2010 — 11 January: Monday
Among the many things I don't understand is why on earth I was watching Being Human earlier. Comedy? Hardly. Drama? Not really. Still, I guess we all have our little foibles...
It seemed almost mild outside when I squeezed another bag of rubbish through the (locked) back gate and into the still-unemptied bin. Wonder how the rubbish collectors intend to get back on track, as it were. If it stays cloudy and the flakes stay away it could even thaw a bit more. I do hope so; this is getting rather tedious. G'night.
Unaccustomed as I am...
... to the wacky world of BBC Radio 2 at this strange hour (05:53) I'm already on cuppa #2 and moving around a bit. Breathing during the last throes of my cold turns out to be easier when I'm upright and, if I'm awake, well I'm awake (as it were). The "pause for thought" slot is currently giving space to a lady Buddhist, which makes a change I suppose. I've heard of Sarah Kennedy, but not previously actually listened to her show. Or the Dawn Patrollers.
Signing off, she's just bet "500 quid" that Terry Wogan will be listening in to hear what sort of show Chris Evans manages. (He kicked off with a couple of Beatles tracks.)
Charlie Brooker's off on one of his amusing rants. And, almost unbelievably, up to one million UK households have used credit cards to pay mortgage or rent bills in the past year. Ouch. (Source.)
And, down in sunny NZ, they've reported on the world's first sex robot at a show in Las Vegas:
At a demonstration at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, the dark-haired, negligee-clad robot said "I love holding hands with you" when it sensed that its creator touched its hand.
Another action, this one unprintable, elicited a different vocal response from Roxxxy the robot. The level of sophistication demonstrated was not beyond that of a child's talking toy,
but Roxxxy has a lot more brains than that...
I think it's time to get some breakfast! Munching away (somewhat later — it's now 10:18 and grey and dull out there) I see that yet another neighbour has finally found the round tuit needed to get cavity wall insulation. We were ahead of our time, Christa...
The funny thing...
... about your subconscious is that it knows stuff that you don't. I was wondering why I'd woken so early. Well, it's exactly 26 months since I lost Christa. I think that might be the reason for my low-energy gloom this morning. Still, it's 11:57 and can only get better. "KBO", as Churchill used to say, "KBO!"
There is, as they say, a...
... first time for everything. Today's novelty was executing a three-point turn on Chalvington road to avoid the crane/lorry that was blocking the already quite narrow space between parked cars as I made my cautious way back from my successful hunter/gathering foray down to Waitrose. Then driving the "long" way round. And thereby first descending precisely the still icy hill (Weardale road) that I had really wanted to avoid, and then ascending the still icy1 bottom part of Trevose crescent (equally high on today's "don't go there" list). But, here I am, safely tucked up in my cabin once again, pondering the whichness of the why, the greyness of the sky, and the occasional tiny teensy flake of frozen rain. Ghastly stuff.
It's 14:37 and I pity anyone who stands between me and the kettle. Meanwhile, Brahms violin concerto is doing very nicely.
Music to my ears
This has been an interesting listen. (Jarvis Cocker as a BBC DJ.) Mind you, I still have a two-hour tape of Frank Zappa as a BBC DJ. And that link is, oddly, to the previous date on which a denizen of the "Gardens" had cavity wall insulation put in. At least Richard picked a warmer day for it than Bill has. It almost reached 0C earlier today, but not quite. And Mr Postie managed to deliver both Private Eye and my first post-Christmas credit card bill — the card I only ever use in Waitrose, as it happens. Hard to believe than one chap can get through quite so much food in a month!
The New Flat Earth Society
Speaking of the consumption of finite resources (not just my pittance of a pension) I've been further browsing the treasure trove that is Professor Al Bartlett's website, as I mentioned, perhaps rather too implicitly, yesterday. Here's an article that screams out for wide circulation. It is clearly-written, insightful, and humorous. It's also (literally) deadly serious.
And this piece by the late Garrett Hardin is every bit as good, and cogent.
For the post-literate, video-oriented generation, try Are humans smarter than yeast? and The exponential function (part 1 of 8) by Professor Bartlett himself.