A Half-Baked Theory Of Opposing Ideas

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I have had cause to return to a thought I’d been having a few years, and it’s all thanks to the American TV program, C.S.I. New York, which was on last night.

It all started with two pathologists discussing the cause of a hapless victim’s demise. One of the pair commented that the corpse’s alcohol level was “just above legal”, which furnished Jo and me with two opposing assumptions about the lifeless woman on the slab. I thought she had imbibed a fair quantity of alcohol, because if you’re above you’re therefor over the legal limit. There are, after all, only two states of intoxication that count when it comes to the Law: legal and illegal. So, being above the limit must presumably mean the limit of one state has been overstepped, and enters the other state.

Jo, one the other hand, believed the woman to be within the legal limit, as if one could plot alcohol consumption on a y-axis graph, with sober being a 10, the legal limit being 0, and completely arsed being -10. Thinking in this way, being just above the limit implies a 1 on the piss-o-meter.

This whole incident could have been avoided by the exclusion of the word “above” or with the replacement of it with “within”. But it wasn’t. A word can launch a thousand thoughts.

If I’ve explained this well enough we can continue to the crux of this entry, which is to demistify and refute the Christian faith, along with other religious beliefs and philosophies, and still make it home in time for tea and biscuits.

It is a human trait to group adjectives into opposites (tall and short, fat and thin, black and white – oh, how we love to categorise), yet that is its very downfall. For most of these adjectives we simply take the average (or ourselves) as the norm and base everything around it. There is nothing especially tall about Jo’s brother (almost 2 metres) except in comparison to other people. If I were to saunter in to a pygmy village on a brisk Saturday morning there would be many inhabitants agog at my size, though a quick visit thereafter to a basketball match would diminish my grandeur, and my ego, substantially.

I think this is where the problem lies, that we subconsciously piss-o-meter everything, meaning things naturally get placed in one of two opposite states (minus or plus). Being sad is no opposite of happy. Neurologically it is just a different mixture of chemicals being squirted around the brain, and has nothing to do with anti-serotonins or the like.

If we were to instead erase the “normal” 0 score and place everything on a scale where 0 is at the bottom (severely depressed?) with incremental grades of being less sad, neither/nor, happy and ecstatic (bad examples, I know) it may give us a completely different perception of the states of feelings.

This paradigm shift kicks sand in the face of Taoism (yin and yinger?) and backs up Conversation with God’s idea that there is only Heaven, and Hell is just there to frighten us into obedience.

I cannot actually be bothered to write any more on this subject, since I have unwittingly fried my brain with my own thinking. I’m sure there are numerous flaws to this theory (not least the complete lack of biscuits), though I am still quite proud to have explained thus far.

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I Suppose You Had To Be There

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This evening, when Jo was taking Freya to bed, our daughter came up with an unintentional classic: she told Jo to wait because she was going to fetch something, stuck her finger up her nose and pulled out a bogey.

A wish To Save More

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I use price-comparison sites like Pricerunner on a regular basis in my search for video games. I find the idea a superb one, though its implementation leaves my asking questions; with a few changes such sites could be a goldmine of information, and not the half-satisfactory tool it is.

I should like to be able to include my own sites to any searches I do. Whilst the results given often give a good price of games, there are many other independent shops that could be referenced. As it is I still have to go through the labourious task of manually searching for the best price, even after using Pricerunner. Since it is not unusual to find a price difference of several hundred crowns for certain (normally older) games, this is very much worth my while doing. I reckon there are ten or so sites I do or could add to Pricerunner’s standard version, which would make me feel I’m not missing a good deal.

It would also be a fantastic improvement if these sites were to become more community driven. By this I mean the ability to see other users’ pages and inclusions (those, for example, who have also searched for the same product as I) to glean any further sites for my own use. I’m sure that there are many other sites I am unaware of, and being able to see others’ additions would make me sure I have explored all the options before purchasing.

I have no idea how easy this would be to implement, and I see that it’s not in Pricerunner’s economic interests to allow it, but it would truly be a huge step in the right direction.

How Should One Be Angry?

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Angry with or angry at? It’s quite simple, and should be used as follows: one is angry with people, and angry at anything else.

N.B. These are reminders to myself, and are not a call to humanity for a better world. Although…

Saint Lucia Day (The First In A Series)

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Today is a special day here in Sweden: St Lucia’s Day, the celebration of the beginning (along with Advent) of the Christmas season. In almost every school around the country, children clothe themselves accordingly, wear fake candles on their heads, and sing Santa Claus songs. Today was Freya’s first school Lucia Day.

Needless to say, many proud and excited parents turned up with more technology in their hands than the C.I.A. have at their disposal, to record this special moment in every parent’s child’s life, and we were not to let the side down.

It was a heart-warming occasion, with the added bonus of an available CD purchase of the children practising the songs at an earlier date. The quality is moot, though the sentiment very much appreciated.

Despite Freya being ill, she managed to sing along to the songs as best she could. Even a few hand movements were spotted, though in her weakened state (and, perhaps, with the presence of so many people peering) she did not give it her best effort. We have seen here singing the songs at home, where she was both vociferous and whatever the word is for using lots of hand movements.

We left after Freya wanted to see the on-site Santa. She refused to go in the room to get her present, but she was happy to watch from afar. Santa asked me if I was a good dad, and I replied that I thought I was; he should, of all, people, know, so the question was a purely social one.