Quad Mix

Soundtrack - Best of - The Kinks (yes! Really).

Did the word 'snipe' spring to mind because of the sniper? Even here, I began to get worried about walking across open spaces. It is good that they seem to have got him. Fear itself indeed. In the last couple of years, there has been a terrible rise in events where the fear generated is far more damaging than the actual events themselves. It does our health no good and the media just hypes it all to sell units rather than to inform. This is nearly as bad as the criminal who sells weapons with no thought or care for the damge they do. Reporting could be more restrained (and probably as a consequence - more truthful). I bet the Anthrax letters killed many times more people through raised blood pressure than by actual infection (5 people died directly). Our main Post-Office was shut shown because of a suspicious powder leaking from a damaged letter. It turned out to be sand from someone on holiday! Driving home yesterday, I saw a small plane flying a straight line about 10 degrees off parallel to the docks. It seemed to be too small to be a real plane and it was definitely not a microlight of which there are many around here. And what did I immediately assume? That it was an attempt to seed the city with something nasty. (Sorry about the split infinitive).

Oh the Coffee is good from the machines this morning. We have to start paying for it soon so maybe that is why. It seems to vary in quality but I suspect that really it is my perception. Taste seems to be the sense which varies the most depending on mood or chemical balance. Sight and hearing seem to be constant in an internal sense. I know they vary over the long term but that is generally a decline over years. Maybe sight does change and that it is just that our brain spends so much of its processing on sorting out reality from the limited information, that it compensates and we don't realise. Indeed, perceived sight has been described as 90% fiction based on what our brain and its preconceptions make of the limited input. A circle is a circle; right? And a Crop Circle is something else. No! Crop circles are made by men with planks and bits of rope!

I have just invented a portmanteau word - Crumpety - Crotchety and Grumpy. Which of course has reminded me of Jabberwocky. In Godel, Escher, Bach, there are two translations of Jabberwocky in French and German to make a point about language. I have found this page of translations which are interesting.

Martin is just looking at this site. I agree with him that there are too many House makeover shows on TV but this show examines the building process in depth.

There will now be my impression of the Millenium Falcon's engines failing. More later.