So, there’s this film:
And it’s just … plain …. awful!
And I mentioned Patrick Stewart, right?
In amongst all the humour in “The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul”, Douglas Adams makes some clever observations. This one particularly struck me:
“What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? ‘Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
“I reject that entirely,” said Dirk sharply. “The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, ‘Yes, but he or she simply wouldn’t do that.’”
“Well, it happened to me today, in fact,” replied Kate.
“Ah, yes,” said Dirk, slapping the table and making the glasses jump. “Your girl in the wheelchair — a perfect example. The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday’s stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don’t know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality.”
To elaborate: while visiting the Woodshead Hospital, the character Kate comes across a young patient in a wheelchair who constantly recites stock market prices (but on a 24 hour delay). When told this is extraordinary, the psychiatrist in charge states:
“Oh yes. Quite a feat.”
“A feat?”
“Well, as a scientist, I have to take the view that since the information is freely available, she is acquiring it through normal channels. There’s no necessity in this case to invent any supernatural or paranormal dimension. Occam’s razor. Shouldn’t needlessly multiply entities.”
“But has anyone seen her studying the newspapers, or copying stuff down over the phone?”
She looked up at the nurse, who shook her head, dumbly.
“No, never actually caught her at it,” said Standish. “As I said, it’s quite a feat. I’m sure a stage magician or memory man could tell you how it was done.”
“Have you asked one?”
“No. Don’t hold with such people.”
“But do you really think that she could possibly be doing this deliberately?” insisted Kate.
“Believe me, if you understood as much about people as I do, Miss, er - you would believe anything,” said Standish, in his most professionally reassuring tone of voice.
This exchange neatly sums up my experiences with how the medical profession deals with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Doctors would rather not admit the ‘impossible’, or in Dirk’s argument, CFS is simply “something we don’t know about”. They won’t consider the possibility that CFS:
Instead, the medical community would rather come up with improbable and implausible explanations for CFS that completely defy common sense. For example, many doctors claim that people with CFS are malingerers who have concocted their illness for some unexplained reason. As some of my friends have pointed out, this argument doesn’t hold up to reason since many CFS sufferers are talented, intelligent and driven individuals who would never choose a life of isolation, idleness and relative poverty. As Dirk eloquently argues:
“the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable”.
Moreover I’ve even heard a psychiatrist argue that CFS could be explained by the fact that sufferers were abused as children, were not loved enough by their parents or had a bad relationship break-up (I kid you not!). The complete ridiculousness of this theory and the fact the link between such trauma and CFS has never been proven does not stop such bizarre (but supposedly ‘rational’) explanations.
Indeed, it seems that doctors would sooner believe a wacky conspiracy theory where hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world all spontaneously devised some impossible illness out of thin air for unexplained reasons rather than admit that they (and ‘science’) are wrong or fallible.
Does anyone have one of those annoying continuous flow gas hot water systems? It feels like they always take ages to heat up the water.
Earlier this evening I had a few pots and knives to wash, so as I impatiently waited for the water gushing from the tap to change from ice cold to hot, I wondered if there was anything I could do to hurry up the process. My eyes idly fell across this on the bench:
and I distractedly thought “if I chopped them up and added them to the water, then it would be hotter.”
Nice work, brain.
My Dad was storing this in my fridge yesterday.
In case you can’t read the label (blame my crappy photography skills), it reads “Sheldon’s Bait: Live quality gents”.
Which raises the question, how many gents does it take to catch a Sheldon?
Why do so many people proudly declare on their profiles that they “love going on adventures”? Has the word “adventure” been redefined by hipsters to refer to some weird activity that I’m unaware of? Is it the latest euphemism? Or is it an example of society over-using and devaluing another perfectly good word?
The following scenarios are those that I would define as adventures:
Other possible adventures include travelling into space, circumnavigating the globe in some kind of dirigible, discovering buried treasure, or any situation where you are trapped and starving and you have to resort to eating your fellow travellers.
Some examples of exploits that may be defined as adventures include:
The following activities do not qualify as an adventure:
I don’t know why I bother with Umberto Eco’s books since I usually find them impenetrable. But at least this one has pictures:
This screencap sums up my day yesterday:
Unfortunately, this one does not:
In my previous job, I used to be a big fan of Buzzword Bingo. It helped to cut through the boredom of our regular branch meetings. The boss would never let us down, over-using wanky management buzzwords like ‘cognisant’, ‘paradigm’ or ‘synergy’. My favourite was ‘copacetic’.
So how about okcupid profile bingo? Here’s an example bingo card I prepared earlier:
If it goes well, we could turn it into an okcupid drinking game and market it to the masses, although the nanny state government here frowns on that sort of thing. Come to think of it, they frown on gambling too, so bingo is probably out too.
And then Erast Fandorin said in a squeaky but perfectly clear voice, “Tell me about her. About Bezhetskaya.”
Zurov tossed an exuberant lock of hair back from his forehead. “Ah yes, I forgot. You’re from the train.”
“From where?”
“That’s what I call it. Amalia—she’s a queen, after all—she needs a train, a train of men. The longer the better. Take a piece of well-meant advice: put her out of your head or you’re done for. Forget about her.”
“I can’t,” Erast Fandorin replied honestly.
“You’re still a babe in arms. Amalia’s bound to drag you down into the whirlpool, the way she’s dragged so many down already. Maybe the reason she took a shine to me was because I wouldn’t follow her into the whirlpool. I don’t need to—I have a whirlpool of my own. Not as deep as hers but still quite deep enough for me to drown in.”
“Do you love her?” Fandorin asked bluntly, claiming his privilege as the offended party.
“I’m afraid of her,” said Hippolyte with a dismal laugh, “more afraid than in love. And, anyway, it’s not love at all. Have you ever tried smoking opium?”
Fandorin shook his head.
“Once you’ve tried it, you’ll hanker after it for the rest of your life. That’s what she’s like. She won’t set me free! I can see perfectly well that she despises me and thinks I’m not really worth a damn, but she’s spotted something or other in me. Worse luck for me! You know, I’m glad she’s gone away, honest to God.”
Boris Akunin, The Winter Queen
Vimes was smoking a cigar with great pleasure. Somehow this seemed the time and the place. Snuff was all very well, but a good cigar had time and wisdom and personality. He would be unhappy to see this one go.