2011 — 10 February: Thursday
From the look of this morning's weather1 today is a day for young Master Mounce to curl up with a good book, some fine music, and the occasional cuppa as a rare treat. It's 09:03 and an extract from Stravinsky's "Firebird" is doing just fine so far.
Being a bear of...
... little brain, I simply cannot understand why "ministerial colleagues" would be "incensed" by a simple truth such as these remarks by the departing Lib Dem spokes chappy person on Treasury matters in the House of Lords:
Barclays boss, Bob Diamond, can now expect to collect a bonus of at least £8m and Stuart Gulliver of HSBC at least £9bn. Oakeshott, a former City financier and a
close ally of Cable's, had been scathing. Speaking while still a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, he laid into the Treasury's negotiators saying: "They've got
an awful combination of arrogance and incompetence, most of them couldn't negotiate themselves out of a paper bag."
"If this is robust action on bank bonuses, my name's Bob Diamond."
Breakfast, Mrs Landingham. I need more blood sugar.
It's entirely possible...
... that reality is just a crutch for people who cannot handle drugs, I suppose. There's a long piece in the "New Yorker" about the defection from the bizarre cult of Scientology of Paul Haggis. The last thing I would have expected to find in it is an assertion that Robert Heinlein was in Naval Intelligence and "controlling" L Ron Hubbard. Stories persist,2 of course, that Scientology was founded after a conversation (possibly even a wager) between those two chaps about whether the quickest route to $1,000,000 was indeed to start a religion. No matter how strange. (And, in any case, isn't all religion strange?) Source and snippet:
Davis said, "[Hubbard] was sent in there by Robert Heinlein" — the science-fiction writer — "who was running off-book intelligence operations for naval intelligence at the time." ... "A biography that just came out three weeks ago on Bob Heinlein actually confirmed it at a level that we'd never been able to before." The book to which Davis was referring is the first volume of an authorized Heinlein biography, by William H. Patterson, Jr. There is no mention in the book of Heinlein's sending Hubbard to break up the Parsons ring, on the part of naval intelligence or any other organization.
If only I could remember...
... what my hippocampus does :-)
My next mission (should I choose to accept it, of course) will be to nip out to pay for, and collect, the next batch of accumulated post to dear Mama's former address... I really ought to get that round tuit and sort out a formal change of address. Not before lunch, though. I'm starving.
"If you break the law, you should not make the law" sounds grand. But what about the people who make the law before later being found to have broken it. Perhaps we should rescind legislation enacted by cheating, lying, politicians?
Excellent!
And some people thought Dirac had no sense of humour...
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
Cruel :-)