2013 — 3 April: Wednesday
Why am I not surprised1 to learn on the UK's national radio news that energy companies consistently and wilfully mis-sold their "products"? Personally, I (continue to) blame the deregulation manoeuvres introduced by the ghastly Thatcher but, hey, that's just the sort of easy-going chap I am. I am, however, still appalled to hear of the "six kids killed in a deliberate fire" episode that went tragically wrong. As a chum remarked, you couldn't put such a plot in a work of fiction.
I'm no fan of capital punishment (being not much of a fan of the judicial and police2 processes and systems hereabouts, let alone the possibility of genuine mistakes) but, it occurs to me, there are some people whose continued consumption of food, water, and air (at my expense, too) is of dubious benefit to the society they inhabit. I also wonder, vaguely, how long it will take me to sink down from the "technical middle class" I presume I sort-of inhabited while 'working' in the IT industry to the level of the "precarious proletariat" that's just been identified. Sociology is such a wonderful non-science.
I don't think sociologists were invented purely to make economists look good (or, at least, better). Nor do I suppose the average sociologist does as much real harm as the average economist...
Tea? Yes, why not? It's 08:45 and has got off to a frosty start out there judging by the ice on various surfaces. Going to be a chilly ramble, I suspect.
Some few miles...
... and hours later. And so it proved to be. The chill wind from the North was bitterly cold, but the fresh air and multiple contour lines around the "Pub with No Name" do us good. Could have done without the detour all the way into Alton (nearly) because of a road closure, but our return route was (as it were) forewarned.
More tea? You betcha. It's 15:05 and time for a spot of serious warming-up. Edgar Rosenberg's Norton Critical Edition of "Great Expectations" was waiting on my doorstep. Its notes and articles almost match the length of the original text, and I look forward very much to the exploration.
Tee hee
I've just "done" the new Great British class calculator on the BBC's web site. Its conclusion (perhaps a tad simplistic?) assigns you to the class group you "most closely match". I think my considered opinion — after playing with a few of the pitifully small number of extremely coarse-grained parameters (and I choose my technical term with precision) — is "bollocks". Of the "utter" kind.
But that's only because I can't find my cloth cap, ferret, and homing pigeons anywhere in my two sheds, obviously. "New affluent worker"? Me? "Traditional working class"? Me? Get outa here.
"Argo" requires...
... the suspension of a certain amount of disbelief, but is a well-made and seemingly authentic piece of entertainment. I've just watched the Blu-ray, including all the documentary bits and pieces, and will (when the price drops a little further) get my own copy.
Brrr!
About the only useful "Modern App" I have:
Running tidily inside the ModernMix App I bought last week to tame the unwanted Full Screen tendencies of these Tablet-oriented lumps of software.