I can’t think of an example, in the last decade or so, of compute and capability moving closer to the user, rather than farther away. In the data center, engineers have devised powerful, resilient systems … so your phone and laptop (and refrigerator?) run great as long as they can connect. A supercomputer in your pocket, a supersupercomputer on the banks of the Columbia River, and, tying them together: a thread.
For me, the competition for Best Wodehouse Novel comes down to The Code of the Woosters and Uncle Fred in the Springtime. Uncle Fred, more properly Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham, is my favorite Wodehouse character. Here we see Uncle Fred and Lord Emsworth trying to convince an acquaintance of Uncle Fred’s, a con man named Claude “Mustard” Pott, to transport and hide Emsworth’s prize pig, the Empress of Blandings … for reasons too complex to get into here.
The clouds gathered once more when Mr Pott, having listened to Lord Emsworth’s proposal, regretfully declined to have anything to do with removing the Empress from her sty and wafting her away to Ickenham Hall.
‘I couldn’t do it. Lord E.’
‘Eh? Why not?’
‘It wouldn’t be in accordance with the dignity of the profession.’
Lord Ickenham resented this superior attitude.
‘Don’t stick on such beastly side, Mustard. You and your bally dignity! I never heard such swank.’
‘One has one’s self-respect.’
‘What’s self-respect got to do with it? There’s nothing infra dig about snitching pigs. If I were differently situated, I’d do it like a shot. And I’m one of the haughtiest men in Hampshire.’
‘Well, between you and me, Lord I,’ said Claude Pott, discarding loftiness and coming clean, ‘there’s another reason. I was once bitten by a pig.’
‘Not really?’
‘Yes, sir. And ever since then I’ve had a horror of the animals.’
Lord Emsworth hastened to point out that the present was a special case.
‘You can’t be bitten by the Empress.’
‘Oh, no? Who made that rule?’
‘She’s as gentle as a lamb.’
‘I was once bitten by a lamb.*
Lord Ickenham was surprised.
‘What an extraordinary past you seem to have had, Mustard. One whirl of excitement. One of these days you must look me up and tell me some of the things you haven’t been bitten by.’
A fantastic essay on Blake’s Laocoön by Adam Roberts. I must write about this at some point….
In one of the Nero Wolfe books Archie Goodwin calls his typewriter the “alphabet piano,” so that’s what I’m gonna call my computer keyboard from now on.
Architectural designs from The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs by English garden designer Batty Langley (1696-1751)
Civil-official husu, Korea (19th century)
Some people will struggle to believe that I did this, but I wrote about Auden’s bad wrong essay on detective fiction.
ONE-NIL TO THE ARSENAL ⚽️
