pumpkinstrokemarrow

Was able to do much better eight hours later, when stomach was much fuller but the alcohol level was running down. Instantly got the trick of stacking them the obvious way which we had missed earlier. Tried again on waking this morning and hand not very steady at all. Part of the trouble was was once the stack wobbled it was doomed. No amount of two handed tweaking would stabilize it; not that such tweaking was permitted anyway in many of the rules and regulations. Another part of the trouble was that the Paul Lamond spec. to the Chinese engineers was not particularly demanding. While the chairs were all the same nominal size there were variations of the order of a millimetre; quite enough to make a big difference when trying to stack the obvious way.

A few hours later, hands much steadier with the result illustrated. Have now got just the five most awkwardly configured chairs to do, where by configuration I mean the sectional shape of the legs and the shape of the head of the back of the chair, there being various variations. I think I shall fail.

The camera in the telephone does not seem to be able to cope to well either. I think I am getting the effect which results from the pixel size getting large relative to the detail one is trying to capture, giving the image a rather jagged appearance. You can get the same effect on the screen - in Powerpoint, say, when the display font size interacts in a funny way with the screen pixel size. See also how the lower yellow chairs have been distorted.

In intervals of stacking chairs, becoming alarmed by a proposition acquired from a review of a recent book by Hawking & Mlodinow. It seems that Hawking has followed in the illustrious footsteps of Fodor by taking a collaborator and venturing, when in years of maturity, into new territory, in the hope that his eminence in old territory will carry him through. The reviewer thought that perhaps it had not. See also June 12 and July 8. Notwithstanding, a presently popular theory seems to be that the universe is built on the surface of a complicated manifold - an object of a dozen or so dimensions and which can be of considerable complexity with lots of strange folds, holes, singularaties and tunnels, but which, locally, looks just like Euclidean space. You can move around in the ordinary way. At least that it what I think the idea is. So, so far, so good. But it then seems that the properties of the universe you get depend crucially on exactly which complicated manifold you choose. With the result that some people think that there are billions of universes out there. We just happen to be in the one which works for us.

An arrangement which seems very different from that of evolution. With monkeys, natural selection has had millions of years and perhaps millions of generations to tune the design. It may well be that the gorilla on the typewriter usually types nonsense, but if you give him long enough he might whack out something sensible. And unlike the gorilla, natural selection can build on success. Once you have got a decent eye or toe-nail, you can run with it. No need to start from scratch each time. So not unreasonable that you get some decent designs coming out of natural selection. Whereas with universes you are starting from scratch. I don't see an option where this manifold nearly works so let's tweak it a bit. At least not without admitting the deity. Which is not the plan.

PS: Mr G. scores again. He seems to think that I need advice about alcohol dependency.