. Glue the broken magnetic street-entrance thing back together again with my key ring, so I don't have to wait outside on the street for someone to let me in if I leave the magnet thing in my flat. Also one or two weeks ago re-attached my landlady's cold-water tap on bath using fragments of dry pasta to jam the thread tight with glue. So that didn't take me long.
February 16th;
Friday. A student firmly refers to a relative of his who walked out leaving his girlfriend to raise two of his children as a "bad man". Quite right too. Talking of people who neglect their offspring, there's Percy Shelley, and a decent article about his wife's famous piece of early sci-fi. A man-made orphan, perhaps.
February 15th;
Thursday. Czech government archives reveal Jeremy Corbyn was a low-level asset for Czechoslovak secret-police agents in the 1980s.
February 14th;
Ash Wednesday. Readers will be thrilled to learn that some time in January, perhaps even this month, the display cabinets in the dairy aisle at the nearby basement supermarket changed again. The cheeses, butters, creams, and yoghourts are now underlit with a brighter, colder, bluer light. This makes them look fresher and more appealing. Boston Dynamics robots can open doors now.
February 13th;
Shrove Tuesday. Fairly sane-looking technical predictions in gold.
February 12th;
Monday. What might be a good light-hearted Hollywood caper, unless the trailer (using my mother's favourite Sinatra tune) turns out to be all that's good in the film. Sadly can happen.
February 11th;
Sunday. Portraitist of Mr Obama also paints proud warrior negresses beheading people against Victorian pub wallpaper. Meanwhile, over in Glasgow, other exciting envelopes are being pushed!
February 10th;
Saturday. Finish a curious, intriguing book moments before seeing, in my first cinema outing in many moons, Ildiko Enyedi's 'On Body and Soul' with Film-maker Jessica & her Internations chums. Very good, though a bit puzzled by the Sexy Psychologist subplot. Still think Enyedi's older film 'Simon Magus' is even better. Borrowed from Robin, 'The Fourth Dimension' by C. Howard Hinton is a wonderfully earnest and odd book, packed with lovely line drawings. From 1906, it patiently and carefully explains, in well argued steps, how to thoroughly visualise a 4th spatial dimension. It does this using some small coloured cubes which can be made from cardboard following the book's instructions. A quite difficult read if you don't actually build the models, which I shall have to soon. One chapter digresses to relate this to Kant, and another section suggests some puzzles about electromagnetism are solved if we imagine them as 4-dimensional relations "hiding behind" 3-dimensional perceived reality.
February 9th;
Friday. 20-lb rat beings chew through California.
February 8th;
Thursday. Over lunch with Zizi, she shows me a review of Gwyneth Paltrow's strange cosmetics brand.
February 7th;
Wednesday. High-frequency programs force-retire hedgefunders.
February 6th;
Tuesday. Piece with paywall, about how the good old days of the NHS involved experimenting on people without telling them.
February 5th;
Monday. 2 good paired book reviews - Wright Brothers & Elon Musk.
February 4th;
Sunday. Chinese scientists building ginormous mega-laser thing.
February 3rd;
Saturday. The mystery of my blue plastic ice-cube tray continues. One chamber seems to leak, sometimes, but I cannot find even a tiny hole. This chamber which is empty the next day seems to also roam around the tray on different days, to add some excitement.
February 2nd;
Friday. Early evening get off the underground train and sit on the bench by the platform for a few minutes. A train comes and goes, and then another arrives. Two late-teenage girls, perhaps 20, of quite normal looks but slender & leggy get off and walk swiftly down the platform. Instead of swerving away from my leg jutting out as they pass me, the nearer girl, without breaking stride, lets her hanging left hand cup the toe of my shoe in her palm, stroking four fingers over it, as the two of them walk past. Both look resolutely ahead. A hundred paces further on they glance over their shoulders back at me to see if they had an effect. Suppose it's now officially pre-spring.
Here is that memo from current US politics. People thought it would show collusion between Trump & the Russians. In fact it seems to show collusion between the Democrats & the Russians.
February 1st;
Thursday. Tests of the appeal of high heels. Still not sure they have all the reasons. Maps to understand Britain. How to read a poisonous book.
Mark Griffith, site administrator /
markgriffith at yahoo.com
