2008 — 16 April: Wednesday

Just time (00:57) for the proverbial placeholder. The Time Machine is doing its stuff on the iMac,

and I've just checked email and learned therefore of a change in venue for the walk later today. Because of the worsening weather to the east of us, we're ruling out Hooksway for the time being, though spies who were there earlier yesterday do tell us the bluebells are out...

Also (necessarily) been doing some tidying up, and will have to think hard about another new book shelf (and where exactly to put it, of course). I may end up rejigging Christa's study to some extent — that's not something I could have contemplated until very recently, to be honest. Time shuffles on, though, doesn't it? Alternatively, it is quite some time since I last culled some books.

I shall sign off with another smile from Christa — just over a year ago at Lepe country park:

Time (Machine) to get going

Vitamin supplements can shorten your life. East European immigrants are no less law-abiding than anyone else. What will the Daily Mail make of such BBC "news" stories, I wonder?¹ It's just gone 08:42, the sun shines on, brekkie is prepped, and the next task (after ingestion) will be to do the packed lunch. I must say, for a facility on the iMac I hope never to have to use, the designers have poured a lot of effort into the look'n'feel of this Time Machine incremental backup and recovery gubbins. I'm not even sure it's incremental or, at least (of course) not the first execution, which has obligingly salted away just over 907,000 items sprawled over about 45 GB onto the new external drive. (At least I managed to exclude all the MP3s; they would have added a further 162 GB to the total.)

Here's an item that takes me back to the Hursley Lab's one-time system of monthly and quarterly "Key Indicators" for measuring "progress" towards a sometimes unattainable end:

'I know that Art and Culture make a contribution to health, to education to crime reduction, to strong communities, to the economy and to the nation's wellbeing, but I don't always know how to evaluate it or describe it', said the former UK education secretary Estelle Morris back in 2003. She insisted that 'we have to find a language and a way of describing its worth' because 'it's the only way we'll secure the greater support we need'.

Quoted by Frank Furedi in The truth about music

Spoken like a true Empire builder in Parkinson's Law of course. Let's not overlook the "mole man" either! Now there's a hobby idea...

Yet another demographic time bomb... dept.

Oh dear! Lord Hunt says we need innovative ideas² and is quoted as saying we were very good at extending life, but not so alert to adding quality to those extra years by making provision for old age. Did you realise "someone aged 55 had a one-in-two chance of reaching 90, but two-thirds of them had failed to make any financial plans for sustaining themselves later in their retirement."? I certainly didn't. However, this is the bit that the BBC still needs to work on: "This is not an issue which is going to go away, and we want to play our part in diffusing the ticking time bomb of longevity" Smile? I very nearly giggled! And they've had seven hours to correct it.

I must admit, I had vaguely wondered what happens to the veritable mountains of misplaced luggage from events like the chaos at Heathrow's new terminal. Well, turns out it's a new small (but growing) business opportunity. Am I alone in thinking this is somehow disgraceful? Or certainly distasteful?

Today's walk

This yielded, inter alia, the following shy, giant, stick insect:

Nor, I think, could anyone rightfully accuse our little patch of Hampshire countryside of being boring, or unvarying:

Not, at any rate, without being a little sheepish:

Philosophers 'r' ¬Us... dept.

My chum Nick tells me he spotted the following slogan on a T-shirt in Cambridge during a visit he made there last year:

What if the hokey cokey³ is what it's all about?

Quoted by Nick G

Which reminded him of his time in the Civil Service and the three document trays on his (doubtless spotless) desk:

In
Out
Shake it all about

While, on a related theme, you could always check out an entry from the British Antarctic Survey for 9th June 2002.

Footnotes

¹  They picked up the vitamins, as it were, but didn't touch the immigrants. What a surprise.
²  Was there ever an idea that wasn't innovative, at least in a politician's opinion?
³  David Bamber, writing in the Torygraph nine years ago suggested the hokey cokey originated as a parody of the Roman Catholic Church's Latin Mass. I wonder what the Pope thinks.