2015 — 9 December: Wednesday
Although I wasn't giving it my full attention I quite enjoyed "Timescape" (a David Twohy film based loosely on Henry Kuttner's classic tale "Vintage Season") yesterday evening. This was despite the lousy print, the dialogue dubbing, and the wooden acting! I remember the original plot1 perfectly well. After all, it's only been half a century since I read it in the second of the equally classic Kingsley Amis and Bob Conquest "Spectrum" anthologies of SF I devoured in 1965. If you're going to have a focused enthusiasm there are — as I scan the world's "news" reports — clearly far worse things to focus on...
I don't think it contributed much to the weird dream 'playing' on my internal cinema when I woke up shortly after 8 o'clock...
Anyway, on with the Show. Despite the morning frost out there today (in stark contrast to the NZ weather that has already allowed Big Bro to splash about in his pool) I think I shall defer my next winter crockpot prep for a day or so. This morning I have a brisk walk, and tomorrow's lunch date will be sure to quell my unruly appetite tomorrow evening, no doubt. No rush.
I've just confirmed...
... my new Linux digital audio régime remains present and correct though I'm currently enjoying BBC Radio 3's breakfast show from Norway (where it's snowing hard; surprise, surprise). Having listened to a variety of material yesterday I am indeed delighted by the performance of the new Xonar soundcard. Its predecessor — a neat little internal PCI-bus Creative X-Fi ("Soundblaster") that I originally bought to bring its digital optical I/O to earlier Windows PCs about six years ago — will be handed over for assessment2 by Brian.
Breakfast beckons.
Back from my walk...
... to the cheery news that, since more than 100,000 people have now signed a Downing Street petition seeking to bar the admission of Donald Trump to the UK, parliament now has to consider the issue. The dangerous thing about the gentleman, of course, is that he makes more normal right-wing nutjobs look almost rational, and almost moderate by comparison. Should he win the Republican nomination it would be bizarre enough. The idea of him becoming President is way past the normal range of values of "bizarre" even for me.
I now have a second PCI digital audio soundcard to play with for a while. An M-Audio "Revolution" that was considered the Bees' knees in its day. It 'should' just work with Linux, I gather. We shall hear...
Bouncing between...
... a pair of interesting articles on Aeon is probably good for the mental circulation as I rest the weary limbs. I've slowly been coming to the conclusion that written History (for all I know or can tell) is pretty much produced by a process of "making things up" to present a smooth-flowing, hopefully plausible-sounding, explanatory narrative of human affairs. Skulking somewhere on my shelves is a copy of John Merriman's 1985 anthology "For want of a horse" in which 22 historians amused themselves by asking precisely the sort of "What if...?" counter-factual questions that are now being taken more seriously by "real" professors of history (example here).
And no less a giant of modern political thought than Jeb Bush has already enthusiastically asserted that, given the opportunity, he would quite happily murder an infant Hitler.
Science is more about "poking" at stuff as a process of "working things out" and constantly changing your mind as you work through a series of possible explanations that might exist (if any) for "phenomena" that we think seem to "happen" (as it were) in the "real" world. Though the easily observable fact that you can bang your elbow painfully on a table top — when both your elbow and the table consist (or so we're told by these science chaps) mostly of empty space between atoms and molecules — is quite amazing enough when you stop to think about it.
Much like digital audio on Linux, in fact.
This fire tornado...
... video from the Slo-Mo guys tickled me. (Link.)
If there's a...
... nicer way of listening to the late Charlie Gillett's five double CDs in his "Sounds of the City" series (Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, and New York) than by loading them all into Decibel and then clicking on "Shuffle"... I don't know what it would be.