Of Feedback & Wobbles
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Asynchronous beer & spirits taxes, courtesy of the Tories, which coupled with the economies of supermarkets means that pubs are NOT what they used to be and a nexus of the village (and they ARE a village level resource) as for Chapels: maybe people are waking up to the fact that ALL religions are cons!
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Joe
I would tend towards a more nuanced approach, and my pubs/chapels thing was an ironic observation on the secular/religious dichotomy, but point taken on the tax front...
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