An heuristic purchase of logic

The current cover

The previous cover

Yesterday, I visited Matlock Bath with my family. It is the place where my parents honeymooned back in the 1950s before their idealistic world was forever altered by the arrival of a child. After a pleasant meeting with some old friends in a café where they serve exotic coffees in the kind of receptacles normally reserved for afternoon tea, we went to the Oxfam bookshop. ¶ It’s all in Middle English gasped my daughter as she opened a copy of an OUP Chaucer (thus making her father proud, yet pushing her further to the edges of her X-factor watching generation). This was purchased along with a copy of Wilfrid Hodges Logic, a Penguin book. When I skimmed the book later on, I realised that I had purchased a book I already owned, but the original had been a Pelican book: my heuristic, scattergun approach was confused by the new dress and change of badge. I suppose that means I need this/these books more than ever — maybe I’ll read it twice. ¶ This is not the first time I have bought something I already owned.

Bad language = ‘Pre-prepared’

This text was prepared offline and when I was confident that it expressed what I wanted to say, I posted it. However, it seems that preparing things is no longer adequate, they must be pre-prepared. I have heard this redundant little adjective dropping from the mouths of people I would normally consider to be thoughtful and intelligent. ¶ There is a little button at the side of the editor in which I am typing that invites me to ‘Preview this Post’. That’s grand, but because I’m passionate about technology, I think I’d like to look at it before I look at it.

Criminalised for forgetfulness

What has happened to the ubiquitous man in a box, with whom we would communicate whence we gave him money? He (I never met any women this way) has been put out to grass that has been covered in tar and stones. He wanders this flatland in his flat cap, peering at — and occasionally through — glass, to see if the numbers on your paper are correct up yet. He now has a greater sense of responsibility than before — when he was protected from the elements and had time to improve himself by reading — he is now hypervigilant. ¶ We too must now be more vigilant. No longer do we have the luxury of storing our carriage, going about our business, and then paying our debt. We must seek out machinery (let us hope that it is functional) that bears a contract, we must (over) estimate the time required for our business — the first part of which must be spent seeking out machinery, reading its contract and supplying it with the correct coins of the realm (no copper, no notes, no change) to acquire a document. We must then return to our carriage (in which we were forced to temporarily imprison our children, because we fear the killers and the kiddy-fiddlers) and display the document we have purchased in the correct manner. Only then will we be free to go about our business (for the time estimated/purchased). Should you forget to do any of this, (because your father, or your dog has died, or you’re pregnant etc.) you will become a criminal. ¶ You must Pay & Display.

11 results for: nothing

I tried a dictionary search for the meaning of a word and by accident omitted to supply the word. Nevertheless, there were 11 results, prefaced with the statement; 11 results for: nothing. ¶ It is, no doubt, encouraging that even nothing can get results.

Repudiate | exculpate

They’re lovely words, they make a lovely rhythm as they flow from the mind to the mouth and out into the air but one doesn’t get the chance to use them very often. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

Transplanting hair

I’ve had it made painfully clear over the years that my hair is foppish; that what grows out of the top of my head makes me look like the lovechild of Melvyn Bragg/Barry Gibb or Daryl Hall/David Hasselhoff. Most of these hurtful comments have been manufactured by are borne of resentment from men who are bald, or at least, thinning. ¶ My wife has informed me that hair transplants are a B R U T A L process and this elicited in me a wave of compassion for those who are destined to be thatchless. Nevertheless, I remain an unrepentantly hirsute popinjay.

You see if you suck — dirty little heuristics

I’m writing this because I’m trying to understand the mechanism of creating and maintaining a ‘blog’, and I think the best way to learn is intuitively — press all the buttons and see if it breaks. I’m sucking it, so we shall see.