2013 — 24 May: Friday
If I didn't know already, one glance at the weather1 and my unscientific mind would naturally conclude we're on the edge of a Bank Holiday weekend. Well that, and the number of fleeing neighbours (not) hereabouts. I'd ask Mrs Landingham to make me a cuppa but I've just beaten her to it.
Posy Simmonds
Definitely one of the people who enhance what's laughingly known as Life on Earth. (Link.)
I lost some of my enthusiasm for IBM when it started paying good people to leave. That was over quarter of a century ago, but I see their nasty habit continues. Nowadays, it's called "workforce rebalancing actions" and is doubtless rewarding to those brave senior execs who so selflessly contribute so much good to the common weal. (Link.)
There was (inevitably) even a "Management Briefing" from On High on the topic a while ago that's worth a re-mention a mere 2,393 days after I first quoted it:
Example 4-86: October 22, 1986 — [There] is no way around the fact that we are at the same time encouraging employees to voluntarily conclude their IBM careers and telling them it would be good for the company. To a group as talented, dedicated, and loyal as IBMers are, that could seem like a mixed message.
Whatever became of 'Big John', I (don't) wonder...
I've been taking...
... my time with the Fred Hoyle book. The arguments are clearly-presented (but, as noted elsewhere by his co-author, "What strong panspermia does not do is account for life 'in the first place'." Similarly, neither does the big bang, nor any theory, answer the question. "Why is there anything instead of nothing at all?")
Personally, I would have thought that one was obvious! :-)
Although the recent...
... radio series "A history of the world in 100 objects" was generally both enjoyable and interesting, it's unlikely to prove as much fun overall as today's delivery:
I'd spotted it in Bournemouth, but grumpily declined to pay the full High Street price. The author is a researcher for QI and The Museum of Curiosity. Here's part of what she has to say about Isaac Newton's gravitational apple-related insight:
The owner of Woolsthorpe Manor saved some pieces of Newton's original apple tree after it blew over. Some of them are in the Royal Society archives... One of the fragments is in a
little pink plastic bag, because it has just been on an adventure...
The apple wood was taken up into orbit so that it could experience zero gravity. The plan was also to drop a real apple on the space station and film whether it was subject to gravity
or not. They weren't able to do the test because an astronaut who didn't know what they were up to — she will remain nameless — saw the apple
lying2 around and ate it... so they had to make do with a pear.
Now this could be a fascinating development. Though I suspect it's really still all about the money.
If I didn't know...
... better, I'd say it was a lot more autumnal than springy right now. It's all of 6C out there, wet, and windy. There are already a few bits of branches and what not on the roads, too. Time to find my battens, methinks.
Though I'm starting to yawn (it is, after all, now 23:09) I may yet stick around to hear a brief studio session from the Wainwright that is Loudon. Not that I'm a sad completeist, you understand.