2014 — 31 May: Saturday
May seems to have been hanging around for a very long time, somehow. As I wait1 I'm catching up on the latest news from NPR — which, at this point, is still operating on the assumption that it's yesterday.
I've just updated...
... BlackBeast's external graphics card's video driver, on the (possibly equally-mistaken) assumption that the Windows 8.1 update that's just popped out of their "system" is in some sense 'better' than the more generic update I installed direct from the card's manufacturer two or three weeks ago. Microsoft's own driver information is not yet available (though they thanked me for my interest) so I have no idea what the update brings to the table.
I'm very trusting.2
Lord, enlighten thou our enemies
Thus spake Coleridge, according to John Stuart Mill, regarding Tory philosophers. Now, I admit I've been unaware of Charles Krauthammer (though I'm liking the name already). This scalpel slicing of him made me smile as I winced. A brace of tasty snippets:
Conservatism was different in Mill's time. What he rejoiced at in Coleridge's example was the prospect of deliverance from "the owl-like dread of light, the drudge-like aversion to change, which were the characteristics of the old unreasoning race of bigots" — Sir Leicester Dedlock, for example, or the Duke of Wellington. A conservative intellectual was virtually an oxymoron before the Industrial Revolution; too much cleverness made a man "unsound."
Facility in framing the conventional wisdom, however vacuous, with perfect assurance — indeed, with an edge of impatience in one's voice that such truisms need to be explained at all — is a singular gift, and probably the supreme qualification for an op-ed columnist or talk-show guest.
I'm not autistic...
... because I can empathise with this! Though I also find it hard to understand what other people are thinking (and, more particularly, why they think what they think).
If you are at all spooked by ventriloquists' dummies, Kaspar could strike you as rather creepy. To many children with autism and related disorders, though, he has proved a source of joy and
insight.
Children with autism find it hard to understand what other people are thinking, and see them as behaving in dauntingly and upsettingly complicated ways. A robot can be more comprehensible,
which may be why some kids with this type of disorder are strongly drawn to them.
The only "Kaspar" I recall was the Kaspar Hauser described in either (or quite possibly both) "Great World Mysteries" (by Eric Frank Russell) and "Stranger than Science" (by Frank Edwards). Also creepy.
There is little...
... by which you can distinguish between the simplistic advice contained in the BBC's "Moneybox" and NPR's "Marketplace money"... except the accents of the participants. Greed and sharp practices are prevalent in both societies, it seems.
What's the point...
... of hosting a trailer on Vimeo, but giving no help to the hapless would-be viewer? Erm, that would be me. Pity. His interview on NPR was quite amusing. (I know, I know, it plays perfectly on Chrome, Pale Moon, and IE11. But not on Firefox...)
When I toddled along to an actual cinema recently-ish to see "Gravity" in 3D, I picked up a freebie little review/preview magazine. (Actually, inspecting the front cover closely suggests I should have paid £2 for it... Oops!) Today's DVD delivery...
... is the fourth of the five films I have that were rated (by that magazine) the "finest films from the cast of" the second Hunger Games film. I am still missing "Slither" with Elizabeth Banks, but have decided to risk it. I'm hoping it will be another "Tremors" (as it were). I already had:
Three excellent films.
If this is...
... true, it's beyond satire:
To every parent Facebook should say: "Your children spend hours every day with us. We spy upon them much more efficiently than you will ever be able to. And we won't tell you what we
know about them."
Only that, just the truth. That will be enough. But the crowd that runs Facebook, that small bunch of rich and powerful people, will never lean in close enough to tell you the truth.
Mark Zuckerberg recently spent $30m (£18m) buying up all the houses around his own in Palo Alto, California. Because he needs more privacy.
I wonder how many houses you can buy in Palo Alto for $30m? Fewer than half a dozen, I suspect.