2008 — 24 May: Saturday

Good grief! What time do you call this?1 Definitely time for another of my recent batch of pictures. This time, I'm spiralling, Fibonacci fashion:

Just a daisy?

Sun is still shining

Even though Mr Postie tells me that Mr Car Salesman is still trying to get Christa's attention with an offer in which he claims he will bend over backwards for her. Why, by the way, should bending over backwards help?

Smile when you see the birdie...

I know I'm abusing "Magic Thumb" by using it "this way round" but there are times you need your telephoto and don't have time to fit it. This was one of them:

Heron on the Itchen in Winchester

It's 10:52 and the dweadful Woss is off the air, so I get a chance to hear Mark Lamarr and Jo Brand. Guests at the moment are Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone. (I once got a lift from Rod's Dad in Hatfield, but that's another story, as they say.) Another nice piece here from Theodore Dalrymple, this time on immigration. Then it's time to start tidying up before Junior's arrival...

One should learn something new each day... Charlie Chaplin wrote the song Smile. Crikey.

Post-prandial perusals

I realise that one should avoid sex, politics, and religion (though actually little else matters) around the dinner table. But this comment on a blog forecasting the demise of our benighted kingdom's current political leader2 made me chortle. What you might call the last Straw:

Here you have touched upon the mystery, wrapped in an enigma, and coated with the words of a confusing William Gibson novel, that is Jack Straw. A feeble foreign secretary, a slightly suspicious 'justice minister' (what a title, like a Judge Dredd cartoon), and an all round pointless individual. Yet his name crops up with regularity when leadership positions are discussed. Why is this? I imagine he is a very clever man, though, frankly, this goes against all the actual evidence of his actual decisions in power (Iraq, anyone?). But Prime Minister? Surely politics is a strange game for odd men and women...

"TheCharlatone" in response to Martin Kettle's blog in The Guardian


Nicely put, sir or madam. So much for politics. Next, religion. I generally avoid Scientology as assiduously as I dodge the dodgy SF novels of its dodgy creator. But the article here, and the comments made in its wake, amused me. By the way, the interesting article "Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?" is just as boggling when you think about it.

Seventy-five billion years ago, the intergalactic alien tyrant Xenu exiled manifold individuals to Earth in special craft — which looked exactly like DC-8s. Hubbard provides sketches. These beings were then imprisoned in mountains, before being blown up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashed with a huge 3D film. Their traumatised spirits — "Body Thetans" — then clustered around human bodies and continue to do so to this very day, and can only be removed using advanced Scientology. Xenu? Currently held captive in a mountain by a forcefield.

Marina Hyde in The Guardian


The 75,000,000,000 years doesn't quite fit with current estimates of the age of the universe, (let alone this planet!) but that could be a Grauniad misprint, I suppose... "Internet research" (aka Mrs Google) shows an almost equal mix of million and billion floating around in cyberspace.

Just (16:00) exchanged notes with a chap I haven't seen in many a year. Rog is now, he tells me, designing control circuitry for alpaca fibre processing. Not exactly an off-the-shelf item, but I gather you can be fleeced to the tune of many (tens of) thousands of pounds by what little is commercially available. Junior's room is now once again fairly pristine, at the cost (of course) of massively increased entropy elsewhere hereabouts. Good job I'm retired.

The monthly3 reminder from one of my online banks to check my statement also sneakily introduces increased ATM charges and minimum fees. It also reminds me that (as is increasingly common) "Telephone calls are being recorded for security, quality control and training purposes." With all this incessant quality control and training going on, how come their operations never seem to get any smoother?

Can't wait any longer, son

So I've just served up my bit of tonight's meal — it's 18:47 and I'm hungry! There's a few minutes of necessary cooling first, of course, so I'm listening to (a track from) the new Neal Diamond (when did he become 67, by the way?) I'm guessing it's called "If I don't see you again", and it's at #1 in the U.S. I gather.

Yesterday's doorstoppers

As hinted, I found some goodies on the doormat when I got home yesterday. Gawd knows how Mr Postie got them through the letterbox — makes no topological sense:

Three DVDs

Well, that's a relief... dept.

Just phoned Junior (20:31) even though I'm in the middle of the Archive Hour history of the BBC Reith Lectures. He'd completely forgotten his intended trip down here, so (like all parents at all times) I've been vaguely worrying quite fruitlessly. Well, he should miss the worst of the traffic at this time.

Laugh or cry?... dept.

The rich are different from us. Nathan Myhrvold commissioned the construction of another replica Difference Engine. After it's been on display for a year in California it will relocate to his living room. Uber-nerd or what?

  

Footnotes

1  I'd say "breakfast", at 09:35, were it not for the fact that stuffing the crockpot for the last hour or so has temporarily deadened the appetite.
2  The chap who claimed £32 on lightbulbs and £99 for a "Sky" TV subscription on his expenses while enjoying a salary of £136,000 per year. I'm sure Christa would echo my "Good God!" I wonder why the Speaker of the House of Commons (a misnomer if ever there was one) fought for three years to stop such intriguing details being published? Recall the "sunshine" test.
3  Monthly? Pah! I check on them every day.