Re: Tech was: Ruskin was: Caves

In message <43a871be$1@darkstar>, Eugene Miya <eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes 
In article <X3sBLNENeEqDFwmy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Chris Townsend  <Chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Pen computers? 
They certainly haven't caught on here.

iPods and camera phones are the popular products here. I own neither. 

Well, this is the home of the iPod.  I don't need one.
I am amazed that I ever tried a Walkman.


I have a Walkman I hardly ever used. I'm amazed I bought it now.

I don't really take either
except on the longest trips.

It could be useful on long train/plane journeys. I wouldn't mind a small MP3 player.

But these are newer generation toys
taken by the younger generation.  But my old 80 yr. old officemate has
an iPod, but he listens to classical music.

Camera are just cheap now for phones. 

The cost of digital cameras is falling fast in general.

I'm old fashioned with phones. I just use them to make calls. PCs are for email. Cameras for photographs.


Rite-In-The-Rain
JL Darling makes those:
Alwych notebooks with All Weather covers, produced in Scotland.
Local business.
Yes. Though that's not why I first bought one many years ago.

Available product?

Yes. And the right one. My first Alwych notebook dates from 1979 and is in fine condition. Earlier card covered notebooks are quite tatty. I guess I was looking for a more durable one. I bought that first one in Manchester, England, where I was living at the time.


How fast you can assess and process info is important.
I tend to go for comprehsion 
Small cameras can provide context.
We have seen how phone camera changed news since the Madrid and London
bombings and transformer explosions in SF.
And the recent oil depot explosions in southern England.
We've seen a little of that here. Lots gets edited in news.

The oil depot explosions vanished from the news here after a few days.

A friend grew up in the HH area.

I was born nearby and lived in HH until the age of 4. I have no memory of it whatsoever. 

Northern Ireland is in the news again. A key senior figure in Shin Fein
has turned out to have been a British spy for the last 20 years.

That's common. A similar thing happened in the US during the Vietnam war.

Double agents seem to pop up all the time. John le Carre covered it well. 

Here on Public boradcasting, our man Steves is promoting Northern
Ireland travel.  Dollars coming their way.

As long as the peace holds.

comprehension as key.
all too easy to absorb data without comprehending it. 
People are attempting to rely on unknown mechanisms for info
assimilation.  They may, or they might not, exist.

I rely on my eyes and brain. 

The problem is to try to figure out exactly what the brain is doing.
Don't stop there.

Certainly figuring out what the brain is doing, or trying to is important. Otherwise biases creep in unnoticed. At least if you're aware of them you know your interpretation is skewed in a certain direction.

Eyes can also be fooled.

They need to go with the brain. What you see is not necessarily what you get.

Some of this work can be
automated (like here).

understanding the point being made and how it was derived.
Assessing is comprehending whether the info looks worth considering
Indeed. Gold amongst dross.
data mining ? 
There has to be a way to sort out the worthwhile from the worthless or
irrelevant.
Education.
Agreed.
Deja vu..... that funny....
...
This is part of why heads of state use intelligence organziations. 
Then you have to comprehend the data provided by the intelligence
organizations.

If you are a head of state.... (a man's home is his castle... [a Crusade
phrase if I have ever heard one]).
Your interpretation will depend on your values, your priorities.


Which may mean that you know how you will interpret whatever the
intelligence says, rendering it useless except as a back up to what you
planned anyway.

Didn't say anything about plans.

Doesn't intelligence gathering always relate to some plan or other? Heads of state always have plans. 

Modern's man's concept of time is one of the things which make us
modern men.

True. We forget how recent the measurement of time is. Travel and industry made standardisation essential. The railways brought it to Britain.

We are just now beginning to think abstractly (planning, blue prints, etc.)

Some are. Politicians aren't. Political time is measured in election cycles. Which is unfortunate. 

A Navigator might be able to tell you where you are, and where you are
going on the short term.  You have to set the course.
Assuming you really are in control.

Well if you are the head of state..... 

You may be in control.

Of course our official head of state is the Queen, who isn't in control.

This says nothing about time pressure.

Which might be a reason why you aren't fully in control. 

Control is rarely an absolute thing.  Consider a marriage for instance....
Just who really controls one?  The man in patriarchies?  But it's rarely
absolute is it?  Why is it called matrimony?

Does anyone need to control a marriage? Maybe attempts at control are why so many marriages go wrong. 

Separate out the issues.

Saw the Narnia film on Saturday. At one point there's a close up shot of
a document signed by the Chief of Secret Police.
Mr. Churchill set that up? 

It's in the book, published in 1950.
I rather think Stalin was the cause.


Well, the NKVD and the Stasi, and a slew of secret people in all
countries are like that.  On doesn't have to resort to Beria.
So Cold War?

Yep. I thought the film reflected Cold War attitudes more than Christianity.

DVDs stopping and examining such scenes 

I've enjoyed trying to place all the Scottish Highland scenes in the
Harry Potter films.


Ah!
I did similar in old arcade style video disk gameslike Mach III.


the DVD or a theater. 

Four of us split up at the cinema - two to Narnia, two to King Kong.
I'd like to see KK soon.


I think I've had enough of the Kong films.
"T'was beauty that killed the beast..."
And 3 different Batmen genres.
Fiction is tanking.

My main interest in seeing King Kong is because it's a Peter Jackson film rather than because it's King Kong. I wouldn't be interested if it was any other director. 

How are you able to get along without Woddy Allen, Spike Lee, QT/UT,
and the like?

I see Woody Allen is now making his films in London. I haven't seen one of his for many years.

I don't see many films anyway.

Narnia isn't like LOTR. It doesn't really need a huge screen. 

Good intell.

snow
dump in Europe, the Alps.
I believe parts of the Alps have plenty of snow already. 
Italy.
Austria
Swiss
Reports today of further heavy snow in the Alps. 

r.s.e.

Thawing here .... 

Beware black ice.

A meeting tomorrow in the hills (magazine features discussion "on site" so to speak). The forecast is for 50-75mph winds and snow and white-out conditions above 2,000 feet.
--
Chris Townsend
http://www.auchnarrow.demon.co.uk
.

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