New Title Suggestion Schemes and Other Things (Ruminations Book 1)

The specific mechanism by which attentional bias triggers eating disorder symptoms remains unknown. One possibility is that a cognitive-affective process, such as eating disorder-specific rumination, serves to mediate the relationship between attentional bias and eating disorder symptoms. Eating disorder-specific rumination is characterised by preoccupation with eating, shape and weight and their control [ 25 , 26 ] and has two distinct subcomponents: Research has shown that these two ruminative components differentially predict eating disorder symptoms.

For example, in samples of non-clinical females, only eating disorder-specific brooding was shown to associate with general eating disorder symptoms [ 21 , 23 ] and clinical levels of both dietary restriction and binge eating [ 23 ]. However, in a sample of females with a history of anorexia nervosa, only reflection on eating, shape and weight concerns showed an association with eating disorder symptoms [ 21 ].

1. Mutter Corsage: Enthüllungen einer Dessous-Verkäuferin (German Edition);
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To the best of our knowledge, no research to date has investigated the relationship between attentional biases towards body shape-related information and eating disorder-specific rumination. However, it is plausible to hypothesise that such a relationship exists considering the existence of a relationship between attentional bias for negative information and depressive rumination [ 28 — 30 ].

Associations between attentional bias and depressive rumination remain evident even after statistically controlling for concurrent levels of depression [ 28 , 29 ]. Additionally, Joorman et al. To account for such findings, Koster, De Lissnyder, Derakshan, and De Raedt [ 31 ] proposed the impaired disengagement hypothesis, which basically states that heightened rumination is due to difficulties in disengaging attention away from negative self-referent information.

Recent empirical findings provide support for this theory by showing that greater rumination about depressive themes was associated with greater impairments in attentional disengagement from negative information, and not enhanced engagement with such information [ 32 ]. The theoretical and experimental evidence for an association between depressive rumination and attentional bias for depressogenic information suggests a potential relationship between an attentional bias towards body images and eating disorder-specific rumination.

In turn, eating disorder-related rumination may serve to trigger eating disorder symptoms. Therefore, it is possible that eating-disorder-specific rumination may function as a mediator between attentional bias to body images and eating disorder symptoms. The overall goal of the present study was to investigate the relationship between attentional biases to body images, eating disorder-specific rumination, and eating disorder symptoms in a university sample of young women.

A female-only sample was recruited to maximize comparability with the findings from previous studies investigating selective attention for body images that have used predominantly female-only samples. In addition, gender differences have been found in attentional processing of body images. Specifically, research has shown that men with elevated levels of eating disorder symptomatology selectively attend towards images of muscular male bodies, as opposed to thin-ideal bodies [ 10 ]. The first aim was to investigate whether young women show a differential attentional pattern towards thin, and away from non-thin, female bodies, as compared to neutral images, using a modified dot probe task.

It was predicted that young women would show an attentional bias towards thin bodies and attentional avoidance of non-thin bodies given that this is the general pattern of findings for studies using images of other women and non-clinical samples. To date, no research has investigated which attentional mechanism i.

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As such, the second objective of the present study was to determine whether attentional bias towards thin body images is more strongly associated with the specific eating disorder symptoms of body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint, relative to attentional avoidance of non-thin body images. It was predicted that a greater attentional bias towards thin bodies and greater avoidance of non-thin bodies would be associated with greater reports of body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint.

In addition, it was predicted that the relationships between attentional bias and both dietary restraint and body dissatisfaction would be stronger for bias towards thin versus non-thin bodies. Finally, the current research aimed to examine whether eating disorder-specific rumination mediates the relationship between attentional bias to body images and both body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint.

Based on theoretical and empirical research suggesting a relationship between valence-specific attentional bias and depressive rumination, together with emerging research suggesting an association between eating disorder-specific rumination and eating disorder symptoms, it was hypothesised that eating-disorder-specific rumination would mediate the relationship between attentional bias to female body shapes and the specific eating disorder symptoms of body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint.

The present study was advertised to females-only on an online experiment system used by first-year undergraduate psychology students at the University of Western Australia. Seventy-three female undergraduate students agreed to participate in the study in exchange for course credit. The mean BMI was Ethics approval to conduct this study was provided by the University of Western Australia Human Research Ethics Committee, and all participants provided written informed consent.

Although some of the participants were 17 years old, they were deemed mature enough as university students to participate in this study. There are six items relating to brooding e. Each of the nine items is assessed on a four-point Likert scale ranging from 1 almost never to 4 almost always. A higher score indicates greater rumination. The RRS-ED demonstrates good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity [ 20 , 21 , 23 ].

Specifically, respondents rate on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 never to 5 very often , how often they engage in restrictive eating behaviours e. A higher score is indicative of more frequent dietary restraint. A higher BSQ score indicates greater body dissatisfaction.

This questionnaire demonstrates high internal consistency among females, concurrent validity with other measures of body dissatisfaction, and the ability to discriminate between clinical and non-clinical individuals [ 35 , 36 ]. In the present study, 40 image pairs each comprising a body image of a positive thin body or negative non-thin body emotional valence and an image of a neutral emotional valence abstract art were required. The bodies depicted in these images reflected relatively healthy representations of thin and non-thin bodies.

For each body type there was an estimated small range of BMIs, with thin bodies approximated to be bordering on underweight, which is consistent with the ideal, and non-thin bodies likely to be at the upper end of the healthy to the lower end of the overweight BMI range. These images were cropped to focus on specific body regions, such as the abdominal region and thighs as they have been shown to cause high dissatisfaction in women [ 7 , 11 , 37 ].

Next, images were rated by a separate sample to prevent the participants taking part in the current study from having previous exposure to the body images. This pilot sample was comprised of 57 female first-year psychology undergraduates aged 17—24 from the University of Western Australia. Specifically, participants assessed the valence and arousal of these images using the Self-Assessment Manakin SAM affective rating system [ 38 ], which is the same scale used by the International Affective Pictures System [ 39 ].

Thin and non-thin body images were matched for arousal thin: The images were colour JPEG computer files and approximately 11cm high and 7. Participants were seated with their eyes approximately cm from the monitor. Each trial commenced with participants attending to a fixation cross presented in the middle of a desktop computer screen.

The purpose of the central fixation cross was to minimize the likelihood that participants were attending to either probe location at the start of each trial. The cross appeared for 1, ms and was then replaced by an image pair comprising one body image i. One of the images was centred three degrees above the fixation cross, and the other image was centred three degrees below the fixation cross.

Participants were instructed to identify the letter, by pressing the appropriate key on a keyboard, as quickly and accurately as possible. After a response was made, the next trial commenced. The letter shown and the location of the probe was randomised with equal probability. The fact participants had to discriminate between two alternative probes was to ensure that attention was allocated to the probe location.

In other words, these letters would be easily confusable in the instance that attention was not allocated to the probe location. Additionally, two stimuli pairing conditions were run: The stimuli of interest i. This pairing allows us to quantify the magnitude of attentional bias towards or away from each body type. The conditions were blocked with a random order and random individual trial order for each observer. There were trials for each stimuli pairing combination, making a total of trials. Additionally, there were nine practice trials preceding each stimuli pairing combination block.

To commence, participants completed the modified dot probe task. Subsequently, participants completed the self-report measures i. The questionnaires were presented online via Version 1. Data analyses were performed using SPSS. In considering that probe discrimination reaction times RTs are indicative of attention to the task at hand only when probes are discriminated correctly, the data analysis for the modified dot probe task was based on RTs for correct trials only.

The remaining participants displayed very high accuracy on the modified dot probe task, averaging To further eliminate outliers, RTs more than 2. These scores provided an index of the degree to which probe detection was facilitated or inhibited by images of thin and non-thin bodies. Positive values for the stimulus pairing combinations of body images and abstract art images reflect an attentional bias towards the body image.

Next, bivariate correlations between the attentional bias difference scores and eating disorder-related correlates were tested using Pearson correlation analysis. Partial correlations, controlling for BMI, were also conducted. The covariate of BMI was included in the models simultaneously with all other predictor variables. Paths a and b represent direct effects. All numbers are standardized OLS regression coefficients. BMI was included as a covariate.

Correlational analyses were performed to test the associations between thin and non-thin attentional bias difference scores and ruminative brooding and ruminative reflection on eating, shape and weight concerns, body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint. Descriptive statistics and correlations between attentional bias difference scores and the self-report questionnaires are shown in Table 1. It can be seen that the degree of attentional bias to thin body images was significantly, positively, and moderately [ 47 ] associated with all eating disorder-related correlates.

On the other hand, attentional bias to non-thin female bodies was significantly, negatively and moderately [ 47 ] associated with only dietary restraint and body dissatisfaction. Finally, results revealed that the relationships between attentional bias and specific eating disorder symptoms i.

To determine whether rumination on eating, shape, and weight concerns i. Mediation analyses, which controlled for BMI, showed that rumination on eating, shape, and weight concerns did in fact mediate the relationship between attentional bias towards thin bodies and each of the following see Fig 1: As can be seen in Fig 1 , the direct effect of attentional bias on body dissatisfaction was significant, suggesting partial mediation.

However, the direct effect of attentional bias on dietary restraint was non-significant suggesting full mediation. The current study was the first to show that eating disorder-specific rumination mediated the relationship between attentional bias to thin-ideal imagery and the specific eating disorder symptoms of body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint in a university sample of young women.

These findings extend the literature demonstrating an association between depressive rumination and valence-specific attentional bias [ 28 , 30 , 32 ] to different types of rumination, namely, eating disorder-specific rumination. Also, while correlational in nature, the results are consistent with the suggestion that eating disorder-specific rumination contributes towards body dissatisfaction [ 24 ] and dietary restraint [ 23 ].

The mediational model accommodates various theories including the cognitive science perspective of impaired attentional disengagement leading to heightened rumination [ 31 ] and the novel process account of anorexia nervosa, which suggests that eating disorder-specific rumination may be associated with negative emotions and starvation-related body cues becoming less salient, thus driving dietary restriction [ 25 , 26 ]. Although the current findings cannot establish causal relationships, due to the cross-sectional design, it is possible that the relationship between rumination and attentional bias is bidirectional.

For instance, it is possible that attentional biases arise from a schema centering on the overconcern with body shape and weight [ 48 , 49 ], which may be conceptualised as including eating disorder-specific rumination. This is an important question as it informs the development of novel treatment strategies for eating disorder patients.

Ruminative reflection and ruminative brooding on eating and body shape concerns positively and significantly correlated with bias to thin bodies only. Further analyses revealed that dietary restraint, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorder-specific rumination correlated significantly more strongly with bias to thin bodies than with the avoidance of non-thin bodies. This may imply that attentional bias towards thin-ideal body shapes plays a more important role in the potential development of eating disorder symptoms.

In turn, this identifies vigilance towards thin-ideal bodies as more maladaptive and a greater risk factor for developing an eating disorder, as opposed to the avoidance of non-thin bodies. These findings corroborate previous empirical research showing an association between bias to thin-ideal body shapes and eating disorder pathology [ 7 , 9 , 14 ]. The selective attentional pattern may represent maladaptive social comparison strategies [ 54 ] in the sense that young women with elevated eating disorder pathology engage in upward social comparison by comparing their body to those perceived as more attractive i.

Finally, the current study revealed that overall, young women showed attentional avoidance of non-thin bodies, however, no attentional bias towards thin bodies. The absence of attentional bias towards thin bodies is somewhat contrary to the results of Glauert et al. Several methodological differences between the two studies may account for these discrepant results. Firstly, the current study utilised photographs of real and clothed female bodies that were more ecologically valid compared to the computer-generated bodies used by Glauert et al.

Furthermore, the current study measured attentional bias by pairing body images with neutral images, while Glauert et al. Although the current study is unique in that it advanced on the theoretical and empirical research encompassing rumination-linked attentional biases in the domain of eating disorder symptoms, it has some limitations. Firstly, the cross-sectional data does not allow any definite conclusions to be reached about the relationship between attentional bias and eating disorder symptoms.

Moreover, to aid differentiation between the two attentional components i. A further direction for future research is to determine whether men also exhibit an association between attentional bias towards idealized male bodies i. Finally, it would be valuable to extend the current methodology to young women with a clinically diagnosed eating disorder as it cannot be assumed that findings on a community sample extend to clinical samples.

In summary, the current findings suggest that while young women generally avoid non-thin body shapes, those with a heightened attentional bias to thin-ideal imagery experience greater body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and eating disorder-specific rumination. Attentional vigilance towards thin-ideal bodies is therefore a potential risk factor for developing an eating disorder. Furthermore, the current study was the first to show that eating disorder-specific rumination functions as a mediator between selective attentional processing of thin-ideal imagery and eating disorder symptoms.

This supports the relevance of eating disorder-specific rumination in linking shape-related attentional processes and eating disorder pathology. The current study therefore builds on existing theories relating to the role of attention and rumination in eating disorder pathology and may have clinical applications such as the potential integration of rumination or attentional-focused strategies for the prevention and treatment of eating disorders.

National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but let's go back in time. First, note that the first book came out in The text of the book was accepted and put into production a year before that, in And the book itself was written in and All of that is just to say that I wrote the thing before Barack Obama was president, and I wrote quite a bit of it before he was even a national political figure. But I said he was to blame, right? Yes, I think that at some point when I was writing the book Obama made a speech, maybe at a Democratic convention in or something like that.

I recall liking the speech, but moreover the name Barack seemed perfect for this minor character I had in mind. In the first book he's only a name mentioned once - literally once on page of The War With The Mein.

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That makes him a tiny character, and at that point Obama was a relatively unknown wannabee from Chicago. Nobody involved in the book's production even noticed or thought about the name. Not my early readers. Not my agent, not my editor or the copyeditor. Fast forward a couple years I'm sure I began it before he was even a candidate. But you know what happened with that With my writing, I became more and more drawn to making Barack the Lesser a point of view character in the second book.

I'd never thought of him as connected to Obama by anything other than the fact that I'd casually pinched his name, but still, I started to write more about him. You know how that went I honestly didn't think a thing about it until I delivered the book to my editor, in the winter of At that point - though even he had read much of the book earlier than that - he went, "Ah You can't call this Barack anymore. Nobody is going to be able to read that without thinking of Obama.

Obama owns the name for all intents and purposes. My minor character had been named after a man that had suddenly become one of the most famous men on earth! It was quite strange to face that. On one hand, my character felt to me like he inhabited that name. He was his own thing. On the other hand, I was fully involved in following the election. I was even an Obama supporter. But it didn't really occur to me until my editor pointed it out that I had a problem with that particular name. So I changed it. I made it Barad so that it was close to the original, so that it felt similar to me but was still different.

And that was that. Now, it's easy for me to think of him as Barad - and he's got nothing to do with Obama - at least not that I'm overtly aware of. Nothing like this had happened before with my previous novels. I doubt it ever will again. Thanks for the question. If you stick around for the third book you'll get to see what happens with Bara He's got a role in all the craziness, right up to the end! Now, dear reader, what do you think? It is only a single word in the text, after all. Or should it stay the way it is, a weird moment of real history intruding on an imagined world?

Random Ruminations posted by David Anthony Durham at I find it hard to get a handle on where the industry is going and if that destination is a good thing. I tend to be hopeful, confident fundamentally that people will always need stories, and therefore always need writers to produce them. The rest is just details, right? I keep bumping up against strange, kinda unexpected twists.

Not sure how they came up with that, what amount of market research and analysis of production budgets and profit and lost calculations they've considered. I'm not saying what they should cost, I'm just wondering I also think they might find that the price is only higher for a period of time - like the first year that the book is in hardback format. My Kindle version of Acacia: I wonder if these folks that haven't read my books but have written negative "reviews" will come back then and remove them?

Here's a New York Times blog piece about it. Here's a letter from Macmillan about it at Publishers Lunch. What's up with this? And then there are the folks that wrote protest "reviews" because my books weren't available for These reviews seem to have been removed, but still. Just a question about that How do people that advocate for free books explain how the author gets paid? Or does the author not need to get paid? That's absurd from my point of view, but that's because I know how many days, weeks, years of work writing a book is, how much it effects the circumstances of my family's life on a daily basis.

I don't make extravagant money writing. I make enough to sustain my family. If everything is free how can I do that? And if I can't do that, folks, I can't spend my life writing books. I just don't really understand this free book thing. If you do, please explain it to me. And then there's the whole changing landscape thing. The chain stores in trouble despite that. Newspapers not reviewing books much anymore. Lots of articles with titles like " The Death of Fiction ". That one is at Mother Jones. Kind of interesting, not just the article but the comment thread afterward.

I'm not really advocating anything here. Just being dazed and confused There's just too much. So, instead, I'll just wish you all the best for the New Year. I have big things planned for it myself. Here's hoping I don't screw up. Tonight, I'll raise a glass of champagne to you. Actually, I'll raise a glass of this They've got class, I tell you. It began rather interestingly Hi David, Excuse the personal nature of this email, but having finished your second book in the Acacia trilogy, something has awakened inside of me, a realization I've been waiting many years for.

Interesting beginning, the kind that could actually go anywhere. In this case, though, he went on to describe his college life and education, how he ended up with a very useful degree from a wonderful college, and then felt totally lost on graduation. He's now gainfully employed in a foreign land, but I still feel lost, incomplete and totally unsatisfied. Something's been tugging at my core, every day reminding me that I should be doing more, that there's a talent going to waste like Dariel!

And what might that be? A spark was ignited and I sat there, trying to understand that feeling perhaps you'd woven some spell from the Song of Elenet in there somewhere!? It was more than just the thrill of having read such an amazing book, with characters that were so deep, so interesting, so much like me yet living in a richly fantastic world. It was the realization that I had parallel worlds like that living inside my head, with characters that had stories that needed to be told, that had been there all along, they'd just never met anyone like them before, like Corinne or Mena or Dariel.

Hey, I know the feeling. Actually, that's just why I started writing. I did have stories in my head that would come and go, and at some point it occurred to me that if I wrote them down they might stay and grow into something. What D is saying, essentially, is that he wants to be a writer. I hope this is not too much to ask, but I was hoping for some guidance in terms of how to pursue this calling. I would love to pursue an MFA, so what are your thoughts on this. Where could I go? More than anything though, I'd just like to thank you so very much for writing these two amazing novels.

They are beautifully human, enticing and wholly absorbing works of literature that have inspired and awakened me to follow a new career path. I have no idea how to follow this path, but I see it now, and that's the most important thing. That's quite something to hear. I've had the "should I get an MFA" question before, but never framed with such specific mention of my own work. Although, with that, comes a certain sense of responsibility. Like, I don't want to be the cause of D leaving a good job for the perils and poverty of a literary career.

I checked with D that he didn't mind my sharing our interaction, and herewith I include my response. I'm very pleased to hear how much you got from my books - and how it's prompted you to consider a new path in your own life. You remind me of a very good writing student I had when I taught at Cal State. He was one of our top candidates, writing great stuff about his experiences in the military.

I had no idea he had an interest in fantasy, but we were talking one night and he admitted that it was reading The Lord of the Rings as an adult that made him go, "Wow. Hey, this is amazing. This writing thing is what I want to do with my life. Still in the MFA, but still writing and reading good stuff.

And, yes, he got a full fellowship, so it's his job for about three years.

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So, that can happen I don't think anyone has to do an MFA to be a writer. The most important things are 1 that you write, 2 that you get feedback on what you write, 3 that you read and read and read, 4 that you persevere with it and stay patient. Getting a writing career going is usually a long endeavor. Even authors that may appear to arrive fully formed have likely been writing for six, eight, twelve years before the manage to break through in print.

Patience is a must. And it's also a must that you be able to live with uncertainty. There is no one best way to go about being a writer. There's no guarantee that it will happen, or that it will happen soon. I do, however, think that anyone that devotes enough time and effort to writing can make a life out of it. That may mean being a bestselling author , but odds are very much against it. It may mean being a modestly read author. It may mean being a teacher and lover of literature.

It's impossible to predict ahead of time, but all those paths can lead to a rewarding life. So what do I suggest? First off, I can't suggest that you quit your job and totally change your life around. That may be a great idea, but I wouldn't want you writing me in five years saying I hadn't warned you that making a life in the arts can be really hard. If you do really need to make a change, though, I mainly suggest that you find a way to make reading and writing nearer to the center of your life.

That may mean doing it late at night after a day of work. It may mean joining some sort of writers group to get feedback from others. It may mean getting a different job, one that somehow allows you the free time to write. Or it may mean going for an MFA program. MFA's offer three things that I think are important. It's proof you're serious. That's a good thing in lots of ways. That's a path many writers take - teaching while they write. If you're interested, start looking into programs. They all have websites these days.

Look for programs that sound good to you. Apply to a variety, I'd say, in different areas and with different levels of competitiveness. The top programs are great, but you can also get a lot from more modest programs too - including financial aid. I wouldn't want to suggest any one program, because there are so many and they offer so many different things.

Best of luck with it all! What's the latest word on what D's going to do? Well, apparently he's going to get cracking on his writing and wade into the research about MFA programs. I wish him the best. Definitely a small thing, but it stuck in my craw a bit.. We'd had friends over from Scotland for about two weeks. That's not the part that stuck in my craw. That was good fun. Last weekend, at the end of their stay, we drove over to Gloucester to spend a couple days by the sea. We went out for a big seafood dinner.

All was going well. Our waiter was very professional, like a career service dude, very courteous. We ordered appetizers, three lobsters, two other main dishes, beer and wine. We were giving them good business, I'd say. Toward the end, though, I got a bright idea. We were staying in a self-catering bungalow. We'd bought some stuff for breakfast, but we didn't have any butter. I thought, "Hey, they'll have a couple pats of butter to spare here at the restaurant, right?

That's when things got strange. The waiter sort of got stiff, went a little awkward, didn't meet my eyes. He said, "I'll have to see what I can do about that. Everyone agreed that something weird had just happened. Got a little dessert. And as we're getting ready for the check the waiter asks how many pats of butter I wanted. I said, "Oh, three will do. Just to makes some eggs and toast tomorrow. Just three will do fine. So now I'm thinking things aren't that weird after all.

Musta just been me, right? Well, when he brings out the bill he brings out a little sandwich box and says, kinda under his breath, "I put six in here cause I had to charge you a dollar. No, forget it, then. I didn't want to buy them. I wasn't paying anyway, so I accepted it, grumpy and annoyed, but silent. When we left I opened the box and took the three pats I'd asked for, left the others.

At the time this felt like a weighted gesture, heavy with import. Now I'm not so sure. I am, however, still convinced that it would have been perfectly reasonable and easy for the guy to slide us three pats of butter without charge. More so because we'd been good customers, and that it would be the final icing on his earning a nice tip from us too. Am I wrong, though? Did I cross some line that nobody told me about? The don't ask for free butter line? I was going to post a little self-absorbed piece about a dispute over three pats of butter today, but then I learned of Obama's Nobel Prize.

Seems like a significantly bigger deal, enough so that I'll save my butter issues for later. I'll have to think about this one a bit. It's interesting because it features perspectives from two former Nobel Peace Prize winners, exactly the kind of folks that labored in relative obscurity for years before the Nobel brought them much-deserved world attention. Random Ruminations posted by David Anthony Durham at 4: Free Soap This is a contentious point between my wife and me. As a publishing author that gets to do to events like these and stay in hotels, I don't know that I'll ever need never buy a bar of soap again.

It's been years I tell you. They just leave the stuff around, especially on those carts in the hallway Am I the only one that can't resist the temptation? Should I be as ashamed as my wife clearly thinks I should be? Gudrun will have nothing to do with my ill-gotten spoils, so we still end up buying our share of expensive and fragrantly holistic bars, but so be it. I'm doing my part to keep our soap budget down. A small perk of being a novelist. Please click over and take a look. Look at these guys.

These trains are fast and furious. I rode them the first time last spring. I was so delirious on my first ride from Paris to Epinal that I hardly noticed. Someone asked me if I'd been on high speed train and I was like, "Oh It doesn't feel like it's going that fast. It's not loud or jolting or anything, but then again the landscape is slipping by at about miles per hour. And then when you catch a view of a motorway running parallel and see how you zip by the cars like they're not even moving Yep, I was impressed.

High speed rail in America? Let's get on with it! I found it an interesting discussion. Terry Gross talks to author T. Reid, who has just written a book that looks at health-care comparatively between developed nations. Frankly, the effort feels a bit hopeless at the moment, considering the way things have evolved with cable and online "opinion" news. It's easy, these days, to express opinion as if it's fact, while at the same time feeling little or no responsibility to check those facts.

Today what frustrates me are the attacks being waged on the British health care system, the NHS. It's all about torpedoing healthcare reform here, of course. Some conservative groups have clearly decided that most Americans are misinformed enough to be lied directly to. They're probably right, and they're probably going to succeed at watering down our health care reform enough that it doesn't make things better for anyone. I find that rather depressing.

Take a listen to this NPR story on the subject. I've been part of a Scottish family for about twelve years now. I lived a good five years of that in the UK. Without it, Plan A for us in the event of a chronic illness is that we'll move back to the UK. We've thought a lot about it, and have felt that way for a long time.

I've seen family members treated for chronic illnesses that required long term care in both countries. I've seen how family and friends have raised special needs children in both countries. My daughter was born in the UK, my son in the US. A close friend is a career nurse that's worked in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Guess which she'd pick? I used the NHS myself. It's where I first learned to trust doctors and to look to them for preventive medical advice and assessment.

All of this leads me to complete support of a single payer system - something which we're not even really talking about here. Again, it's not because I think such a system is perfect. But I do think it's less fatally and fundamentally and morally flawed than our current system. I can't stress how Yes, you pay for it in taxes, but frankly we do that here anyway, whether we like to admit it or not.

Mostly, though, I've had a taste of and find it hard to forget knowing what it feels like for healthcare to be about healthcare. A taste of what it feels like for it be a right that's shared by an entire population provided as best as a bureaucracy can manage. If you haven't experienced it, you should try it sometime. That was the title of a post I did over a year ago, put up for a few hours, and then took down. It was from back in the spring of At the time, we were living in Fresno. I was trying to settle into my job there, and my family was trying to settle in to life there.

Thing is, that's never been easy for us. No matter where we live, we're always dreaming of someplace else. Gudrun and I do have this wandering bug, even though we also feel the pull of wanting to be settled. There's also the complicating factor that close family members are spread out throughout the world, from the wilds of the North Atlantic to the sunny Caribbean, from Europe to Middle Earth well Wellington NZ, I mean.

So this post happened late one evening, after too much talk of far flung places and perhaps a few too many beers. Friends, I have to ask you something. Simply put, I'm faced with a decision. There are compelling pros and cons. It's a family decision. My question to you Should we do it? I invite your opinions. Thing is, I can't say what it is I'm considering doing.

Might be a while before we can talk about it.

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Actually, it's not a precipitous thing. It's more of a planning ahead thing. But still, I feel an impulse to ask So you need more to go on? Okay, here's the downside of a yes vote Sports knowledge rendered useless. Fungus a possible problem. Snarky presenters on tv shows likely. Sports knowledge rendered useless! Fungus a culinary delight.

Financial ruination not inevitable. And a yes vote is a shout for faith in gifts given and the call to use them So what do you think? That's what I wrote, and thing is I got a quick barrage of responses, which reminded me that, oh, this blog thing is public and maybe I shouldn't be ruminating out in the open in quite this way The destination in question was, of course, the Shetland Isles.

You may recall that my father in lives there, in a cottage by the wind wracked sea. We didn't make that move. We stepped back from that particular precipice. Gudrun and the kids did spend fall of of 08 in Shetland, as documented on her blog, The Shetland Trader. A year on from this post, though, we'd decided on our move back to Massachusetts, which we just completed. Why do I post this now? Honestly, we're happy and excited about being back in Western Massachusetts. We're in a good place and we'll be staying put for a while.

Of course, nothing is permanent and you should you check in here in the years to come you might well find us asking a similar question sometime down the line By the way, the first 11 or so comments on this came from that original post. Random Ruminations posted by David Anthony Durham at 9: A lot of time with aspiring writers. A lot of time with published writers that continue to struggle and grasp for more.

In situations were artists are pressed together intensely lots of good stuff happens, certainly, but not everyone handles their successes or disappointments with equal grace. I'm aware that I spend more time noticing the lack of grace - strenuous self-promotion, aggressive criticism of others, defensiveness, genre elitism, those folks that use every occasion of public speaking to reference their recent successes - than I acknowledge when someone gets it right.

So this post is meant to highlight a positive example. I recently workshopped a very good student story. It convinced me from the first lines. It covered all the basic storytelling bases and then did a variety of further things with understated ease. No bells and whistles. No need to explain or obscure. Just very good writing and a substantive, quirky tale as well. This story was good enough, in fact, that my edits were light and my response included a declaration that I rarely make: The workshop went well, although I'm never sure that other students quite know what to make of it when I say a story is publishable.

It must be a strange thing, considering that over a semester I may see two stories each from twelve different writers, but then only pull out that stamp of approval once. I don't entirely know how to explain it, but some stories just announce within their fabric that they've arrived. Their genetic code lines up. They exist, blemishes and all, and they exist in a way that for me feels ready for prime time.

Now, the part of this that has to do with humility is that I only discovered later that this particular story had been accepted for publication just before the workshop. Not only that, but another story the same writer submitted to another workshop also given the stamp of ultimate approval by that workshop leader had also been accepted. Two publications that occurred between the writing of the stories and the workshop meant to tear them apart in critique.

But it's also rare for a new author faced with the uncertainties of a workshop to withhold information like that. I've seen people try to shape the focus of a workshop before it's begun. Or who inflate their credentials ahead of time often with self-referential things said while they're critiquing someone else's work. Or who would hold that publication information as a shield to be brandished to deflect all criticism. The student in this case did none of that. He entered and exited the workshop without a word intended to bias or control the discussion, despite the fact that he had more than the usual ammunition to do so if he wished.

Competence demonstrated where it matters - on the page. What does that evoke from me? Yes, I'm saying that like Ali G, but I mean it. I quite enjoyed listening to it, and it reminded me of how grave America's grievances with Britain were, how long they'd tried to come to terms, and how visionary the language and objectives were.

Yes, America screwed up a lot in the years to come, but still this Declaration does seem to me to be a hell of a document. On this holiday, when I think of the people across the country citing revolutionary language because they still can't live with the outcome of the last election Well, I just want to point to how substantially different the grievances the lead to America's founding were. If you haven't read the DOI recently, take a look I N CONGRESS, JULY 4, The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

Random Ruminations posted by David Anthony Durham at 5: By mid-afternoon yesterday the plan for the day was: Do a bit more packing. Make fondue for dinner. By the evening what really happened was: I bought two Macbook computers. I bought two iPod Touch thingies. I bought a Nintendo Wii, a game for it, and accessories. I really can't figure it out Random Ruminations posted by David Anthony Durham at 1: I just flew Air France to and from Charles de Gaulle Airport, and you all know how much I've had France of the brain the last few weeks.

One of the downsides and upsides of travel is that it makes the world seem smaller in some ways, that it creates personal connections with tragedies in the lives of others Tonight I'm thinking a lot about the people that were on the planes with me, and the people that were on that plane from Rio de Jionero , and about the many people effected by it in France and Brazil and elsewhere. Here's good news and good news about reviews.

Thing is, I actually believe it. Not only do I believe it, but I also think that the more people read any book the more people are going to not like it. So would you rather have a handful of raves from a few folks, or bushels of mixed reviews from the masses? I remember a few times when someone at a reading has said they got interested in a book of mine because of such and such review, and that's why they bought it and brought themselves out to meet me Sounds normal enough, right? Funny thing is that the times I'm recalling are times that the review in question wasn't a good one.

I was like, "Really? You read that review and I mean, did you notice that the reviewer hated me and thought my children were ugly and wrote that concluding paragraph about how my feet stink? If they read it they're more likely to remember it - the book, that is, not the specifics of the review.

If they remember it they're more likely to assume the attention was good. Most of the time, at least. I can't help but take a moment to acknowledge the earthquake in Italy. When I was writing Pride of Carthage , I had the great pleasure of taking several trips to the Mediterranean, including a long driving and camping tour of Italy.

I loved it, of course, and have great memories of it. I fondly remember hilltop villages like the one in this BBC story. My heart goes out to those dealing with the destruction and loss of life. This one leaves me scratching my head a bit.

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It sounds - according to Jay Lake - that something very big and very unfortunate is happening in terms of copyright law, something that will eventually effect us all. He's a smart guy. I also feel a bit powerless to do anything or to shape my feelings about this into a usable form. Take a look at Jay's post to see what I'm talking about And then there's Cory Doctorow's take on the same thing. Seems a bit different. He's a smart guy too. And here's what the Authors Guild has to say about it It's just been unveiled as possibly the only portrait of the Bard to have been painted during his lifetime.

It's not terribly different than other portraits I've seen, but there is a crispness to the details.

This interests me not just because it's Shakespeare, but because I've come across the problem of attaching too much emphasis to particular images of historical figures that may not be true likenesses at all. I've always found it rather amazing that each book on Hannibal has images of him included, a coin, a sculpture, plenty of paintings.

They all present them as if they are valid images, and people walk away thinking they are. But none of them are! Most of them were made hundreds or thousands of years after his death, by people that never saw him. When I've pointed this out I've often have felt some reluctance to it. Like I'm making something vague that shouldn't be. It's like many would rather say, "I saw that bust of Hannibal, that's how I think of him.

Don't know what your motives are for muddying the waters Anyway, I'm off post topic, but that's what I was reminded of when I saw this story. Here's a cat that was famous in his time, surrounded by artists in a culture in which portrait painting was big, studied by millions over the years. And only now might we be seeing the single portrait painted by someone that actually knew him in life?

I don't see that the article below names the artist. Maybe they'll figure that out in another hundred years or so New York Times Article. This cartoon from the New York Post There's been a lot of talk about whether or not it's racist, and a lot of time spent noting that Bush got caricatured as a chimp plenty of times and nobody complained. There are a variety of reasons for that, but I'll stick to the basic questions and my answers to them. Is this cartoon racist?

And what if it was referring to Bush? Would it be racist then? Just cause Obama's black and Bush is white? Can't you see how hypocritical that is? No, but I can see how you might think it's hypocritical. For me, though, I can't help but be cognizant that the same imagery means different things depending on the context in which is used. There is not the same historical baggage attached to a white man being caricatured as monkey as there is to a black man.

It ain't the same. Same image; different meaning. The guy who drew this cartoon knows that. The paper that printed it knows that. At some level I even think the masses of people defending it know that. They may not understand that they know it, because complex self-examination - with all of its contradictions and overlapping truths - is not something we train for in American popular culture. So you'd be fine with this if it was about a white president? I'd still think it in bad taste.

Again, though, this image refers to more than just the assassination of a colorless president. This is a New York paper. New York - like many other cities in the country - has a clear and recent history of police killings of black males under questionable circumstances. This image is also playing with that connection.