2016 — 6 July: Wednesday
I suspect Chilcot's 12-volume report on the Iraq war is best summarised by his blindingly-obvious conclusion that we need "careful analysis" before going off to war.
... it will not be possible in future to engage in a military or indeed a diplomatic endeavour on such a scale and of such gravity without really careful challenge analysis and assessment and collective political judgement being applied to it...
Of course, the several million people who protested on the streets at the time might have been thought to have been making just that point but — as the EU referendum so clearly shows — what the UK really needs is not so much a change of guvmint, but more a change of electorate.
I'm a terrible prophet!
This is (part of) what I wrote to dear Mama a decade ago:
When I retire at the end of the year, I shall systematically set about a major chunk of redecorating and rewiring, room by room, as the house deserves it after 25 years of benign neglect. Actually, the décor has stood up pretty well on the whole, but it's starting to look just a bit rough in a few places, and I must confess there are numerous drill holes in the walls1 that could really do with plugging and repainting.
I now prophesy breakfast, a walk, and some supplies shopping, probably in that order. We shall see.
I seem to recall...
... first hearing the name "Walter Merricks" when he was the chap doing a good job of "explaining" what we were seeing while the BBC showed a documentary series on Miami circuit court #11 (?) and its processes2 in 1976 or so. He's now tackling an interesting and alarmingly-large class action on credit card charges. Good luck with that, say I. (Link.)
Not that I think credit card companies aren't, erm, thieving greedy bastards. Oh no, not at all. Never. Not for a single moment.
There's a...
... moderately scathing analysis of the current contenders for the Tory party leadership, and thus our next Prime Minister. I still don't think anyone who wants that job can be sane. Source and snippet:
And since betrayal and misstep are tipping careers lifeless on to the stage at a rate to rival the final scene of Hamlet, it is possible the field will have shrunk again by the time you read this ... But if the recent trajectory of politics is sustained, reason will not be the decisive factor.
When was it ever?
Back after a walk...
... a bit(e) of lunch, and the necessary post-lunch supplies shopping, just in time to bid farewell to the last worker departing with the final bit of the house repair scaffolding. I have also shut the back door firmly against the little swarm of flying ants, so Technology Towers is back to just me, once again. The Bliss of Solitude, to quote that 1952 JT McIntosh SF short story...
... with its sharp-eyed protagonist. My (corrected) eyesight remains "two lines better than what Americans call '20/20' vision" — near the theoretical limit of the retina3 — but it is as nothing compared to Ord's mighty powers!
The chart above is from a pitch I spotted nearly seven years ago.
I always liked...
... to keep my American friend Carol "in the loop"...
Have just started my weirdest freelance assignment yet: writing 500-word abstracts of recently-declassified high technology patent applications from the Ministry of Defence! However, some of them have been mouldering away in locked filing cabinets for so long that they're no longer as high tech as they were originally. Still, it's useful pocket money. And some of them are quite interesting.
One of the benefits of knowing a little about a lot (rather than a lot about a little) was that it made such work quite pleasurable. And gave my then-new Amstrad WP system a chance to pay for itself several times over.