2011 — 7 March: Monday
This time it was Guy Garvey's "finest hour" that was winding down in time for midnight.1 I thought it felt a little cool. I've just checked the porch thermometer and it's bang on 0C. Brrr.
G'night.
Key questions
Some while back I mentioned a scary piece about the processes involved in nuclear missile launch protocols. The author of that piece is now back with a whole book on the topic of the simple question2 asked by Major Harold Hering during his missile launch training. Source and snippet:
Trainees who asked questions were supposed to be weeded out by the Air Force's "psychiatric consideration of human reliability" requirement. I've read this absurd Strangelovian document, which defined sane and reliable as being willing to kill 10 or 20 million people with the twist of a wrist, no questions asked.
How could he know that an order to launch his missiles ... came from a sane president, one who wasn't "imbalance[d]" or "berserk," as Maj. Hering's lawyer eventually, colorfully put it? Hering needed a lawyer because as soon as he asked the question he was yanked out of missile training class, and after two years of appeals, eventually had to leave the Air Force... But he forced the Air Force to face the question. We couldn't ignore the problem any longer. Although, as it turned out, we couldn't solve it, either.
It's ground that I first remember being covered in the book "Failsafe". There's a reason it's called "MAD". It seems the spirit of Catch-22 lives on.
Scraping ice off the car is a good way of getting a few minutes of fresh air and exercise. It's 07:06 and about -2C out there at the moment.
I don't think...
... I'll be buying this...
... but isn't it a great cover and title? [Pause] I'm back from a supplies run, and from giving the car a drink. I note, without pleasure, that the price of petrol has gone up by 30% since I started driving on 15 October 2007. I might add that the pittance I receive from the IBM pension scheme has shown no sign of a similar increase :-(
Good job it's only money. But, hey, it's 10:46, the sun is shining brightly, there's a hint of Spring in the air and, even more vitally, there's a fresh cuppa in the kitchen with my name on it.
A more accurate title would usually be "decomposer of the week".
String up all the bankers!
The just (and, no doubt, reluctantly) revealed bonuses and salaries of the top people at Barclays are so unspeakably far beyond obscene as to make me smile having just set up the transfer of the next month's care-home fees from a savings account to dear Mama's current account. She's been with Barclays, I suspect, for more than 70 years.
I'm somewhat amused to hear a BBC report state that £100 invested in Barclays five years ago would today fetch £53. And that the "risks" the bank takes in the global "investment" markets are (essentially) guaranteed and underwritten by the UK tax payer. I think this must be what's meant by a "win-win lots" situation for the outstanding, ungreedy, multi-talented superbeings at the top of the smelly system. "The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself."
Quite why I have to enter my name three times on one census form remains a mystery to me. The whole thing took about 10 minutes, but then I wasn't hurrying. Perhaps I should request one in one of the other 56 languages just for fun; after all, I still have to complete my answers in English (or Welsh). I now have 23 days in which to mis-place the form before I send it off. Not smart on the part of the National Statistician. Right. Next outing is for some of that Carlo chap's ice-cream.
People of a certain age...
... should have no trouble naming four of these five folk from "beautiful downtown Burbank":
Horrifyingly, their combined age is 370 years.
Cough, cough
Typical! My throat has decided that the first really Spring-like day is the perfect time to become sore. Last time this happened, I ignored it and went out (in the snow) to help my main co-pilot buy a "uke" from these guys. Tonight, I shall be watching some choice pixels and probably wrapping myself around a nice, hot toddy — always my preferred placebo. Now, where's that bottle of malt?