Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

POINT ME TO HEAVEN WHEN THE FINAL CHAPTER COMES
Mail on Sunday, 2 August 2009



I’m all for assisted death. Of course there are people who are against
it, but they come up with the wrong reasons, such as “God doesn’t like
it” and so on. Personally, I really don’t think God is all that
bothered, but I would like to think that my god would be more concerned
about unnecessary suffering. Who knows.

We are being stupid.
We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living
longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we
learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age,
their lesson will be harsher still. At least, that is what I thought
until last week.

Now, however, I live in hope—hope that before
the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am
pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and
Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall.

In any case, such thinking bestows a wonderful feeling of power; the enemy might win but it won’t triumph.

“I was young, still so young, that I thought my lack of wholeness was somehow my fault. I had no idea everyone feels this way—that the most essential part of growing up is figuring out where your empty places are and learning how to fill them by, and for, yourself.”
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, Bittersweet

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

"Umberto Eco on Macintosh vs. DOS

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the
Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly
of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is
Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been
influenced by the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits. It is cheerful,
friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step
by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which
their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation
is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a
right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free
interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions,
imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the
idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need
to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community
of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner
torment.

"I used to work for a startup software company back when
a package sold for $100,000 and the customers had this silly
expectation that it would work flawlessly. This was before Bill Gates
wrote a "start" button that you clicked to shut down."

Arnhold

Transcript

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