Wednesday, November 18, 2009

On The Fruitless Task Of Commenting On A Newspaper Website


Catherine Deveny sure knows how to write an opinion piece.

As I write, 194 comments have been left in today's Age column about private schools.

That's 21,006 words.

At an average of 181 words per comment.

It would take 35 hours to read them all aloud if you were reading at the standard speaking speed of 100 words per minute.

The standard novel is around 60-80,000 words.

Why do all these people bother?

To convince?

To be read?

To be noticed?

Well, there's not much chance of that happening.