2014 — 4 January: Saturday
Well, that's now three bits of bad news so far this morning.1 We kick off with the death of Phil Everly (news that will greatly upset an old friend of mine from apprenticeship days in Hatfield). Then there's the fresh four-pint carton of milk which (despite a usually conservative "Use By 1 Jan") has already clearly gone the Way of All Flesh, and has therefore now been invited to join the Choir Invisible in the local drainage system. And now a core dump while snaffling a "Jazz Club" radio programme from BBC Ulster:
Stop it, Mr Universe!
I'm barely aware...
... of this chap (clearly demonstrating just how unsocially-networked and out of touch I am) but I find myself warming to him after reading this profile. Source and snippet:
In summer 2004, Morozov underwent a quintessentially Morozovian life transition — that is to say, he encountered something he thought was "crap" and made a vigorous effort to escape it. In this case, he spent what he calls "the 10 worst weeks of my life" as an intern for J.P. Morgan in England, something considered the height of achievement by most of his peers at university. To Morozov, though, it was confirmation that he had no future in finance. He finished his degree anyway, then, unsure what new direction his life might take, made his way to a non-degree liberal arts program in Berlin.
Fourth bit: nothing for me from Uncle ERNIE this month. Plus it's cold, and raining. Perfect weather for my next culinary crockpot masterpiece, in fact. I'd better get dicing and slicing, I guess.
This "research"...
... would have amused Christa very much. Source and snippet:
... according to study coauthor Sabine Begall, a biologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany... The scientists studied 70 dogs of 37 different breeds as they defecated (1,893 dumps, to be precise) and urinated (a whopping 5,582 times) — data collected over two years. The researchers found that dogs prefer to point along the north-south axis when they do their business — as long as the magnetic field is stable... The authors caution that more research is needed...
Why?
I've been vaguely...
... on the lookout for more about the new Spike Jonze film I noted recently. Meaning I've not been actively searching. However, this piece suggests it has promise. Source and snippet:
Initially ashamed to admit that he's "dating" an O.S., Twombly discovers that he is far from alone. In fact, people everywhere seem to be dating or befriending them. (Amy, among Twombly's only real-life friends, finds in her O.S. a female best friend and confidante with whom to gossip and snark and heal.) Practically overnight, the prevailing social fabric is utterly rearranged, and Jonze paints this shift as astonishingly casual. In one scene, we see people traipsing up a set of public-transit stairs, each yammering away, presumably to an O.S. — though there is no way for us to know whether or not there is a "real" person on the other end, and that seems to be part of Jonze's point.
Shades of Andrew Niccol's film "S1m0ne". Still, it certainly has more promise than the magnetic sensitivity of defecating dogs.
I captured this frame from a new NASA video recreating the Apollo 8 "snapshot":
It's now (16:48) nearly as dark out there as the moon's sky, and still a great deal wetter. I've been tidying up a variety of web2 files. How exciting is that? And gradually becoming more aware of the (welcome) presence of my crockpot :-)
[Pause]
That was one yummy crockpot! What's next? Chill the remainder. Slap it into the fridge. Clean up. You really should know the routine, by now.
On the face of it...
... these two CDs should 'work' equally well. Guitar music conjured from Stravinsky and Bernstein. What's not to like? The first — by Larry Coryell, from 1983 — is a solo performance; the second, from 1989, features a trio. Yet the first really doesn't work:
Whereas this one really does:
Most odd. I haven't played either for probably over 20 years. Nor had I ripped either of them to MP3. [Pause] And now, having caught some of Michael Sheen's choices of music from the eighties, I've just done a "back to back" comparison between Tim Buckley's original performance of "Song to the Siren" (from Starsailor) with the later version by This Mortal Coil on their Dust and Guitars album. Only the latter raises the hairs on my arms. Music is damn' funny stuff.