Tony Kane

Grauniard

Tony Kane, who has died aged 80, was an artist, teacher, editor and community campaigner and one of the best-known figures in Wimbledon, south-west London. There he created the arts magazine Time & Leisure and set up the Wimbledon BookFest, an annual literary festival for the public and schools. He saw the creativity within everyone, and developed opportunities for both young and old to participate in the festival through story writing, plays and film.

Fiona (Icons passim) has written an obituary for Tony. Time & Leisure's offices are next door to mine and he often used to stop in for a chat. Here is a random example from three years ago. He was a gent and will be sadly missed.

Parliamentary Pub of the Year: The Four Elms

The winner of the Parliamentary Pub of the Year is The Four Elms @TheFourElms #ParlipubOTY pic.twitter.com/91L5EZMmO9

— ParliPuboftheyear (@ParliPubOTY) January 15, 2019

I have never previously heard of the Parliamentary Pub of the Year, but the Four Elms where we sometimes take Dad on furlough from Belle Vue has won it, so congratulations.

A voice inside is channelling Alvy Singer from Annie Hall, "What's with all these awards? They're always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler." but I am trying to quell it.

The Infinite Monkey Cage

John, my brother was up in London on business and stayed at mine last night. Over an evening's conversation, he recommended Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage.

Witty, irreverent look at the world through scientists' eyes. With Brian Cox and Robin Ince is how it describes itself.

"Alexa, play the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast," seems to work for it.

Next Monday's episode will be The Origin of Numbers which ought to work for me as I am currently reading Turing's Vision: The Birth of Computer Science.

This weekend's achievements

IF YOU LIKED TOUGH MUDDER, YOU’LL LOVE THE LATEST OBSTACLE COURSE FOR ADULTS… NAVIGATING YOUR DEPRESSION

From the minds that brought you TOUGH MUDDER, the WARRIOR DASH, and SPARTAN RACE comes … NAVIGATING YOUR DEPRESSION — the latest in ultra-tough obstacle-course competitions for adults!

If you love an extreme challenge, then NAVIGATING YOUR DEPRESSION is the obstacle course for you. Forget what you’ve heard about those other races… participants in NAVIGATING YOUR DEPRESSION are given the ULTIMATE warrior’s task: just making it through a single goddamn day!

The second installment of our Manifesto Series is available for preorder. Orders will ship late January, 2019. Since the 2016 election, reading the news each day can send even the most placid...

Sound crazy?! It literally is!

But that’s not all: while trying to complete the course, our Serotonin Spartans will also have to deal with our world-famous obstacles! In Tough Mudder, those obstacles include the Mud Mile, Everest 2.0, and a barbed-wire crawl! In Spartan Race, you’ll face the sled drag, the seven-foot wall, and the Hercules Hoist! In NAVIGATING YOUR DEPRESSION, you’ll face our world-famous obstacles like PUT ON SOME PANTS.

The PUT ON SOME PANTS obstacle is a brutal test of will, so don’t worry: if you can’t manage to get into a real pair of jeans, you’ll be allowed to continue the race if you can at least put on a DIFFERENT pair of pants. Fresh sweats are at least… something! But that’s not all …

Once you’ve PUT ON SOME PANTS, there’s no time to relax! Hop the Unexplained Pain Partition, sprint up Restlessness Road, and you’ll run straight into your first WATER OBSTACLE! Specifically, the water is in a SHOWER, and the obstacle is you need to TAKE A SHOWER. As with all water obstacles, we have a crew standing by for emergencies, but also to shout encouragement, like, “Come on, man, it’s such a small thing, but it will make you feel like a new person. It’ll take five minutes. Please? For me?”

Skinflix

Netflix's Sex Education jocks and cheerleaders (raised in the Welsh valleys)

The high school campus is bathed in golden sunshine, the kids play American football on the lawns and varsity jackets are the cool uniform of choice.

Welcome to British school life according to Netflix.

Sex Education is a comic coming-of-age drama starring Gillian Anderson as a sex therapist and Asa Butterfield as her mortified teenage son. It is also an attempt by the US streaming giant to steal the BBC’s crown as the home of British-made entertainment.

The series was filmed in Penarth, South Wales, with a British cast and crew. But the first viewers of the show, which launched this weekend, were left baffled by the curious interpretation of the British education system.

Sex Education: a Welsh born icon. Well I never!

Bertrand Russell

Wikipedia

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense." Russell was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom.

In the early 20th century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism". He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. With A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system) and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.

Bertrand Russel: a Welsh born icon. Well I never!

Curiouser and Curiouser

🔴IF I WERE ODOI...🔵(Callum Hudson-Odoi Song Parody Bayern Munich Transfer)

282,501 views, only published yesterday.

The whole Callum saga gets more surreal by the day.

Kerala Literature Festival

Our new year starts with fireworks: a double-bill programme presenting the literature and culture of Cymru / Wales in Kerala and Maharashtra. We are delighted to have curated #GuestNationWales at the @KeralaLitFest with @walesliterature pic.twitter.com/nH3jAXbrCt

— LitAcrossFrontiers (@MakingLitTravel) January 4, 2019

I am a great lover of both Wales and Kerala, but the idea of Wales being the guest nation at the Kerala literature festival still sounds exotic and strange to me.

Come to think of it, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things was set in Kerala. That won the Booker Prize in 1997. My God I am getting old.

Events, dear boy, events

I have snaffled up tickets for Andy Fairweather Low and The Low Riders at the Hideaway on March 16th.

Also I went along the London Palladium Panto on Sunday. Julian Clary makes me weep with laughter. I am not entirely sure why, but he do.

Callumity for Chelsea? (yet more wordplay)

BREAKING: Sky sources: @FCBayern table a fourth bid for Callum Hudson-Odoi, matching @ChelseaFC’s required asking price of £35m. #SSN pic.twitter.com/CURRlx125X

— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) January 8, 2019

I make no apology for devoting so much space to the Callum saga. I wonder he will feature in the League Cup semi final away at Spurs tonight?

If and when he signs and gets the Bayern number 10 shirt i will probably tug on your sleeve again.

Not a dry eye in the house

Callumny (hiliarious play on words)

Here are Callum's highlights against Nottingham Forest yesterday.

See also Match of the Day discuss whether Chelsea's young star Callum Hudson-Odoi would be better off developing in the German Bundesliga after his impressive performance in the Blues' 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup.

This sort of thing no longer seems strange to me; just another day in the office.

artificial intelligence is entwined with state and corporate power

To save us from a Kafkaesque future, we must democratise AI - the talk I gave at the launch of the @AdaLovelaceInst is published in the @Guardian todayhttps://t.co/oFtvR0JOxw

— Stephen Cave (@stephenjcave) January 4, 2019

I think this is a great and important article. I won't quote from it or write a precis; take a few minutes and read the whole thing yourself

Happiness for Humans

I have been reading the book that the son and heir got me for Christmas. From page 170:

Was l like Colm at eighteen? Awkward, tongue-tied, badly in need of a haircut?

(A shower wouldn't kill him either, to be honest.)

Someone with many children, a former cabinet minister I seem to recall, wrote in his memoir that one is only ever as happy as one's least-happy child. It may have been the truest thing he ever said. Colm isn't unhappy exactly, but neither does he radiate the joy of youth. He is still, as he always was,a transparently decent person. He contains little malice or guile. I just want to shake him by the shoulders and shout, 'Come on, for fxxk's sake, Col, snap out of it!'

Whatever it may be.

Of course I learned a long time ago to keep my trap shut.

As William Nicholson had CS Lewis say in Shadowlands, 'We read to know we're not alone.'

Anturiaethau Alys yng Ngwlad Hud

Dad is waning again, though antibiotics (fingers crossed) should sort him out. Elsewhere in the circle of life, I am due a new niece Alys (Welsh for Alice) today.

Previously merely passive-aggressive, my new (stop-gap) phone has now escalated its relationship with me to abusive.

Type “God is” and let autocomplete define your theology.

Making my message to myself less specific

It seems that Chrissie Hynde wrote "I'll Stand By You" with Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, who have written many hit songs, including "True Colors," I'll Strand by You is a favourite song of mine, and Billy Steinberg's contribution to the "True Colors" episode of the Soul Music podcast in which he explains how Tom Kelly persuaded him to change the lyrics to make them less personal provides real insight, I think.

Here is what he says about working with Chrissie Hynde.

"Tom and I never had a publisher, we both published ourselves. Jason Dauman was somebody who, for a commission, was willing to provide some of the service that a publisher would. He once said to me, 'Who would you like to collaborate with?' and it was sort of an annoyance to me. I didn't take him all that seriously, but almost facetiously I said, 'Prince, Bruce Springsteen and Chrissie Hynde.'

I said those names because they were three of my favorite songwriters and he sort of took it seriously. He went off and I just thought, 'Well I got rid of him, didn't I.' Then a little while later he called me up and he said, 'Chrissie Hynde wants to write with you and Tom,' and I thought, 'Right.' So anyway, I get a phone call and this woman said, 'Billy, this is Chrissie Hynde,' and I thought somebody was playing with me or something. I couldn't imagine it, but then in a minute it was quite clear that Chrissie was on the other end of the telephone.

Chrissie is a very complicated person, a very no-nonsense person especially when she doesn't know you. She was a little intimidating on the phone. The butterflies in my stomach were fluttering so much I could barely speak because I love The Pretenders. She said she'd like to get together and write some songs with Tom and me, and I went, 'Woo Hoo!' She came to Los Angeles and she was so determined. She said, 'I want to write a hit.' Over a period of about two weeks Tom and I wrote a handful of songs with her. The first one we wrote together was called 'Love Colors Everything.' Then we wrote 'Night In My Veins' which was also a hit single, and we wrote '977,' 'Hollywood Perfume' and 'I'll Stand By You.'"

Ben E. King's song "Stand By Me" was a big influence on this.

Steinberg: "'I'll Stand By You,' like the other hits that Tom and I wrote, started out as a lyric that I had in a notebook. I had the title and the chorus lyric. Chrissie is a very, very strong songwriter in her own right. She's very ruthless, she would get out her pen or her pencil and I remember I was fascinated the way she would write in the notebook because she wouldn't write on the lines. I use a Mont Blanc fountain pen and I tend to write kind of neatly. She would just scribble across pages. Very few lines would fit on a page and they wouldn't stay on the line. I remember she would just take a pen and she would cross out any lines I had written that she didn't like, and usually the lines that she didn't like would be ones that were too tender or too poetic. She would toughen up stuff I'd written. On 'I'll Stand By You' she added lines and changed lines."

This was written based on the piano. Tom Kelly played the piano on the record.Steinberg: "I remember when we wrote it I felt two things: I felt one, we had written a hit song and I felt two, a little sheepish that we had written something a little soft, a little generic for The Pretenders. Whereas 'Night In My Veins' really felt like a great Pretenders rocker, 'I'll Stand By You' felt a little generic. I know that Chrissie felt that way too to some extent. I don't think she really entirely embraced it to begin with, but she certainly does now because when she plays it live, it's one of the songs that gets the strongest response. It's done really well for her and for us."

So now you know, and I have something to jog my memory about yesterday.

Same Old Same Old

Floyd Mayweather needed just 140 seconds to beat Japanese kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa in an exhibition boxing bout yesterday. Former five-weight world champion Mayweather, 41, was smiling during the short-lived contest in Tokyo as he floored the 20-year-old three times.

On Netflix, I watched the first episode of Sunderland 'Til I Die, an eight part documentary series following the Black Cats as they are relegated from the Championship after being relegated from the Premiership the previous year.

Not the most heart-soaring end to the year, and only the slimmest chance of Cardiff City v Spurs boosting my joie de vivre at half past five this afternoon.

How are things with you?

WHY ARE SCIENTISTS TELLING US THE YEAR MUST END?

McSweeney's

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.

My given name is Nicky, I come from Cardiff City, and I'm doing very well

29 Dec Pro14: Scarlets 5-34 Cardiff Blues

29 Dec Leicester City 0-1 Cardiff City 

26 Dec Leicester City 2-1 Manchester City

22 Dec Chelsea 0-1 Leicester City

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).

Is Science the Subject of Philosophy?

Steve told me on Boxing Day that I should add Kingston University to my list of organisations offering free public lectures.

I am now booked onto Catherine Malabou: Is Science the Subject of Philosophy? Miller, Badiou and Derrida on Thursday 17 January 2019.

I will be the bilious old man harrumphing from the back row.

‘FUMING RIGHT NOW’

Protestations to the contrary (Icons passim) it seems that I do often quote The Sun here when it comes to Callum.

Chelsea fans rage at Callum Hudson-Odoi being subbed off

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."

Certainly a firm fan favourite.

Capra Cinematic Universe

We watched It's a Wonderful Life at Anne-Marie's on Christmas Evening. I was forbidden from listing IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE: TOP NINE FAN THEORIES.

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.

Hard Candy Christmas

Hey, maybe I'll dye my hair

Maybe I'll move somewhere

Maybe I'll get a car

Maybe I'll drive so far

That I'll lose track

Me, I'll bounce right back

Maybe I'll sleep real late

Maybe I'll lose some weight

Maybe I'll clear my junk

Maybe I'll just get drunk on apple wine

Me, I'll be just

Fine and dandy

Lord it's like a hard candy Christmas

I'm barely getting through tomorrow

But still I won't let

Sorrow bring me way down

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.

Ghosts and Ancestors

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 am large, I contain pulchritude

MARIAH CAREY’S “ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS” AS WRITTEN BY WALT WHITMAN

by MAGGIE DOWNS

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!

"Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off"

Anne-Élisabeth Moutet

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.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

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.

Chalice featuring Belly

All together now:

Bangers in the building and they banging

Calm down bruh don’t panic

Hey hey hey, he he he

Smoking on the weed I got a chalice

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.

My music pulls me through.

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.

While I think of it, Radio 2's The Rolling Stones in Blue is probably worth a listen as well.



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.

My life in microcosm

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.

Deduce your own moral.

Where does the time go II

More Lewis (see Icons passim). Sometimes I feel as if everyone Ben ever met grew into an effective sports person.

Chelsea could cash in on Callum Hudson-Odoi as Bayern eye £25million bid in January

Current Bun

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.

half Dan, half Fish

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

Endgame

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 know this is beyond sad. Whatcha gonna do?

Deck the halls with boughs of holly

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.

Nobody owes nobody nothing.

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.

If you want more, more, more

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.

Tweet Charity

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

— Angela Barnes (@AngelaBarnes) December 9, 2018

I agree with this. Good idea. I would be happy for a charity to get my refund.

Can you help? pic.twitter.com/WlmNpiAoR1

— Wimbledon Food Bank (@WimbledonFB) December 10, 2018

I can't do this today but I think I can spare two hours on Thursday morning.

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

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.

The Loyal Opposition

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.

Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal
Gary Marcus
(Submitted on 2 Jan 2018)

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.

too hip for the room

I'm thinking of starting a version of Tinder for people my age; it's called carbon dating.

I made up that joke and I think it is pretty funny.

O2 be in England (gedditt!!)

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.

Torygraph

Transport for London

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?

You and AI

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.

The Book of Job

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.

Learn about the BT Hub Manager

The broadband connection we have put into Bronwydd Avenue doesn't seem to be working, and there is little I can contribute from up in London except to recommend looking at http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/57427/~/learn-about-the-bt-hub-manager.

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.

Man shot by police in raid at house in south London

Standard

A man was shot early today as armed officers swooped on suspected robbers in south west London.

Officers from the Met's Flying Squad assisted by firearms officers descended on a small residential street in Wimbledon shortly after 8am on Monday.

Witnesses claimed the suspect was shot in an exchange of fire with police after a stake-out outside a Sainsbury’s store.

The man suffered a gunshot wound during the pre-planned "proactive" operation.

He was taken by London Ambulance Service to a London hospital. Another man was arrested for conspiracy to rob.

This is just round the corner. The bus I took to New Malden on the weekend goes past the Sainsbury's in Haydons Road.

See also https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/2018/11/these-violent-delights-have-violent-ends.html and its links in turn; going to hell in a handbasket.

All the grocery news you can eat

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.

René Girard

On Monday, I went to Social Justice: An Evening with Alex Vitale and Gary Younge at the South Bank University. Why didn't I see you there, you lightweight?

Afterwards, on account of being a ponce, I wrote as follows to Rebecca who was also there with Steve:

I can't help but think that René Girard's thought could have helped clarify a lot of Alex Vitale's contribution to last night's event.

In particular, his concept of mimetic desire (https://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/#H2) goes a long way to explaining gang behaviour. and the scapegoat mechanism (https://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/#H3) underlies the policing reaction Vitale deplored.

See what I mean about being a ponce? Any road, if you need to catch up with Monsieur Girard  in a hurry, there is a convenient overview in the latest New York Review of Books. See https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/20/rene-girard-prophet-envy/.

Kirk out.

Start, score, assist, play all 90 minutes. What more do you want?

Callum Hudson-Odoi shines as Chelsea thrash 10-man PAOK but Maurizio Sarri plays down expectations, says the Torygraph.

Maurizio Sarri is an arse. And you may quote me.

Raising a quizzical highbrow

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.

A Welshman, an Iraqi and an African walk into a bar

Introductory Essay on the Pelagian Controversy

§ 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).

Slow Hand Clapham

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

— Clapham Picturehouse (@ClaphamPH) November 27, 2018

Can't make it tonight, but maybe one for a fortnight's time.

Interesting fella

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.

Gwdihŵ

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.

By way of explanation

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.

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

Being There

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Yep. I am back in Cardiff.

Jetts (I thought the major was a lady suffragette)

Jetts Colliers Wood is coming to Christchurch Road in December 2018!

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.

Conflict of Interest

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.

A Contribution to the Theory of Taxation

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.”

'crouch, touch, pause, engage'

I've taken to doing Hotpod Yoga on Saturday mornings when I am back in Cardiff. Booking up this weekend's session, I noticed that they are involved with the 'Quins.

I shouldn't be surprised given https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search?q=yoga+rugby yet this unlikely cross over never ceases to put a little more spring in my step.

The Kominsky Method

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.

You're in a Rut, You gotta get out of it

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.

We'll be in the last eight in group eight now see https://www.englandrugby.com/club-competitions/national-under-18-cup/fixtures-and-results/2018-2019/group/28425

A un vincitore nel pallone

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?

Myself: I suppose so, but I don't want to leave anything to chance. Besides that, in an age when so many people are at a loss to give life meaning and direction, Giacomo Leopardi is essential reading.

Longshot Kick De Bucket

We went mob-handed to see RUDEBOY: The Story of Trojan Records last night as part of the Doc'n Roll Festival.

It was playing at the Ritzy in Brixton. We met at Colliers Wood tube station at half past seven and had arrived twenty odd minutes later.

Why don't I make the effort to get over to SW2 more often?

Prodnose: Saltfish de pan counta a wait pan bread an butta

Myself: Yes, that must be it. God give me strength.

SWIFF as a shadow, short as any dream

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.

Where does the time go?

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 Machine - Bert Kreischer

Ben's mate Jonnie H played the audio of this story on his phone when we got back from the Wales game this weekend.

Bert Kreischer was on the Joe Rogan Experience back in August. It is strange how all these threads entangle outside mainstream media/

Still a hill to climb

Kevin's Hong Kong go beaten 26-9 by Germany in the World Cup Repechage.

How juice drink billionaire bankrolled Germany’s Rugby World Cup charge: Hans-Peter Wild got his money from Capri Sun and spent €20m to get the country to within three games of the tournament, is an interesting story.

Cyntedd

Ben and I went to see Mum in the Heath Hospital yesterday.

Because I am so puerile, cyntedd, which is apparently Welsh for concourse, is my new favourite word.

lucky 14

Ben, the Hendries and I are setting off for Cardiff shortly to see the Wales Australia game.

Australia have beaten us 13 times in a row, but hope springs eternal.

"The surgeon thought I had been slashed by a machete" OUCH!

https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search?q=dan+fish

The Midterms: What's it all about?

Wikipedia

Legislative branch

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.

50 Things No Man Over 40 Should Own

As I was driving home last night I found myself tapping my foot to this tropical club banger on Radio 1.

This morning I found out exactly what it was using https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/tracks/find/radio1/2018/11/06/5PM

That is all.

Repechage

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.

3 Blue 1 Browne

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.

Sunday is still rugby day in my house

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.

I can see from https://www.englandrugby.com/club-competitions/national-under-18-cup/fixtures-and-results/2017-2018/group/26013 that they were certainly in at the death (maybe there is a group thing I don't understand) and must be one of the best Colts sides in England.

All rather heartening.

These violent delights have violent ends

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.

See Dan Young RIP.
See Knife Crime.

It just seems to get worse and worse.

as we that are left grow old

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.

Big Balls Dickson

Michael Dickson on his 1st down run out of the end zone: "Yeah, I’ve got big balls. They call me Big Balls Dickson."

(via @Seahawks)pic.twitter.com/0PGgy7NLBT

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 28, 2018

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.

Orphy Robinson

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?

I Wanna Be Sedated

As Lorazepam is presecribed to the old man.

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Arguing machines

I watched the Joe Rogan Experience #1188 - Lex Fridman (or rather half, it's nearly three hours long) yesterday evening. Note to self: subscribe to Fridman's Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

The main purpose of this post though, is to share a couple of Boston Dynamics videos that Rogan referred to in passing during the discussion.




"Changing your idea of what robots can do." True dat.

Stop all the clocks

Mum's in hospital and dad is in a home. We had to move the clocks forward this morning in their empty house where time is standing still.

Billy the Seal

Why is there a statue of a seal called Billy in Victoria Park, Cardiff?

This is his (actually her) amazing story. pic.twitter.com/qtb7C1EiBI

— BBC Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@BBCWales) October 24, 2018

This is an automated post set up to launch itself upon an unsuspecting world while I am away from the interwebs in Bronwydd.

Fold the corner of this page

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.

Engel's Hedgehog

I had no idea when I wrote about Schopenhauer's poodles, that I was starting a series. A series that continues today with Engel's Hedgehog.

Volume 43 of Marx and Engel's Collected Works covers their 1868 to 1870 correspondence.

Engels to Marx 10 April 1868

Dear Moor,

.......... 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.

Pipe Dreams

One day, and that day may never come, I will do the Machine Learning Crash Course with TensorFlow APIs; Google's fast-paced, practical introduction to machine learning.

OFM Awards? OMFG!

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/oct/21/ofm-awards-2018-best-restaurant-hang-fire-southern-kitchen-barry

Old Rutlishains U18 16-13 Horsham U18

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.

What is Echo Connect?

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.

This could be just the job for the office. It seems to have a few teething problems that the moment. Perhaps I will leave it for a month or two.

Cardiff City 4-2 Fulham

A fine win for the City and they are out of the relegation zone. This is the first day of the rest of my life.

Chaos Theory

• 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.

And they're off

Wimbledon Bookfest is finished for another year. (Icons passim.)