2016 — 4 June: Saturday
I have my late mad Aunt Peg in the Midlands to thank, among much else, for introducing me to both PG Wodehouse and HH Munro (aka Saki). And many years later1, I found a battered "treasure" — the first Jeeves omnibus, published 15 years or so into the saga — for £1-50. It's always a good day when something like that happens! The book has a characteristically amusing introduction by "Plum"...
This trackless desert of print which we see before us, winding on and on into the purple distance, represents my first Omnibus Book...
Inspired by yesterday's visit to Roger & Eileen, last night I disinterred another long-neglected Wodehouse volume with a renewed determination to give it my full attention for a while. I'd found it for £1-95 in August 1981 shortly after starting work in IBM. Given the vast pleasure I've previously obtained from the various stories and novels featuring Jeeves and Wooster, let alone from Plum's own letters and hilarious memoirs, I have absolutely no idea2 why I have so far failed to tackle either Blandings or, in this case, Mulliner, with the same enthusiasm.
I've just downloaded...
... the Jonathan Meades programme "Ben Building". Meades has an offbeat approach to diverse subjects, but I generally find him well worth watching. Mussolini seems to have been an utterly repellent chap — a sociopathic thug at best. I don't understand the appeal of such types as our "leaders", let alone their addiction to power, control, and what have you. The psychology of crowds and "mindless" mob behaviour is weird. Bronowski touches on its roots when considering early hominid (or, more precisely these days, hominin) survival strategies in his fascinating series "The Ascent of Man". Sagan, too, took a crack at explaining it in "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors".
Given the small...
... but still perfectly legible typesetting on the back artwork of this newly-arrived Blu-ray (click to magnify it somewhat from this life-size view)...
... I fail to understand why studios never bother to rework the cast and crew details from their posters to be equally decipherable. [Pause] Well, almost never!
Here are the two front covers:
Is this...
... scary?
... funny?
... or just a sign that Winter is coming? (YouTube Link.)
The same Grauniad piece on AI by Leo Benedictus also led me to this:
While Newlan is on the call, his computer microphone listens in while a python script runs on his computer. IBM Watson's speech-to-text service also transcribes what's happening on the call.
When Newlan's name is mentioned, the program automatically sends him a transcript of what was said a minute before and a little bit after so he has context.
That could create some awkward pauses for people awaiting his response, but Newlan thought it through. He has time to read the meeting notes quickly because the script waits 15 seconds before playing a recording of Newlan saying "Sorry, I didn't realize my microphone was on mute"
to make up for it.
Having watched the demo of s/w learning how to play an Atari game, by the way, I fired up YouTube on my Android SHIELD Tablet PC, to see how well its recommendations of stuff to watch tracked what I'd just watched on my PC. Sure enough, I now got offered the CEO of DeepMind (Demis Hassabis) and the talk during which he played that same video. Well worth a listen, by the way.
Inheritance tax
Our Tory Overlords having persuaded us to fear this tax, a factoid from the Pru caught my eye:
Two of the most enduring myths in personal finance are that (a) people work their guts out to pay for a home that jumps in value to hundreds of thousands of pounds and (b) that the nasty taxman will, when they die, snatch the money they wanted to leave to the kids.
A report from Prudential this week explodes that second myth comprehensively. The Pru's research suggests that fewer than three in 10 people will leave any sort of inheritance, and those that do will average just £191,000.
I can still remember when £191,000 was rather a lot of money!
Much later
"Youth" is a stunning film, with gorgeous music. I'm now listening (again) to "Just (after Song of Songs)" which I've heard played on Late Junction. Amazing.