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Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

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Brief Encounters: 2002

July 28, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

So, this is journal number 150 and I’m wondering if Siena is a nice place to visit. We’d have spent last night there and be walking down the last eleven days to Rome if not for the pandemic. Our plan had us continuing along the Via Francigena, reaching Ponte d’Arbia tonight where we’d planned to rest for our weekly day off. I think we’d have stayed a second night in Siena instead. I’ll try to remember this for next year, assuming waves of pandemic and panic won’t prevent us trekking from Manchester to Rome in 2021.

There’s a letter regarding life insurance on the counter this morning. It includes a Covid alert that seems strangely inappropriate on a renewal notice.

Trout Fishing in Utah in October 2002.
[Read more…] about Brief Encounters: 2002

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, colin tudge, fishing, green belt movement, insurance, life expectancy, nobel prize, photo, travel, trees, utah, walking, wangri maathi

Saturday Pencil Blues

July 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Saturday started badly. I had a bad night’s sleep and then the TV locked up before we could watch the breakfast news. I was already grumpy and my coffee mood boost was still in the cup when there came a glitch that became a technology challenge.

I should explain that we have a streaming service that provides our ‘terrestrial’ TV. It’s a service that comes bundled with our broadband via a DSL router and a set-top box. We’d surrendered a satellite service once we lost sight of the satellites beyond the growth of neighbouring trees. Copper wire transmission was all that was available as replacement. Indeed, our road is only now being upgraded with suitable fibre-optic connections.

I was watching a small holding farmer tend to a flock on our willow tree …
… this day six years ago.
[Read more…] about Saturday Pencil Blues

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: bobby kerr, booklink, Covid-19, haim ofek, leonard reed, matt ridley, newstalk, photo, technology, tv

Where are all the Curies?

July 21, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

In a normal world, there are people who study deviations beyond the standard. There’s a conventional heuristic (rule of thumb) that our most significant interests fall within three standard deviations from the meanest of any measure.

I journaled here of a corporate presentation I titled ‘To 3σ and Beyond’. That, together with the opening paragraph today, are (bad) statistics-based jokes intended to refer to new learnings that may lurk within less than 6.7% of a range of products or data.

[Read more…] about Where are all the Curies?

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: 3-sigma, anna rosling rönnlund, bernard mandeville, booklink, education, gapminder, hans rosling, inequality, isaac newton, marie curie, photo, probability, virginia woolf

Shaggy Fenec: Episode 2

July 19, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Continuing from last time, you’ll recall that we were in a desert dealing with a health and safety policy that mandated a full test of an emergency response plan within four weeks of setting up operations. We were in week four and about to create a cautionary tale of ill-considered independent action that rivals Hilaire Belloc’s lion-eaten Jim.

‘And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse’

[Read more…] about Shaggy Fenec: Episode 2

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, emergency response, geophysics, photos, travel

Simplex 17,242

July 18, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Richard Brautigan once misled me back in 1974. I enjoyed Trout Fishing in America so much that I read everything he wrote. At one point, he wrote that he didn’t write. His mental blocks were such that he typed, stopped, scrunched up the paper and threw it into the wastebasket. There, in the basket, the words reassembled themselves into a story he never wrote. I put many words in a bag and despite nearly thirty years of incubation, nothing much has hatched.

[Read more…] about Simplex 17,242

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, crossword, ignobility, infamy, irish times, lewis carroll, lrb, mexico, photos, popular, rachel nolan, richard brautigan, writing

Authoritarian Ignobility

July 16, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Trending Authoritarianism

You can’t read I Will Never See The World Again without being affected by it. I challenge you to read what Ahmet Altan has written especially if you worry that you have become desensitised by the descending spirals of ever worsening news. Perhaps you are inured, worrying that you have a heart of stone. He writes with such elegance and equanimity that I am certain your heart will flutter several times.

Even those of us who are empathy-challenged will be troubled by many aspects of this book.

Three classic reads on my desk at the moment.
[Read more…] about Authoritarian Ignobility

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: ahmet altan, america, booklink, Covid-19, ireland, nurcan baysal, PEN international, pre-crime, turkey

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