesus tells us to be content with what we have and seek the kingdom first, and generally speaking I aim to be content, and seek. Nevertheless there are days when....

Anyway, there have been a couple of times in my life when I've thought that I'd found the right scheme for betting on the horses. I've come across a few people who apparently live comfortably enough by successfully betting on the nags, but from what I can understand it's actually something you need to treat as a job, not a hobby. Doing it casually won't get the results. However, I wasn't planning on giving up my job at that point...

In general I don't go in for sports betting, but something about the horses has always intrigued me, and I actually enjoy going to the races once in a while. So when schemes that didn't seem to require too much effort came my way, I went for them. Yup, foolish.

There was one that required you to get hold of the weekly racebook, and by checking through the statistics figure out which horses fitted the category of ones you could bet on. There would be a disappointing number to bet on each week, I found. People who treat the thing as a hobby are inclined to expect to be able to bet on virtually anything with four legs. Nope, you don't.

I did try this method for a while, though not by actually using any real hard cash. Either I wasn't checking the stats correctly, or the horses decided that losing was better than winning. Anyway, I would have been a pauper if I'd continued on with this system (and used real money).

The other system I remember thinking very seriously about was a computer programme. All the stats were already entered in for you for all the horses through the country, and all you had to do was update these as the next lot of races came along. It looked foolproof. Hmm. It also cost quite a bit to get started on, and again, after great initial enthusiasm, I let it go.

Occasionally when I've been at the races I've had good days - doubling my $2 bet, for instance - but such days are few and far between (as are the days I actually go to the races). Still, there's something about the atmosphere at a race meeting; you see people you never seem to come across in your ordinary day. It's as if the city suddenly produced a pile of people were never walked the streets at any other time.

Somewhat off the subject of betting, but still on the subject of race meetings, I remember going to one particularly striking meeting. Halfway through the afternoon, huge black clouds came up over the hills. A chilly wind swept through the stands, and within minutes there was such a downpour that the gutters on the grandstand roof couldn't cope and the water was pouring off the roof like a constant sheet in front of the spectators. There was thunder and lightning and general weather mayhem.

Some people stood out in the rain - I suppose that's an experience in itself. The rest of us retreated away from the front of the stand, waited until Nature had done her dash, and then dashed ourselves for the cars, over some of the most sodden ground you've ever come across.

The photo is by Kirsten

Quit yer whining!

When you get good at whining, you start noticing evidence that makes your whining more true. So you amplify that and immerse yourself in it, thus creating more evidence, more stuff worth complaining about.

If you spent the same time prattling on about how optimistic you are, you'd have to work hard to make that true...

Seth Godin: two problems with whining.

The exam looms

The strange thing about doing a subject at University that's not part of an ongoing course (like medicine, or dentistry) is that it's very easy on the day after the exam or the end of the course to cease to have any interest in the subject. It's almost as if all that stuff you've crammed into your head has been more than enough for the time being and you just want a holiday from anything related to the topic.

When I was reading stuff by the mile for the Christianity in New Zealand paper (the exam is on Saturday) I kept saying, I'll come back and read this book thoroughly, and enjoy reading it; enjoy in the sense that I won't be consciously thinking, I have to remember all this stuff. And I meant it. But the incentive is less, and this is a pity.

I got so interested in the books on conscientious objectors during the two major wars of the 20th century, for instance, that I thought about writing a play on the subject. And there's a whole heap of stuff in this course that I've actually lived through; it isn't entirely 'history' to me.

But just as payday advances each week, the exam looms, and whether I'll go back so enthusiastically to these topics is a question I can't quite answer at this point. There are other books sitting on my shelf nearby that I haven't even started, books I've bought while the course was running. And there's the music for the musical to write.

On the other hand, having the pressure off of having to read the stuff and think about it, may be a bonus. Maybe I'll sit and spend the holidays reading and re-reading the things that interested me.

Maybe.

There is no average person

Seth Godin rants in a recent post entitled 'Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so' about those people who choose to get their opinions from shallow TV shows rather than taking the effort to read the news, or informative (and formational) non-fiction books.

It's possible Seth was having one of his rare bad hair days (quite an achievement for him), particularly when he goes on to say: Hal Varian at Google reports that the average person online spends seventy seconds a day reading online news. Ouch.

I'm guessing that he's quoting the following sentences from a piece Varian wrote back in March this year where he says: However, visitors to online newspaper sites don't spend a lot of time there. The average amount of time looking at online news is about 70 seconds a day, while the average amount of time spent reading the physical newspaper is about 25 minutes a day.

It's a bit of a surprise to see Seth talking about the 'average person.' As he's pointed out on more than one occasion (and I'm working from memory here, so I can't link to a specific blog post), there is no average person. [My italics, incidentally.]

The people who read online news don't equally spend 70 seconds each day. It does seem to indicate that a large number of them spend a small amount of time reading the news online, but we don't know, since we have no indication of how large a number of people this is altogether, or where this statistic comes from. Nevertheless, in order to get that average figure we would have to have a number of people who read the news online for a good number of minutes, maybe more than those who 'on average' read the newspaper for 25 minutes a day, as well as having a good number of people who read the online news for less than 70 seconds a day.

But we just don't know: 'Mr or Ms Average 70 secs' is a non-existent person, and should never be invited to anyone's party, not Seth's, nor Hal Varian's - not even mine.

The Kettles Count

I watched a superb scene from an old Ma and Pa Kettle film the other day. I can't even tell you which of their films it was, but the scene began with a man telling them that dividing some fund of money - it amounted to 25% of the total - would give each of the five family members 5%. However, Pa insisted that dividing 25 by 5 would result in 14, and proceeded to prove it. The man insisted he was wrong and showed Pa first how to divide in the usual way (5 into 25 is 5) and then how 5 times 5 was 25. Each time Pa showed him how the answer was actually 14. And then Ma Kettle got in on the act.

The whole thing is done at a whizz bang speed, and leaves you scratching your head at the way in which the sums are worked out. Just wonderful. If you've got Math Questions you couldn't do better than get Ma and Pa Kettle to help you out - especially if you wanted to make your share increase!

Actually, if you're really stuck for help there are now an increasing number of online places that can give you tutoring in anything from prime numbers to linear equations. I was reading just today how there's now concern that soon Universities won't be doing very much teaching at all; everything you need to make sense of all manner of subjects will be online. This is the equivalent in the newspaper business of big newspapers going under because so much news is available online (usually for free).

For instance, while I know what algebra equations are, having done them in the past at school and later as an adult, I'm not entirely sure what pre algebra is (some kind of historic period, like pre-Triassic?) or what standard form is. But these things are all on the Net, carefully explained.

These explanations, though helpful, aren't quite as much fun as Ma and Pa Kettle's maths....they really rock.

Old and poor

True of the USA, true of NZ and very relevant to my own situation:

“More and more people who are approaching retirement age now kind of know that retirement in prosperity will likely not be an option for them. They’ll have to keep working in a techno-society full of preferential options for the young. Many will be stuck with the indignity of downward mobility combined with increasing frailty or general vulnerability. We can say that older voters this time know enough to know that government can’t really promise them security, and that policies that promote general prosperity are most likely to benefit them. The great Founder of modern liberalism–John Locke–said that in a free country you’d better be rich if you’re going to get old, and, unfortunately in some ways, that’s probably more true and more difficult than ever.”

— The Tea Party and the Old Folks: Our Conservative Coalition » Postmodern Conservative | A First Things Blog

Herpes, exams, haircuts

Don't you just love statements like this: A cure for herpes has not yet been developed. Once infected, the virus remains in the body for life.

Doesn't that just make your day? Well, it could be worse. In most people the herpes is at least controllable, and often it becomes asymptomatic - that is, it ceases to show any symptoms, like cold sores. It just hides inside you....for life. It's a bit like Alien.

Herpes isn't exactly the topic I intended discussing, even in the small amount written so far. But the Internet being what it is, and my curiosity being what it is, here I am writing about it and discovering the exciting fact that herpes simplex 1 is a fancy name for cold sores or fever blisters - and also for the nasty herpes associated with the genitals. Incidentally, here's something else that'll impress you: herpes means creeping.

Okay, not impressed? Never mind. Let's consider something else that's not so pleasant: I have to do an exam on Saturday week, the first exam I've done in about a hundred years, and while I'm not exactly quaking in my boots, I can't say I'm looking forward to it much either. Never mind, at least the kindly lecturer has indicated the likely subject matter for the exam, so it's possible to focus revision and further study on certain topics. I'd be much happier writing another couple of essays, though.

And I'm feeling distracted from study because I've written the music for the first two scenes of the musical, and have a good deal of the music for the third. And of course, that stuff keeps going around in my head, taking up room that's needed for study.

I'm just reminded by the fact that our dog is running back and forth between my wife and me -we're in separate rooms -he's probably checking to see if we're both behaving ourselves; I'm reminded, I say, that we gave the dog his first hair cut yesterday. Initially we started out at a friend's place; she's cut her own dog's hair frequently, and her parents' dog's hair as well. (Parents' dog's hair? confusing.)

Anyway, she got us started, showing us how to go about it, and we then went to my daughter's (she's done hairdressing) and finished off the job. Now the bundle of fluff, the furball that was running around the place has turned into an elegant looking specimen of caninity. The fur over his paws got shorn, amongst other things, and now he looks as though he has tiddly feet. I used to like the little paw gloves he wore previously. No doubt they'll grow again.

So there, how to get from herpes to hair cuts in three easy steps.

Recalcitrant facts

...A recalcitrant fact is one that is obstinately unco-operative in light of attempts to handle it by some theory. A theory may explain some facts quite nicely. But a recalcitrant fact doggedly resists explanation by a theory. No matter what a theory’s advocate does, the recalcitrant fact just sits there and is not easily incorporated into the theory. In this case, the recalcitrant fact provides falsifying evidence for the theor.

J P Morland, quoting from his own book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: human persons and the failure of Naturalism.

Inarticulate

Brad Greenburg opens a recent post with these words:

I make no secret of the fact that I prefer the written word to the spoken word.

Sure, I’m a talker. But I’m not a remarkably articulate speaker. The words just never seem to come out as neatly as they do on paper (though just how neatly they come out on paper is up for debate). And there are few things that frighten me, as a reporter, more than radio appearances. I’m always convinced that the interview to follow will be the one that ends my journalism career. Why? Because I need a filter, and real-time lacks the luxury.

This resonates greatly with me - not that I've ever done much in the way of radio interviews - though many years ago, when I was managing the bookshop, for a brief few months, perhaps, I used to get rung up by someone on Radio Rhema to do a short interview. Don't ask me now what these were about, nor why I was chosen for them. Anyway, I didn't enjoy them; my tongue would instantly knot up, and even if I prepared some material, it would all evaporate as soon as the interview started.

But ask me to write something, and I'll get a first draft done before you've finished asking, and will often have it all sussed and sorted before the deadline. Words seem to pour out of the fingers far more readily than out of the mouth....