2010 — 21 March: Sunday
It's just gone midnight; Junior will be setting off on the trip for his ski holiday in a couple of hours, unless he's entangled with the British Airways industrial "action". Why they call it "action" when it's the exact opposite has always amused me.
Unless I mis-heard, Bob Harris mentioned a new album coming out from the Gotan project. I missed the details. Oh well, time for some sleep. G'night.
Ministering angels
And, unless I mis-heard the headlines on BBC Radio 4, several ex-ministers now stand accused (within the uniquely British court of "justice" known as the media) of quite possibly accepting inducements to get legislation changed in ways that would favour businesses. How very transatlantic of them. But since the particular medium currently carrying the story is owned by that fragrant businessman Mr Murdoch, I refuse to worry just yet. Besides, is it news? Isn't that what lobbyists do1 every day? Oil the wheels, grease the palms, pass the brown envelopes, or whatever? (Source.)
It's 08:14, the barometer is up, the drips have stopped both inside and outside. A walk is indeed on the cards. It will warm me up!
Speaking of stings...
... back in December 2008, I obliquely noted Victoria Coren's weirdly amazing story about a gang of funeral gate-crashers, and the amusing way she tried to trap them. Well, it seems some of the gang are still at it. And one of them apparently choked to death while feeding himself at a funeral just the other day. You can't make this stuff up. (Source.) According to comments already made to her latest article, this story refers to another member of the strange crew.
I seem to have stumbled upon Bizarro world! Oh well, time to throw together a packed lunch. It's 09:21 and the sun is now actually shining.
This made me smile, in a relative sort of way:
"Today some happy news. Lorentz telegraphed me that the British expeditions have verified the deflection of light by the sun." So sorry, by the way, to hear that you are not feeling well,
he adds.
Thus Einstein reveals to his ailing Jewish mother that he has become famous as a genius, a man who has been vindicated over his claim that gravity can distort the space-time continuum.
All that is missing is her reply. "He never writes, he never calls, and suddenly he's cleverer than Isaac Newton," she might have written.
Six miles later...
... the walk has been walked, the nice hot bath has been bathed, the next cuppa cupped (as it were) and, at 16:51, I'm listening to Jarvis Cocker chatting to John Hurt on BBC 6Music. About drinking, oddly.
The late, great Isaac Asimov was writing stories about a giant computer ("Multivac") long before Arthur C Clarke's HAL9000 came along. Asimov loved telling jokes, too, and he used his story "Jokester" to very good effect. There's a delicious twist in the end, too.
This splendid little chap is just one of twelve gorgeous creepy crawlies2 on the Torygraph's web site:
A human flea, if you please. Or is it cousin It from the Addams family?