2014 — 2 March: Sunday
The BBC chappie has just remarked that, on driving from his home in Glossop over to the studio in Salford1 this morning, he thinks he saw some crocuses poking up through "what's left of the soil". He regards that as a harbinger of Spring, by which measure we've been Springing down here for a couple of weeks already.
The weather...
... during yesterday's little ramble was certainly the warmest we've enjoyed so far this year. [Pause, to make a cuppa] That could even have been why I found myself falling asleep last night part-way through the equally warm, rambling interview / memory ransacking session between Harlan Ellison and director LQ Jones that's appended to the Blu-ray edition of "A Boy and His Dog" I'd mentioned last week. Before I could watch Mike's copy, of course, I first had to ransack my own memory to retrieve2 the rapid-fire remote control button sequence "dimmer, dimmer, dimmer, mute, 1" needed to set the Oppo to Zone A.
I suppose Hollywood could almost be excused for having crippled DVDs with region coding in 1998 as they clearly had yet to grasp the implications of the Interweb malarkey. But to repeat the same stupidity a decade later with Blu-ray in a further misguided attempt to exert control over the uncontrollable clearly demonstrates just how little they learned from the single global standard that was a CD. And just how much contempt they have for us poor punters.
What sort of species...
... carries out a "knife rampage" at a railway station? Good grief!
I've been browsing...
... the Dark Arts described in a book titled "Where does money come from?" without feeling motivated to buy a copy. It's very dispiriting to be assured that you don't legally own the money you "put into" a bank. 77% of us, myself included, labour under that popular perception. Source and snippet:
The third type of money, however, is not created by the Bank of England, the Royal Mint, or any other part of government. This third type of money is what is in your bank account. In banking terminology, it's referred to as bank deposits or demand deposits. In technical terms, it is simply a number in a computer system; in accounting terms, it is a liability of the bank to you. The terminology is somewhat misleading, as we shall see. A bank deposit is not a deposit in the sense that you might store a valuable item in a safety deposit box. Instead, it is merely a record of what the bank owes you.
The bank takes legal ownership and records "my" money as their liability to me "because at some point in the future, it may have to be repaid". Gotta love that conditional "may". Hell's Teeth!
That solitary haven...
... of sanity-filled trustworthiness in a bizarre world that — seven years on, and still going strong — is "Conservapedia" remains reliably entertaining. Consider the entry on "Evolution syndrome" that (I fear, correctly) asserts that I must lack the intellectual depth of more accomplished peers. Or the one on "Age of the Earth" confidently stating that "All verifiable evidence indicates that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old" whereas liberals insist it's nearer 4.54 billion years.
Though quite why the fact that the "oldest star in the known universe" happens to be a mere 6,000 light years away bolsters their claim when the article they cite in a NASA magazine quite clearly states (in the opening sentence!) its age as being "shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago" is completely beyond even my intellectual shallowness. Priceless.
We'd originally intended...
... to do our weekend walking today. Given the nearly all-day so far (and it's now 18:44 and I'm hungry) rain, I'm glad we went yesterday. Though our plans for another ramble on Tuesday are now looking even more fluid (well, moist) than usual. Ghastly weather. Still, I've begun the second title of the "Game of Thrones" sequence.
But there needs to be a pause for further nourishment, I fear. Man cannot live on a diet of nothing but words. Where's that stale crust I've been keeping for a rainy day?