What is truth - continued.

Going off slightly at a tangent, the 17th century philosopher Decartes spent some time thinking about this question and came to the uncomfortable conclusion that he could not be sure about the existence of anything. The chair on which he was sitting, the table at which he was sitting, the room in which he was, all the people he came into contact with - indeed the whole of the world as he knew it - could simply be figments of his imagination. Or he might be dreaming, or some supernatural being could, for whatever reason, be fooling him into thinking that these things existed (shades of The Matrix here). But then he realised that he could not be a figment of his own imagination - to have an imagination, he must exist. Equally if this was all a dream, he had to be dreaming, and to be dreaming, he had to exist. And if he was being fooled, then once again if he didn't exist, there would be nobody to fool. So he realised that the one thing he could be sure of was his own existence. The very fact that he was capable of thought meant that he must exist. He encapsulated this idea in the phrase "I think, therefore I am" which is often given in Latin as Cogito, ergo sum, or in French (for he was French) as Je pense, donc je suis. So in Cartesian terms, the only truth is - I exist!

Does God believe in Professor Hawking?

So has Stephen Hawking done away with the need for God - using the word in its widest meaning? I don't pretend to understand half of what Hawking is talking about, but I keep coming up against this fundamental problem - however you slice it, there must have been a time when there was nothing followed by a time when there was something, and according to my (perhaps imperfect) understanding, this contravenes a basic law of physics, and therefore, by definition, must have been a super-natural event, and therefore caused by some supernatural entity. So it seems to me that we can't get away from the need to have "God" as the original creator of everything.

Dog in the manger - part II.

Well apparently I was wrong (see post of 11th August) - Southampton it seems are continuing with their ban on press photographers at their ground, and requiring anybody wanting photographs of a game to have to buy them from the club. The Swindon Advertiser has resorted to Subbuteo figures to give their readers a flavour of the highlights of Swindon Town's recent match against the Saints. I really can't see Southampton winning this particular fight.

Hic!

According to excerpts published in the press, Tony Blair in his autobiography confesses to having a Scotch or G & T before dinner and half a bottle of wine with his meal most nights, and considers that this was a problem. Well all I can say is that if he was a problem drinker, I am right down there in the gutter!

Another one down the drain.

August was the coldest for 17 years it seems. So the private forecasting service which earlier in the year confidently predicted a good summer, and specifically that the beginning of August would be really hot (see post dated 23rd March), has proved as fallible as the Met Office. Why don't we stop listening to these people, and simply take every day as it comes? Might just as well.

Cricket, lovely cricket(?)

Let's stand back and look at this objectively. It is not against the laws of the game, or a criminal offence, to bowl a no-ball. If it can be proved that a no-ball was bowled deliberately (for a monetary consideration or any other reason) then that could be seen as bringing the game into disrepute, and the International Cricket Council could impose such sanctions as it thinks fit - against the bowler, or indeed the team. For a criminal offence to have been committed it must be shown that as a result of the deliberate no-ball somebody has been defrauded - that is, has lost money as a consequence. What we have at present is an allegation that money was handed over to a "fixer" who then arranged for no-balls to be bowled at specific times during the match. Certainly this brings the ICC into play, but at present as far as I am aware there is no evidence of anybody being defrauded as a result. Of course, what it does raise is the question of whether other aspects of this and other matches have been "fixed" and doubtless this is what the police are looking into. For the immediate future, it is for the ICC to decide what, if any, action to take.

Oh no - not again!

I fear Ed Milliband is in danger of becoming the Michael Foot of the 21st century. Elections are not won from the extremes - left or right. Labour's "core vote" is not sufficient to do the job - if they are to come back electorally they have to attract voters away from the other parties. I can understand the unions liking what he's saying, but I'm afraid it looks very much like electoral suicide.

What is truth? - continued.

One of my abiding memories is of a family meal years ago at a pub up in the Malvern Hills somewhere. It was one of those perfect days - the weather was perfect, the food was perfect, the company was perfect - which is why it has stuck in my memory. And when we'd finished eating, we took the rest of our drinks out onto the patio at the rear of the pub. Like I say we were up in the Malverns, and from the patio you could look down on the countryside below, and see for miles. And there in the distance was a man hammering in a fence-post - I could see him swing his sledgehammer onto the post, and then maybe a couple of seconds later, I would hear a faint "thwack". It's a well-known phenomenon - compared with the speed of light, sound travels slowly, so you see the man hit the post well before you hear it happen. So I'd had a good meal and a couple of beers and it was a warm afternoon, and you can guess what happened - my eyes started to close. So now I was sitting there listening to the "thwacks" as the man continued with his work. At the time I was just enjoying the moment, but later it occurred to me that there were two different realities going on here - with my eyes open, the man hit the post when I saw him do it, but with my eyes closed, he didn't hit the post until I heard it. So, what's the truth? When does he hit the post? More to come, I'm afraid!

You'll just have to google it!

Sad to read about the demise of the book version of the Oxford English Dictionary, but if there is one area where the internet scores over the printed word, this is it. As has been mentioned over and over again on this blog, language is forever evolving, and this means that printed dictionaries are doomed to always be chasing the fire - whereas the internet is far more capable of reflecting subtle changes in meaning as they occur and can introduce new words as and when they come into fashion. The OED has simply accepted the inevitable.

Drives you mad.

I remember Jasper Carrott in one of his one-man shows talking about running a marathon and of how he was warned about hitting THE WALL - and that's how he told it, putting the expression in verbal capital letters, and then of how everything was going well until he hit THE WALL, and so on. I am reminded of this whenever we come back off holiday down in the Southwest, except it isn't a wall you hit, it's THE MERGE. For those not around here, this is where the M5 joins the M6 - and you can just imagine it, two of the busiest motorways in the country just coming together. You've driven all the way up from Devon or wherever with no major holdups, and then you hit THE MERGE. Everything grinds to a halt, and if you get through it in 20 minutes, you've done well. Every time I mouth a few well chosen obscenities to whoever thought that one up.