I’ve been a gracious guest, really I have. I’ve not spoken a word out of line here I think. “Freedom of speech” is perhaps not built into the structure of English society the way I learned that it is in America. I saw George the 3rd’s house at Kew Gardens today. Much that one could say spinning off from that. It appears to be a modest enough home for an imperial monarch.
I’d like to thank England for the Iraq withdrawal.
But there was a man named Harrison. He built clocks in the eighteenth century, pretty much gave his life to engineering the most accurate and shock proof mechanisms built up to that time. He was after the Longitude Prize, and he won it, but man-oh-man did they make him jump through hoops.
I was in the Eastern hemisphere today, just the other side of the prime meridian. Didn’t feel any different really.
There isn’t much better in this life than sitting in the dappled shade outside the Royal Observatory, eating ham bap and crisps and reflecting on the weirdness of Newton and Flamsteed. Flamsteed was an obsessive, an astronomer in a land of clouds and damp, out every night trying for observations and faithfully recording whatever he saw.
Newton stole his data and published it. There’s a story there, but Neal Stephenson has probably already written it.
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