Non Intervention

Usually I don't talk about Politics, and even this week when I will have something to say about politics, I will try to make it as blurry as possible.

You see, there has been a fine tradition in US Israeli relations.

According to this fine tradition, each party refrains from stating his (or her) preferences about the other party's Politics.

Thus, for instance, if there is a US Presidential race going on right now, than the Israeli Prime Minister in particular, and all of Israel's Members of Knesset in general will refrain from stating their opinions about the aforesaid Presidential elections.

I don't think it will be too much to state my own opinions about Israeli politics though, since I am Israeli, right?

Well, Israel has many parties (I think something like ten in the current Knesset), of this embarrasingly rich tapestry, I now support the Israel Labor Party, and its head Shelly Yachimovich (see picture above).

The Israel Labor party only has something like five seats (out of 120) in the current Knesset, but is considered the major opposition to the current Prime Minister, and up to about two weeks ago  Shelly Yachimovich, was indeed the head of the Opposition.

So it was very nice according to this policy of Non-intervention that our Prime Minister hosted Mitt Romney so nicely here last week, allowing him to raise more the 1M dollars in campaign money, and it was also nice on his part that he cancelled his planned meeting with  Shelly Yachimovich.

I think this is a beautiful policy all around, and I intend to keep this wonderful policy of Non Intervention.

I will not say anything about the US Presidential race!

Using Google Docs - Part II - Google docs and Creative writing

Perhaps now is the right time to say this: I've introduced at least thirty people to Google Docs, and taught them how to use it.

I can't say all of the cases were resounding successes, but some of the more interesting cases were last year when I taught creative writing in Beer Sheva.

You see, quite a few of the kids I taught were originally from the Former Soviet Union (mainly from Russia and the Ukraine).

The cool thing was that when they first opened their Google Docs account, the menus were all in Russian. This really helped some of them get along!

On the other hand I also teach creative writing at the Beer Sheva Municipal Library. There my students are a bit older (the median age is above sixty). 

Not all of my library students have gotten the hang of Google Docs, but the ones that have? let me tell you! it makes working on a manuscript so much easier!

Using Google docs - Part I - My First Google Doc

I guess that just like the rest of us I use Google products such as Google Search, or Google image search, or even Google maps occasionally.

Google Docs is very different. It is my main word processor (I only use the spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs rarely, still haven't figured out what the charts are good for...) and thus I use it almost every day. 

Looking just now at the list of my 'recent' Google drive files, I must have more than a thousand docs in there, maybe two thousand, and about a half were written originally on Docs.

But you never forget your first one, right?

So my first Google Doc is a business plan from February 2009. It's a plan to market a computer game, and it came to nothing (so far).

But the convenience! I typed it on my computer, and my prospective business partner (who also happens to be my uncle) could see it on his computer, and edit it, and I could see his edits, and so on!

I thought it way cool at the time.

I still think so today...

Introducing a New Blog

Yesterday I started a new blog:
http://mathandsciencestories.blogspot.co.il/
This new blog will deal with stories about Mathematics and Science, just as its name suggests.
My initial inspiration for this new blog was the discovery of the 'Higgs Boson'. You are welcome to read (a little) more about it in the blog itself.

PS. If all goes well I will start another blog later this week, and report about it here next week...
PPS this blog will start being a lot more 'About literature' in the near future...

Newsflash: Feeling of Power

I didn't think I'd do it this soon, but yesterday I published my first book on kindle!

We are talking here about my book Keter Malchut that I've published in Hebrew in 2007.

It contains five science fiction and fantasy stories in an Israeli setting.

This book is my first effort in publishing, so there are many things that I'd do differently today, but hey it's only 2.99$!

Mainly I wanted to see how this whole 'Publishing to kindle, and selling electrons to (potentially) the entire world' works.

I guess I will find out pretty soon.

Here is the link to the Kindle book.

Here is the link to my Author page.

I also made a Createspace Print on Demand book today - Wow, busy day!

Feel free to share this information, of course!