The Lair of the SlowFox

Overslept by 40 minutes today... kinda. I heard the alarm, and was sort of awake, but just lay in bed for... y'know, 5 minutes. When I checked the (super-accurate-to-1-millisecond-every-six-ice-ages-radio-synchronised-atomic) alarm clock '5 minutes later', however, it was 6.25. Gah.

Nonetheless, I still shaved, showered, walked Mali, got to work at the usual hour and all that. Still feel tired, though. Blech.

The washing machine at Castle Fox has gone on strike. I think the problem will be that the filter needs clearing out. Unfortunately, the Book of Words for the device insists that it possesses a 'self-cleaning' filter unfettered by the need for human interference (yes, my washing machine has its own Prime Directive), so this may be a job beyond my abilities (is there no beginning to my talents?). In the interim, I'll need to re-acquaint myself with the joys of the laundromat. Fortunately, brundle lent me Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser the other day, so at least I'll be able to make a start on that...

aome was asking whether Castle Fox was back on the net. The answer is yes. And no. And all points in between. It's mostly back, I think^*, but is somewhat tempremental, and even when the connection is up, the router's reporting the line speed as 460kbps, which is just a little shy of the purported 'Up to 12Mbps' that the account's quoted at. Hull is a monopoly for ISPs, so room for manouevre is limited, but yes, I really ought to mention it to someone at KC. That and the static filled line.

* Verily: give me certainty or give me something else

Blech. I know I was still awake at 1am, and that I was awake again from 3 until at least 4.

To be fair, I do feel more awake now, after having walked Mali, than before we set out, so that's something, but my eyes feel tired already.

The current podcast is taken from the LSE's catalogue of public lectures, and is pretty good fun: the journalist David Aaronovitch is talking about his book Voodoo Histories, which is apparently about how and why conspiracy theories arise. The Q&A is rather entertaining.

Whilst we're on podcasts, I thought that Gillian Tett's Lecture Fool's Gold was another interesting LSE download, talking about the rise of the use of derivatives and other such things in the financial world, and how these led to the Credit Crunch.

Another excellent 'cast is Dr Albert Bartlett talking about the exponential function, and how this relates to population growth and energy consumption. I've only ever listened to the audio, so am presumably missing out on some of the slides and stuff, but there is, apparently, a Real Player (ick) stream.

More politically, WGBH Forum (why do American radio stations have names that are a scrabble bag selection of four tiles?) has Norm Chomsky introducing Robert Fisk's lecture War, Geopolitics and History. That page is a video stream, but from there you can download the MP3.

Another political cast that I liked was Michael Klare's discussion about the prospect of depleting energy resources fostering increased global conflict. I liked Klare's book Blood and Oil, but was less whelmed by his later tome, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. Still, I thought that the lecture (if that link points to the one I originally downloaded), was good.