2014 — 8 May: Thursday
Dear ol' Dad1 would have been 97 today. I do find myself wondering what he'd make of "modern" life on Planet Earth. Example. Meanwhile my Thunderbird email connection is behaving much as if it were also 97. My super-clever smartphone shows an item from Len but the application on BlackBeast just does not want to know. Chrome to the rescue.
I have already done my supplies run, by the way, figuring that the drizzle would only get worse if I waited longer. The perversity of the Universe does, after all, tend always to a maximum hereabouts. Breakfast now seems like a terribly good idea.
This is aggravating...
... as I know damn' well I have a copy of Margaret Visser's "Much depends on dinner". Indeed, I've had it for years. Proof can be found in an email to Carol:
Have to tell you that, although I'm only on page 49 of it, I am about to recommend, unreservedly, what will probably turn out to be the most fascinating book I read this decade. It's by a Canadian lady called Margaret Visser, and it's called Much depends on dinner. The subtitle being The extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos, of an ordinary meal.
But can I find it? Don't be silly. See above re perversity. Any road up, it gets the first mention I can ever recall seeing in this appraisal of margarine. I have pretty catholic tastes, but margarine isn't one of them.
In that same email to Carol was a spot of software ranting that amuses me more now than it did back then.
Here we go again
Remember ZETA?
A team at the US defence-funded National Ignition Facility (Nif), in California, are working on the laser method. By firing 192 lasers at a fuel pellet the size of a pinhead, and
compressing it 35 times to produce the pressure and heat needed to start a fusion reaction, the scientists succeeded in producing slightly more energy than the fuel absorbed from the
lasers — a breakthrough after years of setbacks and slipped timescales.
However, the 17 kJ of energy released during the reaction is equalivalent [sic] to around 1.5% of the energy contained in a Mars bar and the reactor itself still needs much more energy to
operate than it produces. Nevertheless, many hailed this finding as a significant step.
Did they also compare it to the energy contained in a Galaxy, I wonder?
I've been entranced...
... listening for 45 minutes or so to this latest, oddly-moving, celebration of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I missed it on 30 April, and it's taken an alarming several days to become available on "Listen again". The podcast that's also now available is mono, and 64kbps. Normally, one can download BBC Radio 3 programmes in stereo at 320kbps for up to seven days after first broadcast, dagnabbit.
Somewhere...
... in the house are the two living room wall light-switches that I long ago replaced by dimmer switches — and one of those has just given up the ghost after about quarter of a century, with neither a bang nor a whimper. I wonder what the chances of finding the original switches are? I suspect it will be simpler, and certainly a lot quicker, just to buy a new light-switch tomorrow before heading out on my lunch date.
Meanwhile, I've just finished re-watching, and very much enjoyed, "Out of Sight". Now, if only the TV series "Maximum Bob" (another Elmore Leonard creation) could be released on DVD, that would be just dandy.