Would it be preferable if we could live life and make pressing decisions on a purely deductive basis? Suppose I’m wondering whether today is actually Saturday, thus whether I should get busy with my laundry as per my rule. I might create a perfect syllogistic chain to answer this question. By my count, such a chain requires three premises and one definition. For example: P1) In this neighborhood, every day on which the trash collectors arrive is a Friday. P2) Yesterday was a day on which the trash collectors arrived. C1) Thus, yesterday was a Friday. D1) “Yesterday” means the day that immediately preceded today. C2) By (C1) and (D1), The day that immediately preceded today was a Friday. P3) Every day that was immediately preceded by a Friday is a Saturday. C3) By (C2) and (P3), Today is Saturday, QED. Now … where is my hamper? Obviously, we don’t think like that. Nor is it a desideratum. Life would be a very ponderous business if we did. So when ar...
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My day-to-day calendar for 2017 (a Christmas gift stocking-stuffer from Diane) has a Big Bang Theory theme. My monthly calendar for 2017 will be just like my monthly (wall) calendar for 2016 -- modeled each month by a dog of a different breed. My desktop appointments book for 2017 is a pale blue covered generic "at a glance" thing, utterly unlike the Amex calendars of earlier years. I've given up those and their monthly factoids about distant places aimed at selling me on the delights of credit-driven travel. This year my Christmas gifts to each of Beth's children were ... calendars. She has three kids, so each of them received a calendar of one of these three types. The day-by-day calendar, for Alex, was Dilbertian, the monthly calendar for Shannon was scenic, and the appointments book for Alison was appropriately collegiate. All of which reminds me of a joke. Did you hear about the burglar who broke into a calendar factory? No, what did he get? ...
I have a Dilbert day-by-day calendar again this year. Saturday and Sunday share a single page, each day of the work week has a page, and a comic, of ots own. I'll quote here the comic for January 9/10. Dilbert is sitting at his desk, the pointy-haired boss is standing behind him. Boss asks, "Do we have any actionable analytics from our Big Data in the cloud?" Dilbert, "Yes, the data shows that my productivity plunges whenever you learn new jargon." Boss, "Maybe in-memory computing will accelerate your applications." Dilbert, "Plunge, plunge, plunge." I also have a month by month wall calendar, aptly titled "Puppies," in which I'll be greeted each month by another cure dog-child. January greets me with a photo of a babe beagle, running about in grass with an orange ball in his mouth. Finally, am the proud possessor of a desk book for appointments. For the first time in several years, I'm NOT using one from A...
I've returned from my travels, so perhaps the postings will seem somewhat fresher for a bit. One of the pre-fab postings you read last week, dear patient reader, involved my three new calendars for 2015. Allow me now to cast my mind back nostalgically at 2014 as it fades into the rear view mirror, and comment on my day-to-day calendar for that year, which involved Dilbert cartoons. On November 27th, this dresser-top calendar illustrated a theme dear to my heart. In the first panel, pointy-haired boss, standing behind Dilbert (who appears to be working on a spreadsheet at his desk) says, "Someone sent me another anonymous email with a link to the article about the world's worst bosses." In the second panel, boss clearly now has Dilbert's attention, and he continues: "I get one of those emails every time I leave your cubicle. Did you think I wouldn't notice the Correlation?" Then he walks away, and we see Wally, in the next cubicle, smilin...
I begin this year, as I seem to begin each year, with three calendars. I have a new desktop/appointment calendar from American Express; a month-by-month wall calendar advertising the Boston Red Sox baseball team, and a day-to-day calendar atop my dresser filled with trivia regarding a television program, The Big Bang Theory. The AMEX calendar, as is its year-by-year custom, tells me to travel to various exotic places where I can use my blue card to go into debt. Among the locales highlighted this year: Cancun, Mexico; Oslo, Norway; Cusco, Peru. In connection with the latter, we're told amidst space for mid-September 2015 appointments that visitors to high-altitude Cuzco should keep well hydrated and avoid heavy meals and alcohol. Got it. The Red Sox calendar gives the stats for different players each month, starting in January with Jon Lester, Pitcher, #31. Lester also gets a very dramatic photo portraying him in full stretch, mid-pitch. If you're curious, he was born...
For my week-by-week desk calendar through 2014, I will rely on an unflashy but serviceable volume from American Express. As with last year's Amex calendar, there are factual tidbits on each page about various destinations where I can presumably enjoy a debt-financed vacation with my Amex card. The earliest pages tell me various facts for example with reference to Mykonos, in Greece, the red dot in the map you see here. I learn in this way that Mykonos is home to the a neighborhood known as Little Venice, "whose waterfront houses with their colorful balconies recall the quarter's Italian namesake." While Mykonos gets January, the site of this year's winter Olympics, Sochi in Russia, gets February. Events will be clustered in two distinct parts of Sochi, "a coastal cluster for indoor ice events and a mountain cluster for skiing ... in Krasnaya Polyana." Separately, my month-by-month wall calendar for the new year is entitled "Railroads: Illustratio...