2012 — 6 April: Friday
I'm well aware1 that Robert Wise's wonderful 1951 film "The day the Earth stood still" can be seen, on one level, as a sustained piece of early Cold War paranoia. (My 1967 copy of "A requiem for Astounding" by Alva Rogers describes the 1940 short story that inspired the film as "another masterpiece from the former editor" [of that magazine, Harry Bates], and thanks to the wonders of the Web you can read the original story here.)
So what?
Well, (prompted by the excellent article here) I was reading the list of five key factors identified as high-level motivations for the exploration of distant space...
... while trying not to become too depressed (particularly after stubbing my mental toe on that awesome fifth 'bullet', which surely has no place on the list) at the thought of human beings spreading, like some truly ghastly (dare one say Biblical?) plague organism, without some significant further evolution (preferably not leading to our further-increased toxicity) occurring first.
Grumpy? Me? Get outta here!
Recent history
I've long felt the IT industry is particularly poor at examining its own past. NPR (three-part[ial]ly) to the rescue!
#1,
#2,
#3.
Visits to a couple...
... of my chums this afternoon have encouraged me to try a slightly wider range of words and music. So I shall be looking out for some Mussorgsky other than "Pictures from an exhibition" and — instead of taking yet another pleasurable romp though Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" — I've decided to have another stab at Cthulhu:2
Although I've long been aware of HP Lovecraft, and although I bought this collection of his stories in August 2000, it has so far proved impenetrable. But that's what retirement is for, is it not? The cover illustration is by John Martin, taken from the reduced size version that lives in Southampton's City Art Gallery. According to Wikipedia, the full-size original was discovered in Sweden and acquired by the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1983. The chap struggling in the foreground is Sadak (in search of the waters of oblivion).