Herpolhodes and a Man Named Arthur

I was reading a book and encountered the following footnote:

“Hence the jabberwockian sounding statement: the polhode rolls without slipping on the herpolhode lying in the invariable plane.”

I pondered the footnote for a bit. I think that’s why people write footnotes. I mean, for the

Manufacturing a Crisis

There’s a pattern that is completely obvious to me when I look back over my online activities over the years. I have enjoyed each part of the pattern. It hasn’t grown much. It isn’t significantly wider. I don’t say many brand new kinds of things that I didn’t used to say. I can’t claim to have improved my depth. I don’t penetrate issues much farther than I

Police Raid to No Effect

This reporter saw four big burley cops and two smaller and differently uniformed people enter the house of my drug dealing neighbours. The visit appeared to be a surprise. Shortly before the visit a young woman had popped into the house and come out all happy. She showed her dog a bag of plant material. Eyewitnesses report that this is nothing out of the ordinary for the comings and goings at that house.The police stayed inside for about

Midlife Crisis

I have reached an age where I could go all nutty and call it a midlife crisis. I think that’s a generally accepted excuse for doing nutty things and I am fond of doing nutty things. So, armed with an all purpose excuse, I’m faced with a choice. What nutty thing should I do? I suppose I should examine my life to see what will be the most fun.

The classic thing to do is have an affair. In considering this as an option, the first question I

Do I look like …?

Friday afternoon, I skipped out of work and met a friend downtown. We agreed to meet at a little health food café. I showed up late. Fortunately, I’m not friends with idiots. My friend had brought a book with him and was contentedly reading while awaiting my arrival. He was done his food and I wasn’t hungry. So, we decided to leave the café. I wanted to go to the library to get a book. We did that. It didn’t take very long. I would

The Fragrance of Panties

It is the weekend. After the mostly splendid week that I’ve had, I noticed that my house has more dirty laundry than I usually like to have. I considered throwing it all out and just buying new clean clothes.

There are a couple of problems with that solution to my dirty little problem: 1) I can’t

Dystopias for Youngsters

As a youth, I enjoyed reading. That is hardly surprising. I still enjoy it. Something that is a bit surprising is that I liked reading dystopias. The first one that I read was “Animal Farm.” It’s got talking animals in it. You know, for kids.

I wasn’t so young that I thought it was all about cute talking animals. In fact, I quite got

Morons on the Side of a Good Cause

There are lots of morons in the world. There are lots of good causes in the world. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there are morons supporting good causes. One might be tempted to say that their heart is in the right place and thus be pleased any time someone supports a good cause. But, that’s not right. Having bad reasons for supporting a good cause is like having one’s heart in sideways. Sure, it’s better than having it dangling

Word Pairs

Most of the time when one considers two different words, one is considering two different ideas. I find that I often point out to people that the reason that there are two different words for two different things is that those two things are not the same thing in an important way. I don’t think that it is quite right to say that. I think I have the order of things backwards. The universes of things and ideas are such that they are filled with things that aren’t all the same. Our languages evolve so that many important and useful

My Dream

As I rounded a corner of a tall building, a somewhat mangy tiger appeared behind me. I say appeared but it had arrived naturally. It had escaped from the zoo. I knew this as one just knows things in a dream. I hadn’t noticed it before rounding the corner.

On reflection, I think the mangyness of my dream tiger is strange. I love tigers. I love the