You know what day it is...

60 years ago yesterday, allied bombers destroyed Dresden, killing several hundred thousand people. It makes you realise that while the holocaust, or the first A-bombs, were landmarks, there were many other tragedies. And terrible things can be done when you truly think them necessary, and doing and not doing are both the wrong choice. I want to find a moral lesson, but there seems no response, except a moment of silence, and praying that that choice comes rarely.

http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/14/newsid_3549000/3549905.stm

Warning: don't read this artilce without realising it's a reprint. When I first saw bbc news reporting "Thousands of bmobs are showered on Dresden" I thought war had broken out again.

Though saying that:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L14549619.htm

"Thousands of far-right marchers are threatening to upstage the official commemoration of Dresden's wartime destruction by portraying Germany as a World War Two victim while ignoring Nazi atrocities."

I'm used to the idea that there are still atrocities today, but it's always a shock to realise that there are people who aren't just trying to be evil, but actually thinking that Nazism wasn't the worst thing to have happened around WWII.

PS. Uh, happy valentines everyone.

45kb of vampires + internet privacy issue :)

Vampire fic has reached 45KB = 7k5 words. Apparently the rule of thumb of 'average word is 5 letters' is pretty much spot on for my writing. Measuring writing by the byte seems crude somehow, but it's certainly quick :)

• Chapter 1: Rat PoV. http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jv233/fic/saldini_chap_1.html
  
• Chapter 2: Maurice PoV. Late night bookshops are a godsend (so to speak) for vampire detectives.
  
• Chapter 3: Random extra PoV. It's not a vampire without evening dress, so it's formal hall time.
  
• Chapter 4: Maurice PoV. Exposition chunks are broken up into conversation, and someone turns up dead, ie. plot.
  
• Chapter 5: Maurice PoV.
  
• Chapter 6: Rat PoV again at last. Some vampires have problems worse than mild depression. But not feeling the cold is good if you live rough. We learn why exactly we're reading a book by a talking rat.
  
• Chapter 7: vampirechat.org transcripts. I liked this. How can come Maurice knows anything when he was abandoned by his sire? There's an anonymous internet message board! DR4CUL4R :)

I do need suggestions:

It's set in cambridge, but I've changed the name of everywhere in it. Virgin Mary College is a bit like trinity, but where Kings is. The university is run in a different way. Borders, Chilli's, etc appear but with different names. Keeping the originals makes it feel more real, but falls down whenever I need to dpeart from reality. Fiddling works almost as well, but seems gratuitous. Which should I do? Should I invent a city name as well?

I seem to rush through it a bit fast, but it'd never make a novel. Probably 15kwords would be optimal, though I probably won't make it that high -- which is probably also the worst possible length of a story :)

The rat is roughly Maurice's familiar. What is his name?

Vampirechat requires sponsorship from two members to join. How anonymously is this possible? If it's set up on a server trusted to be independant and the source code made available, could it be done without a central authority?

HIV 'could destroy cancer cells'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4257783.stm

"A University of California team found an 'impotent' version of HIV, with the disease-causing parts of it removed, tracked down cancer cells in mice.

The next step would be to insert a gene into the virus that would kill the cancer upon contact."

Maybe the universe is on our side after all.