2013 — 9 May: Thursday
Today's cheery outlook1 is for lots of wind and even gales. I'll try not to let that interfere with my next batch of crockpottery and my steady progress through the next batch of cartons of CDs. At this rate I should soon be able to estimate exactly how many more CaseLogic folders are going to be needed. Though not where I'm going to put them.
Meanwhile, I'm delighted to discover my chum Nick fears for my safety "working alone". He suggests using a rope to raise or lower stuff into the loft (unfeasible, alas, with the position of the hatch and the present ladder I use) and always to have my mobile phone with me in case of calamity. A point I did actually consider on my first-ever such solo adventure five and a half years ago, but then what better way is there to check out than half-buried in piles of unwanted junk in a ready-made funeral pyre?
Never a day...
... goes by without another gap in my knowledge revealing itself. In this case, the parallel drawn by Aristotle between sodomy and usury in the wake of Niall Ferguson's recent, and rather silly, jibe about John Maynard Keynes. Source and snippet:
By remembering how the Greeks saw economics, we can make sense of the curious argument made by Aristotle — that usury was similar to unnatural sex, a case of money being generated by interaction with an outside party rather than the growth of a household through the fruitful union of husband and wife.
Fascinating little essay. But it isn't getting my next crockpot stuffed, is it?
Yesterday's minor-league...
... financial engineering works is already now visible next time I login, so the 'bank' was being unduly cautious about the elapsed time needed for the new savings account to reveal itself. Suits me. Besides, all the fund transferring going on was internal, so it really shouldn't have taken too long. I shall celebrate with my next cuppa while observing the cherry blossom failing to be blown off my tree by the forecast gale that is failing to blow. Though there are some breezes, it seems.
Oh, the horror!
I've just heard Norman Lamont (Norman Lamont!) sounding strangely sensible on the tactics and strategy behind his expressed wish to see the UK withdraw from the EU and negotiate a more straightforward simple trading partnership of the sort Switzerland (he claims) has long enjoyed with that fine, unbureaucratic, incorruptible, unbloated body. Am I going mad? Perhaps not. After all, in the 2012 update to his book "The Rotten Heart of Europe" I read recently, though it majored on monetary union, its author Bernard Connolly had observed:
Yet Europe is now a continent of widespread economic misery, of financial collapse, of disappearing faith in 'mainstream' political parties and rising support for 'extremist' parties, of a loss of sovereignty and thus of legitimacy and democratic control, and of the destruction of law, both domestic and international, by the judicially larcenous European Court of Justice (sic). Perhaps worst of all, the relations of amity and cooperation among European countries which could — much of the time — be observed thirty or forty years ago have been replaced by a return to mutual resentment, distrust, jealousy, contempt, ridicule, anger and even hatred.
Don't want that sort of Johnny Foreigner business here in the Untied Kingdom (sic), do we? :-)
Had you asked me...
... a mere 10 minutes ago "What examples of Tuva throat singing do you have in your little stash of CDs?" I would have confidently answered "Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha". However, now that I've just filed away my copy of Ry Cooder's soundtrack music to the Walter Hill film "Geronimo" I note there is some throat singing from Tuva on that, too. It only goes to show.