2015 — 19 October: Monday
Two cups of tea, before a diary entry?!1 No wonder it's rapidly approaching 10:00 already. Tut, tut...
In some weird parallel universe...
... this might even be funny. Source and snippet:
To the disciples of Calvin, no infant soul was too tiny to become a battleground between light and darkness. From Puritan presses in England streamed forth the first-ever flood of children's literature; their J. K. Rowling was one James Janeway, whose runaway best seller A Token for Children, Being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths, of Several Young Children (1671) was evidently every bit the lighthearted romp that its title suggests. Summing up what all good parents should teach their toddlers, one earlier Puritan was more concise: "Learn to die," he wrote.
Meanwhile...
... I'm listening to Jeanette Winterson, whose autobiography poses the question "Why be happy when you could be normal?" Blimey. (Link.)
Still easier...
... than listening to the head honcho of another bizarre sect:
The pope was a little more reserved, issuing the thought-provoking, slightly wordy critique: "We must avoid every temptation to fall into a declarationist nominalism which would assuage our consciences."
Perhaps a little something was lost in translation? Fabulous illustration, though!
I find it ironic...
... to be digitally excluded from the Digital Exclusion Heatmap unless I switch from Firefox to using the Chrome web browser. Still, at least I now know the average income in Eastleigh!
I knew nerds...
... had to have something good going for them. Still not convinced it's bad taste, however. It reminds me of an "expensive"2 book I bought 43 years ago...
... illustrating the thesis that 'Bad taste' is only an approximate and inadequate translation of the German word "Kitsch".
This also tickled me, though not because I necessarily think it's accurate:
I am endless fascinated by the idea of entropy. It suggests that not only is the universe indifferent to our presence, it is at least mildly hostile to it. We are low-entropy creatures trying hopelessly to swim upstream in a universe that's gradually winding down towards a maximum-entropy heat death. So the universe itself is, in a sense, Slightly Evil.
Rao cost me a Kindle book: Robert Coram's hagiographic examination of military strategist3 Colonel John Richard Boyd. I recognise most of the authors and many of the titles cited at the end of this 8-page paper of Boyd's. It's all a bit reminiscent of Gordon R Dickson's (happily fictional) theoretical tactician, Cletus Grahame, very early in the "Dorsai" cycle — and before its wheels came off, in my opinion.
I've just paid...
... the final estate debt as executor of dear Mama's Will to the Department of Work & Pensions. Meanwhile, Mr Taxman — after claiming it would take "up to eight weeks" to reach an assessment of her tax affairs (during which time [he assured me] "I don't need you to do anything") — has remained silent. I've been keeping my fellow executor in sync:
I suspect the Dept of Work and Pensions starts by assuming everyone is a "Benefits cheat" since that's how the Tories have long been spinning their way out of any responsibility or blame for their chums' spectacular 2008 financial crash. It's taken them over six months. Just last week they apologetically asked me to repay the two Pension over-payments I'd allowed for in Probate. Amazing.
Of course, if the work-shy regulatory and oversight bits of this massive "self-serving work machine" had actually done its job in the first place, they quite possibly wouldn't now face all this "austerity" induced by propping up with artificially-created 'public' money an already totally broken financial system. And now they have the gall to talk about negative inflation. Bozos!
"S-SWM" was Big Bro's term, not mine. I suspect he, too, read Dad's copy of Parkinson's "The Law" :-)
I've learned...
... to wrangle my latest wired rodent — I find it surprisingly comfortable, already. Whether I will find Beckett's new history quite as comfortable is dubious. It covers that ghastly period when Thatcher was initially setting out her policy stall in the UK:
The Baltic music, on the other hand, is utterly unfamiliar.