2014 — 24 September: Wednesday
The sorry litany of intolerance and cruelty that was paraded before my ears by the 08:30 news summary on BBC Radio 3 suggests a simplistic narrative1 that must be very tempting to leader writers and our so-called political leaders alike. Truth is, we (and they) are too stupid, and there are far too many of us (and them) for much in the way of prospects for long-term peace and happiness on this remote little planet. Recall the Feynman quote I spotted a while back?
We have had to accept that our home, the earth, is just another planet circling the sun; our sun is just one of a hundred billion stars in a galaxy that is just one of billions of visible galaxies; and it may be that the whole expanding cloud of galaxies is just a small part of a much larger multiverse, most of whose parts are utterly inhospitable to life. As Richard Feynman has said, "The theory that it's all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate."
Where's that Vogon Constructor fleet when you need it? :-)
Mind you, there's a little robin twittering away as he hops around the branches of the decorative Japanese cherry tree by my open patio door, slaughtering his insects for breakfast. It would be a shame to see him blown up.
Meanwhile...
... having just solved the minor-league topological puzzle that was the (newly-delivered) SHIELD Tablet PC's nifty (and clever) little stand / cover...
... I think I've earned my next cuppa and a bite or two of breakfast. In time to contemplate the heavy shower and wonder what happened to the sunshine that was showing up all the dust on my desktop screens mere moments ago.
Another...
... illusion shattered. When did "Dezz-dee-moaner" become "Dezz-demmunner"? (Verdi wants to know.)
And while I'm asking awkward questions that probably just reveal my own boundless ignorance... when I've updated an image file with a newly-created variant that happens to have the same filename, at what point did Windows Explorer decide it was no longer a Good Thing to change the new file's date to reflect that update? These things matter2 to us non-NT outliers, you know!
Venturing cautiously...
... out as far as ex-nun Karen Armstrong's book on religion and the history of violence, reviewed in the Spectator, I find some slight support there for the morning's first footnote. Source and snippet:
Invariably, [the founder's] golden rule is: all men are equal in the sight of God, do as you would be done by, love your enemies, turn the other cheek.
This message is common to Confucius, Zoroaster, Jesus, Guru Nanak the founder of the Sikhs, Gandhi and Nurse Cavell. Muhammad too is reported to have told his followers that "not one of you can be a believer unless he desires for his
neighbours what he desires for himself". There are many verses in the Koran which instruct Muslims not to retaliate but to forgive and forbear, and to respond to aggression with mercy, patience and courtesy.
But of course there are other verses which don't, famously the Sword Verse, which eggs on the faithful to slaughter idolaters. The sad truth is that religions are corrupted by success. The more popular they become, the closer they are
drawn into the ambit of state power, the more their practice and doctrine have to be remodelled to suit their new overlords.
Whatever happened to good old "live and let live"? [Pause] It's a fine thing when you have to read one of the comments buried in a piece on El Reg to discover a nifty use of the Windows key. Oh, the shame! It's clearly time for a spot of very late lemonses to perk up the brain. (Link.)
It's been a month...
... since I heard Claire Martin singing live from her new album. The SACD is now spinning merrily in the Oppo. A "free digital copy" discount card fell out of the package, so I also now have it as a set of 16-bit "CD quality" FLAC format files without the bother of any ripping. A cocktail lounge jazz vocalist accompanied by a cello quartet is a little off my normal beaten track, and her version of Bowie's "The Man who sold the World" is certainly, erm, different.
Two Radiohead CDs also turned up, one of them in some ridiculous DIY packaging complete with artwork designed for you (but not me, alas) to stick very carefully on to a spare CD jewel case. Not going to happen.
Christopher Hogwood died today, dagnabbit.
I'm no more...
... dyslexic than the netx persno (I hope), but I sometimes wish — given the number of times I must have typed the string "http" in the last two decades — that my original userid on the mainframe systems I played with worked on when I first joined IBM Hursley in 1981 could have been something other than "htpp". Just sayin'.
Why did...
... Bruno Genovese (head of Personal Banking) wait until two weeks after I'd closed my account (which had been Christa's) before he personally offered me a £100 bribe...
... (sorry, "incentive") to join his bank? Would he understand me if I told him I entirely lack financial ambitions, I wonder? My current pittance3 from the IBM pension fund still seems to me, more or less, an elegant sufficiency for a single chap living quietly on his own.