2010 — 27 February: Saturday
It's 00:14 and, after a quiet evening of pottering and catching up on stuff captured by the satellite PVR (including the final part of "Nurse Jackie"), I think it's been enough for one day. Quite a long one, in fact. I suspect there may be a domestic chore or two1 looming in the near future, but not if the weather's as lousy as the last forecast suggested it would be. (Aah, the freedom of the retired slob bachelor lifestyle.)
G'night.
Those clouds in the SKY...
... look more than a little moist to me, and have been dumping quite heavy rain as I listen to Brian Matthew's weekly programme. I was pleased to read (last night) a defence of BBC 6Music by young Phill Jupitus. Although Patrick Foster's original Times article may just have been trying to stir things up a bit this leader is a nasty masterpiece of biassed writing. I note the BBC's "denial" has ruled nothing out. I wonder quite how the original mission of our national broadcaster ("To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain") stands up against that of the Murdoch empire (to make an average of nearly £500 from each Sky junkie household, while trying to set the country's political agenda into the sour-tasting bargain).
A second cuppa and some brekkie should cheer me up. It's 09:31 and I'm almost awake, I guess.
Gigi, and others
I'm listening to Paul Gambaccini waxing rhapsodic about this musical, and realising that I know all the "tunes" without ever having seen the film. Its story sounds as off-the-wall as "Pretty Woman". And I wonder what this interesting lady would make of it. Source and snippet:
You build a lot of your thinking on John Stuart Mill.
Mill is one of my favorite philosophers. He's so complicated and sees many sides of most issues. But also he's a genuine ally of women's equality, and that's so rare in the history of philosophy.
In this area, what Mill wants to do is to say that there are two types of behavior: what he calls self-regarding, involving only yourself and other consenting parties; and behavior that's
other-regarding, involving the rights and interests of other nonconsenting parties. That's the fundamental distinction. Not this place or that place, solitude or public space. His further claim is
that behavior that's self-regarding should be off limits to legal regulation. The key notion in making something legally regulable is the notion of a potential harm. If there's no harm in the offing
except a self-chosen one, for Mill that's just no business of the law.
The United States has never fully accepted Mill's idea.
Or, to put it another way, as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses...
Personally, I like Mozart. What, then, to make of this? Curious typo in the URL, too. And (given the little I know about programming and debugging) I remain highly unenthusiastic about "fly-by-wire" machines. Recall what Big Bro had to say on the "Airbus-held philosophy that computers are better than pilots at flying aircraft". Or that lovely anecdote from Gerald Weinberg for that matter.
An email from NZ took me, rather indirectly (a route researching the correct spelling of the name of a one-time Chief Scientist at IBM), to this lady's page. Say what you will about IBM, it has had its fair share of interesting people in it. I remember writing (in the letter that accompanied my job application in early 1981) that I suspected IBM contained more Mounce-shaped niches than ICL did at the time. I was right.
Time for some lunch, methinks.
Reading... music...
... and suddenly it's 17:01. How does that happen?
What's in your garage?
Mine has a car in it, complete with new non-stick accelerator pedal (of course). But I'm still almost unique on the little housing estate here as garages seem mostly to be used for (I presume) excess clutter storage. Iris has just emailed me with a clever set of graphics examples from this outfit. And they're based in Germany. Are Christa's countrymen finally developing a sense of humour? I particularly liked the child's car, though I suspect Big Bro might prefer the Jeremy Clarkson style jet. They also do graphics to be fitted over interior doors — I liked this one. Neat.
Oops. Time for a spot of tea. It's 18:22 and rather dark all of a sudden. [Pause] Mind you, it doesn't take all that long to get to 21:45 and I've yet to dish the dos. It seems to have become a bit colder, too.
Excellent piece here about one of the most amazing books I've ever read.