2012 — 24 October: Wednesday
It's good to have friends.1 They remind you, with some justification, that the likeliest explanation for the scanner freezes I mentioned is that device's USB interface, for example. Or that I forgot my foolish acceptance of a challenge — delivered on the night of that dreadful Sandy Denny tribute concert — to build a musical compilation consisting of one track for each year of my life.
So far (at 08:07) it's looking like another dull grey day, too.
Until I lost...
... the satellite box that I left permanently tuned to the NPR signal, I often heard Ira Flatow's "Science Friday" show. Here's (some of) what he had to say when accepting the Isaac Asimov Science Award back in June. Source and snippet:
There's a film called A Private Universe made by the Annenberg Project. They filmed at Harvard's commencement ceremonies. I think it was 1989. They asked thirty-two Harvard graduates
one question: Why is it hotter in the summer than it is in the winter? Thirty out of thirty-two got it wrong. They all believed that Earth is closer to the sun in summer. Actually, the earth this
year was closest to the sun in January. No one did the follow-up question: Then why is it winter in Australia?
Is science literacy worse now? I don't have any data, but my guess is that it probably is.
Nice chap. But doesn't everyone already know that it's the efficiency with which Maxwell's busy little demon does his work?
All shook up
Bearing in mind the disgraceful story of the Italian scientists now facing imprisonment, this report of that particular earthquake makes fascinating reading. (Link.)
Damn the torpedoes...
... I've had quite enough of my little local viral cloud and have now arranged to go for a walk tomorrow, come what may,2 to unclog the nasal passages. My partner in walking crime has been similarly confined to barracks, while dealing with a chum's ailing PC.
If someone could explain why it takes a supreme court decision to force Birmingham City Council to implement equal pay and bonuses...
A small shard...
... of utter truth from a new book by Roger Lewis that I found in Soton a few hours ago:
I went to Hay once to see a great hero of mine (no relation), Norman Lewis.3 He was terrible. Mumbled, fell silent, awkward, boring. And it made it hard
for me to read him again with pleasure. Though one is great on the page, it doesn't follow that one can scintillate4 in public — though that's
not the prevailing view, where style and presentation are confused with substance. Indeed, people are getting to be unaware that there is a difference between
style and presentation and substance.
Everything that's shitty in the entire universe follows from this inability to discriminate.
If you're wondering, it's the same chap who wrote one of my other two "Roger Lewis" titles currently on my shelves...
... but not the one on the Underground Press, which dates from the end of my student days in 1972 and which helped spark my own interest in that particular literary 'scene'.
$5 trillion?!
This is wicked... but it made me laugh.