2014 — 21 March: Friday
Having finished watching "True Blood" — all 60 episodes of all five seasons (so far) — I've been browsing around the edges of what I can only describe as the rabbit-hole that is information regarding Lilith.1 I never cease to be amazed at what people can find to believe in, and (worse) rule their lives by / justify their actions by. Of course, I may yet be in for a nasty surprise on my death bed, but I'm content to wait, and take Pascal's wager, as it were, rather than go pro-actively looking for trouble. A lesson I first absorbed from some of the pages of tosh churned out by Dennis Wheatley. And voraciously consumed by yours truly.
It's a nice, sunny morning. Up to what minor mischief shall I get today, I wonder?
Meanwhile...
... it seems that the boss chap of Turkey has vowed to "wipe out" Twitter. Surprise, surprise, he's reportedly been upset by "damaging allegations of corruption in his inner circle". I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked. This planet has moved way past satire. (Link.)
Back in the real world, I shall be finding out how well a subset of my recently-obtained batch of frozen cranberries responds to microwave zapping in my next batch of plum-based breakfast cereal topping. Satirise that, if you can.
Asked whether he agreed that the need for food banks was a scandal, De Mauley, a hereditary peer and former banker who went to Eton, said: "Britain has a great tradition of charitable giving, and it would be a bad day on which we started to interfere with that."
Or this:
There's not an overabundance of UK manufacturing left to serve all those wealthy people near retirement. But, apparently, there are at least five families rich enough, it seems, to benefit from this latest piece of insanity guvmint policy. (Link.) There's a dissenting opinion here. Naturally.
The time I spent...
... cooling my heels (what an odd phrase) in a solicitor's office this morning was put to mildly beneficial use. I now know the opposite of "bona fide", and the distinction drawn, as a form of shorthand, between "Nelsonian" knowledge and "naughty" knowledge.2 That will teach my newest best friend Lisa what can happen when she leaves me alone with an 1,102 page book on Trust Law. Still, at least she only charged me £5/copy (cash, please) for each of the six certified copies of the complete Power of Attorney document rather than the £84 at the £1/page rate that she could have. (There's a relevant graphic here from December 1995, that appeared in "New Scientist".)
She had the grace to admit that £84 would have been an excessive fee for the amount of work involved :-)
I was less amused to learn that the two classes of folk who can certify such documents are UK solicitors or stockbrokers. [Pause] I've earned my "lemonses" this morning, if you ask me.
I like to keep...
... a gentle eye on this...
... from time to time. It helps to convince me I don't want to make a habit of streaming hi-def videos.
I were that busy...
... yesterday, I failed to record these two, welcome, arrivals at Technology Towers:
Is the headline...
Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies
... actually going to surprise anyone? Anywhere? I somehow doubt it. (Link.)
As for this!
If you've been following economic debates these past few years, you know that both America and Europe have powerful pain caucuses — influential groups fiercely opposed to any policy that might put the unemployed back to work. There are some important differences between the U.S. and European pain caucuses, but both now have truly impressive track records of being always wrong, never in doubt.
My emphasis. Yesterday I ordered a copy of Robert Reich's "Inequality for All" documentary on the income gap in North America. (Just sayin'.)
In a (second) startling...
... display of near-adult behaviour on my part, I've made an appointment to update my Will. After all, the present one simply says: "Everything to Christa or, failing that, everything to Peter or, failing that, everything to the five nephews in Germany and the four nieces in NZ". Not that "everything" amounts to a great deal (as it were). And, come the day I'm dead, I don't anticipate taking much interest in the disbursement of said everything...
Newest best friend's incoming new colleague Emily may just draft a codicil for around £95 plus VAT but opinions vary about whether it's better simply to draft the whole Will afresh. How very tedious. [Pause] My (third) near-adult behaviour today was to trickle into my cyberspatial bank before their next batch of weekend maintenance and kick-start an online ISA that pays a few fractions of a percent more interest than one of my other online "easy saver" accounts but (I gather; Christa was the expert on all this crap) also escapes tax.
That's more than enough near-adult behaviour for one day, surely? Can I go out and play? Or, at least, have an evening cuppa?