2013 — 16 November: Saturday

Brrr! An even brisker -2C out there this morning.1 Time for a cuppa. The living room, I note, runs around 21C higher than the current outside ambient, while the raging inferno that is the passive-cooled graphics card inside BlackBeast ups that a further 20C or so — I refuse to worry about that.

Brian Matthew has just kicked off his programme with "Shame" by Alan Price. Don't tend to hear that played much these days. But then it doesn't seem to be a modern emotion, does it? I wonder what the main board of JP Morgan thinks about the $4,500,000,000 compensation they have agreed to return to 21 major institutional investors in the wake of various mortgage shenanigans in the North American housing market. (In addition to the $13,000,000,000 with their own guvmint last month.) Must be jolly nice to keep a bit of loose change around for a rainy day. Perhaps you recall that helpful FBI guide to property fraud?

FBI mortgage fraud report, 2007

I guess there's a reason these were referred to as "toxic" assets. The original FBI web page I linked to has gone AWOL, by the way. Perhaps they should issue a BOLO? Or perhaps I should cut down on my current video diet of police procedurals?

I've just read...

... one of the finest essays I could imagine on one of my favourite topics. Papyralysis, indeed! Brilliant. Tiny, insignificant, unrepresentative(!) snippet:

The oldest piece of print was found in a cave. It's a speech by the Buddha, and it asks the reader to imagine all the grains of sand in the River Ganges, and then to imagine a world in which there were as many Ganges as grains of sand...
Perhaps the purest expression of the idea that books are a form of life comes in the story told by the Mandeans, an Iraqi people who practice a gnostic religion. One of the Mandeans' great sages was a creature named Dinanukht, who was half-book and half-man. He sat by the waters between worlds, reading himself until the end of time.

Jacob Mikanowski in LA Review of Books


Sounds much like one of Neil Gaiman's "The Endless" to me. (And, no, I haven't [yet] forked out the cost of the "annotated" Sandman.)

Looking (as usual)...

... for something completely different, I found the first letter (I'm aware of) that Peter had published (on this occasion, in the June 1993 issue of "Archimedes World").

Tips on completing a 1993 space game

If you click the pic you can (more easily) read part of his text. I'm pleased to see that the only typo is in the heading, not the letter he wrote. Though I'm less pleased by the game's dubious strategy... "Don't leave a planet without first stripping it of its resources." Really?

Christa and I both sometimes rather despaired of his, erm, focused enthusiasm for all manner of computer games. Since his current earnings in the IT industry are getting on for twice the pittance I received from IBM, however, perhaps he knew what he was up to. As I reported in an email to Carol somewhat later:

Tension is going up somewhat domestically as Peter's exams loom and lurch ever nearer. I've taken the precaution of disconnecting his modem to remove many of the more pressing distractions he was managing to find on the Web. Ten days of cold turkey and he seems to be surviving. He's just started a fortnight's Easter holiday after which he's really down to the wire.

He's also more or less confined to barracks in a vain attempt to get him to show more than a passing interest in the contents of some of his more pristine text books. He seems to prefer the latest fat Tom Clancy tome but I must be ruthless (even though I quite clearly remember the powerful lure of "Lord of the Rings" back in 1969 when I was in the same situation).

He knows which university he prefers, and has a useful backpocket insurance choice (also local) if exams are a disaster. That said, he is still being predicted basically "A"s in all four subjects which is more than enough for any uni in the gland of en.

Date: 6 April 1998


I have to say...

... I was a little disappointed to discover that today's delivery of this 20th anniversary edition...

Comic Book Confidential BD

... of a much-liked 85-minute film by Canadian documentary film-maker Ron Mann — although a Blu-ray — added no fresh information to my stash of Underground Comix material. A pity, and a wasted opportunity. I admit, I was hoping for some further insights into my heroine Shary Flenniken :-)

It's also a bit depressing to contemplate the deaths there have been among the participants since this film was made.

  

Footnote

1  Even with the sun just "up".