Picture from Jeremy Selwyn via The Evening Standard
I set out last night on a five-mile cycle journey to meet a friend which turned into an hour and a half odyssey thanks to freezing fog but also technological dependency. It was late in the day so my Galaxy Nexus was already low on charge but I thought had enough to use to navigate. Intermittent use of the GPS was enough to make it go flat but not enough to help me to navigate successfully. I then realised without my phone I didn’t even have a map. I would have called my friend to tell him I was running late but of course my phone didn’t work and because “everyone has mobiles these days” the few remaining phone booths on my journey didn’t work. For a moment I thought of working out my laptop from my bag and Skyping my friend but, of course, my mobile broadband is dependent on (you guessed it) my phone.
Fortunately, I did manage to get to him in time to see Argo together (very good) but our dinner was extremely brief (sorry John!). On the upside cycling around the back streets of Hampstead in the fog was extremely atmospheric. I’d show you some pictures but I don’t carry a camera any more because I have one always with me… in my phone!
A plan with too many moving parts– which I worried about beforehand.
Ironically it reminded me of the Iran Rescue Mission that failed at Desert One.
Another part of those events was chronicled in ‘Argo’.
And ‘Zero Dark 30’ about the mission to kill Bin Ladin, may or may not mention that, once again, the US ran out of helicopters on the mission due to mechanical issues, thus failed to ‘hoist’ all the of captives from the mission out, as originally planned.
In other words, the same mistake that led to the failure in 1979 at Desert One.
Comment by John — 15 December 2012 @ 4:23 pm