Push it all the way in, Jack...

I read Brenda Brooks comments in the Plymouth Herald's 'Saturday thought' (a religious segment of the paper) about the survival of the people on the plane which landed in the Hudson River. Brenda states that the pilot told everyone 'to pray', unfortunately, I can find no reference to this statement actually being said. What I do find is that Captain Sullenberger's one instruction to the cabin was to 'prepare for impact'. However, whilst Brenda does give Captain Sullenburger some credit in this horrific accident, she implies his 148 passengers survived by the grace of her god through prayer. I was wondering if this is the same god who chooses not to answer the millions of prayers of those men, women and children caught in conflict, genocide, ethnic cleansing etc., throughout the world - or do their prayers and suffering not attract the necessary media attention for her god to act? Or am I being cynical?

Jill's digital movie camera broke just before we went to Slovakia and she bought a new one to take with us. Before purchase, she established with the store assistant that the camera would play the film she took on our TV as well as recording it to DVD and he suggested it would do all that she wanted. However, after the trip she spent hours trying to get it to play the film on the TV without success. She took it back to the shop yesterday and explained her problems. The assistant decided to try it on a TV the same as the one we have and it worked! Elated, Jill brought it back and plugged it into our set and guess what? It didn't work. We couldn't understand why - the set was the same as the shop, the leads were the same, the connections were the same - it just didn't make sense. Granddaughter Leah had a go and attached the cable from her video camera onto Jill's camera and images appeared on the TV screen - so, we were guessing the fault was with Jill's connection leads - which we tried once more and, yep, 'no joy'. Then I did what I should have done when Jill first had the problem a week ago. I checked the connection - and Jill hadn't been pushing the small jackplug all the way into the camera socket each time she did it! At least the camera is performing as it should now.

No news from Camilla Bolton on The Messenger, yet. Is that no news is good news, I wonder? Met up with Rita this morning to talk through the storyboard for the Jack Chandler sequel. I am finding the story research (on GM crops) alarming and more like fiction than fact with Terminator Seeds (Good name for a book, but terminology for male sterile seeds) which are modified to produce one crop only and regarded as intellectual property for the purposes of law. I gather the French have stopped (temporarily?) using a certain brand of GM maize. How do we know what the long term effects of GM foods and additives will be? Are we setting up our children and grandchilden to reap what we sow? I hope not.