I wait patiently, with no urgency. I have been granted all the time there is. I do not try to make anything of what I see. I hold no expectation or assumption that I know anything at all.
At the end of this month, just as we were getting used to the year 2018, scientists are telling us that we have to end it. They’re creating a whole new year, not-so-cleverly-named “2019,” without taking any poll, survey, or referendum. Now I know that it’s been a year of ups and downs, but did they even bother to ask the American people about it? No! They’ve been planning this for months and refuse to propose any alternatives, despite all the money and financial support given to them via government grants that OUR tax dollars pay for.
These scientists are just passing the buck, blaming an old Pope in Italy several hundred years ago, who decided that what’s happening way up in outer space should determine how we live our lives down here on good old Mother Earth. Together, they have literally given our rights away to alien forces. The more conservative calendars, the older ones that know better, don’t have the year abruptly stop at the end of December. But the calendar they tell us to use leaves absolutely no room for dissension. Just as the days are getting longer again and the sun is spending more time shining down on us, they want us to suddenly change the way we plan our precious time in that sun.
See also: Brexit. "Yeah, they say two thousand zero one nine party over, Oops out of time," as Prince would have it.
Cardiff City beat a Leicester City team yesterday in the Premiereship that was coming off successive victories against Chelsea and Man City.
A little later, the Cardiff Blues (with Dan Fish starting at 15) crushed Scarlets' hopes of setting a new Pro14 record with a thrilling bonus-point win in Llanelli that brought Scarlets' 26-match unbeaten home run in the league to an end.
I'm typing this in Gatwick waiting for Ben to arrive back from Orlando. I'll tell him he's a day late after such a good Saturday for the old home town (looks the same as I step down from the train).
The winger was brought on just before half-time only to be subbed off five minutes from time - but Maurizio Sarri later confirmed it was due to an injury
.........However, some eagle eyed fans were quick to notice Hudson-Odoi limp off holding his hamstring - while Sarri confirmed it was a hamstring problem the winger suffered.
One said: "Callum Hudson-Odoi is injured, calm down guys."
Another said: "Don’t know why some Chelsea fans are having a go at others about the Hudson Odoi coming off situation when we all didn’t know it was because of an injury in the first place."
1. George Bailey was dead the entire movie.
2. George and Mary are undercover Soviet agents
3. Mr. Potter is literally a “scurvy little spider.”
4. Bailey Building & Loan is built atop the Hellmouth
5. Young George Bailey didn’t stop druggist Mr. Gower from sending a boy poison; he stopped
him from sending Captain America serum
6. Bedford Falls is part of the Capra Cinematic Universe (CCU)
7. Zuzu’s petals are opium-strength poppy
8. George’s life would have been transformed if it had just not been for World War One, the Great Depression, and Christmas
9. “Old Maid Librarian” Mary would have actually been way happier than Mary Bailey.
Actually I am thinking of watching Five Came Back on Netflix to learn more about the Capra Cinematic Universe.
I think it is widely acknowledged that there is a Dolly Parton for every occasion. I'll be getting drunk on pickle backs as opposed to apple wine today but apart from that I think she has nailed post Noel Wednesday morning coming down.
Ben got me a book called Happiness for Humans as a Christmas present. "Part love story, part meditation on the role of AI in our society, Happiness for Humans by P.Z. Reizin is a fun, light romance that also happens to ask some important questions about what it means to be human-and what it means to be in love." Gosh. It might be a good book or a terrible book, but it certainly demonstrates that he has paid attention to what I am thinking about lately.
He also got me a plastic expandable thingummyjigger that you can us to bring four pints back from the bar. James Oakes - the world's leading gadgeteer - lent me his at a Ruts game earlier this season and I have lusted after it ever since, Chalk another one up to the Bomber's powers of observation. I am humbled. Springsteen
I'm gonna add this song to our set tonight. Alright, this is the final days of Patti's first pregnancy. And I receive a surprise visit from my father at my home in LA. Now he'd driven 500 miles unannounced to knock on my door, that's his style. So at 11 a.m. we sit Sunday dining room, and we're nursing morning beers, that's his style. That's my father's breakfast of champions. When, my dad, never a talkative man, right, blurted out, "You've been very good to us". And I nodded that, that I had, ya know, and uh, and he says, "And I wasn't very good to you". And, the room just, was, stood still. As to my shock, ya know, the acknowledgeable was being acknowledged, if I, if I didn't know better I would've sworn an apology of some sort was being made, and it was. Here in the last days before I was to become a father, my own father was visiting me to warn me of the mistakes that he had made, and to warn me not to make them with my own children. To release them from the chain of our sins, my fathers of mine and our fathers before, that they may be free, to make their own choices and to live their own lives. We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children's lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them, and we haunt them, or we assist them in laying those old burdens down, and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behavior. And as ancestors, we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way, and some transcendence. My father, on that day, was petitioning me, for an ancestral role in my life after being a ghost for a long long time. He wanted me to write a new end to our relationship, and he wanted me to be ready for the new beginning that I was about to experience. It was the greatest moment in my life with my dad, and it was all that I needed.
I do not want much this Christmas time There is but one thing I need. It is not a gift that can be placed beneath the holiday tree, The house is fill’d with merriment, I breathe the fragrance of the festivities, I invite my soul to celebrate. I do not require to hang my stocking Thereupon the fireplace My hair, my tongue, every atom in my body form’d from this air feeds the Yuletide fire and the very spread of my thighs proclaims noel. I would only like for my own—more than you could ever know— not this earth, which is only sufficient. No, I shall desire the huff of my breath, the constellations of my heart, the sound of my barbaric yawp as it strikes the goose down of the morning. And perhaps you, Though you shall assume that every atom of you was form’d by me. Who shall bring this to me? I need not Santa Claus! Divine am I! For I make my own wish come true. Clear and sweet is my soul, naughty and nice is my spirit. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, my stocking contains multitudes) I hear you whispering there O Santa Claus, O red hat—O jolly lips—O canes of candy, Ye who cannot possibly fulfill me. I am unfillable. No jolly old elf could make me happy. It matters not if it snows, Nor how long you wait beneath the mistletoe Each delicious moment I spend with myself is not a burden. (The elfin folk already know this to be true.) If I worship one thing you must know It cannot be found in a church, It is my tussled crown of hair! My beard like gander rear! The muscular fields of my back, the trickling sap of my girth. I sing only of myself! B’cause baby, all I want for Christmas is me!
Yes, you British drink too much, and I love you all the more for it
It wouldn’t be Christmas without the annual splurge of stories about emergency services steeling themselves to deal with “binge drinking Britain”. This year, the NHS has set aside £300,000 for “drunk tanks” over the festive season: specific areas where the irresponsibly plastered can check in after 23 Christmas Eve pints without having to add to A&E bottlenecks.
Still, in the spirit of holiday cheer, as a French native, I would like to make a case for British drinking culture. Not the paralytic, bare-legged, mini-skirted ladies slumped outside the city centre pub at the end of a heavy night, or the louts making a scene on the last train home, half-empty cans in hand.
No, I mean the drinking culture embraced by the vast majority of British people. You don’t know how lucky you are.
There’s the joy of arriving at a British friend’s house for lunch, and after journeying through hail, sleet and gridlocked traffic, being greeted with those magic words: “What you need is a stiff drink.” All the better when this is a G&T served English-style (equal measurements of gin and tonic, from what I can make out). The meal itself is always generously and unpretentiously lubricated with “whatever’s going”: wine, beer or buck’s fizz, a recipe for teary reminiscences, embarrassing confessions and endless laughter.
Then there’s your cosy, convivial pub culture, which ought to be listed as intangible heritage by Unesco. What could be more pleasurable than savouring a few too many dark ales while sitting by a crackling fireplace wreathed with tinsel the night before Christmas, or, sozzled on sherry, linking arms with strangers and bawling out the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve?
We French drink well – expertly, even – with a lot of showing off on vintages and terroirs and grape varieties. But we don’t really indulge to excess. This is not virtue so much as a testament to our obsession with looking sophisticated, and our determination never to let our masks drop. Life in France is about keeping up appearances, often at the expense of enjoyment.
At least someone French will miss us when the inevitable hard Brexit crash lands.
Ben and his mum flew out to Orlando yesterday to spend Christmas with Rayburn in Florida. They were due to depart from Gatwick with Virgin Atlantic at one in the afternoon, so I feared the worst after the multiple drone sightings that had brought the airport to a standstill.
In the end their flight was transferred to another operator and they ftook off from Heathrow at about quarter past three. I was amazed they got out of London at all.
When you think about the airport chaos and the recent O2 outage(Icons passim) it shows how vulnerable we are to failures in new technology.
Don't even get me started on the Spengler's-Decline-of-the-West disaster of my mobile phone giving up the ghost today. All I will have to do is buy a new one and transfer the SIM card but I feel that the bottom has dropped out of my world.
I was rather taken by Donae'O's Chalice ft. Belly when I heard it on the radio yesterday so I am sharing it above for your aural and visceral uplift.
I used to know a girl who was actually called Chalice. The good-humoured delight anyone of Jamaican extraction took in her name is how I know now that (deep breath):
A chalice, also known as a wisdom chalice or chillum chalice, is a type of cannabis smoking pipe used most often by members of the Jamaican Rastafari movement. It is a sort of water pipe with a hose, or drawtube, for inhaling; the water cools and filters the smoke and the hose provides additional airspace for cooling.
Come to think of it, Chalice featuring Belly would have been a good description of us as a couple; the relationship having predated my gym going days.
Soul Music (a series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact) is back on Radio 4 for series twenty seven (27!). Next up is "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" which we can hear on Boxing Day.
Finally, Springsteen on Broadway is out on Netflix. I watched about half last weekend and was enthralled. Then, and more by chance than by design, I was distractedly exposed to the rest as I was using the video to check and fix the broadband in Mum and Dad's on Tuesday night so I didn't give it the attention it deserved. I think I will take an evening over the holidays to do the whole two and a half hours of the show again.
Sunday marked the final day of a centuries-old tax of paying to cross between south Wales and south-west England. Charges on the M4 and M48 Severn bridges were axed on Monday.
Naturally then, on Tuesday, after a meeting in Telford I drove back to visit mum and dad in Cardiff on the A449 and crossed from England to Wales for the first time in my adult life, by something other than the now toll-free bridges.
CHELSEA look set to sign Christian Pulisic from Borussia Dortmund – and that could hasten the exit of Blues starlet Callum Hudson-Odoi from Stamford Bridge.
The 18-year-old is yet to make a Premier League appearance this season, and will be out of contract in 2020. Blues boss Maurizio Sarri looks increasingly likely to cash in on the youngster while he can.
The forward is reportedly a transfer target for Bayern Munich, who are hoping to have the same success in recruiting young English players as Borussia Dortmund and Hoffenheim.
I don't often quote The Sun, but it has to be said that Callum has come a long way from the Odeon with me and Ben.
I was on the office yesterday when I noticed that the Cardiff Saracens game was being shown live on Channel 4 and that Dan Fish had started, so I rushed home to catch it.
We lost but the Blues were winning at half time due to Dan's try a minute into the video above. You can go directly to it at https://youtu.be/UPbaAJR3fck?t=60
I bought a handful of tickets this morning for The Convert at the Young Vic, so that is where the official Paapa Essiedu Colliers Wood Stalking Society will be on January 17th next year.
Letitia Wright is in it as well, and as the last thing I saw in the theatre was Hayley Atwell in Measure for Measure, it has struck me that both these leading ladies are in the Marvel Avengers Endgame trailer that dropped just over a week (and over seventy million views) ago.
They are both blink-and-you'll-miss-it picture cameos, but I have done the leg work so you don't have to watch it with your cursor on the pause button.
I am due at the first Christmas do of the party season tonight.
I will try to be jolly but my hedonic set point is more along the lines what Ross Bullen is implying in his "Literary Alternatives To “Ghosting” At Parties". Please don't take it personally. I am pretty much like this with everyone.
ROBINSON CRUSOE-ING
Tell everyone you’re leaving the party to buy a bottle of wine and that you’ll be back in ten minutes. Board the nearest ship. Sail across the Atlantic and get shipwrecked on a desert island. Survive as best you can, living off the island’s meager resources. Meet a native, give him a new name, and tell him that he is your slave. Return to the party after 28 years (make sure to bring your new slave with you). As the hosts struggle to recognize your weather-beaten visage, tell them the story of your hardships and adventures. Also, tell them that you forgot to buy wine.
BARTLEBY-ING
Arrive at the party and say nothing. If anybody asks if you want to have a drink, say, “I would prefer not to.” If anybody tries to get you to answer a question about your job, say, “I would prefer not to.” Eventually, your dispassionate silence will make everyone so uncomfortable that they will just leave you alone in the host’s apartment. The police will arrive and haul you away to jail. Refuse all offers of food and starve to death. Become a metaphor for the human condition.
JOHN KEATS-ING
Die of consumption before the party starts.
MR. ROCHESTER-ING
Get to the party early enough to hide your secret wife in the attic. Once she’s safely locked up, start chatting with a nice young woman named Jane. Try out the brooding bad-boy approach — she seems to like that. Don’t say anything when your secret wife occasionally escapes from the attic and tries to attack Jane or set you on fire. Things go well until your wife burns the party to the ground, you are tragically blinded, and Jane blocks you on Tinder.
TIME MACHINE-ING
Excuse yourself from the party, go to the bathroom, and build a Victorian-era time machine in the shower. Travel to the year 802,701 A.D. and convince a dozen Morlocks to come back with you. Bring them to the party and introduce them to the other guests. Once the Morlocks have finished eating everybody, slip out the bathroom window, grab an Uber home, and catch up with The Great British Bake Off on Netflix.
EMILY BRONTË-ING
Die of consumption before the party starts.
FRANKENSTEIN-ING
Swing by the graveyard on your way to the party. Dig up a few fresh corpses. Defy the laws of God and man by making a living creature out of dead flesh. Once the monster stirs to life, freak out, run away, and just go to the party like nothing has happened. Eventually, the monster crashes the party, starts strangling your friends, quoting passages from Paradise Lost, and eating all the finger foods. Tell the surviving guests that you need to leave in order to chase the creature to the ends of the Earth, and also to buy more Doritos. Follow the monster to the Arctic, get stuck on an ice floe, and — just as you are about to perish — get rescued by a passing ship. Tell your life story to the ship’s captain, and eat the last of the Doritos while you lie on your deathbed.
EDGAR ALLAN POE-ING
Die in a gutter before the party starts, probably from consumption (with a hint of alcohol poisoning).
HAMLET-ING
This strategy is ideal for family gatherings. Tell everyone you are going to perform a play about your mother’s relationship with your new stepfather, Claude. Begin the show with a monologue that requires you to dramatically weep three times in the first five minutes. The party will break up before the second act, and you can go back to shitposting about Claude on Facebook.
INFINITE JEST-ING
Tell everyone at the party how much Infinite Jest changed your life. Trust us, nobody will ever start a conversation with you again.
Ben and I went to Creed II last night in the Odeon in Wimbledon. Good fun and a creditable addition to the Rocky canon. Standard adult tickets are £14.25 each though.
Afterwards, as is traditional, we went to Wahahaca. We had the Favourites set menu. Serves two: £17.75 each, £35.50 total, plus £4.10 each for two Coronas and a tip.
Thus, including the gratuity the evening totals about eighty quid.
I'm not moaning, it just put the stint I am going to try and do today helping out in the food bank in perspective.
The Bomber has passed his driving theory test at the third time of asking. I am about to do Hugh Grant's embarrassing dance from Love Actually around the office and then down the stairs outside.
Hi @O2 I’m a customer and I’d prefer to donate my outtage refund to charity. I reckon if even just 1 million of the 32 million customers you are having to refund were up for that something really good could come out of what happened. So how do we make that happen please? Ta
Cardiff City beat Southampton on the weekend, so we are fourteenth in the Premier League today.
All the teams below us - Newcastle, Crystal Palace, Burnley, Huddersfield, Southampton (obviously) and Fulham - lost. "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." as Gore Vidal said.
Watford (one above City but six points clear) are next up, 3pm on Saturday.
For all the background reading I have been doing on deep learning, I am still completely baffled as to how and why neural networks work at all. Perhaps I am just temperamentally unconformable with connectionism.
What I think I will do is start following naysayers like Gary Marcus and see what I think of their criticisms.
Although deep learning has historical roots going back decades, neither the term "deep learning" nor the approach was popular just over five years ago, when the field was reignited by papers such as Krizhevsky, Sutskever and Hinton's now classic (2012) deep network model of Imagenet. What has the field discovered in the five subsequent years? Against a background of considerable progress in areas such as speech recognition, image recognition, and game playing, and considerable enthusiasm in the popular press, I present ten concerns for deep learning, and suggest that deep learning must be supplemented by other techniques if we are to reach artificial general intelligence.
I was twigged to yesterday's O2 outage early doors yesterday as I got a call from my brother while I was still in the changing room after 7am yoga and noticed my phone's general distress.
London Bus electronic timetables, which rely on the O2 network, have been affected. London buses include a SIM-card which transmits to bus stops ahead, giving the arrival time of the bus. These have stopped working.
The network of Santander Cycles, or Boris Bikes, is also experiencing headaches. While users who have a subscription can hire out a one of the on-demand cycles, users trying to create a new subscription at one of the terminals are blocked, since these are also based on O2 connections
A TfL spokesperson said: “We’re sorry that customers are unable to use our Countdown screens at bus stops for live travel information and some Santander Cycles customers cannot hire bikes. This is a result of a nationwide O2 data outage. We are working with our service provider to resolve this as soon as possible.”
Uber affected
Customers took to social media to complain features of their smartphones had stopped working. Several Uber drivers reported on Twitter that they were missing out on trips and work due to the service disruption. The Uber smartphone app relies on mobile data connections to connect drivers to passengers.
What would have happened to all the autonomous cars in our promised brave new world?
Since I went to see Social Justice: An Evening with Alex Vitale and Gary Younge at the South Bank University, I have been more aware of the various series of free lectures that are available in the metropolis. This morning I have added the upcoming Royal Society events to Feedly via this RSS feed.
I can also see that I have largely missed the Society’s 2018 series: You and AI, a collaborative effort to help people understand what machine learning and AI are, how these technologies work and the ways they may affect our lives.
No matter I can catch up with the backlog on video, starting at the beginning with DeepMind's Demis Hassabis on its history, capabilities and scientific frontiers.
Almost exactly three months to the day (Icons passim) after falling and breaking her hip, mum is out of hospital. She is going to be in the Ty Enfys Care Home for the time being.
Just to keep me on my toes, however, the gods have arranged for one of my brothers to go down with sepsis.
If John can start up a web browser on his laptop and type 192.168.1.254 into the address bar he may be able to get connection status details that will help us get a better idea of what the specific issue may be.
I have finally cancelled my weekly vegetable box, it just seemed to get more meagre and more expensive all the time. I must have been signed up to it for about ten years. I remember signing up after it was on a stall in the Singlegate Summer Fair. Ben was in year three in primary school and he is eighteen now. I remember being converted to the cause as he was podding and eating broad beans as we walked home with our half price remaindered treasure.
There's an Aldi opening in Colliers Wood later this week on December 6th. Perhaps I will replace the box with their weekly Super 6 fruit and veg offers. I think John might have suggested this to me a while ago back in Cardiff.
I went to the Donmar Warehouse to see Measure for Measure last night.
I knew from the reviews that the production is built around a sort of high-concept #MeToo manoeuvre; the first half is a traditional, if shortened, 17th-century staging before the second half retells the story in 2018 with the gender power dynamics reversed
As I had left the house at six thirty in the morning to drive to Warwickshire for a meeting, come back to work in the SW19 office for the afternoon, and then gone straight to the theatre, I was so jaded I felt I could do without seeing the same story twice and decided to go home in the interval.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man though, in the event I was so gripped by part one that I stayed for the whole thing and thought it was great. I guess this means they must have pulled off what does sound, in theory, like an over-contrived conceit.
§ 2. The Pelagian heresy is so designated after Pelagius, a British monk. (Augustin calls him Brito, so do Prosper and Gennadius; by Orosius he is called Britannicus noster, and by Mercator described as gente Britannus. This wide epithet is somewhat restricted by Jerome, who says of him, Habet progeniem Scotiæ gentis de Britannorum vicinia; leaving it uncertain, however, whether he deemed Scotland his native country, or Ireland. His monastic character is often referred to both by Augustin and other writers, and Pope Zosimus describes him as Laicum virum ad bonam frugem longa erga Deum servitute nitentem. It is, after all, quite uncertain what part of "Britain" gave him birth; among other conjectures, he has been made a native of Wales, attached to a monastery at Bangor, and gifted with the Welsh name of Morgan, of which his usual designation of Pelagius is supposed to be simply the Greek version, Pelagio.)
I am minded to accept Pelagius as a Welshman whose given name was Morgan, anoint a 73rd Welsh Born Icon, and throw myself on the mercy of the court for identifying him as English in 2005(Icons passim).
Our bi-weekly Film Quiz is on Tonight (7pm for 7.45pm), including rounds on Judd Apatow movies and Christopher Lee & Peter Cushing! £2 per person, with a maximum of 4 per team. Cash prizes, Film related goodies, DVDs & Free tickets to be won! Come along! pic.twitter.com/cfRrC1bed3
Coffee in the Wood seems to be, to all intents and purposes, the Joe Allen's of SW19. Frankie told me yesterday that a regular called Russell Bentley is appearing as Chuck Colson in a drama-documentary called Watergate.
I have had a little nosey-parker at it this morning. Charles Ferguson, the writer and director, sounds like a might interesting fella.
Charles Ferguson is a filmmaker and writer. He is the founder and president of Representational Pictures, and the director and producer of Inside Job, winner of the 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and of No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, which was an Academy Award nominee as well. His latest film, Time to Choose, is the first comprehensive examination of how to address climate change and the bigger challenge of global sustainability.
Ferguson was originally trained as a political scientist. He holds a B.A in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT, where his research focused on interactions between high technology, globalization, and government policy. While conducting postdoctoral research at MIT, Ferguson was a consultant to the White House, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Defense, and several U.S. and European high technology firms.
In 1994, Ferguson founded Vermeer Technologies, one of the earliest Internet software companies, with Randy Forgaard. Vermeer created the first visual website development tool, FrontPage. In early 1996, Ferguson sold Vermeer to Microsoft, which integrated FrontPage into Microsoft Office.
After selling Vermeer, Ferguson turned to research, writing and filmmaking. He is the author of five books, including High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars. Ferguson’s most recent book is Predator Nation, which focuses on the roots of the financial crisis and economic inequality, and was published by Random House/Crown in May 2012. He has written for The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, and other publications.
Ferguson spent several years as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a director of the French-American Foundation.
Developer of Frontpage and Oscar winner. How's that for a polymath? Engagingly casual website as well.
We like a little tipple at Gwdihŵ, so we’ve stocked our back bar with a vast selection of rums, bourbons, whiskeys, vodkas, shooters and liqueurs, with new additions all the time, as well as large array of beers, ciders and ales, including a rotating selection from the Pipes brewery located just down the road in Canton.
We also have some great drinks offers every day including four cans of either Red Stripe, Strongbow, or Guinness, which you can mix and match, for just £12. It’s also 50% off drinks every Monday alongside our Gwd Mondays events!
During the daytime we offer a lovely selection of teas and coffees in decanters, along with Ciabattas to munch on. There’s free wifi access if you want to do some work, or board games to play, or just relax on the sofas and picnic tables in our lovely beer garden, with heaters to warm you through the winter and a roof to shelter you from the rain.
Gwdihŵ is a flourishing, friendly and relaxed independent space for alternative music on the edge of the city centre in Cardiff. Established in 2008, we’re a 100-180 capacity venue renowned for our cosy yet raucous atmosphere, diverse events programme and colourful exterior!
We pride ourselves on bringing the most diverse, eclectic, intriguing live music, cutting edge DJs & events to Cardiff. On our weekends you’ll discover a musical menagerie from live funk, afrobeat, jazz, electronica & hip hop to the finest in underground DJs from the likes of our finest promoters like Blue Honey & Hully Gully to move to.
The rest of the week we focus on bringing the finest in touring acts and local gems, with promoters such as All My Friends bringing an experimental amalgam of electronic & indie-punk, Juxtaposed putting on searing rock & Indie shows, Folk in the Owl’s Nest bringing intimate folk & acoustic music and much more.
The rugby/alternative music cross over scene still being (what's a good way to put this?) nascent. We discovered yesterday that Gwdihŵ's bar is a great place for a civilised drink on the way to an international at the Principality. Plenty of elbow room, while every other licensed establishment in the vicinity is stuffed to the gills with the great unwashed. Don't tell anyone else; our secret.
Offering all the latest state-of-the-art strength, cardio and functional training equipment, Jetts Colliers Wood will continue Jetts' philosophy of allowing members to workout on your terms, with 24/7 access, no lock-in contracts, capped membership to avoid overcrowding, small group training sessions and free onsite parking.
I might check this out. I think that my long term gym has been on the slide since Nuffield took it over from Virgin.
I can see from the England Rugby website that the Old Ruts Colts have got London Irish in the next round of the National Under 18 Cup. The Irish are a tall order, but it is a chance for revenge after they beat us in the semi-final of the County Cup last season (Icons passim).
The game is on February 9th which is the same day as the Italy Wales match in the Six Nations. Ben and I had planned to go to Rome for that, but I think the Ruts game may trump it. We will have to talk it over.
I'm a bit late to this 2017 party, but if Bill Gates, Jeremy Corbyn and Robert Shiller (professor of economics at Yale) all think that taxing robots is an idea worth exploring, chances are it is an idea worth exploring.
Years ago, I read a book called Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace, by Lawrence Lessig (Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard) that I seem to remember suggested that it would be a good idea for individuals to own information about themselves that they could license to organisations. A scenario in which your heath records, for example, would be yours even though you allowed the NHS to use them.
I have always liked that idea, and it has led me on to inchoate notions that perhaps it might be possible to address the looming problem of the power of Artificial Intelligence, by making these disembodied robots legal entities with responsibilities, and subject to sanction if they flouted them. Is that analogous to what Gates is saying above?
It is worth recalling physicist Michael Faraday's reply in the 1850s to William Gladstone, then British chancellor of the exchequer. Questioned about the practical value of electricity, Faraday answered: “One day, sir, you may tax it.”
I watched the first episode of this new Netflix comedy with Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas last night. For all that the reviews I have read this morning seem rather grudging, I thought it was great.
Following on from a very hard fought victory against last years semi-finalists Horsham RFC, The Mighty Ruts entertain Wasps RFC this Sunday at Poplar Road in the 2nd round of the RFU National Colts (U17/18s) Cup.
We won quite handsomely in the end. Thirty nine to twenty odd (the exact result escapes me). Tries for Ben and Jonnie, and the Wasps score flatters them as two of their tries came from our errors; a knock on from our full back, and a charged down kick from our outside half. Both our 10 and 15 redeemed themselves though so no hard feelings.
The face of glory and her pleasant voice,
O fortunate youth, now recognize,
And how much nobler than effeminate sloth
Are manhood's tested energies.
Take heed, O generous champion, take heed,
If thou thy name by worthy thought or deed,
From Time's all-sweeping current couldst redeem;
Take heed, and lift thy heart to high desires!
The amphitheatre's applause, the public voice,
Now summon thee to deeds illustrious;
Exulting in thy lusty youth.
In thee, to-day, thy country dear
Beholds her heroes old again appear.
Prodnose: Isn't that rather an over-egged reaction to the fact that the Old Ruts Colts are playing Wasps U18s in the next round of the RFU's National U18 Cup at the club lunchtime tomorrow?
SWIFF 2018 will be held at The Wheatsheaf, 2 Upper Tooting Road, Tooting, London SW17 7PG
Saturday 24 November, 11.30am-11.30pm
FREE ENTRANCE. NO NEED TO BOOK TICKETS.
I can't go because I am back in Cardiff for the South Africa game. You, however, have no excuse. Whether they would even let me in after 2016's shenanigans (Icons passim)is a moot point.
Here is an interview with Lewis on his graduation from the WP Rugby Academy in South Africa. Here he is with Ben on Bondy's boat in 2009. They met earlier that year when we all went skiing together in Kitzbühel. Ben was eight and Lewis was eleven. I wonder if I would even remember if I didn't write here every day.
The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Makeup of Congress
House of Representatives
The House currently consists of 435 voting members, each of whom represents a congressional district. The number of representatives each state has in the House is based on each state's population as determined in the most recent United States Census. All 435 representatives serve a two-year term. Each state receives a minimum of one representative in the House. In order to be elected as a representative, an individual must be at least 25 years of age, must have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, and must live in the state that he or she represents. There is no limit on the number of terms a representative may serve. In addition to the 435 voting members, there are 6 non-voting members, consisting of 5 delegates and one resident commissioner. There is one delegate each from the District of Columbia, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico.
Senate
In contrast, the Senate is made up of two senators from each state, regardless of population. There are currently 100 senators (2 from each of the 50 states), who each serve six-year terms. Approximately one-third of the Senate stands for election every two years.
Different powers
The House and Senate each have particular exclusive powers. For example, the Senate must approve (give "advice and consent" to) many important presidential appointments, including cabinet officers, federal judges (including nominees to the Supreme Court), department secretaries (heads of federal executive branch departments), U.S. military and naval officers, and ambassadors to foreign countries. All legislative bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. The approval of both chambers is required to pass all legislation, which then may only become law by being signed by the president (or, if the president vetoes the bill, both houses of Congress then re-pass the bill, but by a two-thirds majority of each chamber, in which case the bill becomes law without the president's signature). The powers of Congress are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. The Constitution also includes the "Necessary and Proper Clause", which grants Congress the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers". Members of the House and Senate are elected by first-past-the-post voting in every state except Louisiana and Georgia, which have runoffs.
Impeachment of federal officers
Congress has the power to remove the president, federal judges, and other federal officers from office. The House of Representatives and Senate have separate roles in this process. The House must first vote to "impeach" the official. Then, a trial is held in the Senate to decide whether the official should be removed from office. Although two presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton), neither of them was removed following trial in the Senate.
So now you know. That last paragraph explains a lot.
I went out for a drink with Kevin last night as he is back from the Far East.
It turns out that, among his various jobs and titles, he is Director of Coaching and Performance for the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union.
He is in Europe for the the Rugby World Cup 2019 repechage at Stade Delort in Marseille – the tournament that will deliver the 20th and final team to the Japan 2019 World Cup.
Hong Kong, Canada, Kenya and Germany will compete in a round-robin format event to be played across three match days on Sunday 11 November, Saturday 17 November and Friday 23 November, 2018.
Hong Kong play Germany at four o'clock on the 11th, Kenya at one o'clock on the 17th, and Canada at nine om the 23rd.
OK, so courtesy of this channel's series on linear algebra and neural networks I am close to understanding the scope of this technology as it was before the 2012 leap forward that is changing the world.
Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and Convolutional deep neural networks (CNNs) are still in my future but it is a start I guess.
Andy H told me yesterday that he ahd heard that Horsham U18s who the Ruts beat in the first round a fortnight ago (Icons passim) came third in the RFU National Under 18 Cup last year.
A 17-year-old boy has died after being stabbed outside a Tube station, becoming the second teenager to be fatally knifed in London within 24 hours.
It comes the day after a 15-year-old, named by police as Jay Hughes, was stabbed to death in Bellingham, south east London.
The killing marks the 115th homicide in the capital so far this year, of which 19 victims have been teenagers.
Officers were called to Clapham South Tube Station in south west London at 4.35pm on Friday, where they found the teenager suffering from a stab wound.
He was taken to a south London hospital, where he died less than an hour later, the Metropolitan Police said.
Clapham South is four stops - a nine minute tube ride - on the Northern Line from us at Colliers Wood.
Rayburn is 29 today. To put this in perspective he is just slightly older than Paapa who got a Bafta Breaktrhough Brits Award the day before yesterday.
I went to see the NT Live show of Allelujah! last night. Having spent so many weekends visiting my mum's broken hip and my dad's dementia recently and - for what it is worth - having sung with Bryn last weekend, I found it very moving. It proved you can wear your heart on your sleeve without being overly didactic or hectoring.
It's not just Ben's Old Ruts who like to run the ball from behind the try line then. It's good to see an Aussie starring for my beloved Seahawks as well.
Today (Icons passim)on my way back from Warwickshire I tuned into Robert Elms on BBC Radio London and was turned on to Orphy Robinson (of whom I have never previously heard). His cover of Golden Brown was played and he is doing a jazz version of Astral Weeks on the South Bank in November.
Last night my brother turned me on to the country stylings of Luke Combs and I was drunk-dialling Emmy Lou by the beginning of the fourth track.
Turned on twice in under 24 hours! What will the neighbours think?
Callum made his Europa League debut for Chelsea in their 3-1 win over BATE Borisov at the Stamford Bridge last night. He was on for half an hour after replacing forward Pedro Rodriguez on the 60th minute mark.
.......... Unfortunately, I have a death to announce to Tussy. The poor hedgehog ate a round hole in his blanket, put his head through it, and got so stuck in it that he was found strangled yesterday morning. Peace to his ashes, and BETTER LUCK TO THE NEXT ONE...........
Your
F. E.
The wedding was celebrated here with great festivity: the dogs had green collars, a TEA PARTY for 6 children, Lafargue's glass basin served as a punch-bowl, and the poor hedgehog was made drunk for the last time.
Marx to Engels 11 April 1868
DEAR FRED,
D'abord" the GENERAL CONDOLATIONS, and especially from Tussychen, about the departed RIGHT HONOURABLE HEDGEHOG.
It is a good thing that the opium prescription arrived today..........
In summary, Friedrich Engels had a hard drinking pet (the Right Honourable Hedgehog) that accidentally strangled itself, almost certainly after a night out on the tiles.
My cup runneth over, to the extent that I am just leaving the opium thing dangling.
When John and I (and other assorted family members) met Shauna in 2015 (Icons passim) the Hang Fire crew ran pop-ups and didn't even have their own premises.
Now, the Hang Fire Southern Kitchen, Barry - creole gumbo and Dolly Parton’s favourite brisket, served in the Deep South of Wales - has been voted by reader of the Observer Food Monthly as their restaurant of the year. What an amazon achievement.
I thought Cardiff City's win this weekend couldn't be outshone this weekend, but Ben and the Old Ruts nail-biting win over Horsham U18s in the RFU's National U18s Cup yesterday managed to do it.
With Echo Connect and a compatible Alexa-enabled device, you can ask Alexa to call anyone using your home phone service—all you have to do is ask. Echo Connect uses your home phone number, whether landline or VoIP, so friends and family will still recognise the call. Answer your home phone on your Echo from across the room so you can easily talk to anyone hands-free when you’re busy making dinner or away from the phone.
The incendiary One for The Road is Pinter at his most terrifying: a ruthless government official interrogates a dissident and his family, but is the torturer more tortured than his victims?
The New World Order explores how the abuse of power is legitimised in the name of freedom and democracy, as two brutal interrogators prepare to inflict their terrible punishment on a blind-folded insurgent.
We are all off mob-handed to see the last night of Paapa at the Pinter tomorrow evening. When I booked the tickets these one-act plays seemed to have come out of a time capsule. In the wake of Kamal Khashoggi, less so - to put it mildly.
England U19s made it two wins from two games in October, with a convincing 6-2 victory over Macedonia at St. George’s Park.
The Young Lions are preparing for next month’s Euro qualifiers in Turkey and after an impressive 4-1 win in Portugal last Thursday, it was back to base camp for their final warm-up game.
And Keith Downing’s side certainly found their range, as first-half goals captain Callum Hudson-Odoi and a double from Stephen Walker set the Young Lions on their way.
Happy to see Wales beat Ireland yesterday and for Callum to score as well as captaining England U19. I don't recall him officially leading the team in a match before; it is all good.
The lost communities of Cardiff’s docklands are to feature in a new four-part tv series on ITV Cymru Wales.
‘Dock of the Bay’ examines the transformation of the city’s waterfront from Tiger Bay to Cardiff Bay. It also chronicles the history and demolition of Newtown, nick-named ‘Little Ireland’ and Lower Splott, a community that was built in the shadow of the giant East Moors steelworks.
The series celebrates the present day diversity of the Bay and goes behind the scenes of some of the area’s most beautiful buildings as well as capturing the daily life of the docks itself. It is presented by Adeola Dewis, who brought up her family in the Bay. She works with many local groups including the Butetown Carnival.
“The stories are very moving because they are about loss and change,” said Adeola.
“They are also powerful stories because they show how the spirit of those communities has endured.”
Mary Sullivan, Chair and co-founder of the Newtown Association is one of the people featured in the series. She was brought up in ‘Little Ireland’, an area close to Tyndall Street, to the south-east of the city centre.
“My grandmother had 42 grandchildren and 36 of them lived in the same street. So you can imagine there was never any shortage of playmates. We played a lot in the street. Of course, we didn’t have television so we had lots of street games. We were poor, but we didn’t realise that because everyone was in the same boat.
Dock of the Bay will be broadcast by ITV Wales at 7.30pm on Tuesday 16th October and will then be online at: itv.com/walesprogrammes
What with one thing and another, I have been neglecting my beloved Seahawks lately.
Neglecting them to the extent that I didn't even realise they were playing in London yesterday.
It was then a delightful surprise to stumble on BBC coverage when I got in and switched on the TV. They cruised past the Raiders almost as imperiously as the Old Ruts Colts had cruised past Dorking RFC earlier in the day.
1 Hear me your father, O children, and do thereafter, that ye may be safe. 2 For the Lord hath given the father honour over the children, and hath confirmed the authority of the mother over the sons. 3 Whoso honoureth his father maketh an atonement for his sins: 4 And he that honoureth his mother is as one that layeth up treasure. 5 Whoso honoureth his father shall have joy of his own children; and when he maketh his prayer, he shall be heard. 6 He that honoureth his father shall have a long life; and he that is obedient unto the Lord shall be a comfort to his mother. 7 He that feareth the Lord will honour his father, and will do service unto his parents, as to his masters. 8 Honour thy father and mother both in word and deed, that a blessing may come upon thee from them. 9 For the blessing of the father establisheth the houses of children; but the curse of the mother rooteth out foundations. 10 Glory not in the dishonour of thy father; for thy father's dishonour is no glory unto thee. 11 For the glory of a man is from the honour of his father; and a mother in dishonour is a reproach to the children. 12 My son, help thy father in his age, and grieve him not as long as he liveth. 13 And if his understanding fail, have patience with him; and despise him not when thou art in thy full strength. 14 For the relieving of thy father shall not be forgotten: and instead of sins it shall be added to build thee up. 15 In the day of thine affliction it shall be remembered; thy sins also shall melt away, as the ice in the fair warm weather. 16 He that forsaketh his father is as a blasphemer; and he that angereth his mother is cursed: of God.
Ecclesiasticus Chapter 3 pretty much covers the Cardiff situation at the moment. It is strange, I saw the 86 year old Humphrey Burton on Leonard Bernstein at the Wimbledon Bookfest last night and Mr Burton was still gracious and bright as a button.
Painted from Memory is one of my very favourite albums, so I must catch up with this BBC show. Note to self: I still don't seem to have come up with a satisfactory Alexa podcast subscription solution.
Thanks to existing EU rules this has been a standard part of the account takeover playbook for years, including by authoritarian governments who leverage physical control of one activist into rolling up their entire network. https://t.co/mitx5YzPwN
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) risks abuse by granting hackers a way to access more detailed information than ever before.
The rules allow consumers to download the information a company holds on them so they can move it to another service if they wish. Prof Yang said some of the largest organisations including Uber, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Google have been forced to add in a “super-dangerous” data download feature to comply with GDPR, which came into effect in May.
She said: “There’s more at stake when hackers get into accounts because they can now request all of your data, or they can request to delete your data.”
A hacker gained access to Yang’s Spotify account and her birth date, gender, postcode, mobile number, redacted credit card number and credit card expiration dates. Such information enables “jigsaw identification”.
I can confirm that Callum is not going through an "If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde" stage regardless of what you might see on FIFA 19
We came second in the Antelope quiz last night, so we have got a £25 bar tab for next week.
A fairly recent member of our team, presses a valve on his neck to speak, in a manner reminiscent of how I am sure I remember Jack Hawkins talking on Parkinson years and years ago.
I would never presume to ask him about it, but I have consulted the interwebs today.
He must have a tracheo-esophageal puncture (or tracheoesophageal puncture); a surgically created hole between the trachea (windpipe) and the esophagus (the tubal pathway between the throat and the stomach) suggesting he has had a total laryngectomy, a surgery where the larynx (voice box) is removed.
To speak with a TEP, you take a deep breath and then cover the stoma so that when you exhale, the air that would normally come out of the stoma is shunted through a little prosthesis (a TEP valve). The air goes through the one-way valve of the prosthesis, then up your esophagus, where muscle vibrations help to produce voice. You can either cover your stoma with your finger when speaking, or you can get a "hands-free" tracheostoma valve.
Would you be brave enough to socialise down the boozer competing to answer questions if you had a TEP? Me neither.
Only days ago (Icons passim) I was writing about how uncannily I an McKellen's King Lear echoed my poor reduced father. Then went to see him on Friday he was so furious that he all but paraphrased the Act 2, Scene 4 quote below.
I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall--I will do such things,-- What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be The terrors of the earth.
It was heart-wrenching.
My niece who did Lear at A-Level this year, said that Simon Russell Beale was very interesting on Lear's dementia and said there was an NT You Tube video I should watch. I wonder if it is the one below?
The stuff about nuclear families, extended families, and affluence bringing social isolation (just under two minutes into this is) interesting and relevant to things John has been saying to me lately.
Megan Abbott: A great entertainer! A great Humanitarian, and - since I see her with John Currence on Anthony Bourdain's show - my dear friend of 25 years...
Charles Aznavour is dead at 94. I saw him interviewed on TV not too long ago and he was still as sharp as a tack. I have always been astounded by the quality of his lyrics in English, Let's have the greatest ever Ageing-Curmudgeon-Confronts-Mortality song as a tribute.
"Hier Encore" in French, subsequently released in English as "Yesterday, When I Was Young", in Italian as "Ieri Si", in Danish as "Hvor tiden går", in Japanese 帰り来ぬ青春, and in Spanish as "Ayer Aún", "Eilen kun mä tiennyt en" in Finnish.
Normally collected on Tuesday every other week. The next scheduled collection is 09/10/2018.
Recycling
Normally collected on Tuesday every other week. The next scheduled collection is 16/10/2018.
Paper
Normally collected on Tuesday every other week. The next scheduled collection is 09/10/2018.
Food waste
Normally collected on Tuesday every week. The next scheduled collection is 09/10/2018.
What could be simpler? I was still in when they collected this morning. My carefully separated food waste and recycling certainly all got thrown in the same hopper.
I am not yet as vexed by this as Adrian. He produced a poem of protest he had written at the pub quiz last night. This is possibly over-egging the pudding.
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