Yesterday I got in, ate a meal and went straight to bed. I woke up still aching and went back in. It's pretty much solid hard graft, helping to lay a floor and preparing an open space for a roof. I'm just not used to this amount of hard labour. Plus I'm not of the age where I can take it in my stride.

So, I left early today and have come home, had a nice shower. I'm going to have an early night and am just catching up a bit.

 

keep to the Fen Causeway

So, in such a spirit, mine are here, here and here. These are familiar to olde timers, but people who've only joined recently may not be aware

keep to the Fen Causeway

however, as usual, you read it on ET first.

keep to the Fen Causeway

You're welcome for Buster Posey.

Sincerely,

Florida State

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

I haven't worked as hard as you, Helen, but being older, I'll bet I'm almost as tired.  I'll drift back to ET again in the morning.

'tis strange I should be old and neither wise nor valiant. From "The Maid's Tragedy" by Beaumont & Fletcher

Representatives from Xinxiang District (新乡地区) and Nanyang District (南阳地区) countered him with their own numbers. "We also did testings, and the HIV infection rate among transfusion patients and blood donors is also as high as 50-60%, same as Zhoukou District," they said. Director Zhang was very upset. "If this is exposed, all of the directors here will be thrown out!"

When it was my turn to speak, I told him that "I'm the `man' from the clinical testing center in Zhoukou whom you just mentioned, but I am a woman." I said I first reported it to the local Health Bureau before going for verification in Beijing. Presently several people surrounded me, coaxing and pushing me out of the meeting room. In the afternoon I went to the office of Liu Quanxi (刘全喜), one of the heads of the provincial Department of Health. I told him how Zhang Maocai accused me during the morning session. Before I finished speaking, he erupted in rage. "Out! Get out of here!" I left with tears running down my face. I was confused; I didn't understand: How can a senior official be so rude and irrational? Why is he so afraid of the topic of AIDS?

In November, 1996, experts from the provincial Department of Health and a few leaders of the district Health Bureau, led by Zhang Maocai, came to our testing center to inspect. Zhang told us that our equipment didn't meet the standard and we couldn't continue our testing anymore. "I'm concerned with the health of the woman folk working here," Zhang said, "I don't want you to be infected." I asked him to explain what he meant by saying, during the meeting, that our HIV testing aimed at getting the head of the provincial Department of Health and the director of Epidemic Prevention. I was angry. I said, "I don't need your concern; if we were infected, it was just four of us and we are not afraid to die. Why don't you care about those tens of thousands of AIDS victims?" I told him that he had perpetrated a crime for generations of Chinese! Enraged, he left my lab with his cohorts.

I don't think that living through an artificial self, which is what had got me into such an awful mess, is all that uncommon. The condition is difficult to recognise because it is concealed from the world, and from the subject, with ruthless ingenuity. It does not feature in the standard catalogue of neurotic symptoms such as hysteria, obsession, phobia, depression or impotence; and it is not inconsistent with worldly success or the formation of deep and lasting friendships. The disjointed components of the artificial self are not individually artificial.

What is it like to live in a state of dissociation? In a real sense, the subject is never corporeally present at all but goes about the world in a waking dream. Behaviour is managed by an auto-pilot. Responses are neither direct nor spontaneous. Every event is re-enacted after it has taken place and processed in an internal theatre. On the one hand, the subject may be bafflingly insensitive but this goes with extreme vulnerability, for the whole apparatus can only function within a framework of familiar and trusted responses. He or she is defenceless against random, unexpected or malicious events. Evil cannot be countered because it cannot be identified.

The short personal story which follows is so familiar in its outline that it may seem stale, but I cannot explain how I allowed such strange things to happen to me unless I tell it.

Why planners allow houses to be built on flood plains or new developments to be constructed without adequate drainage infrastructure, I don't know.  

Ad astra per aspera

In 1799 Charles White began the process of identifying Europeans as inherently superior to other peoples. By 1850 the disgraced anatomist Robert Knox had developed the theme into fully fledged racism. His book The Races of Man asserted that dark-skinned people were destined to be enslaved and then annihilated by the "lighter races". Dark meant almost everyone: "What a field of extermination lies before the Saxon, Celtic and Sarmatian races!"

Remarkable as it may sound, this view soon came to dominate British thought. In common with most of the political class, W Winwood Reade, Alfred Russell Wallace, Herbert Spencer, Frederick Farrar, Francis Galton, Benjamin Kidd and even Charles Darwin saw the extermination of dark-skinned people as an inevitable law of nature. Some of them argued that Europeans had a duty to speed it up: both to save the integrity of the species and to put the inferior "races" out of their misery.

These themes were picked up by German theorists. In 1893 Alexander Tille, drawing on British writers, claimed that "it is the right of the stronger race to annihilate the lower". In 1901 Friedrich Ratzel argued in Der Lebensraum that Germany had a right and duty, like Europeans in the Americas, to displace "primitive peoples".

Apparently it's Day of the girl:

http://www.thehungerproject.co.uk/newsandevents/eventcalendar/international-day-of-the-girl-2012/

Here's a girl, an outstanding Olympian, you probably won't have heard of but should have - truly awesome, and rather more significant than e.g. swimming some distance a fraction of a second faster than others:

"Lisa Sauermann (born September 25, 1992) is a German schoolgirl who became the second most successful participant in the International Mathematical Olympiad. She is ranked No.2 in the International Mathematical Olympiad Hall of Fame, having won four gold medals (2008-2011) and one silver medal (2007) at this event. In all of those occasions she represented Germany. She was the only student to achieve a perfect score at IMO 2011."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Sauermann

Obama with a lot of girls - it's OK, they're very smart, it won't be on Fox:

http://aauwmathscience.blogspot.fr/

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

22. The Intouchables
Based on a real-life relationship, the odd couple of this film is composed of Philippe (François Cluzet), a millionaire paralyzed in a paragliding accident, and Driss (César-winning Omar Sy), a street hood by way of Senegal. White, black; rich, poor; immobile and extremely animated--Philippe and Driss are opposite in nearly every way. Their paths would never even cross were it not for the paperwork Driss needs signed to show he's looking for work in order to qualify for state assistance. Tired of waiting to interview for a job he surely won't get, he storms into Philippe's office and slaps the form on his desk. Unable to move from the neck down, Philippe of course can't fill it out, so he asks Driss to return in the morning. Impressed with Driss' forthrightness and the fact that he actually comes back the next day, Philippe offers him a job. It's the best thing to happen to both of them. Energetically paced by editor Dorian Rigal-Ansous and scored by Ludovico Einaudi, the immensely enjoyable Intouchables hinges on this central relationship but also broaches social taboos with a politically incorrect wit that flays what's considered off-limits: socioeconomic disparity, race relations and especially physical disability. The filmmakers aren't afraid to "go there," and that they do elevates the sincerely feel-good material to larger cultural relevance. --Annlee Ellingson

just saw this the other night, effing brilliant!

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter