2016 — 1 July: Friday — rabbits!
How we can possibly have tipped over the year's half-way point mystifies me.1 Having read yesterday of BoJo's withdrawal from the Tory leadership scrum? fray? débâcle? I switched off my PC and resolved to absorb no more news lest it dilute my pleasure.
Instead...
... I sorted out, and set my little hot-air blower to the task of drying out, the last few books that had soaked up a bit of last week's unwelcome water intrusion. Books and water do not mix well.
It's an early start...
... for me today, as I'm out on a Mission of Mercy doing my taxi-to-hospital run. "There and back", as dear ol' Dad would say, "just to see how far it is." Toot, toot!
Actually, I know perfectly well how far it is, of course, having made the same trip several times (to visit Christa) in October 2007. Back then, of course, I was still sporting my training wheels on the Yaris. In fact, I drove to the hospital for the first time on my 10th day behind the wheel, just two days after passing the Driving Theory2 test.
Is an elected President...
... who says he will "honour treaties and international obligations" also allowed to urge his citizens "to kill suspected criminals"? He was a lawyer, too. But that sounds a little weird even in these unusual times. Oh well, the Philippines is off my list of places to visit. (Link.)
4.5 hours...
... after starting my breakfast, I've just finished it. Free parking, too, courtesy of a power cut that had taken out the "pay here for your parking" machines and the "issuing of tickets" machines. Hospitals are not high on my list of places to visit, either.
Which is the more depressing: reading about the UK's severe case of (I hope, short-term) political chaos in what looks very much like a near vacuum at the top of both major parties? Or reading about what (if anything) science has to say about moral intuitions? I suspect the "Aeon" essay is less likely to elevate my blood pressure. (Link.)
Trahison des berks
What could that mean, I wonder :-) (Hint!)
Are there politicians in waiting even competent to negotiate what they have promised? Those who indulged Cameron's smug inadequacies as a prime minister have been brought up short. In the old days there was a division in politics between right and left. But we are coming to see that the deeper division was between those, such as Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown, who knew politics to be serious, a matter of life and death, and those who didn't. Suddenly we are in the lethal hands of the non-serious.
Suddenly? I think not. But what do I know?
Wait! Here's a good plan! We can all relax.
Nice catch, Thog!
Courtesy of Ansible, of course.
I was a big fan of these collections by Denys Parsons, back in the day.
I disagree...
... with Don Paterson, here, writing in "The Book of Shadows" (2004):
Writers dream of discovering some dead genius they can plagiarize in absolute secrecy.