It's been a crazy week: first week back at school. It's a flurry of information and activity as, for whatever reason, enrollments change and new students turn up to the wrong room, leaving me with a trail of administration as I wait until I see them. Anyway, amidst the chaos, some random observations...
- I'm surprised there's room in the market for two classical music stations in Sydney (and other capital cities). One is the nation-wide ABC Classic FM; the other is 2MBS, which runs in capital cities. I'm even more surprised that I generally prefer the commercial 2MBS over the ad-free ABC. The commercials are annoying, but ABC has its annoyances as well: in prime-time the style of music chops and changes, and the presenters talk too much. 2MBS flows nicely. This morning I got "stuck in the car" at work, simply unable to leave until the beautiful piece (Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel, which I have on CD) had finished. The perfect start to the busiest day of a busy week. However, right now I'm listening to the ABC station because I've just happened upon a program called Jazz Up Late, which is playing cool, interesting, modern jazz instead of the humdrum stuff you often hear on radio jazz programs.
- Desk clutter grows exponentially with time, even though the input is linear. That is, you add the same amount of crap each day, but the problem gets exponentially worse, not linearly. That's a problem, because we figure that a linear problem will have a linear solution, and get caught out. It's like introducing germs into a population at a constant rate: people will get sick at an exponential rate. The value of realising these things is that you are motivated to nip problems in the bud. (Disclaimer: I made all that up...)
- The Indian cricket thing has become a joke. I've resisted writing about it, but their repeated threat to send the players home if they don't get their damn way in court has actually made me not interested in watching their damn games. Almost equally amazing was the editorial from The Australian the other day (sorry, no link), which summarised the situation well enough, but said the Australian team needed to be supported in the national interest. I can hardly stop myself from swearing at this point. I try to maintain an open mind towards that august Murdoch plaything - sorry - august publication. It's nowhere near as one-eyed (towards conservative politics) as many people cheaply claim, and it some ways it's a model of balance. (Only in some ways...) But every now and then they publish such absolute bullshit that.... OK I'll stop now.