2009 — 15 June: Monday
Just time for tonight's photo1 of Christa — another of my blurred specials — then I'll explain how it got to be 02:14 or so:
As I mentioned, I'd ordered the DVD of Last Chance Harvey to see Emma T and Dustin H together again. It showed up on Friday while I was away in the frozen North enjoying a free lunch at Big Bro's (distant) expense...
... I'd assumed, from their polished performance together in Stranger than fiction, that it would be another classy act. I was right in thinking that, but wrong in (also) thinking that they'd acted together in anything else. Good film, and indeed the reason it's now so late and I'm only just contemplating a spot of sleep.
I note we've just experienced the first UK death2 from swine 'flu. <Sigh> G'night.
Although my interest...
... in psychology was originally sparked in the mid-1960s by several books by Hans Eysenck (and, I now admit, romping through such fun pop stuff as "Know your own IQ" that has long since fled my shelves) I snorted somewhat at the suggestion that "bitterness" could become the next mental disorder. Source and snippet:
The Bush administration managed to lead the country into a protracted, illegal war, based on trumped-up evidence; ignored memos that said the country faced credible terrorist threats; locked up large numbers of suspects afterwards without trial or due process; lied to its citizens about the widespread use of torture; eliminated every sensible, necessary check on financial regulation to prevent a fiscal meltdown; mocked the facts of climate change; and dithered as Hurricane Katrina devastated a large city.
But when justified anger at such incompetence is discussed as a sign of mental illness, it's borderline insulting, especially because half the reason for the discussion is to ensure that drug companies — anxious to prod their faltering revenues — can promise relief from the alleged disorder with yet more pharmaceuticals.
Imagine, if you will, the inevitable ads: "Think it's just bitterness from job loss, foreclosure on your home, or that nonexistent pension for which you've been saving all your working years? It may be 'post-traumatic embitterment disorder,' a mental illness that some doctors think is due to a chemical imbalance..."
Wonder if I can claim PTED as a widower?! Meanwhile, I'm listening out for a lady PC (whose "Diary of an On-call girl" is probably going to tempt me) after hearing how a policewoman can safely decide whether to accept a cup of tea when visiting a MOP's3 house: "If I'm going to need to wipe my shoes on the way out, I say 'No' to the offer." And listening to Lynn Barber for the first time on Woman's Hour is interesting as she sounds nothing like I'd long imagined.
I exist!
Finally... I've just had a snail mail from Toyota addressed to me rather than to Christa. They're wondering if it isn't nearly time to trade in Christa's last birthday present to me for a new one. I think not.
Did I mention...
... my next door neighbour (the affable young Pakistani radiologist) has urged me to read the Koran in the original to set my thinking (on, for example, evolution) straight? This just in from "downunder":
How much do you know about Islam? Good question, so I approached the stall and some lovely Muslim blokes offered to answer any questions I had.
OK. Do you think Islam is sexist? No.
Then I asked about women in Saudi Arabia not being permitted to drive cars or get about unescorted by males, about the stonings, etc. They explained all that was cultural, not religious.
I then asked if they could show me in the Koran the part about genital mutilation of women. They couldn't. I left and said thank you. I put out my hand. They told me they couldn't shake it.
Glowing reports
A gentleman from the OECD (?) who sounded like more than a bit of an apologist for the nuclear power industry has at least just admitted on the BBC that the health prospects of people affected by the Chernobyl disaster are "not glowing"! Ouch. He was up against a chap who was talking about a yet-to-be-published "mega review" of reports about (no pun) the fallout from this, who had asserted that mortality figures by the end of 2004 could be as high as 985,000 and rising, which is in stark contrast to the official total. This irritates me.
In her 1989 book "Multiple Exposures", Catherine Caufield said: "In ten days during the spring of 1986, Chernobyl spewed at least 36 million curies of radioactivity across the world... Parts of Europe and the Soviet Union were more contaminated by Chernobyl than by all the nuclear weapons tests put together." How's this? "I have in my safe a transcript of the operators' telephone conversations on the eve of the accident. Reading the transcript makes one's flesh creep. One operator rings another and asks: What shall I do? In the programme there are instructions of what to do, and then a lot of things are crossed out. His counterpart thought for a while and then replied: Follow the crossed out instructions." (Source.)
It's not been just the Soviets, of course. "For 12 years after its inauguration in 1944, the government's plutonium-production facility at Hanford in Washington State released radioactive wastes to the environment 'on a scale that today would be considered a major nuclear accident', as the New York Times put it more than 40 years later when the news became public. In 1945 alone, Hanford officials secretly released 340,000 curies of radioactive iodine to the surrounding countryside. By comparison, official estimates give the total release from the Three Mile Island accident as 15 curies."
Recall Robert Heinlein's horribly prescient 1940 story "Blowups happen". Definitely time for an uncontaminated bit of lunch — it's 13:31 and still sunny.
Karl May — who he?
With topped-up blood sugar, I can now look at the Amazon email that has recommended the 1974 film by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg — "Karl May" — because I purchased or rated "Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance". They could be right, but it's hard to see any connection, and it doesn't quite look as if it would "peel my banana". Besides, I've got dishes to do.
Ongoing stimulation
I've stayed vaguely faithful to BBC Radio 4 this afternoon... The programme about America (specifically Cuba) was fascinating. The one about diet and prostate cancer was interesting. The one about the theological implications of Alzheimer's is — literally — beyond belief. For example: "We need to deconstruct the intellect to be unrestricted in our hearts." "Challenges and experiences sent by God." WTF? I think she's talking about karma. I think I know out of what orifice, too.
Still, at least tonight there's a TV programme about "RAF Hendon" hosted by the late Glyn Worsnip. He was a class act.
Meanwhile, one or two items have been accumulating on the doormat, as it were. Actually, I got the book via my sister-in-law; it's my Xmas 2007 present from Big Bro — it's written by an NZ "development facilitator and psychotherapist" who "recognises that in the wisdom of the ancients4 there is truth and help for people in the modern world". I believe Bro hires Ants to assist with his NZ Institute of Management courses.
The 51st series of I'm sorry I haven't a clue has got off to a very promising start with Stephen Fry doing a good job in Humph's seat.