2015 — 1 October: Thursday — rabbits!
This year is simply whizzing by. Another two weeks1 and I shall be wishing myself happy birthday.
I didn't know it at the time, of course, but precisely eight years ago today — the last day of Christa's radiation therapy — also marked my last-ever shopping trip with her to M&S in Hedge End where, as "normal", she bought me a few final items of new clothing. I have no idea where the time has gone since then, but gone it most surely has.
And — progress of a sort — I've learned how to do my own clothes shopping :-)
Having previously...
... only known Sir John C Squire to have been "one of the keenest admirers" of Ernest Bramah's "Kai Lung" tales, and having only one book by Squire in my little collection — his 1917 collection of poems and parodies titled "Tricks of the Trade" — I was somewhat taken aback to find this:
My wife was German. I wonder if they have a file on me?
As we wandered...
... across the grounds of IBM Hursley back to my car in the final stage of yesterday's little ramble we naturally pondered how the mighty IBM had changed in the last few years. Today, I find this:
IBM now uses algorithmic assessment tools to sort employees worldwide on criteria of cost-effectiveness, but spares top managers the same invasive surveillance and ranking.
Golly :-)
Rambling...
... on the other side of the pond can be a whole different — and potentially dangerous — ball game. I still remember we found it easier / safer to drive along a mile or so to a roundabout, and do a virtual U-turn there, than to cross, on foot, an eight-lane highway outside our Florida hotel back in 1992. And that was just to grab a quick bite of breakfast. (Link.)
My killer ape genes...
... have clearly atrophied. Why else would a combination of humour and gentle ridicule strike me as about the most rational response there is to our insane development of nuclear weapons?
When I at last revealed all to my mother, she brought sweet relief and the return of Morpheus by responding: "Don't be so daft! There'll be all sorts of palaver before a war starts, and I'll keep you home. And we're in
London! It's the first place they'll hit, and we'll all die together! Now go to sleep."
My understanding of global nuclear arrangements essentially arrested at this point.
It didn't take me long to conclude, years ago, that Ground Zero was by far the best place to be. And I still regard Herman Kahn...
... as a blithering idiot despite his purported IQ of 200. (Read George MacBeth's 1966 short story "Crab Apple Crisis" for a wonderful debunking of the 38 rungs on Kahn's "ladder" to all-out thermonuclear "exchange".)
Try capturing...
... this effect with an opaque mug!
Unstirring stuff :-)
I've been known...
... to say the world is barking mad. Further evidence of this madness.