2009 — 6 December: Sunday
The noise of the rain an hour or so ago was actually loud enough to wake me up. This doesn't bode too well for our planned walk but, at the moment, (08:38) it's merely horribly grey and damp out there. We shall see.
Statement of the bl**ding obvious... dept.
"The vast majority of women requesting abortion have tried and failed to use contraception effectively." (Source.) Equally depressing: "Some schools may lag — but there are half as many non-readers at 11 than a decade ago." How come there are any? (Source.)
And (possibly) even more depressing: "She refers to herself as a hockey mom, touts her record as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, as proof that she knows how to run a world superpower, and admonishes opponents in the way of a disproving nursery school teacher. Her beliefs can be summed up handily around three Fs: faith, family and flag." (Source.) Shoot me now!
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs would be better named Sacks of Gold: "Average compensation for the rest of the workforce will come in at about $743,000." (Source.) I think I need a considerable blast of fresh air. (The sun is actually shining right now — 09:42 — so I'm predicting a walk.)
And so, it came to pass...
... that, at 13:16, a 5.60 mile walk has duly been walked (in sunshine, blue skies, and not too much mud, roughly in the vicinity [or "in the near" as Christa would say] of Sparsholt) and I'm now back at the ranch vaguely contemplating a range of choices for a lunch snack.
For a change of perspective, I've been browsing the New Zealand Herald, so I now know that NZ seems to feel a need to close the pay gap with Australia by 2025 and to reduce guvmint operating spending to 29 per cent of gross domestic product by 2012/13. Gosh. They also want to cash in a pension fund to reduce guvmint debt. How wearily familiar it all sounds. (Source.)
Lunch, David, lunch! (NZ lamb, perhaps?)
If the feather warcast said "scattered, heavy showers" (and, to be honest, I didn't bother to look for a while) then it was bang on target a few minutes ago. Still, that's what a roof is for. And the car's on its nest, too. Personally, I forecast a nice hot cuppa in my own near-term future, preceded by a nice, hot, bath. I have some serious soaking to do. Glug, glug.
Open Source Software
Basically a note to myself, here, as I got bored searching for the last time I mentioned these pages, and Mike wanted to know about any anti-virus options:
Now, what's happened to that cuppa? It's 17:22 and dark out there. And ten years since "Spaced"? Amazing!
News? "Olds", more like...
Speaking of "wearily familiar", I note that the current Top Three BBC news items are, respectively, a windfall tax on greedy bankers' bonuses, the failure, and hence radical scaling-back, of the NHS IT system, and a chap with an imaginary friend getting hot under his clerical collar at the election of the second openly gay bishop in the Anglican gang of people with imaginary friends. It must be time for my evening ceremony of elevating my blood sugar.