Now I shall envy a German woman.

And here's a happy thought:

[Bonhams' book specialist Luke Batterham] added that the original books have outlived and defeated the Disney versions of the story.

I decided to go to the district polling station before it opened to-day, in the hope of avoiding a line. My thinking was that, while I would be waiting for it to open, I would spend less time in line, for a net savings. In the event, there was already a significant line when I got there, but the line grew dramatically behind me. I might have reälized more savings had I got there five or ten minutes still sooner. On the other hand, there may be times later to-day when the line is much shorter (yet before the polls close).

As per my previous declarations, I did not vote in the Presidential election. I remain persuaded that none of the candidates was adequate to hold so much power. I am convinced that the next President is going to prove a very great fool or a very great knave or quite likely both, and that the next two or more years are just going to be a rolling disaster.

A couple of things to note about this story:

First, we yet again have the BBC confusing a rate of change with the thing changing, The last time that I took note of such confusion from them, they were confusing the growth rate of GDP (ΔY/Δt) with the change in that growth rate (Δ²Y/Δt²). This time, they've turned around to confuse the growth rate of GDP (ΔY/Δt) with GDP (Y) itself. (If they maintain the earlier confusion, then by transitivity they confuse Y with Δ²Y/Δt².)

The Eurozone economy isn't growing 0.2% more slowly than before; its production is shrinking at a rate of 0.2%. (GDP is not itself a growth rate of under-lying wealth, because the vast majority of what is produced is consumed, rather than saved.)

A second thing to note is that the BBC is referring to the Eurozone as on the verge of a recession, while America may already be in recession. The brute fact is essentially the same across these two economies — one quarter in which production declined — but the Eurozone is made to seem on the cusp while America is presented as perhaps already well-in.

On Friday or on Saturday, the balcony that I keep photographing took another hit. I took some photos last night or this morning: The rough-and-ready repair applied on 20 October was a matter of simply pulling or pushing on the supports in a linear way, and it was none too precisely done. Now, with the south-eastern support and its base twisted, more skill would be required to get things even back to the poor state of 21 October.

I'd like to be able to connect my note-book computer to a better antenna than those built into it.

I could drill a hole in the case, and mount an RP SMA jack there, connected to the internal Wi-Fi card. The patch cord that I would use fot this would cost me $20.50.

An alternative would be to get a new USB or PCMCIA[1] Wi-Fi adapter with a built-in external antenna connector. Setting aside units that I fear would be even cheaper than they are inexpensive, it appears that an adapter with an antenna jack or jacks would cost at least $40, and then not support the forthcoming 802.11n standard.

Thus, basically, if I bought one of these Wi-Fi adapters, then I'd be paying $20 or more to avoid drilling a hole in the case of my computer, and for the convenience of not having to open-up the case whenever I wanted to switch to-or-from the internal antenna that would be disconnected to enable the RP SMA jack. (A patch cord with bulkhead U.FL-R connector instead of an RP SMA jack would spare me that latter awkwardness, but I've not found such a cord.)
 

[1]I don't much like the idea of surrendering the PCMCIA slot, as I only have one; but I have six USB slots, and have never used more than five at one time.

Something about being out during bright, sunny days quickly exhausts me. I'm okay from late after-noon into dawn; and I'm okay in shade or in a room with little or no direct sunlight. But about ten minutes in the sun from later morning until mid-after-noon (it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm walking or in a car) leaves me wanting to lay down and sleep.

I headed home this after-noon, thinking that I would thereäfter either run errands or organize my apartment. Now I doubt that I will do the former or much of the latter.

The Swansea Council has apparently failed to learn from the mistakes of others:

A very attractive young woman made a couple of attempts to catch my eye last night. Even though I am quite off the market, it's still flattering. But I anticipate a time when this will no longer occur. Perhaps I should cultivate a combination of a speech defect and Scottish accent.

As mentioned earlier, out of curiosity, I got a copy of Love Affair (1939), the film of which An Affair to Remember (1957) was a remake. This morning, I watched the earlier film.

It's a good film on its own merits, as opposed to being something that one should watch only out of curiosity or as a film buff. As to how it compares to Affair to Remember, well, I can now see why there are partisans for each. Love Affair manages to avoid some of the false steps that would later be made by Affair to Remember, but Love Affair also makes false steps that are uniquely its own.

Perhaps the greatest of these is in Terry's reäction when Michel (essentially the same character as Niccolo in the later film) begins to give his version of events when they did not meet at the appointed time. What he first tells her should at least disconcert her — in the later film, Terry momentarily thinks that she never actually had what she been hoping to recover — but in Love Affair Irene Dunne does nothing with that terrible moment.

In general, Dunne is not as compelling in the rôle of Terry as is Deborah Kerr. On the other hand, Boyer is, for the most part, more convincing as Michel than Cary Grant is as Niccolo.

The ship-board romance in the earlier movie is simply far too abbreviated to be particularly convincing (though we are mercifully spared the over-working of the intrusiveness of other passengers which characterizes the later film).

I was surprised to discover that Love Affair has as many musical numbers with children as does An Affair to Remember. But, in the earlier movie, these are fairly well handled, whereäs in the later film they are abominable. The children in Love Affair are average-to-cute, whereäs those in Affair to Remember are like something that Normal Rockwell would have painted — if he had actively hated children. And the song performed by the children in Love Affair (in this movie, the same song each time), though arguably sappy, none-the-less quite fits the story in a meaningful fashion.

Chris, who is a partisan for Love Affair (though appreciative of Affair to Remember) mentioned to me what he thought to be a problem with chapel scene in the later movie. I have to agree that the earlier film handles those specific aspects better. While I am (as long-standing readers will already know) an atheïst, these characters are not, and this interval in the chapel is where the two of them should recognize that they want a marriage that will be a sacred bond of love, rather than a convenient union with someone good and affluent. The later film fails to clearly convey this thought, basically because (as Chris would have it) it allows Terry's hat to displace the Virgin Mary; however, it does clearly convey that Niccolo is thinking that perhaps real happiness would entail marrying someone such as Terry. On the other hand, the chapel scene in the earlier film, like the ship-board romance, is far too abbreviated; the characters find themselves positioned as if being married one to another, but little more is conveyed than a sense that marriage between them is not unthinkable.

I was pleased to see that in Love Affair, as in Affair to Remember, the original fiancée and fiancé respective to the two principals are themselves depicted as good people. (We get that more clearly in Affair to Remember, but it is an element of Love Affair.) Any conflict or resolution that would come from having these secondary characters revealed as somehow deserving to be jilted would be altogether too trite and too pat. Nor would it be plausible that the heiress who wanted to provide for Michel/Niccolo and the businessman who wanted to provide for Terry could find happiness in each other.

LiveJournal has been failing in its attempts to fetch various feeds, including that for this 'blog. When I first saw that the feed to my 'blog was not being fetched, I examined the profile pages for various syndication journals on LJ; quite a few were reporting a parsing error, and next check times were passing without those next checks.

So far, there is no report at LiveJournal Status, at LJ Support, or at LiveJournal Maintenance indicating an awareness of the problem.

Up-Date: Well, the previously unretrieved entries have now been fetched, and now they appear one immediately after another on Friends pages.

Up-Date (2008:10/29 02:23 PDT): The fetching is failing again.