tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post6483433105597977607..comments2024-03-29T05:24:12.453+00:00Comments on call me ishmael: WOTSONTELLY. THE SOUND OF ONE MAN FLAPPING. THE SECRETS OF QUANTUM PHYSICS, PERFORMED BY JIM AL KAHLILI, BBC4call me ishmaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-55405483483643616282016-11-16T06:10:29.575+00:002016-11-16T06:10:29.575+00:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Bloggerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07287821785570247118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-53650261573266218802014-12-13T00:17:42.983+00:002014-12-13T00:17:42.983+00:00Yes, I think that Colin probably saved a lot of pa...Yes, I think that Colin probably saved a lot of painand time in the long run.<br /><br />So I have found a copy of said book, Mr I, and I have an old unplaned board of some orange or light red stuff that has been hanging around a decade or more looking sullen - too small to be useful but too big to throw away. May have to make it a strap-seat but there should be enough for one of those simple straight-up-and-down jobs. Maybe one last heave and we will be there. I'll let you know if anything sound emerges. mongoosenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-28432141134773398032014-12-12T10:40:18.746+00:002014-12-12T10:40:18.746+00:00I know the feeling well, mr jgm2. It is an everyda...I know the feeling well, mr jgm2. It is an everyday story of grammar school folk, yours and mine, of assuming our nascent mastery of all Jack's trades, if he can do it we can do it. Often, that is the case - I can't do plastering but I can lay floorboards and make skirting boards better than most builders/floorers; I can't do lead flashing but I hired an aerial platform, went up forty feet and did; that was twelve years ago and the chimney-stack is still as sound as a pound, needs must. A former jumbo-piot I knew taught himself plumbing and electrics and he now does it at genius level. On the other hand, we are currently replacing thirty-odd wooden windows with uPVC and using a proper tradesman; he knows exactly what he's doing, not only how but why, I could never do that, well, maybe I could after a few years at it but not off the top of my head.<br /><br />I don't know which came first, the decline in trade skills among so-called tradesmen or the ascent of Barry Bucknellism - DIY - but what I do know is that both of the old houses which we have owned have been mutilated and endangered by the dab-hand of DIY. We have a sparks coming in the New Year to do a partial re-wire and change the boards, then, after twelve years, we may have undone the damage caused by the previous owner, a Master Mariner with whom I would never set sail.<br /><br />It is a big subject, to which we should return, DIY, renovation,loft- conversion and extension; the Awful Coming of the Knockers-Through.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-38393572896455557992014-12-12T10:19:30.745+00:002014-12-12T10:19:30.745+00:00Aye,money borrowed into existence, mr yardarm, pix...Aye,money borrowed into existence, mr yardarm, pixcillated usury, Jesus'd be viral-attacking the servers, the laptops and the ouija-phones, all along the Information-Super-Highway-To-Hell.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-21729598500731611282014-12-12T10:13:09.696+00:002014-12-12T10:13:09.696+00:00I am afraid that nothing of that programme resonat...I am afraid that nothing of that programme resonates with me, now, just a few days later, mr bhs; I( was just so irrutated by the presenter and by the theatricality of it all. I will try to watch the next episode but I fear the worst.<br /><br />Consider yourself lucky to have that woodworking memento. It took me years, to get those souvenirs, and I don't know how they slipped away from me. I have nothing treasured from before, nothing.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-37032846567397631942014-12-12T10:08:15.313+00:002014-12-12T10:08:15.313+00:00That's how it goes, mr mongoose. I used to giv...That's how it goes, mr mongoose. I used to give chairs to my old friend Colin, who did some work for me, Just fix that stretcher, eh? I'd see him a few days later and the chair was in pieces, completely disassembled; Colin, I only wanted the stretcher doing. Never made any difference to Colin. If it was a chair it had to come apart. I grew to love him for it.<br /><br />We have a two hundred year-old Windsor - actually Lancashire, elm, with a fiddle back - armchair, one of the slats came out but I just managed to force it back in and there it stays, without glue, God know what would've happened if I'd glued that one and not the others, whole thing be in splinters, I should think.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-58538361966844632802014-12-11T21:27:30.716+00:002014-12-11T21:27:30.716+00:00" Just like QE money ". That's it, M..." Just like QE money ". That's it, Mr Ishmael. I look at dosh juggling with quantum terms I`ve picked up from programmes like that.<br /><br />Governments can`t create money. Until the Great Tits up of `08 when they can and did by the billion in great haste. From nowhere. Just to bail the City out. <br /><br />These particles that are also waves; like a bank that had assets when it came to bonus time and when they were demanding light touch taxation and regulation. And became debts in the Great Tits Up when Gordon and Gideon tipped us up to pay for them.<br /><br />And LIBOR, that money that was everywhere, circulating among the banks, giving them liquidity. Until it wasn`t and guess who had to sub them ?<br /><br />The conventional view of it is like Einstein`s: this deficit/debt is real and has to be paid for: by us. Mine is the Bohrs like view: its fucking bollocks.yardarmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08700165830593026578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-51176095392939119822014-12-11T18:41:14.105+00:002014-12-11T18:41:14.105+00:00some telltale error, recorded in the wood though k...<i>some telltale error, recorded in the wood though known only to the builder</i><br /><br />That's certainly true of anything I turn my hand to, Mr I.<br /><br />Marius, the Romanian plumber, got a bit enthusiastic putting in the new bathroom and the little recessed thingy my wife wanted to stand the soap and shampoo on instead of screwing those annoying holders to the tiles. Partition wall, single course of bricks. Hammer, chisel. Long story short he bust through the plaster on the other side and split the wallpaper. However we didn't notice until he was long gone and we took the mirror which happens to be on the other side off the wall.<br /><br />Ahhhh, fuck it. Okay, no problem, we have some of that paper left, I'll just replace it. Off with the paper, off with the plaster. Of course it's not just a small area of plaster is it? Take off one piece and there's the next loose piece. A square metre of wall to plaster before you know it. Fucking thing sagging when you apply it. etc etc. Sanding. Replastering. Filling.<br /><br />To be fair to myself it looks okay now and nobody would the any the wiser but I know where the defects are. The paper cut 1mm too short. The mismatch with the existing paper. Fucking well haunts me it does.<br /><br />But not enough to tear it down and start again.<br /><br />I fucking well hate starting anything for exactly that reason. <br /><br />You think to yourself 'I'll ask the chap whose installing a new aerial to remove the redundant satellite dish. Just because my wife (fair enough) didn't want it blighting the house', The tiniest little job and before you know it, the plaster is curling back from the bolt holes and falling off and you have rain running down the back of the plaster into the house, paper coming off the fucking wall and you're chopping out plaster and repainting the entire outside of the fucking house. <br /><br />Turns out that underneath all that old paint and plaster the flashing wasn't chased into the fucking joint. What cunts eh? My dad would have fucking well killed 'em if he could find the bastards who did such a half-arsed job.<br /><br />Managed to break a couple of sealed units for good measure too. I think sanding the old paint off allowed the frame to dry out and shrink or something and it broke the fucking things without anybody being anywhere near them. Heard one of them go.<br /><br />Nothing is ever as easy as it looks.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-78844095326647047862014-12-11T17:44:28.998+00:002014-12-11T17:44:28.998+00:00"All and Everything" written by George ..."All and Everything" written by George Gurgieff is a treasure worth reading, and having if you can find a copy.<br />It is full of unbelievable truths.Alphonsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-75409934191584598492014-12-11T14:25:01.777+00:002014-12-11T14:25:01.777+00:00The Secrets of Quantum Physics was indeed a disapp...The Secrets of Quantum Physics was indeed a disappointment, not at all up to the standard of his previous documentaries.<br /><br />Do I remember correctly that Dr. Al-Khalili attributed soft shadows at the macroscopic scale to quantum physical processes?<br /><br />A least the subject matter was inherently interesting. The fact that the diffraction grate experiment produces the same interference pattern with single photons was most thought-provoking, can't make head nor tail of it.<br /><br />I hope the later episodes are better thought out.<br /><br />Wood is a beautiful material. An entire secondary school woodworking class produced only one item, a picture frame, which I still have. It is not especially well made, yet I would not chose to part with it. It is almost certainly the only thing I do still posses which dates from that period.<br />blackholesunsetnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-47343530600998478512014-12-11T13:25:07.274+00:002014-12-11T13:25:07.274+00:00"How a chair works?" Jeez, Mr I, we'..."How a chair works?" Jeez, Mr I, we'll be here for weeks with that one.<br /><br />It doesn't help, of course, that my first foray was to fix my old windsor rocking chair which had started to explode. Instead of tracing the trouble back, I tried to kill it with lots of glue and a big fuck-off clamp. A chair that rocks being the perfect way of testing the sympathies of the chair within, this did not go well. It took me a while to work out that - everything being physics - the clamp was working against me and just pushing the problem down the line, and hiding it a bit more effectively. But what can you do with the slow-witted but wait, eh? For a further while then all was kept under control with a dressing gown cord - rigging for chairs - and by screwing around with that we got the stresses evened up and finally we had peace. I then crept up and glued the bugger while it wasn't looking. Cord back on to dry and there we are. <br /><br />I now often clamp stuff up with parcel straps - self-correcting and self-evening clamps for butchers. You heard it here last.mongoosenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-84631933335921000212014-12-11T09:31:40.813+00:002014-12-11T09:31:40.813+00:00It has always been one of my self-exculpatory maxi...It has always been one of my self-exculpatory maxims - the man who never made a mistake never made anything.<br /><br />Every time I look at a chair I think, how does that work, for up to a point, the more weight you put on it, the firmer become its joints.<br /><br />Maybe the way to understand chair making is to take a mallet and completely knock one apart and put it back together again, with hot fish glue from the glue pot and inner tubes.<br /><br /> The first known chair was a joint stool, a piece of fallen tree trunk with three short branches protruding which, inverted, could be sat upon, raising man's arse from the cold, hard floor, one of those techno-nature collisions which have shaped us, the rolled log led to the wheel, the rock led to the hammer, the jawbone to the saw and so on.<br /><br />All cosmology, I suspect, is bollocks, the Creation being fleetingly felt only by the new-born infant and then subsequently and swiftly overladen and confounded by language, forever and ever, Amen. In the beginning was the word.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-17915371601470140532014-12-11T02:31:03.667+00:002014-12-11T02:31:03.667+00:00I will gladly seek out the book. I like the Shaker...I will gladly seek out the book. I like the Shaker chairs but I have tried making chairs more than once over the years and I am crap at it. Firewood. Patience and precision and more feeling for the material than a mudplugging tinker possesses may be the problem.<br /><br />The multi-universes thing strikes me as bollocks. (Technical term.) We are just peering ever more closely at ever smaller "things". It will all be fine - until the next layer of the thinning onion presents itself. It's the trying that is the point rather than the knowing - or the chairs to sit on.mongoosenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-8835790617985839662014-12-11T00:57:14.958+00:002014-12-11T00:57:14.958+00:00I'll do that, mr mongoose, as long as you orde...I'll do that, mr mongoose, as long as you order Moser's book; if it was written for one person in the world that person would be you, the Zen of engineering, the poetry of the Creator, the skill of hands and eyes, too soon coffin dust; the futility of us all, stumbling about, trying to find reason, make sense with our shavings and scrapings, our sawings and sandings, our frettings and fixings; our stains and varnishes and waxes. Was it WH Auden said, Embellishment, all is embellishment? He was wrong, whoever he was, embellishment comes at the very end. At least, it used to.<br /><br />Yes, it is the non-unmderstandability of QP which I always liked. Maybe mr mike has a view.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-21035816151974180442014-12-10T23:50:00.218+00:002014-12-10T23:50:00.218+00:00One day a goodly few years back when the lad was w...One day a goodly few years back when the lad was wee his grandad bought him a kid's toolkit thing with a few bits of wood. And therein was this maybe half-size-and-a-bit claw hammer. To cut a long story short, it is now my mini claw hammer. I'll be sure to mention it all, Mr I, next time I'm at confession.<br /><br />The madness which begins with Q but which can now end with all sorts of -ics was as clearly explained as it can ever be by old Feynman back in the black-and-white day - in his messenger lectures at Caltech. (They're on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja0HSFj8Imc" rel="nofollow">youtube.</a>) As I believe I may have shared here before, it's all anyone needs to know who doesn't have their own physcis lab in which to hang out. Feynman had a bit of Moser about him too, using short words where long ones wouldn't do, and playing drums in strip clubs all the while generally being unhealthily human for a mad scientist. "Nobody understands quantum physics."mongoosenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-61002920157549546382014-12-10T23:20:10.248+00:002014-12-10T23:20:10.248+00:00It has puzzled me, too, your majesty, since I read...It has puzzled me, too, your majesty, since I read it at thirteen. I tried it again about five years ago and found it too bleak, too upsetting; I put it on the apocalypsian shelf to try again, after a while, maybe soon, now.<br /><br />There used to be a healthy, literary interest in apocalypse, here and in the States and I can too easily visualise Ruin's Wilderness; high tides and strong winds might bring it; a stolen nuke or bugbomb; the continued financial incompetence of our masters, some super-Ebola plague. My young friend, stanislav, used to counsel the keeping of, at the very least, a small forest of sharpened sticks, dipped in poo, some stones and a crate or two of Comrade Molotov's Cocktails. He had also read Liebowitz.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-16219934512283799862014-12-10T23:01:04.467+00:002014-12-10T23:01:04.467+00:00A Canticle For Liebowitz - a book that puzzled me ...A Canticle For Liebowitz - a book that puzzled me when I first read it at the tender age of about thirteen. I remember that I was particularly shocked when a fine mind was wiped out by a casually hurled lump of rock ... I read it again last year and was blown away. The parallels with our own "maggots of corrupted texts" laid bare for all who would see.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Caratacushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03676339602955090535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-36476625731485126642014-12-10T22:11:51.225+00:002014-12-10T22:11:51.225+00:00Yes, I remembered your praise of Jim and I am glad...Yes, I remembered your praise of Jim and I am glad you agree.<br /><br />Should have been so much better, mr bungalow bill, could have stirred a benign whimsy in all who follow popular science or prompted an outbreak of WhatTheFuckism among those imperilled by uncertainty, should have rattled our KnowItAll cages, good and proper and made us laugh out loud. A wasted opportunity.<br /><br />I am too old to be anyone's apprentice but if I wasn't I'd be Moser's. <br /><br />Don't know if he's still alive, actually, but he'll be around while I am.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-18680620174890163492014-12-10T22:03:47.420+00:002014-12-10T22:03:47.420+00:00I grant you, mr sg, that olivier is preferable to ...I grant you, mr sg, that olivier is preferable to that Geordie git on Big Brother and on all the copdocs but he has a sonorous, magisterial inflection which is a bit arch to my ear, here, in the presen; a bit like Huw Welshman, nausing all over the WW1 feast, as though we need stars, our betters, to orchestrate our emotions for us.<br /><br />It doesn't detract from WAW, it just seems a stagey mellifluosity now redundant, outdated, if superior in its day.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-22011722690173043632014-12-10T21:52:37.603+00:002014-12-10T21:52:37.603+00:00It was a staggering horror, a sloppy shitfest of p...It was a staggering horror, a sloppy shitfest of patronising, ill-written garbage. I've seen him doing other stuff, a programme on entropy, which was excellent so Christ knows what happened with this shambles. Producers probably and, as you say, Jim imagining BAFTAs.<br /><br />That writing from Moser is lovely. It's what we've said before: there is little craft now, no touch, no awareness of what may be brought forth from apprenticeship and patience and a humble understanding of ourselves in the world. Bungalow Billnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-33327281933203003502014-12-10T20:24:45.106+00:002014-12-10T20:24:45.106+00:00Regarding Oliver, my ears must be old Mr I - to me...Regarding Oliver, my ears must be old Mr I - to me his voice lends gravitas and authority to the production. I looked up Issacs on the Wikipedia thing - apparently he threatened to throttle Michael Grade, when handing over Channel 4, if he betrayed its original remit. Pity he didn't carry it out!SGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-40964806024629707172014-12-10T20:09:35.116+00:002014-12-10T20:09:35.116+00:00Such a ponce, Portillo, a good example of Telly...Such a ponce, Portillo, a good example of Telly's self-degradation. The World At War was amazing, the only star, apart from Death, being Olivier's voice, hammy-sounding to modern ears but then earnestly proper.<br /><br />Jeremy Isaacs went on to something in opera, didn't he, television's loss; was it that porno/music hall cretin, Grade, succeeded him at Channel Jon Sox? call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-6866349543543840142014-12-10T19:48:12.050+00:002014-12-10T19:48:12.050+00:00I admire those with real practical skills Mr I. As...I admire those with real practical skills Mr I. Aside, for some strange reason, the art of bicycle maintenance I have none. My hands - fucking useless - everything they touch turns to dust. Frank Spencer eat your heart out.<br /><br />I agree with you about most modern TV science and history programmes - mostly fronted up by self promoting gabshites masquerading as 'experts'.<br /><br />I am not sure why these 'presenter' led productions dominate. The magnificent 'World at War' eschewed them altogether. I suppose Kenneth Clark was the start of it, with 'Civilisation', albeit that he looks like a giant amongst pygmies when compared with most of the 'modern' efforts. That said, the bill of fare on TV was so bad last time I looked at it that I found Portillo's poncing around Portugal on his Grand Continental Railways, clutching his Bradshaw, good infotainment. I must be sick...SGnoreply@blogger.com