2013 — 31 August: Saturday

I were that busy yesterday¹ that, although I did manage to listen to these two CDs dropped off by Mr Postie (and thereby hangs a tale of near-disaster as I stumbled quickly down the stairs to the front door with one lower leg completely numb), I've only just scanned the artwork. Shame about the dreadful font; glorious music. Guess the performer?

Likewise, though I was tipped off about the latest pleasing Kermodian rant² (and downloaded the podcast once I was back online with my extra smidgen of broadband) I've yet to hear it for myself. My informant was kind enough to send me a link to the "unlimited fibre" ISP he uses (which, to be honest, I should investigate as I now have three chums using it, all very satisfied).

As usual, I'm paying more, and receiving less. But I already have enough media in Technology Towers to keep me 'entertained' for the rest of my life (or, at least, until my brain melts — much the same thing, really).

Bill Withers!

I have nothing...

... by Ian Thomson on my shelves. If his review in the FT is any guide, he's clearly knowledgeable about, but unimpressed by, the new translation that the sadly-ailing Clive James has recently produced of the 'Divine Comedy'. By contrast, and by my own choice, I have lots of things by Clive James on my book (and CD) shelves. Not sure what that says about me. (Link.)

I've just heard...

... Richard Curtis tell his favourite Bill Nighy joke: no matter what the age is of a woman who approaches him (Nighy), her opening gambit is invariably "My mother is a huge fan of yours" and if / when he is then later approached by a plausible candidate of said mother her opening gambit is identical.³ [Pause] Mr Kermode is once again viscerally unimpressed by the film-making abilities of Mr Bay. In fact, he said it was even worse than "Sex and the City 2". Shudder.

Predictive text...

...has its moments. I'd just catalogued the Timo Andres jazz / classical fusion CD "Home Stretch" that arrived from America a couple of weeks ago. It occurred to me to see if I still had a recording of Michael Garrick's "Home Stretch Blues" lurking in any of the dustier recesses of my little digital domain. Maybe on an old minidisc, or even older cassette. So, fire up the Copernic desktop search tool. Bang in "Home stretch blues". Back comes the impertinent and certainly not pertinent query:

Did you mean: hypersurfactants

It's going to be one of those days, is it? I shudder to think what the programmer was smoking.

I contacted...

... my more maths-oriented chum yesterday in hopes (I admit) that he might take it upon himself to explain to me the aspects of the Borel-Kolmogorov paradox that (I admit) puzzled me. Of course (I admit) I didn't actually admit to him that that was one of my motives. Still, he didn't let me down, though he also didn't seem too impressed by the paradox:

Hmmm... I don't remember being aware of this. Anything
involving argufication that brings in any expression
implying division by zero seems pretty dodgy to me.
And that is more or less what Kolmogorov said when he wrote:

The concept of a conditional probability with regard to an
isolated hypothesis whose probability equals 0 is inadmissible.

I shall eventually parse this, I have (I admit) almost no doubt.

Footnotes

¹  As we used to say "Oop North".
²  Generally reliably entertaining. This time he's taken against "Pain and Gain" which is not a title I know.
³  My weird, content-associative memory reminds me of something I heard Scott Adams ("Mr Dilbert") say once in an interview. He was always being buttonholed (at events and conferences) by Corporate managers saying how he must have a "mole" in their ranks, and who was it? They so readily recognised within their own hierarchies analogues of the range of foibles displayed by Dilbert characters (particularly, of course, the moronic pointy-haired boss). But, no matter how senior these Company people were in their own sociopathic worlds, they only ever talked in reference to the "bozos" they saw further above themselves in the ranks of more senior management.