2013 — 5 August: Monday
Guess who forgot about his ¬blog entry?1 I was browsing the "Village Voice" and found one of those pieces that's perhaps more interesting in summary than (currently unsurprising) end result, though the software behind it is quite cool.
- "Voice" summary: On any given day, when you visit the New York Times's homepage, you'll likely click on an article, any article, that has two specific qualities: It will mostly quote men, and it will have been written by a man...
- Analysis of the first of those two assertions in the "Voice" blog.
- Today's result and more detail of the method behind it
- Beautiful Soup (Python, of course)
Now, what about a cuppa and some breakfast? Where's Jeeves?
Impossible things...
... before breakfast are always harder to believe. For example, there's an Iranian lady (Baroness Haleh Afshar OBE, a British professor and a life peer in the House of Lords) chatting on the steam wireless. She was making quite a lot of sense until (for me) she spoiled the effect by adding that she "based everything she did on the holy text of the Koran". Given that she, like the 'Voice', had been talking about gender inequality, and I doubt many women were involved or consulted in the creation of said holy text, let alone any of its (for me) dubious truths, it was at that point, your Honour, that I made my excuses and turned/tuned away.
I wonder...
... what our recently-departed chemist PM (the provincial bigot — not my description — whose name rhymed with part of the phrase "milk snatcher") would have had to say about this fascinating item about the archaeology of lactose intolerance? Or the Koran, for that matter.
I'm not paranoid...
... but I have no doubt that "they" are after me, every chance "they" get. Here's an interesting BREACH of SSL. It relies on being able to monitor the traffic between me and a website, and then somehow getting me to visit a malicious link to do the dirty work. Now, if only all this massed brain and computing power could be put to more socially beneficial use...
Having exchanged...
... a few words of sympathy (on my entry to the Waiting Rose) with a chum whose cautious clambering into his vehicle showed, only too clearly, that he's again having back problems, and then having popped my Yaris back onto its nest about 4 seconds ahead of the rain, all I have to do now is to enjoy the mid-afternoon Beethoven. Not too hard. I missed most of the Coriolan overture, but am in perfect time for the "5th". Bliss.
I don't know...
... what I've done to offend Uncle ERNIE but, for the third (or fourth?) month in a row he's decided to send his little cheques to other, needier, households. Perhaps he's saving up to give me a bonus at the end of the year. We shall see. In the meantime, I shall have to content myself with tomorrow's IBM pension. Now, where's that dry crust and hard old cheese rind? Oh well. Nearly time for tonight's Prom.