2014 — 27 August: Wednesday
Yesterday's procrastination1 can now become one of this morning's tasks to be performed in much brighter weather. And I even remembered where I'd left my smartphone: in the car's glovebox, locked away in my garage. So I now know it reduces to 4% battery in a little over 100 hours. Not too shabby. I shan't be worrying about the string of "unknown" missed calls.
A nine-year old girl...
...in (I assume) Arizona has accidentally shot and killed her shooting instructor. The chap was showing her his Uzi machine pistol. Further comment seems pointless. Though Rotherham council could, I suppose, start handing out such toys for better protection of its own youngsters.
One of my former banks...
... is still paying fines for 'serious failings' in its mortgage sales. These have occurred since I became an owner (along with my fellow tax payers) of 80% or so of this outfit. Nice to see it got a 30% discount by paying its fine early. It's also set aside £3,200,000,000 for compensation to people who were mis-sold insurance. I don't want to be too harsh: its reported loss last year was a mere £8,200,000,000 so there's clearly nothing much still wrong with it. Move on.
I wonder...
... what Chrome's Embiggener of Bits really does? (Link.)
[Pause]
Shopping shopped, I've just heard Victoria Glendinning describe herself as like a "baby at the tit" with regard to her computer. Golly. And on BBC Radio 3, too. I've only read (and I've just checked to see if I still have it) her 1983 biography of Vita Sackville-West:
She (Glendinning) believes men who are entirely male and women who are entirely female are all equally boring, so she chooses to write about those who are in-between (as it were). I wonder if she's ever read Ursula Le Guin's 1969 novel "The Left Hand of Darkness"?
Back, late, from ...
... lunch, a chat, and an interesting demo of the new Nvidia "Shield" Android 4.4 Gaming Tablet,2 to find yet another card from Mr Postie regarding a pair of parcels too large for my little letterbox. Still, their postal lair remains open until 20:00 on a Wednesday, so there's no immediate need to go dashing out again.
If I read...
... this correctly...
"If we find a noise we can't get rid of, we might be detecting something fundamental about nature — a noise that is intrinsic to space-time," said Fermilab physicist Aaron Chou, lead scientist and project manager for the Holometer. "It's an exciting moment for physics. A positive result will open a whole new avenue of questioning about how space works."
... it seems they think existence could yet turn out to be a cosmic case of tinnitus. And a negative result? Turtles all the way down, again.