Quite a view from our lovely room in the CBD.
And there is little pollution and no dust storm. Result.
Lucky clear night in Beijing
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Category Archives: Personal
Comfort class to Beijing
Very happy to get a “First Class seat with business class service” to Beijing today. Sounds like Cathay Pacific’s homage to “one country two systems”.
Yes, that’s my guest seat.
Agnotology – my word for the day
Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. There’s an interesting comparison with epidemiology (the study of how we know): agnotology is the study of why we do not know, recognising that it could be more than ignorance, indeed it could be an “outcome of a cultural and political struggle”.
People in the news
My mum alerted that some relatives were featured in Time Team recently.
Upton Castle is a fabulous building, which I was lucky enough to spend a day at a few years ago, and I’m chuffed for Pru and Steve that the castle and chapel are properly medieval.
Splendid science, in Time Team, as always: ”OK you can persuade me that’s an apse”, “her dress looks right for the period” = we can confirm it’s Margaret Malefant.
Separately, my circuit trainer turned up in the Guardian. Ahem.
Panoramas of Mars and London
Fabulous panoramas to spend a few minutes exploring.
Mars Panorama – Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 177 in Out of this World
Who knew our London house was so directly underneath Alexandra Palace (when viewed from the BT tower)? Click to view the extraordinary panorama of London.
Hong Kong feels tremors from earthquake in China
Hong Kong feels tremors from earthquake in China | South China Morning Post.
Yup, the building moved a little bit, but only for a second. It was over so fast I thought it might have been an odd heartbeat or something.
Armstrong
It’s funny how hearing it from the horse’s mouth makes allegations you were sure were factual more true. For me it also made it more shocking. Just astonishing that you can get so used to having pretty well everything work the way you want it to and control those parts that don’t. I guess we are seeing aspects of this in the Saville et al revelations in the UK.
It was a very honest interview, as far as I could tell, and well handled. It could have been very dull to hear a man to basically say “I’m sorry, I lied and I shouldn’t have” twenty plus times, but wasn’t.
The thing I absolutely hated about it was when the ad-men made it descend into two-Tweet exchanges:
- Return from messages
- O: When Y accused you about X, did you lie about X and seek to destroy Y?
- L: yes I did. I’ve reached out to Y and it isn’t sorted.
- O: do you regret coming back?
- Please view some messages.
Making cents of streaming music
Making Cents is a very sad article setting out quite how minimal the payments to artists can be from streaming music services. It’s a shame that these services are our preferred option for accessing music, because I’d like to reward the musicians if possible.
Authors still write books despite the Kindle, so there seem to be business models that work. Maybe we just haven’t found them for music yet?
Separately, well worth a listen to the marvellous LFK (Elizabeth Meister) in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis at the Carnegie Hall.
Modestly offensive
Some intriguing thoughts on causing offence and being offended.
- Ultra-orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with women they are not married to are being offered “modesty glasses” which blur their view in such a way that they do not fall over and yet they cannot see the (scantily-clad?) women they are trying to avoid.
- In Bangkok’s Grand Palace, as with other places, they do not like shorts and exposed shoulders. Rather than ban you, they lend you apparel they deem suitable.
- Airlines are considering child-free zones on planes. I’ve yet to have a flight really disrupted by children, but I know it is possible, and would probably choose such a zone if it existed.
I very much like all of these routes of minimising offence by either shielding the potential offendee from those that might offend them or helping the potential offender avoid creating offence in the first place without curtailing their rights or freedoms in any damaging way. Wouldn’t the world be a nicer place if we all worked this way?
Sidebar: I didn’t know that the practice of covering women’s hair was originally for the higher classes.
The sun sets in a different place during the year
Sunrise Analemma with a little extra shows pretty well exactly the pattern I see in Hong Kong. From our flat, during the summer the sun sets directly over Central and then gradually moves back over the Peak during the winter.