Tuesday, January 04, 2005

2005 Gets Started

These ramblings have been too long unillustrated. Above, I hope, is a picture of the newly re-commenced Fair Isle jacket. The knitting is now -- being symmetrical -- pleasant and fast. The issue is whether what I am doing with the colours will result in a legible pattern, or just confusion. It's far too soon to tell.

Non-Knit

I spent much of yesterday wrestling with the problem of how to get a lot of documents loaded into a not-quite-state-of-the-art Palm Pilot. I have not succeeded. and my dear computer has become slightly odd and very much slower as a result of the attempt. Poof.

There is a truly excellent article about Einstein in the current issue of the Economist -- tackling head-on Winnie-the-Pooh's immortal question, "Tell me, somebody, what did he do?" I was glad to see that our near neighbour (although not, of course, contemporary) James Clerk Maxwell was included in the discussion. I have never even begun to understand what he did.

It is good to be reminded that there are, occasionally, still differences between Britain and the US. If Tony Blair had set up a group to coax more money out of us for tsunami victims -- consisting, say, of John Major and the Prince of Wales, because I can't think of any other ex-Prime Ministers who are both alive and compos mentis -- he would have been laughed, or hissed, off-stage. I'm thinking, of course, of Bush's little performance yesterday involving Clinton and his father.

The news that Guantanamo Bay prisoners may be kept forever is truly chilling. I read the definition of habeas corpus in Webster's International Dictionery yesterday, almost in tears.

 

 

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