Friday, November 02, 2007
Senior moments
I learn that our masonic brethren call senior moments, out of respect for the craft, craft moments. An acronym for can't remember a thing. Can't remember what the eff stood for. Have had two of these recently. One quite harmless, involved pouring the boiling water into the tea cup rather than the tea pot. The other rather less harmless, involved walking into a pole in the pavement while distracted by a closed noodle bar near Earlsfield station. Right ribs somewhat bruised.
I also learn from Mr Joep Leerssen's excellent essay on national thought. One thought from same being that one aspect of conservatism (not something I ordinarily care to be associated with) is that one should not try to write a rule book, even a revolutionary new rule book or a constitution, from scratch in the way that Napoleon is said to have done. This is far too difficult. Much more sensible to rely on an orderly and organic growth of customary or common law. The 'is said to' qualification because one does not really write rule books from scratch. I hope that not even the most self confident legislator is going to attempt this. Rather, one assembles chunks of stuff one likes the look of into a new frame - all a bit like quilting really. So the distinction is not quite as sharp as presented. But it is a good point nonetheless. And then there is the related point of New Labour's touching faith in the power of rules to achieve change.
And I have a puzzle. Why would James Joyce refer to his soul as being a feminine entity? Something he does quite a lot of in potaaym. Must make enquiries about whether souls are thought to be sexed at all. I suppose they might be aged but one would need to be sure of having lots of bytes to store the age in as souls last for ever - although I suppose one could cheat by mapping I+ onto [0,1) by a transformation such as: T(i)=sumk(i(k)/((2^k)*10)) , where {i(k): k=1 to K} is the decimal representation of the integer i. This would be sort of OK but there would be a loss of precision in the absence of lots of bytes. Presumably this is the sort of thing that the scholastics used to get excited about.
I also learn from Mr Joep Leerssen's excellent essay on national thought. One thought from same being that one aspect of conservatism (not something I ordinarily care to be associated with) is that one should not try to write a rule book, even a revolutionary new rule book or a constitution, from scratch in the way that Napoleon is said to have done. This is far too difficult. Much more sensible to rely on an orderly and organic growth of customary or common law. The 'is said to' qualification because one does not really write rule books from scratch. I hope that not even the most self confident legislator is going to attempt this. Rather, one assembles chunks of stuff one likes the look of into a new frame - all a bit like quilting really. So the distinction is not quite as sharp as presented. But it is a good point nonetheless. And then there is the related point of New Labour's touching faith in the power of rules to achieve change.
And I have a puzzle. Why would James Joyce refer to his soul as being a feminine entity? Something he does quite a lot of in potaaym. Must make enquiries about whether souls are thought to be sexed at all. I suppose they might be aged but one would need to be sure of having lots of bytes to store the age in as souls last for ever - although I suppose one could cheat by mapping I+ onto [0,1) by a transformation such as: T(i)=sumk(i(k)/((2^k)*10)) , where {i(k): k=1 to K} is the decimal representation of the integer i. This would be sort of OK but there would be a loss of precision in the absence of lots of bytes. Presumably this is the sort of thing that the scholastics used to get excited about.
# posted by Jim @ 4:39 AM 
