2008 — 19 August: Tuesday

It's 00:45 and I've just finished watching some of the extras on the Director's cut of Donnie Darko. Strange film. Very strange. Right, time for some sleep. Before that, here's the second of two "family" shots from 1999. Same lineup as last Saturday, of course...

Family meal

Oh well; let's see if I still recognise Big Bro when he shows up later today. G'night.

Given up on sleep... dept.

For the last hour or so. So I've just discovered (for example) that the garden waste chaps come thundering around at just after 08:00 — a pair of large lorries one backing down and one travelling more conventionally; odd — next will be the black bin wallahs. Better get some tea. Much to prepare and do today.

I see George Monbiot is still intent on costing me sleep, too. Here's part of his concluding paragraph about the "magic pudding" that is the US government's missile defence policy after a text that ironically includes the phrase "glowing future":

[The government] seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at key stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.

George Monbiot in Monbiot.com


Call this a filing system...? dept.

I decided to sort out some paperwork. It's 13:35, I've had lunch, so let's see what an efficient, user-friendly, post-modern home office filing system looks like, shall we?

Incoming paperwork, August 2008

Strange choice of words!

I'm listening to a BBC Radio 4 piece about vocalisation (singing?) among higher primates. This seemed weirdly appropriate:

Barenboim, who says that he reads Spinoza in his dressing room during intervals, worries about 'musical ethics' and fusses over 'the moral responsibility of the ear'. I'm not sure that a sense organ can carry such a burden; we don't ask our penises to possess a conscience.

Peter Conrad reviewing Daniel Barenboim's "Everything is connected" in The Observer


Not sure about a conscience (musical or otherwise) but there's an old joke about God giving Man both a penis and a brain, but not enough blood to use both of them at the same time.

Get a move on, Bro!

The sooner you call, the sooner I can nip out and collect you, and we can grab ourselves a bite to eat. It's 18:35 and I'm getting hungrier by the minute.

I sometimes wonder whether a good memory is all it's cracked up to be. As a youngster I was unbeatable at card games like "pairs", and I used to think a retentive memory was a Good Thing. Nowadays I'm less sure (which is just as well, as my memory is less sure, too). My new word today is "Agnotology" — the equal but opposite counterpart to epistemology. While I assume the word, the concept, and indeed this book are genuine, what is one to make of this extract from the synopsis?

Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Doubt is our product" is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible.

Found here


Guess who's just called from a platform seat in Waterloo? (Actually, I didn't think they still had seats on the platform. Perhaps he's in a bar?) So I'm on chauffeur duty just about exactly when "Maestro" is available to record. Curiously, but probably wisely, he doesn't seem to want any solid food. I expect I can find a suitably analgesic nightcap to pour into him. It's a mildly amusing thought: as I observed last December when I contemplated a similar pickup duty for two of his daughters "It may sound trivial but, for the first second time in my life I can say 'Great! I'll drive out and pick you up from the station.' How cool and grown-up is that, I ask you?"