2015 — 29 September: Tuesday
Today's mission1 is to make good the present deficiency in the number of working electric fan-heaters — and nice, long 13 amp extension leads for same — available hereabouts. On looking for mine yesterday, I now realise they must both have emigrated to Junior's house during an earlier stage of its partial re-building — and I somehow doubt either will return. I wanted to hasten the drying out of the disassembled cute little sucker, but ended up leaving that overnight to let the magic of unassisted evaporation weave its spell. (It works for my laundry, after all.)
Of course, in these centrally-heated days, I rarely need such a device (despite its 100% energy efficiency) except in the aftermath of the odd soaked boot or under-floorboard water escape escapade. But, when I do, there's no substitute, is there?
[Pause]
Mission (not to Mars — at first glance I assumed the Google doodle2 related to the recent red moon; then I saw the animation of the drinking)...
... successfully accomplished. It's quite good fun browsing in B&Q and exchanging light badinage with an attractive, albeit multiply-pierced, pre-Uni youngster.
When I disinterred...
... my October 1967 copy of Heinlein's 1949 'juvenile' novel "Red Planet" to confirm my memory of the name "Willis" ascribed to what people had assumed was merely a pet...
... I noted with pleasure its use of the data70 font3 for the title, and the fact (I'd jotted inside the cover) that Peter read this on 4th July 1987 — he was then less than seven and a half. Mind you, that fits with what I noted about his schooling, I guess.
Personally...
... I think Trident is less a sacred cow and more simply (speaking as an unreconstructed omnivore) an enormous, idiotic, insane, totally useless, totally unaffordable, wait for it, mis-steak:
My stint in Civil Defence 50 years ago cured me of any liking for 'nucular' weapons beyond a morbid interest in their undeniably fascinating mechanics. Contemplating just their horribly flawed control systems gives me the heebie-jeebies. Nothing said by Bruce Blair (a former Minuteman missile crewman and Brookings nuclear systems savant who published a study called "Strategic Command and Control" in the mid-'80s)...
The time pressure to make momentous decisions is the key problem. After the three minutes are up, if the warnings are assessed as "serious," there follows a quick conference between the president and his nuclear advisers "whereupon, on the U.S. side, the commanding duty officer at Strategic Command headquarters in Omaha, Neb., would brief the U.S. president on the nature of the apparent attack, the wide array of response options and their anticipated consequences [human casualties and physical damage]." Blair noted that "the time allocated for this briefing is as little as 30 seconds," and that afterward the president's "decision window is typically twelve minutes, although under certain conditions it can be much shorter."
... was contradicted by Eric Schlosser's far more recent "Command and Control" either.
I'm always willing...
... to try an anti-rom-com, though they rarely work terribly well:
Here's hoping. [Pause] Well, I made it through perhaps seven minutes of the 'hilarious spoof of the rom-com genre'. It supposedly took bad Hollywood movies apart and transmuted them into comedic gold. Well, all I ask of a comedy is some laughs. This one, I found unfunny. In total contrast, "This is where I leave you" turned out to be an absolute gem. Win some, lose some.