2010 — 17 August: Tuesday
Suddenly, it's already quite some time past midnight.1 West Wing is too absorbing. I notice I haven't even bothered to buy a copy of "Radio Times" for the second week running.
G'night.
I find myself torn...
... between two equally neat comments attached to this Ophelia Benson piece "If there is no design, there is no designer". Three if you count the Laplace quotation. Source and snippets:
1. As a male, middle aged owner of an expanding prostate with an increasingly impeded urethra passing through it, I would like to have a heart to heart talk2 with this so called designer.
2. The designer set the whole universe we know in motion, and sometime later ceased to be. That is to say, the designer-creator died. That creationist explanation at least fits the facts...
The manufacturer has gone out of business, and we are left with a product which has problems but no warranty, and the lights are all out in the Complaints Department. Caveat emptor, or
whatever the appropriate expression is.
Shades of that XKCD cartoon — I love the punchline. As usual, Ms Benson gets my vote. Now I think it's time to go and design my second cuppa. And to ingest brekkie before the carpet fitters arrive. It's 09:23 and rather a grey-looking day, so far.
Fitters at work
It's 11:01 and they're already hard at it... one tea with one sugar, one coffee with two sugars...
Speaking of drugs, I recall my remarks on UK drugs "policy" here triggered today after reading the sensible remarks by the outgoing president of the Royal College of Physicians...
... And I continue to wonder at our latest guvmint's continuing stupidity-in-the-face-of-evidence approach:
The government does not believe that decriminalisation is the right approach. Our priorities are clear; we want to reduce drug use, crack down on drug-related crime and disorder and help addicts come off drugs for good.
The priorities may be clear, but I wouldn't describe the current policies as successful.
Very odd
Quite why re-assembling Peter's bed, and re-filling his wardrobe, let alone moving any of the other "stuff" back into his room should be in any way upsetting is (and will probably always remain) a mystery. But it's now 13:15, all rooms that initially needed new carpet or vinyl flooring have it, the pair (father and son, in fact) of fitters were treated to a blast of Avatar as I'd correctly deduced from remarks that they wanted to see the plasma screen in action. I suppose this all constitutes yet another small step along the sometimes laborious path to wherever the new Planet Normal lives.
I'm hungry, thirsty, knackered, and still have lots to do — so (obviously) it must be time for a break! It's a bit drizzly out there, still. But I can report a phone call to my cousin that cheered me up. I always like it when that happens. KBO
Thanks, Mr Postie
Though I think the lure of West Wing will rule tonight.
Right. Time I was elsewhere. [Pause] Back from the care-home in time to catch a news snippet suggesting that inflation is stubbornly above its official 2% target. Were I more intelligent, and less tired, I might point out the effect of all that lovely quantitative easing but (to quote from Dalrymple's elegant piece) "I can't be arsed!" What's next, Mrs Landingham? A cuppa? Splendid!