Just your average dinner of roast pork, Yorkshires, ratatouille, refried beans, new potatoes, mashed potatoes, three types of vegetables, Asian inspired coleslaw, seafood platter, cheese and tomato tart, salad and five different types of bread.
The real achievement was that we managed to eat almost all of it. Or at least will have by the time this is published…
A Tiffany Aching book that I actually enjoyed reading? Surely the world has turned upside down. I mean they were all okay, but this one I would upgrade to a full on “good”.
Maybe it just took a little time for Pratchett to build the universe (even though it is technically the Discworld universe). Discworld novels are like a sitcom, a lot of it is funny because you know the characters and situations. Starting again without many of the existing characters probably takes time to build up once again.
Plus it did have Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg in it.
This short book contains the first few chapters of Auguste Comte’s work, translated by Frederick Ferre. It gives a very brief and compact introduction to the ideas but nevertheless remains rather hard going.
Comte believes that all sciences can be broken down into individual classifications. Each can then be split into the theoretical and the practical, the latter of which can be disgraced. You can then use them as building blocks. What I mean by this is that you start with physics. If you want to study astronomy, you can, but only after you have learned physics. Similarly, if you want to study chemistry, you must first study physics and astronomy.
He also talks about “social physics”, now known as sociology. He puts this at the top of the pile, thus making it the most difficult science to study because you need to have a grounding in almost everything else in order to effectively study it.
Between the Bridge and the River is a novel by Craig Ferguson. Ferguson is an American, but was born in Scotland, and hosts “The Late Late Show” which as you might guess, comes on after “The Late Show”.
The plot is complicated. It follows lots of different characters winding in and out of each other lives. Religious themes are explored extensively throughout the story, generally in quite a satirical light.
Ferguson does that thing that Douglas Adams someones did in taking a meaningless extra from the back of a scene and going into extraordinary detail about their life. If anything, he takes it to a new extreme.
His writing blends a number of different styles. The sex scenes for example are very blunt and matter-of-fact to the point where they could be at home in an Irvine Welsh novel. Whereas at other times we move in and out of the surreal that James Joyce would be proud.
It is a book that I think you really have to commit to to avoid getting half way through and thinking “what is this nonsense?” It all comes together at the end though and forms some kind of coherent story.
I’ve read Douglas Crockford’s book on JavaScript several time before, but it is always goof to have a refresher. It’s super-helpful and so short that you can easily get through it in a day if you try. I think the appendices are actually bigger than the text.
I have been thinking about whether we’re using the right online supermarket. That in itself is a pretty depressing action. However, I’m doing it having spent last week in London and Birmingham, and tonight in Sheffield, so it’s not like I just sit at home thinking about these things.
I am using Sainsbury’s at the moment. I tried Morrisons last month, and it was very good, but I much prefer the ordering processing with Sainsbury’s and I can amend by orders until 11pm. This is key, because I usually do, whereas Morrisons cut off is 5pm.
I also thought about switching to Waitrose because they have such a good reputation for customer service. However, it is significantly more expensive and their minimum order is like £60-65. Plus their website keeps crashing my computer. They do sell Swiss chard though.
Today I’ve been looking at Ocado. They have won loads of awards of their experience, and do sell chard. However, they are super expensive. They consistently come in the top two most expensive in Which?’s rankings, alongside Waitrose.
I also took a look at mySupermarket which is a really cool service. You add everything you want to your basket and it tells you how much it would cost at each supermarket. Here is the example basket I made for myself:
I started with the Sainsbury’s product set, so I don’t know if this biased it in any way. However, Sainsbury’s does come out really well for price, and with the good service I have always enjoyed, it does not seem to make it worth switching.
Auguste Comte and Positivism is a book by John Stuart Mill and best of all, was available free from the Kindle store. You can also get it from Project Gutenburg. The Kindle edition was not great because I suspect it was in an odd format – I could not select and lookup words for example.
The book itself is a sort of review of Comte’s work. I am sure there is a scholarly term for it.
I found it hard going. Mill writes without breaks for sub-headings. The book is divided into two parts and those are the only distractions from a constant stream of text. The first part looks at Positivism and the second part looks at Comte’s Religion of Humanity.
I found the second part easier to follow, perhaps because I had no background in what positivism was, or that I was just more interested in this part and so found it easier to concentrate.
Comte clearly has some views that are very silly today. Suppression of science and women for example are pretty much the worst things you can belief in. Underlying that seems to be Comte’s severe OCD. He needs to category and systematise everything. I am looking forward to reading more about his work though.
For anyone attending my talk at Atheist Society tonight, here is the suggested reading list I will later be promising to post on my blog:
Earlier this month saw NFL Super Bowl XLIX take place in Arizona. Normally I would have supported Seattle because they are great organisation, but I was so annoyed that they had knocked out the Green Bay Packers, I was on the side of the Patriots. Of course, now it’s over, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
It was certainly more interesting than last year which finished with a 35 point difference. This one finished with just 4 and when Seattle were driving in the last few minutes, it looks like they would take it. Only a strange decision by the Seahawks to throw, which ended in an interception, saved the Patriots.
That is not to take anything away from the Patriots though. The Belichick Brady team have now won 4 Super Bowl titles making them the most successful coach quarterback combination in NFL history.
Katy Perry’s halftime show was fine.
The crowning glory of the evening was Elina’s Super Bowl cake, featuring a Moomin making a field goal.
The problem when you don’t just plonk your holidays on top of existing Pagan festivals, is that they are not as nicely spaced out. Three days after the special West Yorkshire Humanists Darwin Day event then, we’re doing our Galileo Day events – organised meals between society members.
I don’t have any photos from ours yet, because it hasn’t happened yet, but here are some from previous years.
I’ll report back on how it went. Probably painfully given I have American football training this morning…