I seem to have agreed to go into work on Sunday. On one hand, it's good, since I'll be able to get a lot of work done, and it means that the FileMaker changes that I want to get in before I go away can be completed, and I'll be able to charge for a five-day week next week, despite taking Sunday off. Nevertheless, on a more fundamental level, it kinda sucks.
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Packing continues apace, as do my avoidance behaviours. Have got up to Weezer in the CDs, so on target to finish "mp3 backups" tonight; except there's still all the compilations, humour, and classical CDs to go. Hmm. I may end up having to compromise. Still, I've made a large dent in the task.
The DVDs and videos have gone to the new flat, as I realised that I had packed them in the monitor box, and my monitor is very heavy. There are large gentlemen with the truck coming over tomorrow morning; I'm paying them to deal with exactly this sort of thing for me, so into the box with its packing it will go. The computers I'll just pop in the back of the car.
The nonfiction is done - about 350 books in total, including humour. More depressing is the "unread fiction" category, clocking in at 210 books. Next up - fiction that has been read. Hopefully I'll get that done before I go to bed.
Major things to do still remaining: pack the kitchen things, clean out the fridge, pack up the computer, disconnect the washing machine, dismantle the stereo, finish packing the nonfiction books.
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As part of looking up various things on the magical interweb, I came across palmbook librettos for the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. This may well be of interest only to me; but at least now I have something other than the default "Last of the Mohicans" on my Palm if I get trapped somewhere.
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I've heard it proposed that in order to develop the scientific method, one needs monotheism - that you might get heuristic, rule of thumb development, but not the whole "hypothesis testing" thing. The argument goes, as I recall, that you need to have the idea that the universe is lawful - that there are universal rules that can be discovered - and that under either polythesism or animism, the world as seen as essentially disjoint, with no reason to expect the same things to hold everywhere.
It's an interesting idea, and while I'm not sure I agree with it, I'd like to get a better grasp on it. I don't suppose any readers are familiar with whoever put the idea forward, and can point me in the direction of their writings?
(I must admit, I find Jarrod Diamond's emphasis on geography in Guns, Germs and Steel more compelling - I'd heartily recommend it to anyone interested in why different cultures develop differently.)
Anyway, enough dilly-dallying - back to packing!
Posted by svend at July 9, 2004 11:41 AMLast of the Mohicans? Good grief, there’s a book that could have used an editor, if only to remove half the commas. I wonder why it was chosen to be the default text for the Palmbook.
Posted by: Jamie at July 9, 2004 10:33 PMIn a general sense - because the copyright has expired, and people were likely to have heard of it but unlikely to have read it.
In a particular sense - I have no idea. Why couldn't they have gone with Dickens or something? Maybe they wanted an American author?
I certainly haven't found it to be a compelling read so far.
Posted by: Svend at July 12, 2004 3:05 AMYes, there’s a reason for people being unlikely to have read it. :)
I read that Cooper used to read his wife stories in bed, and said that he could write better, to which his wife replied that he should then. Either he read really bad books or de gustibus non disputandum. I wouldn't be surprised if his work(s) were on the curriculum of American schools.
Posted by: Jamie at July 13, 2004 5:55 PM