2013 — 26 July: Friday

I could do without the itchy ankle1 and I could certainly have done without the weird dream, let alone hearing the "Today" chap banging away at the ex-business chap who now works directly for his imaginary sky-based friend — you know Who I mean: the One who created every creature, great and small, including the ankle nibbler — and whose company pension fund here on Earth has 'inadvertently' put some money into a pay day loans outfit.

Meanwhile, the chap facilitating the signals carrying this 'information' from geostationary satellites is now raking in £577 per year per subscribing UK household, which comfortably exceeds the BBC TV licence fee and no doubt buys a fair amount of champagne. And the woman in charge of the group that includes the FT had a pension top up last year that, itself, matched my lifetime earnings in a slightly more productive industry. Funny world, is it not?

I watched...

... all three of my newly-arrived Nina Conti DVDs yesterday evening. She is amazing.

Whoever summarised...

... this piece clearly hasn't read, or chooses to ignore, the conclusion of Fred Hoyle's "The Black Cloud":

Both creativity and eccentricity may be the result of genetic variations that increase cognitive disinhibition — the brain's failure to filter out extraneous information... When unfiltered information reaches conscious awareness in the brains of people who are highly intelligent and can process this information without being overwhelmed, it may lead to exceptional insights and sensations.

Shelley Carson in SciAm


One of the quotes from Ken Campbell during my Nina Conti fest was along exactly the same lines — the disinhibiting effect of speaking through a ventriloquist's dummy can unlock (or, at least, loosen) the creative process. And, of course, my learned chum Professor David EH Jones entertains similar ideas about the need to cut back on the mental filtration processes in his latest book.

As I was making...

... yet another attack on the level of (in this case) "desk entropy" I uncovered the Blu-ray I mentioned a mere 10 days ago but failed to note the arrival of...

Midnight Cowboy BD

... before moving on to tackle a small heap (nine, so far) of accumulated CDs awaiting ripping to MP3 although — come to think of it — there's a tenth CD stuck inside the back cover of the Robert Crumb book of "Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country" I bought last Friday.

Jeff Bezos is no anti-entropic...

... help at all. Mr Postie has just dropped off a trio of BBC DVDs from his little online shop. I originally watched2 "Incredible Human Journey" on the iPlayer some while ago, and entirely missed the more recent series, what with giving up on broadcast TV.

Alice Roberts series

But £14-17 buys 523 minutes of (I hope) concentrated infotainment if you can just wait long enough for the price to drop.

Over at Roger & Eileen...

... for a cuppa and a biccy earlier I discovered that mobile phone coverage is excellent despite them being at the foot of a hill. By contrast, reception here in Technology Towers (as shown by a call from Junior a few minutes ago) is pretty dismal, with O2 transmitters at the junction of Leigh Road and Bournemouth Road and on the School Lane industrial estate. (Ofcom map here.) Still, at least I didn't suffer the four power cuts they had over there this afternoon.

  

Footnotes

1  My current theory is insectile-derived.
2  More precisely, listened to its soundtrack.