Thursday October 1st 2009 - Another Octobertest

          Another day in the Library.  This time the Email is here, so I can print things off for checking and signing.  I suppose I'm really checking that, not only did I say what I meant, but they heard what I said.

          What is really irksome is the requirement to sign bits of paper.   There really ought to be something more foolproof than that.  I now mostly sign LCD screens when I use my credit card, and because I'm awkwardly left-handed, it usually comes out looking nothing like any other attempt to do the same thing.  And, I would think, unameanable to graphological analysis.  In other words, a waste of technology and time.

          The absence of some sensible way of acknowledging the contents of a document so as to allow electronic transmission must result in thousands of tons of paper being shipped around the world, at very considerable cost.

          If we managed to finds a virtual signature method, we could start a "ban the printer" movement.  Hardly anybody ever needs to print anything, ever.  Perhaps the great bureaucratic factories of governments could print it all out after it arrives, and pulp it all when they've finished with it.  We could provide them with pulping machines, and demand they become self-sufficient in paper. 

 

          All of which has been timed perfectly to coincide with the Octoberfast.  So there's no putting it to one side and going down the pub, leastways, not without it still being there when I get back.  In a world where they greet you with a glass of water, I'm about to find out what they think when they discover that's all I want.

 

          It's very difficult, when eating out, to find any dish that isn't stuffed with carbs.  I've decided a sensible strategy is to follow thin ladies about, and see wwhere they go.  They're bound to know some underworld of carbless food.  Old shops refurbished with old furniture, where they can drink perfumed tea and munch on grass.  Actually, it's not such a bad strategy: at least the scenery's nice.  And we can talk abstractly about the nations health problems, without seeing them all around us.