2016 — 16 July: Saturday
Last night's "World on 3" programme was shaping up nicely but I was too tired1 to stay with it "live". Good ol' get_iplayer to my rescue.
Mr Special Delivery...
... (actually, one of my 'normal' posties) has just shown up, with the precious (to me) Ron Cobb RCD-25 set of drawings from 1967. Inscribed, as mentioned, to William F Temple...
... and containing several images I'd not seen before. (As a scholar of Cobb, that thrills me, if nobody else!)
Meanwhile, my trick memory has not failed me. I have the Summer 1992 issue of "Foundation" with an appreciation in it of William F Temple. The cover photo shows two gents, well-known in some circles, posing across an ornate fireplace. The caption (more accurately, what I had mis-remembered as the caption) mentions Temple, so I'd correctly filed that in my head as a picture of him:
William F Temple and Arthur C Clarke, 1975
Only on the back cover do we learn where and when this was taken (click the pic). I recognised Clarke, of course, but this is the only photo I can recall showing Temple. One day, I may even find out exactly when and where Temple and Ron Cobb actually met.
A faint glimmer...
... of sanity?
I have already said that I won't be triggering article 50 until I think that we have a UK approach and objectives for negotiations — I think it is important that we establish that before we trigger article 50.
What, me worry?
Terrorist attacks. Military coups. Censorship of Wonder Woman's divine posterior...
Cropping Wonder Woman's knickers!
... Whatever next? Well, they do say troubles come in threes, do they not?
Typically in the UK, jobs that are utterly thankless and unworkably exhausting are left to migrants. For whatever reason, Theresa May didn't feel she had that option when she had to appoint her troika of senior ministers to handle the UK's graceless exit from the EU. So it is that Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox will be clambering inside the Jean-Paul Sartre simulator and testing the theory that hell is other fatally flawed Tories.
Exponential therbligs?
Six years ago I hosted a link (still here) to one of those "Information Is Beautiful" visualisations by David McCandless of some pretty large numbers. It's since been reworked and updated here. I note Frank Jacobs is still producing his "Strange Maps", too. (Link.)
Seven years...
... after buying my 60" Pioneer Kuro plasma TV screen I'm pleased to see that it's still "regarded by many videophiles as the best consumer television ever produced". I bought it on that basis, reasoning that by the time it needed replacing, TV technology would have surpassed plasma black levels, improved resolution well beyond mere Full HD, and become much less power-hungry. Not to mention, more affordable. (Link.)
Now, if only somebody could fix the quality of broadcast TV programmes!