1 May, 2003: Month ending

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Ah, the relief: `Stay Calm April' is over. Of course, the whole exercise was a waste of time, since it is not possible to remain calm purely through an effort of will. I could act calm by refusing to discuss the things that made me angry, but doing so is pretty futile and in any case I didn't muster quite enough self-control to manage it. So I found myself saying things, pausing for a moment, and then saying ``I'm sorry, that didn't come out calm at all, did it?''

Anyway, in true content-free web log style, here's a list of some of the things which challenged the purpose and execution of `Stay Calm April':

And some dull, more geeky things:

So, I can recommend that you do not try any `Stay Calm' months. They are a waste of time.

I was pondering doing `no technology made after 1950 month', which might work a bit better since so much of what seems to annoy me results from transistor-age technical innovations, but I don't think that's really feasible. That said, I did a quick count and the only bits of post-1950 technology I use are the computers and the mobile 'phone (which I'd rather do without). (I should note that in `pre-1950' I include things which could have been made before 1950, even if they weren't, like my bicycle or my FM radio; things which, though they didn't exist in 1950, are the direct equivalents of things which did, like supermarkets and bar-coded goods; and things which I can't really avoid using, like roads and public transport. In any case, this would be far too difficult to sensibly pull off.)


Copyright (c) 2003 Chris Lightfoot; available under a Creative Commons License.