2014 — 6 May: Tuesday

Hello, pension. Say 'hi' to bank account.1 I've just been browsing the details of Mr Pinpoint's next home (on the 8th floor of a renovated Art Deco all-American skyscraper [built in 1928] in Cincinnati). Amazing. We shall probably have a 'catch up' in July when he's next over.

Cuppa to hand, I suppose I could now start waking up. It is, after all, already a little after 08:00 :-)

I shall be...

... giving this exploration by conductor Charles Hazlewood a try next Sunday. The programme trailer sounds fascinating. But I wonder whether BBC Radio 3 listeners know how to find 6Music? (Link.)

Eternal inflation...

... isn't a Bad Thing, it seems, according to Alan Guth. (Link.)

Brain damage...

... on the other hand, I would wish to avoid:

German painter and printmaker Lovis Corinth, had a stroke that damaged the right side of his brain in 1911. Damage to the right hemisphere can stunt processing of information on the opposite side of one's body and artists suffering such brain damage often neglect the left side of images that they produce. After his stroke, Corinth sometimes omitted details on the left side of his subjects' faces, and textures on the left often blended into the background. (These later works were regarded highly by critics, one of whom wrote that Corinth had "become prescient for the hidden facets of appearance," according to Howard Gardner...

Anjan Chatterjee in Scientist


Critics' artistic "sensibility" was also a theme coincidentally invoked in yesterday's "Butter", where [spoiler alert] a child's sabotaged butter sculpture was deemed particularly insightful.

I've never read...

... a judge's "sentencing remarks" before. Indeed, I don't recall ever seeing them published in the media I generally rely on for what I (perhaps stupidly) still think of as "news". The 9-page account written by Judge Anthony Leonard of clinically precise detail (don't say you haven't been warned) of just exactly what the odious Max Clifford got up to is appalling. Though, with judicious editing, it would doubtless be accepted by a publisher as a synopsis of a ghastly Harold Robbins novel. And go on to sell by the cartload. Publicised by Mr Clifford in a parallel universe. (Link.)

I am left wondering when the Pope will publish similar details of his fiddling priests.

You hafta smile...

... when Ken puts the boot into Boris:

"After I lost the last election, Boris phoned me to say he'd like me to be his guest at the opening of the Olympic Games because it would be very bad if I wasn't there, so I said, 'That's fine. Can I just try and explain something to you? We've got this real housing crisis: you need to start building homes for rent.' And he said, 'Homes for rent?' and the shock in his voice was like I'd asked if I could sleep with his wife."
"You just realise, for this sort of leader running the Tory party, they don't have a struggle paying rent: they reach a certain age, their parents give them a house, or they inherit one. They have no understanding of what it's like."

George Eaton in New Statesman


Not that I think putting the boot into Boris is a Bad Thing.

That nice Microsoft...

... has kindly plugged a (Bleeding Heart related) security hole in my Juniper Networks Windows In-Box Junos Pulse Client. Who knew I had a third-party VPN product baked into my operating system (sic)? It goes without saying I didn't :-)

On Christmas Eve 1979...

... I treated myself (for 80p, in Staines, on a last-minute present-shopping expedition) to what has since become a rather battered, but much treasured, 1973 anthology of often surprisingly beautiful prose about prose, designed — judging by the "Study Questions" in between each judicious selection — for an American college student course in "composition":

Book of prose excerpts

That would explain why it was remaindered, no doubt. It has often proved a useful antidote to boredom. Typical item, written by Loren Eiseley — the chap I mentioned just last February. His was a wonderful prose style:

I am older now, and sleep less, and I have seen most of what there is to see and am not very much impressed any more, I suppose, by anything. "What Next in the Attributes of Machines?" my morning headline runs. "It Might Be the Power to Reproduce Themselves."
I lay the paper down and across my mind a phrase floats insinuatingly: "It does not seem that there is anything in the construction, constituents, or behavior of the human being which it is essentially impossible for science to duplicate and synthesize. On the other hand..."

Date: 1955


My goodness! The technical confidence in American technology sixty years ago, heh? It was then still two years before the awesome shock of Sputnik.

Thanks, Mr Postie!

I'm very much looking forward to enjoying this stylish (and under-rated) film in the quality it deserves:

Dick Tracy Blu-ray

There was a thrown-away reference to the original "Dick Tracy" (and the use of an ice bullet to conceal ballistic evidence) by the Robert Redford character in "3 Days of the Condor". Personally, I suspect the projectile would have shattered, but that's just my opinion. Whoops. Hand-shaking is suggesting it's well past time for a spot of lunch.

Having enjoyed...

... renewing my acquaintance with Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" in its 2011 remastered edition last week, this evening I watched one of my Floyd "Ultimate critical review" in-depth examination DVDs of the work that went into it. Good to see and hear Ron Geesin after all these years. The title came from a tabloid story about a woman (with one of the earliest heart pacemakers), who had just given birth.

  

Footnote

1  Just don't get too settled in there!