The goal this a.m. is to get through the backlog of newsitems so that 'regular' blogging can resume ... we begin today with the incipit of a piece from the New Zealand Herald:

Technical writing isn't unlike running the Roman Empire, Phil Cohen says. It's all about understanding what makes people tick.

"The Romans controlled what for them was the whole world ... [but] they didn't have ballpoint pens. They had their act together, they thought about how people interacted and how they worked together. That's what did it for them," he said. "[It's] about making the technology fit the people rather than making the people fit the technology."