Post the First - Sad Anniversary

Today is the 13th anniversary of the June 15, 1996 Manchester Bombing (PDF document).

Another link to a news article on the event

On the day itself I rolled a die. 1-2, Manchester. 3-4, Chester. 5-6, Liverpool. The die came up a 6. I went to Liverpool, and at about the time of the explosion I was in another city altogether, staring out of a large glass window on the first floor Costa Coffee cafe in Waterstone's, Bold Street, Liverpool - my first ever visit to that then newly-opened cafe.

Had the die rolled 1 or 2, my first stop in Manchester would have been my last - the old Corn Exchange, where I did most of my shopping for occult stuff at the time, was right at Ground Zero.

It's bearing this grim anniversary in mind that I've been reading some documents sent to me by a colleague. I'm still working on them, but please bear in mind that I have three projects on the go right now.

Still and all, it's time for me to light the candle I usually light at this sad time.

Post the Second - Sad TV News

A very successful TV SF drama series, Primeval, has been unexpectedly cancelled.

The basic premise of the show is simple. Temporal anomalies have started appearing at random across the globe (well, that part of the globe within the bounds of the M25 motorway, at any rate). These anomalies are like great, glowing, glittering rips in time allowing two-way travel between the present and other time periods in Earth's history.

People can go through those anomalies and see what's on the other side; and creatures, mostly dinosaurs and other extinct animals, can come through and terrify people in the present.

( Spoilers posted behind the cut, for those who haven't seen the rest of the show yet )

I am disappointed that they have axed the show, because it was virtually the only ITV show I actually watched. I've stopped watching virtually everything else on ITV. A few movies, and that is all. I watch some BBC stuff (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Ashes to Ashes) and the rest is all the cop shows on five and Five USA. The vast majority of shows I watch these days are all on Virgin 1, which is pumping out an awful lot of TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise repeats, along with The Outer Limits and The X-Files.

And now that Primeval's been axed, I don't honestly believe I'll have reason to watch anything put out by ITV's channels ever again. And I don't think I'll be alone either.

Wait until the flavour on the "Britain's Got Talent / X Factor / Saturday Night Shitefest with Ant and Dec" wears off, and they cynically resort to uglier, raunchier material to shock people into staying on ITV rather than vote with their channel changers.

Shakuntala Devi

I would love to meet this woman. Her capacity to compute numbers mentally is prodigious.

She also published a 1977 study on homosexuality in India, clearly attempting to break some taboos there.

She is an amazing and beautiful woman - and to me, beauty is as much a function of mind as of physical form.

When I was asked to create a calendar program back in college, when I needed to calculate what day of the week a given date started on, I used Shakuntala Devi's formula for calculating the day of the week for any given date. I got an A for that assignment.

I have a very old, yellowed, book, Figuring - The Joy of Numbers, written in the 1970s; it has never been far from my side. This woman generated in me a love of number which has never died.