2007 — 15 June: TGIF (again)!

What with yesterday's extended little Figsbury Ring countryside adventure, not a lot of CDs got ripped. But here's the score, (1,019), "round midnight". Time for some beauty sleep, even though BBC Radio 3's Late Junction is still going strong.

Professor Tufte isn't dead, by the way; it's just that the fact that he cropped up twice on Arts & Letters prompted my memory of him.

Guardian's letters page

Although this clearly inhabits its own, parallel, universe, it's good to know that real-world mathematical theorems can still be brought to bear on it:

Peter Barnes's letter (June 13) stating how many letters he has had published raises problems touched on by Gödel's theorem. It was either true when written and untrue on publication, or untrue when written and true on publication.

Martin Skinner, writing here

But what if it had been lost in the post? Speaking of which, what'cha got there, Mr Postie? Tonight's viewing, perchance?

The adventure of Sherlock Holmes' smarter brother replacing a very battered old LaserDisc pressing from well over 20 years ago. Nice little film, this, even if two-thirds of the protagonists are now dead, dammit.
Gladiatress What a gorgeous tagline!
Hot Fuzz Looking forward to this, even if the extras run to nearly 3.5 hours.

And a brief trip into the local metropolis yielded three magazines and the new book The Omnivore's dilemma by Michael Pollan.¹ This time, he's apparently in search of a perfect meal in a fast-food world. Fat chance!

Footnote

¹ I bought his The botany of desire back in November 2001 having heard him interviewed about it on NPR. I recall it had a long section on tulips and tulipomania, and an even longer one on marijuana. I also learned that, according to Aldous Huxley, the relative paucity nowadays of mystics and visionaries on the hoof [as it were] can plausibly be ascribed to better nutrition. Vitamin deficiencies wreak havoc on brain function and could well explain a large portion of visionary experiences in the past.