2015 — 11 February: Wednesday
There was a nasty moment earlier1 when it seemed that a minor instability had been induced in my wondrous Win8.1 Update 1 yada yada desktop. Not that I could actually see my desktop (that being at the heart of the instability). An adroit use of the F5 key (never previously needed) and a couple of consecutive reboots — each of which managed to find some "operations" with which to amuse itself before proceeding — have banished the problem, restored the desktop icons and pinned apps I was expecting to see, and actually cleaned up the behaviour of the "system notification" area too, since I found myself forced to delve into that and do a little battle for the first time ever.
I feel I've earned my second cuppa already. And breakfast will be hard on its heels as I aim to go a'wandering in the fresh air today.
Meanwhile...
... I've long harboured severe doubts about the 'science' of psychiatry.2 I keep hoping it will go the way of phlogiston, which may be why this book review (and the long comment it's attracted) put a large smile on my face. Source and snippet:
To the diagnostic chaos was added the spectacle of treatments. Psychiatrists superintended horrifyingly squalid asylums; used insulin and electricity to send patients into comas and convulsions; inoculated them with tuberculin and malaria in the
hope that fever would cook the mental illness out of them; jammed ice picks into their brains to sever their frontal lobes; placed them in orgone boxes to bathe in the orgasmic energy of the universe; psychoanalyzed them interminably; primal-screamed
them and rebirthed them and nursed their inner children; and subjected them to medications of unknown mechanism and unanticipated side effects, most recently the antidepressant drugs that we love to hate and hate to love and that, either way, are a
daily staple for 11 percent of adults in America...
I may be critical of psychiatry, but as a clinician, I would be thrilled if the portrait Lieberman paints of the mental health field bore a closer resemblance to reality. If a scientific medicine of the brain were truly available, I'd be glad to
avail myself of it. At the very least, I'd be relieved not to worry that every time I sent a patient to a psychiatrist, she might return with a fistful of prescriptions, little idea of how the drugs work (for no one really knows) or what side effects
she may suffer, and no guarantee that she will get better.
The idea of Harper Lee finishing "Game of Thrones", even if satire, is a wry one, too. Thanks, Len! (Link.)
Now, about that failed update (some nonsense about a Visual C++ binary redistributable update 4...)?
The only thing Microsoft has to say about that, so far, (KB 3032622) seems to suggest that somebody in Japan is having the same problem (if Google's translation can be trusted) on their Vista system. Meanwhile BlackBeast assures me that I have both the x86 and x64 packages (though whether either of these is 'update 4' is glossed over) now on my system.
What? Me worry? I have other fish to fry. TTFN
Trust the BBC...
... to score another Internet radio home goal. Glad (after reading the irate comments here) I got out of Squeezebox and never got into DAB or Internet radio receivers. Quite why Aunty Beeb (who clearly thinks she always knows best) is (literally) hiding the URLs for aac streams from the public (who clearly think: "Hang on. We're paying for this!") is an Ineffable Mystery.
I just tried my trusty get_iplayer on (chosen at random) "Gideon Coe" and saw:
You may receive this message if you are using get_iplayer outside the UK
However, I've just successfully snaffled yesterday evening's "Late Junction" hosted by Max Reinhardt in its usual, more than acceptable, 320kbps quality, mp4 format. I notice the BBC have archived their own page about BBC radio and no longer update it. Very uncool. (Link.)
This little charmer...
... may look like a cuddly toy...
... but it's a $6,000 medical aid (Paro is Personal Assistive Robot) finding great utility in, for example, cases of Alzheimers. Remind me what that is, again.
While I'm cooling...
... my heels, waiting for enough time to elapse for me to trot down to Mr Postie's Cavern of Infinite Delights (to find out what two packages have proved too big for my letter box this time) I've been revisiting the first of the Laundry Files novels by Charles Stross — and just typing that has, in turn, sent me scurrying out to unload the washing machine I forgot all about a couple of hours ago. Stross? I enjoyed his blend of HP Lovecraftian horror and alternate 20th Century history spy thriller when I romped through these last year.
Here, our hapless hero is down in the library stacks:
We don't use the Dewey Decimal Catalogue to locate volumes in here; our requirements are sufficiently specialised that we have to use the system devised by Professor Angell of Brown University and subsequently known as the Codex Mathemagica. I've spent the past few weeks getting my head around the more arcane aspects of a cataloguing system that uses surreal number theory and can cope with the N-dimensional library spaces of Borges. You might think this a deadly boring occupation, but the ever-present danger of getting lost in the stacks keeps you on your toes. Besides which, there are rumours of ape-men living down here...
You can thus deduce I'm taking a tiny break from my usual diet of Austen (and my distinctly unusual Cinema Sewer fanzine which, although both erudite and amusing, is proving to be a real strain3 on the eyes because of Robin Bougie's lettering). Though I very much enjoyed David Whiteland's elegantly-lettered "Book of Pages" I mentioned a while back. This still tickles me:
