2013 — 2 August: Friday

We seem to be off to a slightly cooler start1 this morning. There will need to be a spot of gentle hunter-gathering at some point, but I've learned not to do that on a Friday morning unless very early. At 09:28 it's no longer very early.

How, I wonder, have I...

... stumbled as far as I have to reach my present altitude on the foothills of senility without being aware of the delightful "Crackpot Index"? Source and snippet:

#15: 10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations".
#16: 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.

John Baez in his website


Time being in ever shorter supply these days, I fear I've not visited the Baez site since last November, when I was reading about the wonderful weirdness of "24". My loss, clearly. For some reason, my mathematical bump of curiosity tends to itch for a couple of days after each visit to my chum Ian (who is so mathematical I strongly suspect his hair has square roots).

Martin Rowson's definition of religion?

Religion

My current contributions to his pension fund:

Rowson books

Notice I have in my genome a component that renders me incapable of finishing "Tristram Shandy" in (almost) any shape or form, as I confessed when the one exception so far was delivered by Mr Postie...

Cock and Bull story

It being Michael Winterbottom's amazing film 'variant'.

Aside to Christa

Our (my) butterfly bushes are both living up to their name. And I spotted a dragonfly. I'm just back with my latest dollop of human fuel; mostly healthy stuff. I blame Big Bro for introducing me to the posh salt (sea) and vinegar (balsamic) kettle chips, but surely they are counter-balanced by the grapefruit, plums, oranges, apples, and kiwi fruit? To say nothing of the chocolate.2

The BBC's relentless dumbing down has replaced the word "Schedules" by an icon of a clock and the phrase "What's On". Though drilling a single screen deeper restores "Schedule".

Back from an...

... unplanned little afternoon jaunt, riding shotgun, into the bookshops of Soton, in which I may just have discovered a way to wean myself gently off the Kindle!

Studying Jane

The city is looking distinctly more run-down, alas. And for a day that Mrs BBC Radio 3 confidently asserted would be "a lot cooler" than yesterday "in the South" it still managed to be a day that encouraged us into shops with air-con.

I wonder...

... how long it's going to take the main BBC website Home Page to realise that BBC HD has "ceased to be"?

BBC Oops

Perhaps someone nailed it to the transmitter mast?

  

Footnotes

1  Just as well, as I'd hate to think of it getting any hotter. Ruins my beauty sleep. Let alone the normal variety of anti-wakefulness.
2  Why is eating a digestive biscuit with one square of Bourneville not the same as eating one chocolate-one-sided digestive? It ought to be.