2010 — 19 March: Friday — Happy birthday, favourite son and favourite cousin!

30, heh, son?1 And Leigh has once again caught me up for the next half year or so. I've been spending the latter part of the evening in the amiable company of John Macnab — I do my huntin', shootin', and fishin' vicariously (unlike Big Bro).

I have a date with my plumber on Saturday morning. Meanwhile, the drip tray is doing fine. I think I'll suggest he drains the heating circuit to pre-empt any more radiator leaks. After all, if the daffodils are any guide, it should now be warmer and Springier, so who needs central heating? But now (00:32) seems a good time for a spot more sleep. G'night.

An only slightly...

... "Brrr!" worthy 16C in the bedroom, 18C in the study, and a positively balmy 8C out on the front porch at 08:55 as I sup a cup of cheer and demolish the second half of a tasty grapefruit.2 BBC Radio 3 is playing a Beatles instrumental ("Here comes the sun", which is more hopeful than accurate just at the moment) on a lute, and it's not sounding quite as weird as you'd imagine. Its effect is weakened, however, by young Mr Council's strimmer on the grass verge opposite.

Why does a cold caller always call when I'm in the middle of something more interesting? And why does he not get straight to the point of whatever it is he's selling? Or try to assert that he's not selling something when it's obvious he is? Maybe I should display a "No hawkers" sign. Grrr. I was nearing the end of this interesting article. Source and snippet:

The general response to Fodor among evolutionary thinkers has been a mixture of derision and awkwardness, as if one of their previously esteemed colleagues had entered the senior common room naked.3

Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian


Peter Greenaway offers an alternative slant on evolutionary thinking: "I'm not here to play tiddlywinks and I don't think you are either." (Source.)

Meanwhile, Madeleine Bunting puts the boot into the Catholic church. I like the idea of "bewildering" the "faithful", but wonder whether it's actually possible to bewilder the bewildered any further. When my parents returned from a fortnight spent touring Eire in the 1960s I remember them being astounded at the signs of an affluent church and well-fed priests in stark contrast to what was at the time widespread rural poverty. (Article.)

Pygmalion, Faust, Oedipus and Leviathan

I've always been a sucker for tracing and making linkages. This is a delightful "map" by Haisam Hussein. Shaw's "Pygmalion" is a favourite film; Christa and I both enjoyed a performance of Marlowe's "Faustus" at South Hill Park, Bracknell, in the mid-1970s; we both loved the Doors' first album, and the track "The End", but I have to say I preferred the tale of John Wyndham's "Kraken" to "Moby Dick". (A very long book.) Nor did either of us ever see "Jaws".

As the afternoon drizzle turns even gloomier, I give up wrestling with the abominable user interface of the Humax Hi-def satellite PVR (all I want to do is cancel the remaining episodes of a series that failed to grip me) and turn my thoughts to the idea of a cuppa with Roger and Eileen. The car is already out as I mooched down into Soton an hour or so ago for a little browse around. So, check the drip tray isn't yet overflowing (done) and away I shall go. Toot, toot.

One could, if one were a...

... cynical type of chap, draw a cynical conclusion from this type of mid-Hudson story. IBM hiding a key indicator? — as Vizzini the Sicilian was wont to say in the film version of The Princess Bride: "Inconceivable".

Zebu was new to me. Thanks, Brian!

  

Footnotes

1  I still vaguely remember being 30. It was three months after I'd joined IBM, and Christa and Peter had only just moved down here to join me. Christa had been assigned the task of decorating and selling our house in Old Windsor. She did both very efficiently. I don't know if Peter helped... I suspect not, as he was still at the early toddling stage.
2  As a kid, I ate grapes long before encountering my first grapefruit. Imagine my surprise at its name, therefore, after that first meeting. One of my earlier clues as to the madness of the adult world.
3  I can't help recalling Francis Wheen's tale of Sir William Armstrong (Edward Heath's chief civil servant) and his naked meltdown at a Ditchley Park conference.