A while ago, a good friend introduced me to Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman detective who features in a whole slew of whodunnits by Lindsay Davis. Falco is an informer, working mostly for the emperor Vespasian, who roams about the empire solving mysteries and giving readers like me insights into ancient Rome.
Of course, I'm not a classicist or historian, which may be the reason I find the Falco novels such fun. Where else would I have cause to learn the intimate workings of Archimedes' hodometer? I mention that because it plays a key part in the book I have just finished, A Dying Light in Corduba. And because I am not a historian, I take as gospel everything Davis has to tell me about hodometers and everything else in the Roman empire.
World this day, international that week, global the other month.
Normally I find out about these things too late to do anything about it. So I'm actually grateful to Eattiamo -- who'll send a box of Italian goodies to your doorstep, if you're in the USA -- for pointing out that 25 October happens...
These have been very trying times. When the UK voted to leave the European Union I was having a good time in two of Britain's former dominions. I was utterly shocked, surprised and depressed. I still am, in a way. I refused to discuss it with anyone over there unless they also allowed me to bring the US presidential campaign into the discussion, and mostly they saw my point.
Which was: if the Brits could vote to the leave the EU -- which all the experts, as opposed to talking heads, believe could be bad economically, culturally, everything -- it is entirely possible that come November, the Americans could vote for the presumptive Republican nominee, as he was at the time.
Only one thing was clear, although I could not articulate it: these voters and the people they followed were not simply stupid.
I have to believe that nobody at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science has actually looked at the site since 11 July. Either that, or this headline is a joke to which I am not privy.
Also interesting, the original on the BBC website, credited by the AACCS, has no such error, and is shorter.
So maybe it is a joke.
Over the past few days I gave myself the luxury of a few unbroken half days to try and get to grips with the machinery underneath this website and to try and revive the Vaviblog. In the process, I've learned a bit about Grav and a lot about me and how I tackle this sort of thing.
The biggest single problem is how easy it is to simply suck it and see. Try something; save it; refresh the browser. Rinse and repeat. I've made a lot of progress that way, but I wouldn't say I have really deepened my understanding too much. I get some of the principles of programming; after all, I started been doing it around 45 years ago, with FORTRAN on an IBM370. The rot set in with my first personal computer, an Apple ][e, a dozen or so years later. Working in BASIC, it just became easier to try things rather than go through all the stages.
