2013 — 18 March: Monday
A burst of Bach1 and a nice hot cuppa have eased me into the early morning. No rain at the moment (07:19, or thereabouts) but it's a bracing +2C out there and grey-looking. Though I'm ready for taxi duties I suspect Gill's post-op infection will delay her scheduled visit to Winchester hospital today.
Unless I miss my guess, my NZ sister-in-law can carve a further notch on her birthday belt today. What it is to be a pensioner, heh? Who knew most of us were going to last this long?
How cute...
... is this little Easter bunny? There's a YouTube video of his sculptor, Henry Segerman, linked from the Smithsonian blog where I found him:
Still not quite justification for a 3D printer, though I like the Hilbert cube, too.
Once upon a time...
... I was an impressionable youth. I saw nothing inherently implausible (for example) in the simplistic Newtonian notion that the Arisians' super-brains could foresee events by extrapolating from sufficient present real world data. The European Commission labours under the same delusion, and is backing Dirk Helbing, holder of the Sociology chair at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who proposes a one billion Euro (and I can't even produce a Euro symbol!) computer crystal ball.
We think that integrating ICT, Complexity Science and the Social Sciences will create a paradigm shift, facilitating a symbiotic co-evolution of ICT and society. Data from our complex globe-spanning ICT system will be leveraged to develop models of techno-socio-economic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inform the development of a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organized ICT systems.
Where's Dr Susan Calvin when you need her?
Surprise, surprise, it's raining again. And I'm (faintly) shocked to realise that some of my David Sylvian music is well over a quarter of a century old. How does that happen? (It was either that, or listen to Alain de Botton...) [Pause] I'm even more shocked to see what a mess my lovely, and initially optically-perfect, plastic sealable storage jar2 is in after I've been using it for the posh and rather addictive Waitrose Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar flavour potato kettle crisps that Big Bro unwisely introduced me to on his last visit. He makes a conveniently-distant domestic scapegoat usually :-)
I'll leave you...
... to uncover the punchline lurking under this lovely XKCD gem:
I need to nip out on a supplies run in case I choose to eat tomorrow.
Having topped up the foody...
... cupboard, and then whizzed back out and footed the bill for two new packs of socks (hopefully a solution to my blistering boots) and a new mug so big that dear Mama's 1974 "one-cup teapot going-to-live-on-your-own present" only fills it about two-thirds full, I felt so virtuous I permitted myself this untried, but recommended, TV comedy show:
The fact that it features the lovely Julie Bowen (whom I saw in "Boston Legal") doesn't hurt.