AS Coleridge did. Somewhere in his notebooks he wrote about his fascination with pieces of snuff floating in his chamber pot.

And, Tiffany Murray was on the Book Show today: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2010/2998173.htm

You might be interested in these links related to Stan’s talk: Booker controversy and the SF authors he rates as contenders and what matters and what you can do.

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I didn’t mean to peck, and I appreciate how difficult it is to sit there and answer questions off the cuff. Obviously, what you said struck a nerve, and I’ve gone and replicated the offense, for which I apologise.

Re the definition of trash, though, I suppose I’m defending the right for one man’s trash to be another man’s treasure. The fact that I might find a book to be poorly written, unoriginal and generally bad doesn’t prevent another reader from loving it, relating to it or being encouraged by the story to seek out other books to read – perhaps even ones that are better by my standards.

And no, I don’t agree that it is better for young people to read trash than to read nothing. It is better for them or for anyone to watch a decent film, or see a decent band, or go to the zoo or a museum or volunteer at the rspca or do something, anything, worth doing, rather than read trash.

http://bit.ly/bDMRNn

A favourite for me is “stakeholder” as it now has 2 meanings which are the opposite of one another. The original, a neutral person who holds the wager for 2 bettors, & the evolved, meaning a person or group with an interest in whatever, i.e. a non-neutral person.