In Surplus

On days when I feel swamped I sometimes get to wondering - only briefly, if I have time - whether our Tech Overlords realised that the fruits of their work were likely to be poisoned; that too much information isn't terribly healthy for our pitifully limited species. If they did, then that tends to suggest they are really rather wicked; if they didn't, that suggests they are more than a little foolish. Either way, it's not such a good look.

Luckily I don't have too much time to dwell on the unpalatable. And now I'm off to get back to the toad, Work, on another less than profitable information-related task.

High Energy

I was feeling a bit listless around 8.00 this morning. That was a bit odd as a meeting I'd been scheduled to attend was canceled leaving me with some unexpectedly free time. Normally I'd have been happily celebrating, but then came this mild slump. I tried the reliable remedy of a cup of hot, sweet tea and that certainly brought some cheer, but didn't really deal with the energy deficit, if you know what I mean.

Then I found the solution. All it took was 4 minutes and 30 seconds of The Clash blasting out a thunderous Clampdown live at the Lewisham Odeon and normal service was restored. It kept me going for the rest of the day, in fact. Everyone should try it!

While It Lasts

I reckon I got thinking about Dad's lack of attendance of football matches in his middle age yesterday because somewhere in the back of my mind was the fact that today is the anniversary of Mum's death. She lived almost four decades longer than her husband (sounds odd to me, thinking of Dad in that way) but I don't think she ever got over losing him - though she did find plenty to enjoy in those years.

I'm guessing she really enjoyed her final job, as a barmaid at Denton Working's Club, for example. She only started that job after his death, actually partly as a way of being allowed into an exclusively 'men's club', where a lady had to be in the company of her spouse to get in. Part of her enjoyment was being good at the job - a natural for the banter at the bar and brilliant at serving quickly, and working out the cost of a complicated round at high speed. I watched her in action more than once and was impressed.

And another thing. I think she got a kick out of being a very senior barmaid in terms of her actual age, being aware that nearly all those customers who didn't know her well, and hadn't known Dad, thought she was a lot younger than she was. If my calculations are correct, she worked until at least 70-years-old. Possibly longer. She once told me about joining in gleefully with some fellows at the bar in praise of a lady, who was younger than her, as 'wonderful for her age'.

Sad, but inevitable, that age caught up with her eventually. At some point the job just became too much for her, I think. But it was good while it lasted.

A Puzzle

Enjoyed an excellent game of rugby in the afternoon at the National Stadium. Also managed to enjoy a coffee & tea as I watched, which is a lot more than I managed to get hold of watching Stockport County back in December in the bracing cold of Manchester.

Meditating on my experiences watching footy & cricket & rugby over the years has brought a perplexing question to my mind. It has occurred to me, rather suddenly today, that Dad never took me to any of United’s games when I was a kid, though he was a big fan. In fact, I can’t remember him going at all to games, though he would have only been in his early forties in the period I’m thinking about. And that's the age when Saturdays are often set aside for the Big Game.

I remember him going to a match (I assume involving Man Utd, though I'm not sure) with a couple of my uncles when we were on holiday in Blackpool once and Mum and various aunties not approving. The men played a bit of prank when they got back, pretending one had incurred a black eye in a fight, and fell about laughing at the ladies when they were being rebuked, suddenly revealing they’d made up the whole thing, and the ‘injury’, which they neatly faked, wasn’t real. But that’s the only time I can recall him actually going to a game.

So what was stopping him?

I sort of took it all for granted back then as just the way things were. But age can do strange things to you, I find. You start questioning the 'obvious' of all those years ago. At least, that's what I'm finding myself increasingly doing.

At A Cost

Reading an excellent piece today on the environmental costs of generative AI on the Channel News Asia website has made me a bit guilty about posting that rather funky, if unflattering, portrait of myself yesterday at this Far Place, since, as you may have guessed, some version of AI played a considerable part in its making. I'm not sure that the fun involved was worth adding to the pace of climate change, even if it only involved the teeny-weenyest bit of speeding up of what now feels an inevitable process. It's the sense of complicity in destroying the planet that's worrying, but, then, that's true of pretty much every aspect of my (and yours) over-privileged existence.

This all put me in mind of a talk I attended last year related to the wonders of AI in general by some professor chappie who knew an awful lot about how AI actually works. Early in the talk he spelled out the environmental costs - not quite as brutally as in the article, but still in a stark manner. This was something I had no inkling of then, and wish I still didn't now. But having referenced the costs his obvious enthusiasm regarding the possibilities of AI took over, and he appeared to overlook the problem. (Sad to say, the talk didn't stand out in terms of joined-together thinking.) And finally things took another turn in the Q & A following his concluding points as he pointed out that the plans for a new data centre in Singapore doing the business related to artificial intelligence will means it functions as part of some kind of virtuous cycle of energy such that nothing really gets lost, somehow or other. The thing is, though, that there wasn't time for him to expand on that since his talk had overrun. And I can't see any real reference to this development in the article. But maybe I misunderstood the prof, or don't really grasp the details in the CNA piece.

To be honest, the prospects for mitigating the ill-effects of the use of generative AI in terms of the environmental costs look pretty bleak, even though folks who know about this stuff appear to be trying to do something. I just can't see that that something will be anything like enough of a something to be meaningful.

A Portrait Of The Teacher As An Old Man

The not terribly flattering representation of my good self above was captured & created by its makers last Wednesday at our Professional Learning Day. Must say, I look to be engaged in a great deal of learning judging by my expression of severely rapt concentration, I'm sure you'll agree.

By the way, the wording represented on my rather spiffy hoodie is entirely incorrect, a sign that at least one of the creators of the image must have been hallucinating. The letters should (obviously) read MUFC. And the 'Old' place is 'Trafford', not some ancient 'university'.

Something Missing

Got a lot done today, including managing to find time for a conversation about Joyce's Ulysses. That alone made it feel like time well spent. But a pity I didn't carve out a space to read a page or three. Still, can't have everything, eh?

Living Dangerously (Sort Of)

I'm in one of those periods when I enact my rather pitiful version of living dangerously. How so? Let me give you two 'real life' illustrations, Gentle Reader.

Number One: At one point today I found myself moving particularly quickly to get to an important 'event' on time. This involved moving down some stairs. Fortunately I had the wherewithal to remind myself that, within recent memory, I've come pretty close to losing my footing doing the same thing and was lucky not to have taken a pretty significant tumble. I happened to chat with a colleague about this a few weeks back who referred to having done something similar and he was telling me that with age we can have problems with what is termed 'depth perception' by those who know these things. His advice to me, and mine to him, was to keep hold of the nearest available handrail when we feel we have no choice but to move at speed. Today I took my own, and my colleague's, advice and all was well.

Number Two: In the early evening I discovered that I'd somehow failed to take note of an important event (not in inverted commas this time as it really is an event in the usual meaning of the term) taking place over the weekend at which my presence is a must. As I get older I'm increasingly forgetful, which can have its advantages in terms of not worrying overmuch over stuff, but has the built-in disadvantage of being professionally a bit risky. Anyway, said event is now noted and I'll be there, God willing.

So there it is, my version of living on the edge. Nothing really happened, but it was exciting in its way, as you may agree. (But do feel free to disagree. I won't take offence.)

Normal Service Resumed

I went back to reading The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes after Ramadhan reached its happy conclusion and now have around fifteen tales left to go before I can say I have completed the canon. Unfortunately there's something of a critical consensus that by the last couple of collections, His Last Bow and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had run out of steam - and, possibly, real interest in his creations - and was running on empty. I'm five stories into the penultimate collection and I can see what the critics mean.

But having said that I must say that the fourth of the novellas featuring the Great Detective, The Valley of Fear, which I read back in February, struck me as being the best of the bunch. This is despite the fact that like A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four it features the clumsy telling of an extended back-story after Holmes has solved the initial mystery. In this case, though, there's a genuine puzzle as to how exactly the characters in the back-story relate to those in the first half of the murder mystery, and the pay-off of the ending is strong and satisfying. Plus the writer invests his fearful valley in the United States, which features in the second half, with real menace such that the reader doesn't miss Holmes & Watson (who aren't there, of course) at all.

I suspect I won't really miss them either once I get to the end of the clunky, chunky Complete. I seem to have been reading it forever, even though it's been only some seven months (with two month-long breaks, I hasten to add.)

No Fooling

Lots to do, so essentially a serious day. Was witness to the usual kind of folly encountered in my line of work. So managed a smile here & there. But not enough to provoke actual laughter.

Funny how, as a child, one spent a fair amount of time just laughing. Funny that nothing is quite so funny any more.