2009 — 30 September: Wednesday
Recently back from Winchester. Tell me why people drive along an empty motorway at below the speed limit and in the middle lane. Oh well, it's 01:37 and time for a final cuppa and a Ritz cracker (do we pensioners know how to live high on the hog, or what?)
Two excellent films this evening, each one new to one of us. I took along the Feast of Love from May last year. Mike chose to show me Pay it forward which, for some reason, has passed me by until now. Right, time for tonight's picture of Christa:
That's her older brother Karl, with nephew #1 (Florian) on his shoulders. Meanwhile, niece #1 (Michelle) has just today reached Cynthia's "dangerous age". (Not the best of the films made in 1968.)
G'night.
Thanks, Tom!
In June 2004 I got to introduce the guest speaker at a seminar at the IBM Hursley Lab, just after I'd started my 24th year there. The speaker was David EH Jones and I first read his witty columns (can you believe?) 45 years ago in New Scientist magazine (at 1/3d per week, by the way). Indeed, my opening remark to the young audience was planned to be along the lines of "I've been reading this chap's work for rather longer than many of you have been walking the planet — how did that happen?"
Meeting and greeting the now rather frail "Daedalus" (aka Dr. David EH Jones) was a rare pleasure, and we got along like a house on fire. The lecture room was completely full, too, which was very gratifying. And despite my feelings regarding public speaking people said later that I was obviously in my element during my introductory remarks, which were as it happened completely unscripted. Mind you, we had to have a Health & Safety dry run first as he wished to fire a chemical bottle rocket over the heads of the audience. Amazing what you can do with an inch of tap water in the bottom of a two-litre polycarbonate bottle, and a couple of slugs of calcium carbide. Can we say "Acetylene" children?
I was reminded of this by an email from Tom G this morning pointing me to a New Scientist piece and asking me whether he correctly recalled an early column on the same theme. I long ago scanned and OCR-ed some (not yet all, alas) of my clipped Ariadne columns. So it was desktop search tool Copernic to the rescue:
My microintegumental friend Daedalus points out the trouble caused by marine organisms growing on ships' bottoms. They greatly increase the power needed to propel the ship, and must be hacked off at vast expense. But Daedalus views the matter ecologically. He is seeking an organism so perfectly adapted to the ship-side environment as to oust all other competitors, and which forms a smooth and self-renewing layer. So DREADCO biologists are studying those sorts of algae which form thin layers on solid surfaces... They are also examining the more slippery sorts of seaweed; for Daedalus recalls the great reduction in water-friction caused by certain gooey polymers, and reckons that these weeds generate their slime to reduce the uprooting drag of water-turbulence.
It's 10:29 and I've just recalled the cup of tea I made about an hour ago. It should be well-stewed by now!
By the way, I took the opportunity to get Dr Jones to sign my copies of his two wonderful books:
My middle initial ("C") clearly stands for "Completeist". Time to get dressed — I rather shocked Mr Postie yesterday in just my "Matalan" knickers, I fear...
Going to the mat
Toyota in the US is recalling six and a half million cars because of "unsecured floor mats that can jam the accelerator". Been there, done that. I always pull my (unsecured) floor mat clear as a matter of habit ever since a near-death experience in my Dad's Triumph 2000 PI — not that that was caused by a slipping mat (but the effect was identical). Toyota in the UK is asking for £20 less for my annual car insurance renewal. Somehow, in driving for just under two years I have established a no-claims discount of four years — I will never understand economics.
Polymath(ematics?)
Here's an interesting piece that majors on one of my heroes (Djerassi), but manages to mention several others. Just back from a nice little outing in search of lunch and a pootle around Meon and other points with my main co-pilot. It's 14:40 and there's a slight suggestion of a hint of drizzle.
Having completed the "Freeview" retuning on all three boxes, I find myself agreeing with the comment here. Source and snippet:
When I compare with what channels I could first receive on my, then new, digibox I see I have lost half the mainstream channels and several other ITVs but on the plus side I now have
a load of dating channels, dodgey trading channels and numerous channels devoted to scary women in their underwear who want to talk to me at two quid a minute. I smell a rat.
Freeview, swap you four women in their pants for ITV and Channel 4. I'll throw in bid up, bid down, bid sideways, casino robbery and all the other worthless tat too if you like.
I recently heard an interview with Matt Latimer on NPR. Like the hapless Ronald Millar (for la Thatch), Latimer had the amazing job of writing speeches for "Dubya". While he sounded as if he had a healthy sense of the ridiculous, it's clear from his memoir that the administration of the time did not. Denying JK Rowling a Presidential Medal of Freedom because she promotes witchcraft plays well in Salem, I guess. (Related BBC source.)