I’m old enough to remember when the internet and the world wide web were both novel creations, and a time when there was a great deal of hyperbole around both of them. One aspect of that ‘hype’ involved the prediction that their creation and spread around the globe would lead to the emergence of new economic patterns, new ways of organising both the economic life of nations and the career trajectories of individuals. Since the crisis of the global economy that began in 2008, such predictions now seem kind of hollow – but that crisis itself has led people to look for new economic alternatives, and new career paths, and to look for them on the internet.

It was as part of a search of that kind that I recently discovered the website of PaperTrue (www.papertrue.com). This is an online service that connects people who need editing services with those who can provide the necessary editorial skills. I can safely say that I am one of the latter people; in addition to my major academic work, I have for a long time been active as a freelance proofreader and editor. This has led me to work with clients around the world, from Canada and Colombia to Germany and Australia. I’m anxious to get more of this sort of work in the near future, and therefore I was intrigued to hear about PaperTrue’s particular take on the online editing phenomenon.

It wasn’t enough to simply sign up for them, however. I had to actually find out what, if anything, might make PaperTrue an appropriate forum in which to offer services. Unlike other online editing firms that I have investigated (and which shall remain nameless), PaperTrue seems to engage in ethical business practices, and to have produced a cadre of editors who are ready and willing to praise this firm as one of the better places for an online editor to work. With that in mind, I’m now going to put myself forward as a candidate for editorial services under the umbrella of PaperTrue.

European Muslim birth rate latest

Scan the net and you'll find that a fairly common trope amongst certain types is that the birth rate of Europe's Muslim immigrant communities means that in a few decades the European continent will have fallen to the fundies.

As always, the people who believe this guff have forgotten Orwell's line about how you should never assume that present trends will inevitably continue.

It now appears as if the Muslim communities of Europe are following their host communities lead when it comes to birth rates and family size:

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2008/muslimsineurope.aspx

Call careers information (have you got yourself an occupation?)

Like an earlier generation of American soldiers did before them, American veterans of the Iraq war are lifting the veil on the less than noble reality of that war:

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/85725/?page=entire

The testimony will be depressingly familiar to anyone who has any knowledge of what soldiers do in contexts of occupation.

OK. . .

So it does work.

This thing will probably be read by precisely nobody, and the world certainly does not need yet another bloody blog.

But I think I'll spin it out for as long as possible, regardless of the fact that I'm probably shouting into an empty void. . .

Testing, 1, 2, 3

Is this thing on?

Let's see. . .

Hmmm.