2010 — 26 April: Monday
Just back from an evening giving Mike and Bryan an eyeful...
... of "Avatar" — it went down very well indeed. Odd, isn't it? The film's distributed by 20th Century Fox, has made far more money than any other film, eclipsing even the same director's "Titanic", and yet the same company's Fox "News" gets a thorough and regular pasting from Jon Stewart (and deservedly so, as far as I can tell) for its relentless and rather stupid-sounding Obama bashing. Has that nice Australian emigré Mr Murdoch no shame?1 (Source.)
I mentioned "South Park" the other day. I see that Jesus and Mo have picked the same topic. Tee-hee. As usual, some of the comments are funnier than the actual cartoon strip.
Oh well; tomorrow (which technically arrived over an hour ago) is another day. And we have a walk planned for Tuesday. Then April will be just about done and dusted. Amazing.
G'night.
Today's new word...
... is "orographic". As in:
When midlatitude baroclinic systems move over a mountain range, the precipitation from the system intensifies over and sometimes upwind of the slope of the mountain barrier. The maximum precipitation occurs on the lower windward slopes in almost immediate response to the orographically induced lifting of the air such that the maximum precipitation may occur well below the summit of the range.
Or, as my informant expressed it: "It rains more when clouds hit mountains". And there's me thinking that the uplift over mountain ranges cooled the moist air and reduced its ability to hold so much water vapour. The co-author's name (here) is a Spoonerism away from being yet another example of nominative determinism.
I still recall attempts being made at the Hatfield Polytechnic (as it then was) to get me to write in such a florid style. They were largely unsuccessful. Though oddly, I was the only course member to pass the much-dreaded "Engineer in Society" essay section of the CEI Part 2 exams :-)
It's 09:09 and no mountains around, though the clouds do look rather wet hereabouts. Time for breakfast. And to note that, after 42 years, "Where Eagles dare" is being released on Blu-ray... Broadsword calling Danny boy!
I couldn't care less...
... that Amazon here in the UK thinks Simon Callow's Chance in a million2 dates back only to 1999. The fact that they're selling it for £11-32 while the robber barons in HMV in Soton are demanding £20 adds extra tang to my chicken, mango, and lettuce with lime mayonnaise sandwich as I gulp it down (with a lightly-salted potato crisp chaser and orange juice) before whizzing out to hit the teaspots (tea pots?) of Hampshire with my now-orphaned main co-pilot in search of the brew that cleanses.
While I can sympathise with classifying parts of Microspit's "operating" system as a virus, I suspect someone in McAfee's anti-virus programming department is currently feeling feverish. (Source.) Mind you, during that brief period in my mad life when I still had a "Vista" system, I noted here the way its own defensive software classified Microspit's own web browser as potentially harmful :-)
It's 50% Ian's fault
Had he not shown me the "animusic" file when he was here recently I would still be blissfully ignorant of the existence of two of these DVDs. The other two fell off the HMV bargain shelves when I was down in Soton this lunchtime:
Now watched all but the Eastwood. Excellent, and I've just ordered "Clueless" on the theory that a variant of "Emma" made by Ms Heckerling looks very promising. Time (23:19) for a final cuppa, methinks.