2010 — 14 February: Sunday
I spent the evening watching The last Mimzy and its various extra features. I was sufficiently impressed by it that I even went so far as to draft and send an email to its director, only to discover (when it bounced) that the chap had actually resigned from the company he'd formed1 following a board-level decision he didn't like by Time Warner bosses.
No big deal. He doesn't need me to tell him what a good job he did, does he? G'night, yawn, at a mere 23:36 or so. (It's not even Sunday yet!)
My fourth...
... St. Valentine's Day as a retiree, and I still have no idea who he was or what he did. I note, however, that I don't have a card from Christa! The sun is still (at 08:34) having a hard time breaking through the clouds and I suspect it's still all too near the freezing point of water out there. But a hot cuppa, double glazing, and the "Danse Macabre" keeps the spirits up.
Farewell, Philip Klass
Or "William Tenn" if you prefer. He gets a nice obit in the New York Times. I had no idea he'd been born in London. I think my favourite story of his would have to be "Time in advance". (Do the time first, then commit the crime quite legally.)
Fit to lead?
Is the title of a 1980 book by Hugh L'Etang that comes to mind as I read this piece on some of the problems of some of our leaders. Source and snippet:
If this armchair analysis borders on the distasteful, that is probably inevitable when political leaders are free to behave so weirdly, yet excused the kind of routine medical check-ups that would be mandatory in any other job where lives are at stake.
Mind you, L'Etang considered a variety of medical problems, not just what goes on (or doesn't go on) in the bit between the ears.2 One of the comments to Bennett's piece adds: "in politics, ... stupidity, ignorance, egomania, greed, recklessness, arrogance, obsessive secretiveness, authoritarianism, untrustworthiness, lack of any relevant qualifications and significant personality disorders are no bar to holding office or even becoming prime minister". It occasionally seemed to Christa and me (a pair of old cynics, obviously) that much the same could sometimes be said of leaders in other walks of life.3
Breakfast beckons, at 09:26, and to some wonderful Bach harpsichords.
Symphony of Science
Jon Richardson (when not writing funny columns in the Guardian) also hosts a BBC 6Music Sunday show. A few minutes ago he played a track that (I gather) Jarvis Cocker played last week — a minute or so with Mrs Google took me to this wonderful site with its set of YouTube videos among other delights. Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, David Attenborough, Stephen Hawking, and others shall we say "remixed" as I have never seen or heard them before. Not to everyone's taste (or interest) but the attempt to deliver science and philosophy in musical form entranced me.
On a par with Harold Baum and his "Biochemist's Songbook" — trust me! It quite distracted me from the fact that it's just been pouring with rain. 11:29 must mean it's tea time, don't you think? Well, "lemonses", certainly. (Or grapefruit and some dried apricot bits, to be more precise.) Just heard one of those "shark bites woman" stories... now, "woman bites shark" would be a real news story. And would make a nice change from "man bites dog", of course.
Catching up
I had some vague idea of digesting lunch (already a pretty distant feast) while listening to Noam Chomsky and William F Buckley going at it hammer and tongs (or should that be "hammer and sickle"?) until I realised it's a debate from 1969. Dammit, I was still at school for the first half of that year. After browsing (the late) Buckley's entry on Wikipedia, I think I'd rather hear the session between him and Carl Sagan:
Buckley participated in a live and very heated debate with scientist Carl Sagan on ABC, following the airing of The Day After, a 1983 made-for-television film about the effects of nuclear war. Sagan argued against nuclear proliferation, while Buckley, a staunch anti-communist, promoted the concept of nuclear deterrence. During the debate, Sagan discussed the concept of nuclear winter and made his famous analogy, equating the arms race to "two sworn enemies standing waist-deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five".
Not that I don't find Chomsky interesting. But I do find him harder on my diminishing powers of cerebral processing than Sagan.4
This should be easier to process — Christa and I very much liked the 1999 film version by Oliver Parker — but it will have to settle itself down on the PVR5 tonight without my help as I'm out for a feast and a video evening. It's a jolly good job software can always be relied upon, isn't it?
Time to freshen up.