Cuthbert

There is a number that is neither greater than 7 nor less than 7. It is the number 7. There is a time that is neither post-mortem nor ante-mortem. It ...

They read like exam questions. Vague and general, to give candidates the challenge of clarifying and explaining. Do animals have rights? What is truth...

Trans: Calm yourself, my dear chap, lest the bridge of your nose meet with violence from the forehead of an assailant.

Gan canny, man, in NyucAstle yud get the bean stuck on yu for taakin like that.

Basterisk! Oh, I love the English language, it invents itself.

Wish I'd thought of that! On the other hand, I let the greater wit carry the punchline.

@"Banno" I am English, visited friends in Melbourne in 1987 and went to dinner with parents of a friend. There were two 'Steves' at the dinner (I'm on...

Ha ha, my bad!! I assumed 'Incidit in Scyllam... etc' was a quotation from Virgil's Aeneid, but I was wrong, it's a medieval tag. Book 6 of the Aeneid...

You'll find the current location of the main monkey in Book 6. Facilis descensus.

The drachm of sugar is a red herring. You will get eight pence in change. If they give you the change in farthings then you will get thirty two valuel...

@"Banno" I didn't know that about Belgiums. You could divide England into four large farms with space left over for a shopping mall.

I got a call from Google Maps apparently from a friendly guy asking about office opening times. I tried to help and had a couple of questions. He repe...

that bit.

I hope Thomson reminded Jefferson that if we find ourselves cutting up Bibles to arrange the text differently and having dark thoughts about Jews then...

In England, miraculously surviving premature babies used to be measured in bags of sugar. They each weighed 1. That was the highest you could go. The ...

I think you don't even need the set of everything to generate the problem. You just need any set that includes its own cardinality and it will blow up...

My usual response is to challenge the person to a fight, miss a couple of half-hearted punches, fall over, declare undying friendship, weep copiously,...

I think you are saying something that I have been wondering how to say for a long time. I would say it's a whole topic in itself. For me the question ...

Sorry to disappoint you, @"Agent Smith", as I am one of your biggest fans, but you might deduce from my handle here that my spiritual home is amongst ...

Or Achilles - confined to his tent and waiting for things to get bad enough for him to emerge triumphant and win the day.

I'm rather sceptical about historical timelines that suggest continual improvement towards a pinnacle of intellectual achievement that is - happily an...

I had a dream a couple of nights ago, woke up, then I went back to sleep and dreamed about describing my previous dream to a group of friends. So I wa...

I think we tend to make our own myths from the history of science and philosophy. Just as Aristotle looked at Thales's ideas about water in terms of h...

What a great topic, thank you. I have reservations about attributing beliefs to people on the basis of myths, poetry, painting, sculpture etc. I imagi...

My bike puncture 'exists in my mind' in the sense that I'm thinking about it. A puncture also, alas, exists in reality. So now I've got two punctures....

Whenever I eat a madeleine cake I'm reminded of my over-privileged upbringing in the withered remains of late nineteenth century French aristocracy.

I say it's a false trichotomy. Jesus could have been a great human teacher, and also not a liar, and also deluded that he was God's son. That would me...

OK. I'm flippant. But please understand I was not trying to be flippant at the expense of anyone. If anything it was a big-up to Scotland. Intended to...

Thank you. You seem to be saying that we need to apply judgement in having children and give them the best chance we can and protect them from harm an...

Yes, you are right about the human population. We can be as anti-natalist as we like and the world will go on. That was the answer to my problem that ...

True. Perhaps Scottish intellectuals were more inclined to share cutlery with France. Perhaps this new Enlightenment can be a fresh start in so many w...

True. But people don't usually have children to save the human race. Nevertheless, if they didn't have children, there wouldn't be a human race. Perso...

I am veering towards anti-natalism. There are very good arguments for it which have been put forward cogently and persuasively by members of this foru...

Great idea. That's a bus, right? As in "...boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburg", Simon and Garfunkel. But it reminds me we need to check valet parking an...

People who bought the Renaissance also enjoyed the Enlightenment. The first one was held in Scotland, I believe. Did I get that right?

Perfect. They are even building a new house that we could use for the purpose.

It was just a rumour. I use my college alumni magazines to make filters. I've reached 2017, working through an article about the coat of arms.

If the human race is to continue then we could leave the morally compromising business of procreation to others and spend our time teaching them that ...

Good point. I think the important thing is to commission a tapestry or embroidery to commemorate the event. I'm hoping that Tracey Emin will oblige. P...

It's a question of practical application and the judgement of history. Rogan's theory of justice has been hugely influential in jurisprudence, whilst ...

I went to an Alternative Health Fair with a friend who spent £20 (at that time about half his weekly welfare benefits) on a 'kirlean' aura photograph ...

Good venue for a planning meeting. I found a place in Indiana where you can buy cigs at state minimum price. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1169198,-...

That's amazing. I think it will be great.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. The Statue of Liberty could have been made of different stuff and it would still have been the Statue of Liberty.

If we go ahead with another Renaissance, where should we hold it? Italy - again?

I think it's partly because Leibniz-style 'laws' don't deal well with counterfactuals and necessity. The same lump of clay might have made a different...

I sympathise. I think the rot set in with Tristram Shandy or perhaps even earlier with Don Quixote. But at least we can trust Tolkien.

That's interesting but it doesn't seem to me to be a problem. Let it be that there can be two objects that occupy the same area of space at the same t...

I just finished 'David Copperfield' for the second time and found it no more convincing than the first. The narrator claims to be the author of severa...

When I was a kid in London I asked at a bakery for a 'sausage roll' and the baker took a bread roll, sliced it, inserted a cooked sausage and handed i...