A few items which were too short to merit separate posts.
If you feel the need to add the words "no offence intended" to the end of a statement, please stop and consider the fact that this means you've just made an offensive statement, and that you know you've just made an offensive statement. Here's a novel thought: try not saying the offensive thing, if you really wish to avoid offence.
This Month's winner of the Nonsensical Spam Award goes to:
To tell the truth, I don't like disco.Knowledge is power.I don't think much of the movie.It involves a lot of hard workNo problem!I learnt that I had passed the test.I learnt that I had passed the test.What time is it? He is collecting money.The doctor's words made him feel comfortable.
[link redacted]
In Sao Paulo, mourners at a funeral were shocked when proceedings were interrupted, as Gilberto Araujo walked in. Well, you can hardly blame them; it was Gilberto's funeral, after all.
The end of an era. The UK's last remaining analogue television transmitter was switched off, yesterday in Northern Ireland. Not coincidentally, the last Ceefax page was also transmitted yesterday.
The town of Wincanton, Somerset, UK, is twinned with the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork, on Terry Pratchett's Discworld. According to The Fount Of All Knowledge™, that's a unique twinning, but I'm not sure how much real effort got put into the fact-checking. Does anyone else know of other such twinnings? (Thanks to reader Remigius for that little titbit.)
I've seen a lot of variations of the spelling, regarding William of Ockham and his famous philosophical razor. Occam, Ocham, and so forth. It doesn't help that until the arrival of dictionaries as standard checks, spelling was pretty much a much a matter of personal choice (and presumably a person's accent), but the modern spelling of his birthplace is "Ockham." If anyone's looking for a reason to pick a particular spelling and stick with it, I reckon that's a good one as any.
Here's one that keeps turning up in the search-terms, in my site stats: "Why don't atheists believe in God?" and suchlike. It's the wrong question. The correct question is "Why should anyone believe in god(s)?" The default position, when faced with a lack of evidence for the existence of something, is one of disbelief a lack of belief* in the existence of whatever it is, with a proviso that new evidence might force a reconsideration. For instance, until I read Remigius's comment, I had a disbelief lack of belief* in real towns twinned with Discworld towns. It's not that I rejected the idea, or ever actively stated that such twinnings didn't exist, it's just that I'd seen no evidence that they might exist. Once I'd seen the claim made, a quick check for evidence proved that the claim was accurate, so I now believe that at least one such twinning exists. Same for gods: I've seen the claim, but—so far—I've seen no evidence to back that claim up, so I'll continue to disbelieve not believe* in them unless evidence is forthcoming.
*Edited to correct my bad wording. There is a difference between disbelief and lack of belief. The latter, obviously, should be the default position. Thanks, Remigius, for pointing that out.
And let's end with a blow struck for politeness in my own town. Counter assistants in County Stores, Taunton, have enacted a policy whereby customers who approach the counter whilst talking on a mobile phone will be passed over in favour of the next customer in line. More power to their elbows, I say! We seem to have formed a culture wherein a person, and our interaction with them, become somehow less important if they're physically present, than a person who happens to be at the other end of an electronically mediated communication link. No matter how trivial the phone conversation, it seems natural and self-evident, to a growing number of people, that it takes precedence over a conversation with a person in the same room. The words "I'll call you back in a minute" seem never to occur to such people. As the linked article says:
It's peculiar that a technology that was supposedly designed to help people communicate has caused so many not to observe even the basic tenets of human discourse.
Damn right!
—Daz
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Daz, with regards that razor thingy. I have always believed that, other things being equal, a simpler spelling is better than a more complex one.
And can you really say you actually had a disbelief in real towns twinned with fictional ones? Surely a disbelief is an active refusal, or inability, to accept something as true, whereas you were merely ignorant (no offence intended) of such a thing even existing!
Good point. I suppose “a lack of belief,” both in gods and fictional-town-twinning, would have been more accurate. I shall edit accordingly, thanks.
@remigius:
And apply the guy’s razor to his home town? Why not – except that Ockham, like so many other towns, has had various alternative spellings. ‘Bocheham’ in the Domesday book, and ‘Hocham’ in 1170 [A.D.Mills, the popular dictionary of English place-names, OUP 1991]. Best stick with the current spelling of ‘Ockham’ to avoid confusion, I reckon.
Calls to mind a book, can’t remember the details but it would stretch the credulity of even ardent crop-circle believers, wherein the author cheerfully admitted to “using Occam’s hair-restorer”.
Er Daz, as a belief is an acceptance of a claim without evidence then surely that very same lack of evidence cannot be evidence of a lack of belief.
Maybe a lack of awareness, or somesuch.
Before my comment you were unaware of the possibility of real/fictional municipal mating. After my comment you were aware of the possibility but lacked the evidence. However, by searching t’interweb you are now both aware of the possibility, and have knowledge of the reality.
You have knowledge of, rather than a belief in, one such twin. If you accept others may exist, but have no such evidence, then that is a belief.
I didn’t mean to imply that lack of evidence for the existence of X is evidence of lack of belief in X, rather that it should, logically, necessitate a lack of belief in X until and unless better evidence is produced.
As for ignorance of the claim of existence, well if we’ve never heard of summat, we automatically lack belief in it.
I think we’re getting into subtly different definitions of the word ‘belief’. The difference between “I believe it’s about twenty to three” which can be roughly paraphrased as “to the best of my knowledge, but I’m not certain…”, and “I believe in God” which generally means “I’m certain.”
I saw the last half of that Taunton story on the news the other night and didn’t get the gist of it. Now I have I take my hat off to the bold shopkeepers of County Stores, Taunton. May they inspire many imitators. Phones do seem to take a curious precedence over human beings. Where will it end?
Funnily enough I think one of the surprisingly sharp visions of this trend taken to its natural conclusion can be found in the Pixar film Wall-E. In the film a whole spaceship full of people have grown obese from lack of exercise and live out their lives zipping about the ship’s various decks in big anti-gravity comfy chairs talking to their onboard computers without ever noticing all of the other people around them. Trapped in their own bubbles of reality they have become gross caricatures of our society’s own apathy and disinterest. As technology gets more immersive this image seems to resonate more and more with reality.
Ok I know Wall-E is a cutesy animation about cute robots that fall in love but under the surface its actually quite an underrated dystopian science fiction. No, really….
I’m gonna have to get hold of Wall-E, now, just to see…