Just realised (from writing a cheque) that today is 05-05-05. When I mentioned this to the kids, they looked at me pityingly. I know that look: it says “Poor Dad: he’s quite cool but a bit slow on the uptake”. Er, they’re right.
Category Archives: Asides
The flip side
I’ve installed ‘Tiger’ — code for version 10.4 of Mac OS X on two of our home machines, and the installation went just fine and both computers are happily chuntering away. (I’m too rattled by Quentin’s experience to entrust my PowerBook to it yet.) One of the nice things about the new version is ‘Spotlight’ — an amazing desktop search program that indexes the entire contents of your hard drive and finds things instantly. But there’s an unintended side-effect of this — neatly captured in a wry email from a friend:
There is a downside to everything. This is the one for Spotlight: suddenly you see how much you have forgotten. I was busy writing a lecture. Looked for something on Spotlight. And discovered that I had written something very similar a year ago. Completely forgotten. Shocking.
Well, yes. But isn’t it better to be reminded? Besides, great things come from faulty memories. Tim Berners-Lee was motivated to invent the Web partly because he had such a terrible memory and kept losing track of information! Full story on page 233 of this. (Health warning: shameless plug!)
Night flight
“It was a dark night, with only occasional scattered lights glittering like stars on the plain. Each one, in that ocean of shadows, was a sign of the miracle of consciousness. In one home, people were reading, or thinking, or sharing confidences. In another, perhaps, they were searching through space, wearying themselves with the mathematics of the Andromeda nebula. In another they were making love. These small flames shone far apart in the landscape, demanding their fuel. Each one, in that ocean of shadows, was a sign of the miracle of consciousness … the flame of the poet, the teacher, or the carpenter. But among these living stars, how many closed windows, how many extinct stars, how many sleeping men …”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writing about his first night-flight over Argentina in the prologue to Wind, Sand and Stars.
Penguin remix competition
On May 9th Penguin launches Penguin Remixed, an innovative competition which invites musicians, professional and amateur, the opportunity to sample some of the best lines in literature to create new tunes. Audio samples from thirty Penguin titles will be available for download from the www.penguinremixed.co.uk website and entrants will be invited to submit their tracks to win MP3 players, subscriptions to Audible’s digital audiobookstore and the top prize of publication in a Penguin digital audiobook.
Los Alamos bloggers turn nasty
Well, well. There’s trouble in the US’s premier nuclear weapons lab. According to the New York Times, staff are so fed up with their new Director, G. Peter Nanos, that they are posting vitriolic messages on an internal Blog.
The blogging comes at a delicate moment in the 62-year history of Los Alamos. The University of California, which has helped run the laboratory for the government since the days of the Manhattan Project, faces close scrutiny in Washington as to whether its contract should be renewed. And resignations and fears of a mass exodus have recently roiled the waters. Some analysts believe that now, given the public outcry, the university will have to abandon Dr. Nanos in order to make a credible bid to keep its contract.
Dr. Nanos would not comment. A spokesman for Los Alamos, Kevin Roark, said false rumors of the director’s resignation had circulated for months. Mr. Roark added that Dr. Nanos was extraordinarily proud of what he had accomplished at Los Alamos, which employs 14,000 people on an annual budget of $2.2 billion.
Mr. Roark called the vitriolic blogging unrepresentative of the majority of employees and said it often had the tone of a sophomoric Halloween prank. “Everybody, I think, was a little surprised at how mean it got,” he said.
Several outside experts said that the director’s quick departure was inevitable and that the blog’s attacks were playing a significant role.
Popemobile for sale on eBAY
For sale: grey VW Golf, 75,000 kilometres on the clock, one careful gentleman owner.
Thus begins Luke Harding’s lovely report of how Cardinal Ratzinger’s wheels wound up being auctioned on eBAY.
Sky High
My very own Tory election poster
There’s a lovely site for generating your own “handwritten” Tory poster. Here’s mine.
The Sun shines on the Vatican
Apropos Joe Ratzinger’s elevation, the Sun has the best headline of the day: “From Hitler Youth to… PAPA RATZI!”
Holy Smoke!
Cardinals elect elderly reactionary as Pope. Whatever next!