Time is presenting a constant challenge at the moment, in that it seems to last less time than it used to. Back when I was young (like, a few months ago), I seemed to have time to do all sorts of stuff. Read books. Write reviews for my review journal. Sleep. That kind of stuff. Not any more.

Some of it's because Steph is now working full time and THEN doing her thesis in the evening. This means that the things she used to have time to do, such as taking Nika for her walk and some of the household chores, are now falling to me. The last couple of days, I haven't stopped for more than a minute or two between getting up at 6.15 and going to bed. Everything just keeps on rolling on, and I end up exhausted.

Exhausted, but frustratingly not able to sleep. Because when you've been on full throttle all day, your brain hasn't had any time to sort everything out, and so come bed time it decides to start thinking everything over.

Of course, this is a very modern, middle-class complaint. Back in the good old days, when you only had to work 16 hours-a-day in the mill and then come home to do everything by hand, you didn't have time or energy to think about complaining about it. Hm.

Anyway, I'm planning to structure my time better. There are things that I've let drop that I don't want to let drop. One had been my writing, but I think I'm getting a handle on that with my earlier starts now. Another is my review journal. I've let that slip, mainly because I've being doing quite a few reviews for Tangent.

Now, I like doing reviews for Tangent. But I think my own journal should be the priority. It gives me the chance to present another view on stories. When I review for Tangent, then that's the only place that many of the magazines and stories I review will get coverage. If I do it on my own journal, it'll be there and someone else will do it for Tangent anyway.

So, I'm going to try to do one review for my journal each week. If I have spare time, I'll do some reviews for Tangent too. How does that sound?

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WorldCon is coming up soon. I finally got around to cancelling our hotel room. We had booked to stay in the Moat House hotel, but after experiencing how noisy the con hotel at Eastercon was this year, and finding out that our hotel was designated a noisy hotel, we just didn't think we'd make it through. So we've booked an apartment which we're sharing with friends. This is actually cheaper than a hotel, and it's going to be so much quieter (hopefully!)

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I shouldn't read newspapers. They just get my blood pressure up. Today it was irritation with the way that they have been reporting on the London bombers. The newspapers have been calling them "evil" and "inhuman". This is not only stupid but it is also unhelpful.

I understand why people do this. When faced by an atrocity, people want to believe that there is something fundamentally different between themselves and the ones who carried out the atrocity. Thus, they are "evil" and "inhuman". They are not like us. They are alien.

But, of course, they are not. One of the bombers was a teaching mentor supporting special needs children. The parents at the school thought he was great, very helpful and understanding. Another bomber was a youth worker in his community. One of them was only 18.

These people didn't explode bombs on trains and a bus because they were born bad. They didn't do it because they weren't really human. Such simple-minded thoughts only ensure that we won't be able to prevent future suicide bombers.

These were fairly ordinary people. And someone identified them, indoctrinated them, recruited them and set them off to commit mass murder and suicide. To stop this kind of thing happening again, we can't just write them off as evil and inhuman. What they did was evil and inhuman, but what they were and what they became was far more complicated, and it is something we need to understand not dismiss with easy words.

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Another thing that has been bugging me about the response to all of this is that news media and politicians have been saying that the problem can only be solved by the Muslim community taking it on themselves. While it's true that some in the Muslim community need to take a stronger stand against the extremists in their midst, it isn't just up to them.

One of the contributing factors to young Muslims finding their way into the influence of extremists is that large parts of the Muslim community have become ghetto-ised. There is not enough integration or communication between the various communities in this country. Muslims (and other minority ethnic/religious communities) are pushed away from the white, predominantly-atheist/agnostic/Christian majority. They close in on themselves. They feel (and are) victimised. Extremists flourish.

By telling the Muslim community that this is their problem that they have to solve by themselves is a sure way of reinforcing the divide.