2014 — 17 July: Thursday

My lunch companion for today1 has suggested I might like to consider a new monitor:

4,953,600 pixels

It has 1,267,200 more pixels than each of my present pair of 27" 'WQHD' screens, and a 34" diagonal. But I've already pointed out that my desk simply isn't large enough to allow me to sit two of them side-by-side.

"Spontaneity" has...

... never been my middle name, nor my defining characteristic.

The wise folk who design the nudges are pleased to call themselves "choice architects". As we are led unsuspectingly along their mazy garden path, on which what they consider the "right" choices are the easiest ones for us to make — the healthy meal is at eye level; we are automatically enrolled as organ donors unless we can be bothered to opt out — we casually make the decisions that they have already chosen for us...
The British government's Behavioural Insights Team, aka the Nudge Unit,2 was part-privatised this year, and hopes to profit from advising foreign governments, local authorities and commercial interests, now that it is immune from Freedom of Information requests from ordinary citizens who might wish to scrutinise its methods.

Steven Poole in NS


Having fixed the worst...

... of the current set of gaping holes in Mother Hubbard's cupboard earlier this morning I've now just got back (from lunch) in time to find, in no particular order:

And back again...

... gasping from the heat, cursing the bad manners of Mercedes drivers, and clutching the two Lost Sheep about five minutes before they rolled a giant stone in front of the entrance to the lair:

BD and DVDs

Had you asked me to name a film with both Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen, I think I would have been stumped. "Sugar Man" is a marvellous documentary voyage of musical discovery, and I gather this is the swan song of those in the Thick of It. Personally, I'm not certain it's possible to satirise our splendid coalition guvmint, so that will be interesting.

  

Footnotes

1  Assuming it isn't too hot for lunch by the time lunchtime rolls around.
2  I first mentioned this a while back.
3  It has a usefully high credit limit from earlier days when my IBM salary was higher than I needed, lower than I would have liked, and substantially more than my present pittance of a pension. That will, with luck, twitch upward when the guvmint's "State Pension" kicks in, in October 2016. Unless the rules are changed yet again.