2010 — 29 March: Monday
I know exactly where I was exactly 343 months ago today...
Having just been sent for a week in September 1981 to Germany (Böblingen, a little south of Stuttgart) on a trainee writer's course (despite having been hired just three months earlier as an experienced writer — go figure IBM management) I was now back there, this time in Meisenheim, and (more important) with Christa and Peter on a brief holiday very soon after they'd joined me down here in this house. I note I was still occasionally using the Polaroid camera I'd won in a competition, though I can see now that the prints have not proved to be very durable.
Christa always used to say "Tomorrow is another day". So I shall get some sleep, then see if she's right. I expect she is. She generally was. And perhaps Peter will by then have let me know he's survived1 his week of snowboarding, too. Parents still worry, you know, even when their sons are now (quite impossibly) 30!
G'night.
Inconceivable
I mentioned my difficulty understanding the virulent resistance to health care reforms in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave,2 etc. Smarter chaps than me are also struggling:
And it's been a hoot watching Mitt Romney squirm as he tries to distance himself from a plan that, as he knows full well, is nearly identical to the reform he himself pushed through as governor of Massachusetts. His best shot was declaring that enacting reform was an "unconscionable abuse of power," a "historic usurpation of the legislative process" — presumably because the legislative process isn,t supposed to include things like "votes" in which the majority prevails.
That's the trouble with democracy, I suppose. Mind you, theocracy doesn't seem much better, surely? How about trying a Nope? Now there's a thought.
I mentioned, too, my difficulty understanding the idea that my species is super-intelligent. "Wingnut" was, until recently, among other uses a slang term for a person who enjoyed the American TV political soap opera The West Wing. And what intelligent, literate viewer wouldn't, I wonder? But look at this set of poll results. I am irresistibly reminded of a dusty old 1997 book by Michael Shermer that's still somewhere on my shelves: Why people believe weird3 things.
Definitely time (10:07, in new money) for breakfast!
To lose one guvmint drugs advisor...
... may be a misfortune, but to mislay seven of them? As the Guardian so elegantly puts it:
The latest departure follows the publication of guidelines that set out the terms of engagement between ministers and their expert advisers. The guidelines were drawn up by scientists, but later amended by ministers and published as formal "principles of scientific advice to government" last week.
Mind you, if you were a conscientious scientist working up a careful set of excruciatingly difficult drugs guidelines, and then had to watch them being amended by a committee of our woefully inadequate elected representatives skilful, scientifically trained, expert, unbiassed, ministers, you'd probably resign too. It must be time for my next drug-laced cuppa.
It's 14:22 and quite dull out there, but not currently raining. I popped out on a supplies run just after breakfast and, having just lunched, am now about to re-immerse myself in Vorkosigan's enticing universe. Better than wrestling with Apache2, in my humble opinion. (Besides, I'm pretty sure I simply omitted a "+" sign from the "Includes" line in the config file. I'm in no hurry to be proven wrong.)
Yuk. 16:23 and pouring with rain, though it's still +9C outside. What dull weather. [Pause] Not much different at 17:57, as I note while wheeling out the black bin.
Later
Fed, watered, and somehow weirdly disoriented listening to Roger Daltrey talking about Quadrophenia 37 years on. I still remember buying it on double vinyl in 1973 while I was pretending to be an aeronautical engineer in Hatfield. Amazing album.
Later still
After Rupert Hine, I find it impossible to choose between Glenn Gould's piano performance of the Goldberg variations, and Trevor Pinnock's harpsichord version, so now I've settled for a blast of Tchaikovsky, both upstairs and down. That is, at least, one very minor-league advantage to having the house to myself, though it's still an extremely poor compensation for having lost Christa! It's 23:30, seems to have turned unjolly cold, and I shall be heading for some sleep fairly soon. There's probably time for another hot cup of the brew that cheers first, of course.