All you need is love

[austin_dern]

And a happy new year to all. As there were no outstanding natural disasters recently Channel 5 aired its planned show, namely, twenty minutes of a beach party on Sentosa Island, five of them before midnight. It was hosted by local celebrities Michelle Cheong and the always game Gurmit Singh, whom you don't recognize, but I do. Part of the festivities was a fifteen-minute firework show all along the path of the cable cars from Mount Faber through Harbourfront to Sentosa Island, reaching out over Keppel Bay. Unfortunately they kept cutting away from the fireworks to show off the singers at the organized party, who were singing one of those modern-type songs that I don't understand.

In a peculiarly horrible twist the cable cars from Sentosa Island, Harbourfront, and Mount Faber (a hill just off the island) were sources of fireworks. The twist on that is that the cable car-launched fireworks were launched by the people inside the all-glass cars (most of the cable cars are metal and plastic with reasonable windows, but a few premium ones are much more glass-lined) who were not trained fireworks showmen, but rather the couples who paid to ride in the all-glass cars, which had little tables, cloth tablecloths, and dinner plates arranged for the ride. And people paid S$999 each for the privilege of riding in all-glass cabins late at night as fireworks shoot around them, and have the chance to push buttons setting off fireworks from the tops of their own cabins.

I've got only the reasonable, respectful fears of heights, fires, and explosives, not to mention of spending large amounts of money on short-lived affairs, but just thinking about that makes my hands and feet clam up, never mind what seeing the horrifying pictures on TV does to me.

Trivia: Auguste Comte's reform ``Calendrier Positiviste'' dedicated the new thirteenth month of Final to the abstract concept of industry, and the concrete person of Marie François Xavier Bichat, the anatomist and physiologist who introduced the idea of `tissues' into biology. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, E.G. Richards.

Currently Reading: Mind Partner and 8 Other Novelets From Galaxy, Horace Gold, Editor. (I notice the interesting spelling of `novelette' there.) Cordwainder Smith, Clifford Simak, uh ... Evelyn E Smith ... uh ... R A Lafferty and Chistopher Anvil ... and names I don't recognize at all. It was 1961.

Comments

Re: Custom calendars

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, I've done my part trying to come up with a reformed calendar. It just turns out there's not a blasted thing you can do as long as the Earth's year insists on being about 365 days, with 366 on occasion, not as long as you insist on keeping the calendar year roughly in tune with the sidereal year.

I'm not aware of an organized negativist philosophy, which would seem to go hand-in-hand with a negativist calendar, although just looking at the name would seem to suggest that an accurate negativist calendar would be a contradiction in terms.