…may want to install their lavatories elsewhere?
Yesterday, I used my watch to buy entrance tickets at the Botanic Garden, and coffee at its café. This morning I paid for petrol using Paypal on my phone, and then used my watch to buy lunch at a local cafe and groceries at a local store.
I only had to get my wallet out today at the market, but that was to buy an old-fashioned apple pie, so I didn’t mind using an antique payment method.
I am looking forward to the day when wallets are things you see in costume dramas, though…
It’s an embarrassingly long time since I last visited Cambridge Botanic Gardens. Probably measurable in decades.
And that’s a pity, because it’s walking distance from my house and, as I discovered again today, it’s really a very pleasant spot.
From this interview with Tom Maudlin…
It’ s easy to prove that a ham sandwich is better than heaven, because:
I know, I keep taking photos of it, but, hey…
Pretty clouds today, stretching as far away across East Anglia as I could see.
They’re filming the new season of Grantchester in, well, Grantchester, at the moment. I wrote last year about spotting a favourite tree in one of the episodes. Well, it must have been a good location, because they were setting up for filming there again this morning as Tilly & I walked past.
Were I a true paperazzo, of course, I would have had something better than a zoomed iPhone camera with which to take the picture.
More importantly, it would not have been back in my pocket when, a few minutes later, the stars (James Norton and Morven Christie), in full costume and beautifully lit by the early morning sun, smiled their thanks at me as I stepped aside to let their LandRover cross the cattle grid. 🙂
Bird Hills, Ann Arbor, Michigan. This unusually-shaped tree changed its appearance completely as I walked around it, but this was my favourite angle. Click for larger image.
Here I am, almost visible on Google Streetview:
Or you can try to get a better view here if you’re curious! For future readers, it’s the April 2015 view…
I should have waved out of the window more vigorously when I saw the car, but then they’d just have blurred out my face anyway. (A wise precaution in any photo that includes me, for aesthetic reasons.)
The discussion below between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins is mostly about atheism and belief, and the degree to which the atheist viewpoint can or should be promoted.
But at one point, about 1 hr 3 mins into the video, Tyson talks about why he’s worried that there aren’t more scientists in politics. Everyone seems to be a lawyer. And his concern is not for the perhaps more obvious reasons of, say, ensuring sufficient funding for research. It’s that lawyers are people trained to be good arguers of a point of view, regardless of whether it’s the view they necessarily hold themselves.
I want people who know how to make decisions in Congress, and I’m sorry, but I don’t count lawyers among those…
When we have two scientists, if we disagree, it’s because one of us is wrong, or the other is wrong, or we’re both wrong… and we both agree with that fact — that those are the three possibilities that exist, and we’re both waiting for more or better data, to resolve it — so that we will one day agree, and then go out and have a beer.
Lawyers don’t… it doesn’t happen that way… any time I’ve seen lawyers in conflict.
Now, I’d be a bit more generous to lawyers than that, perhaps because I’m married to one! Good lawyers are at least trained to examine all the possible arguments, which is a very valuable skill, not taught to everybody. In some ways, I think, they’re almost scientists. But this doesn’t change the fact that, at least outside the academic sphere, they are usually exploring these possibilities on the behalf of a client, so they’re looking to turn their awareness of the other arguments into a reinforcement of a predetermined point of view. This makes them effective, but undesirable, politicians.
It’s nice to think that, in theory at least, good scientists would be better…
Well, I’m back home from Michigan, enjoying the more moderate temperatures of the UK, and some real marmalade, after a two-week absence from both.
I’m also back in the world of hard water, and was pondering this as I squeegeed our shower cubicle this morning, as I do every day, to reduce limescale build-up. I’m sure that that clever inventor Mr Dyson could come up with something to save me having to go through this rigmarole. Perhaps some kind of induced vortex which would pull all the water drops back towards the plughole so that they wouldn’t hit the walls of the cubicle — or perhaps even render those walls unnecessary.
Alternatively, maybe something like the Airblade technology could blast the water droplets off the walls before they had a chance to evaporate? And then also dry me as I stepped out of the door?
Over to you, Sir James…
There’s an old saying:
If you’re not a communist at the age of 20, you haven’t got a heart.
If you’re still a communist at the age of 30, you haven’t got a brain.
I’ve always liked this quote, and have wondered about its origin since I first heard it. Now, thanks to the web — invented when I was about 25 — I can find out. It turns out to pre-date communism by some time, at least as a rhetorical device.
It was said about republicanism by François Guizot, the French Prime Minister in the mid 19th century, whose childhood had been during the Reign of Terror.
Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
It was later adopted by Georges Clemenceau, who substituted socialiste for republicain.
But, Fred Shapiro points out, one could argue that even Guizot was pipped to the post by John Adams, who said something similar, though not as elegantly, in 1799:
A boy of 15 who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at 20.
Adams missed the heart and head distinction, though, which I think is important: it captures the sometimes misguided fervour of youth and the wisdom that comes from experience (or, others might say, the conservatism that comes from age).
Of course, I still prefer the ‘communist’ version, but that’s because of when I grew up. I wonder what variations will be popular in 50 or 100 years’ time?
© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser
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