2009 — 12 February: Thursday
The Terry Pratchett programme was fascinating. Quite a chap. Oh well, time for tonight's picture of Christa:
An early lesson in mechanical engineering, 1980
Here she is, with Peter, in Old Windsor in 1980. He was learning about cause and effect, I guess.
My word. Brenda's royal website is getting a facelift. I can (just barely) wait. And remember my recent lapse with a credit card that I (inadvertently) used for an ATM cash advance? I got the bill yesterday; despite the fact that we're in an era of trifling interest rates, that £50 has ended up costing me £3-02 (with the estimate of a further £4-72 had I not cleared the amount outstanding in full). Daylight bloody robbery if you ask me...
G'night.
Is it cold out there?
I only ask because, at 06:19, it seems the study skylight is once again welded shut. Sleep has fled (I always used to find that sore throats had that effect) so I've given in to the inevitable, popped downstairs, made myself a cuppa and switched on the central heating somewhat earlier than is the norm. Of course, waking up early doesn't mean I've yet absorbed enough sleep — I'll be paying for this at some later point today with a nod (as it were) in the direction of further unconsciousness. I'll worry about that later. Now, back to bed with a book and plenty of pillows... (yawn).
As if there wasn't...
... enough to be worrying about. Just found this. I still have somewhere the book on "critical thinking" that I bought and read shortly before IBM paid real money to send me on a training course of the same title. I remember I scored high on recognising implicit assumptions (but quite amusingly low on some other aspects). Unlike that "HTT" the Gray (sic) Lensman! (That reference, too, will only impinge on people of a certain twisted upbringing.)
Definitely time (08:00) for a bit of breakfast.
Much as one might wish to poke fun at the Wikipedia editing to "correct" the age of Titian to help embarrass the PM, the mind just boggles. Aside to Christa: it's minus 3C but one of your daffodils under the vine is just about to flower. I can just hear you saying "Good God!", too, as you read this in your newspaper of choice:
Of course the "Scumbag millionaires", as the Sun called them, are rightly the target of public rage: their continued bonus-mongering a scandal, their rehearsed humility palpably insincere, their attempt to apologise for the "turn of events", rather than their own devastating actions, truly nauseating. But, as the disgraced former RBS chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin told MPs: "It's too simple to blame it all on me." To make a few banking has-beens the fall guys is to let off the hook a political and corporate elite that underwrote everything such people did for a generation.
Me, and my viruses...
"Being as how" the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the barometer was high, and it's nearly Friday, I took myself and my plasmid cloud (actually, I think it's bacteria that are plasmid, though I suppose it's arguable that once a body cell has been invaded by a virus and had its genetic machinery subverted to produce more of the wretched things, you could almost regard that cell as a bacterium) down into Southampton. No, I did not go near the famed Swedish meatballs of Ikea. I think the law of unexpected consequences had swung into operation — the "shed city" carpark (which is now pay and display) was only about half full. Either that, or the global credit crunch has accelerated locally to an alarming extent.
It's now 14:09 and, as soon as the abominable "Archers" is over there's a Rumpole to be enjoyed as I digest the crockpot and revert to my usual strenuous regimen of world-class pottering. To my mild dismay, there was no sign of the next issue of The Word. It's nearly two weeks since I last shopped for any but what Baloo would call the "bear" necessities. The boring stuff, like food... I leafed idly through a couple of PC and Linux magazines, but then swooped on a book by Paul Nahin and a clearance box hardback in which Spider Robinson has completed a novel that was drafted in outline form back in 1955 by Robert Heinlein, but then left untouched.
I have two editions of an earlier Nahin1 book: "Time machines". Completely fascinating, and replete with lots of delicious footnotes. And Robinson wrote an excellent essay in praise of Heinlein (not to mention the amusing series of stories featuring Callahan and his cross-time saloon). Quite how it can be 21 years since Heinlein's death is a real mystery.
Twice2 today, as I was out and about in my admittedly-grotty anorak, gentlemen of a similar age have apparently assumed I am some kind of kindred spirit and have attempted to engage me in conversations on railway-related topics. What's that about? I didn't have a pen in my pocket, a camera round my neck, a Thermos flask, a notebook... I shall have to visit a drycleaning establishment!
If you recall the last shopping trip I ever made with Christa to Oxford, 27 months ago, today's Nahin completes a trilogy of books I now have about the non-integer numbers in Euler's beautiful equation!
Eli Maor's 1994 book "e: the story of a number" and Petr Beckmann's 1971 book "A history of pi" are the other two.
Start with two cows...
In the wake of a certain minor financial crisis, I've been looking back through some old notes, and present the following without further comment:
Not a single word of truth, I'm sure. It's 17:09 and the radio news is, once again, inviting me to shout at it. Back to music, methinks.