Java One

Ran my first Java program. The Java environment is modular; that is the whole secret.
I should speed along once I get the hang of it. A long day ahead!

China

Le Monde has been telling the story: the Chinese economy is growing by leaps and bounds,
apparently impervious to the problems of the world economy. Not to be overlooked: the
so-called demographic dividend. While the population is aging in the developed world, that of China is increasing for the labour force. China is expected to become the leading world economic power in 2016.

Below, IMF numbers for growth.

Hangover 3

Watched Hangover 3 last night. Loved it; I didn’t laugh, I howled. «I am also

dyslexic’; funny stuff.

Why am I in the minority, here. The folks at Rotten Tomatoes canned it: 19 out of 100.

Those who did like it praised the daring foray into dark territory. WTF are they talking

about.

Younger critics get tangled in the plot line, which seems less clean than a bachelor party

and wedding reception gone unhinged. In point of fact - and the New Yorker magazine have 

writen about this - the fact that marriage as an institution is loosing ground is an upset for literature, 

exploring since Jane Austen  people making good or bad marriages. This episode as well ends 

in a marriage and it is the glaring discrepancy between this and the cool tone of the action that 

preceeded that is jarring and ironic. This crazy act needs to be explained.

The plot line does center on Allan, off his meds. But that is the central conceit of the whole trilogy: 

Allan’s ability to say the precise contrary to what the others expect or

believe is what drives the action and rights the world. It is the language of childhood,

and he marries babyhood. The plot on his story runs backwards.

John Goodman is a wonderful old-school vilain. He could have been better served with less 

plot-explanatory lines. The Chow character is from another timeline: he gets to go

to the wedding, something of an extra Muskateer. ‘I could be a good wife to you.’ Funny!

So I loved it, down to Bradley Cooper who has the most seductive voice in media and

runs like a dancer. Even the soundtrack was sick, tunes from 2009, year of the initial installement. 

Family fun for everybody except the children.

Almodovar

Can't find the movie, but the trailer is OK.

Mouvement

This lovely image - an objet trouvé on the Web -  is of the underside of a bridge in Texas, obviously taken in summertime. Sometimes this kind of dreaming is more powerful than looking at beaches in the Pacific - where I am not going - but

whose feeling tone I will visit again next summer. In any event, it is the new wallpaper on my laptop.

Indeed, couldn’t even make it to Tim’s for coffee, this morning. It wasn’t brutally cold out, a modest -16 C, but windy enough to make me feel like taking chances, and running across that boulevard I have to cross perhaps prematurely. The ice is invisible, and the road maintenance unsure at this point. 

I did make a new year’s resolution this year: I am not weighing myself till February.There’s one I am going to stick with. I took a long walk last Sunday morning in that interregnum of thaw we enjoyed and remembered just how wonderful moving about 

and breathing fresh air can make one feel. Surely this is one of the mechanisms at work in the onset of the more extreme forms of obesity: the human animal, deprived of the pleasures of roaming for whatever reason, goes for the daily dose of feel-good substances from brain party food. And ends up incapacitated. 

Bottom line: no more preachy exercise for weight control. That is a  syllogism.

Mouvement is pleasure.

Polar Vortex

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2014/jan/06/polar-vortex-record-low-interactive

Choices