2011 — 1 September: Thursday

"Rabbits!" again already. Most odd. Technically, it could be argued1 that logically it's still yesterday as I haven't gone to bed yet. The stars were out in some force and there was condensation on my car when I got back to it after a birthday meal (including a few experimental bites of octopus) at "El Sabio" followed by the nostalgia fest that was a screening of that intellectual stretch: Ghostbusters.

It's 01:07, so I'll say g'night.

As solid as a stick of Northern Rock?

I still take an interest from time to time in examples of Corporate speak. Here's one, buried (suitably) on the web site of one of the building societies and/or banks that I now own (speaking as a tax payer, which many of these once highly-regarded and praised institutions patently tended not to be):

The rise in the number of NRAM customers in arrears is due in part to revising the previous practice of capitalising any arrears once a customer was able to maintain their mortgage payments for a certain period of time. We made this change because we believe it is important to have individual conversations with customers to ensure we are providing the fairest solution to meet their circumstances. In addition, the rise reflects continuing pressures on household incomes set against the high amounts initially borrowed by some customers relative to their income.

Anon in NRAM


This, with UK interest rates at an all-time low for an all-time record period. I'll never have enough brain-power to be an economist. Or a Tory, for that matter. I was never a fan of the saintly Thatcher's supposed economic miracle transformation of the UK. Click the 'pic' for an interesting article:

Housing

Given the arguments currently being proposed (by the banks, naturally) for slowing down the introduction of the regulation that everyone (except the banks, naturally) can see that they need, I'm reminded of the quote I published (here) from a chap quite some time before he became what my friend Carol in New York describes as a very disappointing President:

"those with money, those with influence, those with control over how resources are allocated in our society, are very protective of their interests, and they can rationalise infinitely the reasons why they should have more money and power than anyone else."

Barack Obama


Time for my second cuppa of this shiny new day. And some breakfast. It's 09:03 already. [Pause] BBC Radio 3 has just played Lotte Lenya singing the "September Song". I still recall her "Colonel Rosa Klebb" in "From Russia with love". Nice line in shoe-based weaponry. (More here.)

DVD Profiling

Here endeth the letter "H". (Online here.) I'm off to refill Mother Hubbard's cupboard before my lunch date. [Pause] Just finished uploading letter "I" and now feeling peckish as I await my charioteer. It's 12:13, but quite a long time since breakfast. It's a sunny, cloudless sky, too. Christa always used to say these Indian summers aligned themselves with the 'back to school' week.

Monsters of Grok

For those who combine a liking for Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", the band "The Doors", and elegant fonts, this strikes me as a "smart" idea:

Grok

Very neat. Right. Time (14:52) for a post-lunch visit to see dear Mama... [Pause] Horrendous traffic helped ensure I missed out on my afternoon cuppa. By the time I got there, the dear ol' thing was down in the "memory activity" room bemusedly listening to a chap singing and playing the guitar. As soon as she'd spotted me in the doorway she abandoned the rest of her own cuppa and displayed every sign of wishing to return to her room, so we did that. As we climbed the stairs she commented that she'd never been "up here" before. <Sigh>

I stayed only for an hour or so, though actually she seemed relatively2 lucid on this occasion. And I made the right choice by avoiding the motorway on the return trip, too.

Keying in the UPC numbers for all titles beginning with "J" has brought me to disc #1758 and helped reduce the blood pressure — as have two cups of tea, a couple of damsons, and (I blush to admit) a "Daddy biscuit" or two. A chap has to keep himself sane somehow :-)

One James W Pennebaker has spent 20 years researching (among other things, I hope) the choice of pronouns used in diary entries written by people after (during?) traumae of various kinds. He claims to be able to track their return to healthy normality — if such a state ever exists in what my friend Penny in ICL always referred sardonically to as "this vale of tears" — by monitoring the way they change their choices.

Command line

I mentioned — indeed, I quoted from — Neal Stephenson's nice little essay the other day. Today, Mr Postie dropped off the printed version:

Book

And the ever-reliable "Ansible" newsletter proffers a very sensible quotation from Martin Rees:

[The] Astronomer Royal knows where his towel is. As he told the British Interplanetary Society this year, "It is better to read first-rate science fiction than second-rate science; it's no more likely to be wrong and is far more stimulating than the second-rate science. And I think it's good to read the great classics of science fiction."

In Ansible #290


If you don't know where your towel is, you still have much to learn.

  

Footnotes

1  Not by me, obviously.
2  As Len (who's in a somewhat similar boat) remarked over our lunch in "The Wheatsheaf" as I was correctly predicting the course of my upcoming afternoon entertainment: "You have to laugh; otherwise, you'd cry."