2007 — Day 92 - a Vivid demonstration
I'm indebted to an ex-colleague for entertaining me with a PC World link to the state of the Daylight Saving Time issue and the IT world's apparently sluggish response. (Not IBM's, I hasten to assure you. Plans were well in hand long before I left.) I'm reminded however of the thoughts of one Ben Riggins who joined IBM the year I was born, and who can with some justification be regarded (for example) as the father of CICS. He told me once that there was never time to do it right first time, but always time to fix it afterwards.
But why the initial capital "V" in my heading today? Ah, well, yes. Moving on from the original DST article I took a slightly non-PC turn for the worse, here. It is a tad ironic that "adult films" are to play on "Blu-ray" is it not? And Debbie does Dallas1...Again will take some of us back a few years. You have been warned! It's also good to see that Sony, who are now being severely spanked for foisting their nasty little root kit CD protection measures on the world without being entirely truthful (initially) about them, are so protective of our morals.
Multinationals set the agenda. How reassuring to know they are always and unfailingly such bastions of good behavior. They never dodge taxes. They always have the best interests of every last one of their employees at the forefront of every stage of their planning because they never forget who actually does the work and generates that all-important profit. And, of course, they never over-reward their own internal ruling classes by encouraging or even merely tolerating dodgy share option deals, let alone massive salaries and pension top-ups regardless of corporate success.
Pulling strings department
Randall Munroe neatly summarises string theory for me rather more compactly than the elegant
writer of The Elegant Universe managed:
I was taken to his little picture via an article by Michael Riordan reviewing the new book by Lee Smolin The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next.
Better yet, Randall also neatly encapsulates the problem with Wikipedia in a way I, for one, can identify with.
Lest we (I) forget department
I bought some books yesterday, in Southampton!
- Battlestar Galactica #1 companion by David Bassom. I'm a sad geek
- Battlestar Galactica #2 companion Sadder geek, and I only have to wait until the Autumn for #3!
- Dead beat: perverse pleasures of obituaries by Marilyn Johnson. People, it seems, slip away in occupational clusters
- Mr Darcy takes a wife by Linda Berdoll. Not my first venture into parody? tribute? imitation? territory
- The Secret life of trees by Colin Tudge. One might think he was barking; one would be wrong
- Sex Design by Max Rippon. Includes Robert Crumb, Julian Murphy, Pete Underhill's Bad Taste Bears etc
And we were somewhat entertained last night by that remake by Jonathan Demme of Charade though it is surely uncontentious to note that Thandie Newton is no more Audrey Hepburn than Mark Wahlberg is Cary Grant. (Tim Robbins may well, however, be taller than Walter Matthau.)
Tonight, by contrast, we were royally entertained by Peter and Shelagh's Peking duck. Hope it didn't have the sniffles — too late, now.