2013 — 22 July: Monday
As I stood quietly under the skylight last night1 I could see signs of far-off lightning flashes, but heard no trace of thunder. This was somewhat after midnight and, if anything, felt hotter than ever. I also woke twice during the night, so I'm grumpier than usual.
The prospect of nearly wall-to-wall Wagner at the Proms for the next week does little to cheer me up, either.
Deep Thought
How can people think such things? I didn't realise quite what convoluted mental hoops some of these loopy lunatics are only too happy to jump through. Click the (beautiful) pic of Beowulf for a review of the (ugly) "ratiocination":
Even Justice Antonin Scalia (sort of) accepts it's simply "turtles all the way down"? :-)
My preferred Deep Thinkers...
... are far (far!) more likely to be that sublime comic duo Calvin & Hobbes. Best. Comic. Strip. Ever. (Of its kind — Doonesbury remains without peer in its own realm, as was Bloom County. Little Nemo in Slumberland is also mighty fine.)
The trailer is totally enticing. Roll on November. Firefox, by the way, was curiously reluctant to play it. Not so IE 10. Nor Chrome. Strike one against Firefox, alas. There's a mild irony at work here — Firefox running under Linux Mint 15 running under VirtualBox under Win8Pro has no qualms about playing the trailer perfectly.
If you can't trust...
... Brenda's guvmint, then who can you trust? It's now five years and a week since I was promised a refund of the amount I was over-charged for my Saturday driving test back in December 2007. Quite what "we would like to put it right as quickly as possibly" therefore means is anybody's guess. I'm still not holding my breath. Even though I've just opened a snailmail that suggests because I was clever enough to arrange to be born on or before 5 January 1952 (I had no part in that) I may be "entitled" to between £100 and £300 Winter Fuel Payment. In my case, £200, it seems, since "you live alone or are the only person in the household who qualifies".
Excellent. Even if it is a bit warm (27.5C) to be thinking about winter just at the moment.
Life remains...
... full of perplexing puzzles and mysteries. Why (for example) should my ISP just send me an email warning me that at my current usage I'm predicted to hit my monthly download limit, erm, never? And why2 should three of the four tracks of Symphony #4 be performed by the Utah Symphony while one of them is performed by the Tbilisi Symphony? I doubt that would ever happen on BBC Radio 3. (Or should I mistrust the meta tag?)
With the living room now a balmy 27.9C I'm going to retreat and sit in the blast of my room fan. And hope that the cooler evening thunderstorms are not too intense. [Pause] Re-checking the forecast, I see that the storms are now being predicted for the early morning leaving me, I hope, a little window of comparative dryness for me to nip out and pick up the smartphone. It's now 28.3C in here, which is way beyond a joke. I'd better "water" the porch thermometer, too. The sun is now directly on it.
It amuses me...
... to recall that I've bought, and given away, more than one copy of the book (click on the quote to see it) whose author is being quoted here...
... from an interview with Teri Gross on NPR this weekend.
I find myself...
... looking forward to 7 a.m. tomorrow for some reason!
