2009 — 7 April: Tuesday
Tonight's picture? Another one from our Cornish holiday back in September 1975. Magical time...
Christa in Penzance, September 1975
Pah! Guess who forgot to put the "green" bin out until just a few minutes ago? At least it had stopped raining. It's now 00:42 and I'm ready for some sleep. Can you believe Kurt Cobain died fifteen years ago today? Nearly as unlikely as Starbuck piloting a Cylon vessel with a gaping hole in it back to BG. (It's only a fairy tale, David.)
G'night.
Sunshine? Blue sky?
Shome mishtake, shurely? Time (09:33) for tea.
You got that right, buddy... dept.
Following yesterday's poke at economists, here's a neat examination of gullibility:
The real mystery in the Madoff story is not how naïve individual investors such as myself would think the investment safe, but how the risks and warning signs could have been ignored by so many financially knowledgeable people, ranging from the adviser who sold me and my sister (and himself) on the investment, to the highly compensated executives who ran the various feeder funds that kept the Madoff ship afloat. The partial answer is that Madoff's investment algorithm (along with other aspects of his organization) was a closely guarded secret difficult to penetrate, and partly (as in all cases of gullibility) that strong affective and self-deception processes were at work. In other words, they had too good a thing going, for themselves and their clients, to entertain the idea that it might all be about to crumble.
Post-event wisdom is a wonderful thing.
Supplies...
... trail has been hit — it occurs to me that, with a couple of Bank Hols coming up I may need to do this again before the weekend — dashed tedious business. And with my main co-pilot off sunning himself in Spain I'm minus one irregular tea companion, too. But I shall nip over to Roger and Eileen and blag a cup later this afternoon. My theory is the sun is bound to be replaced by the shower needed to clean the birdie crap off my windscreen. It's 13:36 and the stuff on BBC Radio 3 is too damn' mournful. Mind you, this week's composer (my shamefully recent discovery, Astor Piazzolla) is amazing.
Later
Thanks for the tea and cake, Roger! Back (at 18:07) just in time for a cold-calling salesman from Toyota "wanting to keep his best customers(!)". I find (rather cruelly) that they can effectively be derailed from their witless scripted sales spiel by mildly pointing out that "Mrs Mounce" is actually dead and that, no, I really am not yet looking to change my Yaris as I've only just learned to drive the thing. To show there are no hard feelings I then tell them to say "Hi" to the little gorilla family perched in front of the TV in their showroom and remind them we donated them. Works every time, though I do begin to wonder just how many separate bits of Toyota fail to track the — shall we say? — continued vitality of their customer base...
Then, since I had an email from HP I decided, yet again, to poke around their appallingly bad UK web site in the vain hope of finding their new MediaSmart server here in the UK. What a waste of time. If only "da management" could be persuaded to try their own shop windows from time to time things might slowly improve. Until then, no chance. Right; time for an evening meal.
Mmmm, that's better! Next up, the ineffable "Desmo" Carrington. (He's just reminded us of the late Alan Dell.)
Later still
What excellent music the BBC puts out. It's 22:44 and I'm thinking maybe I should do the dishes and sort out a nightcap of the tea type. Gosh, is this an exciting life, or what? Well, it beats the alternative! Now, where did I put that pipe and those slippers? (I'm nearing the end of letter "L", by the way. I've just scanned the artwork for Love actually and may even watch it again1 soon.)