2016 — 13 February: Saturday
I watched (and was utterly mesmerised by) the 65-minute full "interview" of Jacob Bronowski conducted by Michael Parkinson in November 1973. I downloaded it from iPlayer a week ago purely out of curiosity, and played it yesterday evening. I gather this interview wasn't originally shown because of the early evening power-saving broadcasting shutdowns that were a feature of the 3-day week. At that time I had no access to TV unless in the parental home (where I didn't enjoy any freedom to choose my viewing). But nor did I have any great desire to sit and watch the stuff — books, music and cinema were much more my 'thing'. Hence this interview had flown completely under my radar.
Over 30 years later, a brief clip from it appeared on a one-hour BBC4 compilation of "chat shows" from 1973. I cut this compilation to a DVD, which Christa and I enjoyed1 together on our 33rd wedding anniversary in 2007. Of course (!) I've now ordered a DVD set of "The Ascent of Man". My copy of the book has long since been culled, but I liked what I saw of Bronowski's dry humour and spoken style last night.
MATÉ or Cinnamon?
Neither! I prefer tea in the morning. But I've taken the precaution of downloading both Linux Mint 17.3 ISOs in 64-bit variants in readiness for my first tottering steps into the wonderful world of NUCs later this week. I may yet try Ubuntu, too...
Learning that one's...
... "left" (democratic, flexible-minded) or "right" (conservative, closed-minded) political leanings can be predicted, with a claimed 95% accuracy, by MRI observations of neural activity spikes (unconscious to the individual) provoked by as little as one "disgusting" image is a bit of a downer. I'm not very keen on what seems to be steadily mounting evidence that free will is merely an illusion on the part of the conscious bit of the (mostly unconscious) brain!
But it may shed some light on the unconscious motivation behind the FBI's surreptitious surveillance of Richard Feynman. Not that I have any wish for clearer insight into the workings of Mr Hoover's fine organisation, or brain, at that time.
Now I trust my...
... smartphone even less!
The full ghastliness is spelled out here.
Not that Technology Towers enjoys a signal, being both midway between two O2 masts, and in a dip.
I never got...
... the round tuit needed to plumb my spare A/V amp...
... back into the reading room system upstairs after it had been helping me in some recent bouts with the perfidious HDCP. No matter. It's now off across the village to try to restore the sound lost2 by the sudden failure of an Onkyo A/V box.
Having become bored...
... waiting to hear back from the Dept. of Work and Pensions — after I had corrected their grotesque assumption that I was running a care-home at this address — I have now bundled all dear Mama's estate-related paperwork that I had been starting to shred (but halted last October) into a green sack. Step #1 of its journey to its next incarnation. That has at least cleared a path to the patio door.