Saturday, July 09, 2005

Light and Dark.

My gosh, lots to do and say.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments to my last entry. I am safe as yet, and I have made contact with most people I know in London, who are also safe. Won't be quite happy until I've contacted the last few though.

The whole thing is horrible. I wasn't in the least surprised when the news reports started coming through. I think we've been under no illusion that it would happen, it was just the when really that we didn't know.

As others have said, these days of instant information aren't always as informative as we might like. I heard an interruption to the radio programme I was listening to, at 9.30am, saying that due to a power surge, all the London underground stations had been closed. Then, at the 10 o'clock news an explosion on a bus was reported as well, and it became clear that this wasn't a power surge type of incident, but something more sinister and clearly co-ordinated.

Then, much as I was hearing live radio news, reading instantaneous reports on the internet, it was a terribly slow and confused process, because much as the information was being put out soon after it was learned, everyone was actually still trying to work out what on earth was going on, so we were getting lots of speculation and possiblys, as that is the reality of trying to work out what on earth is happening, while also broadcasting to keep people informed. But it was like some sort of horrible jigsaw with the pieces changing shape periodically.

Today it has come out that rather than the tube explosions being within 30 minutes of each other, that actually all three bombs went off in less than a minute.

There are many photos around of the aftermath of what happened. In particular, the first two photos here show how awful one of the situations looked.

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Fact of the Day: It is estimated that the mental capacity of a 100 year old human with perfect memory could be represented by a computer with 10 to the power of 15 bits (one petabit). At the current rate of computer chip development, that figure can be reached in about 35 years. However, that represents just memory capacity, not the extremely complex processes of thought creation and emotions.

PostSecret of the Day: Stare / look closely.

Meme of the Day: "If, as you live your life, you find yourself mentally composing blog entries about it, post this exact same sentence in your weblog" (stolen from Dooey).

Meme of the Week: Ten Songs From the Year I Was Born
1. "Knowing Me, Knowing You" - ABBA
2. "When A Child Is Born" - Johnny Mathis
3. "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" - Julie Covington
4. "God Save the Queen" - The Sex Pistols
5. "I Feel Love" - Donna Summer
6. "I Don't Want To Talk About It/The First Cut Is The Deepest" - Rod Stewart
7. "The Name Of The Game" - ABBA
8. "Living Next Door To Alice" - Smokie
9. "Rockin' All Over The World" - Status Quo
10. "We Are The Champions" - Queen

(stolen from AAYOR)

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I leave you with Never Forget, Tony.

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