“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
What is the direction of time in English?
The English are typically proud of “letting go” of past insults and injuries. “Let bygones be bygones,” we say. “It’s water under the bridge.” […]
This is a follow-up to a previous post called “Wilderness and Canadian identity.”
What that post found in our national and provincial parks, this one will explore at a psychical level. If our identities are tied to a particular conception of wilderness, what are the symptoms of this condition? How does the Canadian psyche operate under the influence of this concept?
Diagnosis, Symptoms, and Moving On […]
The Canadian ideology of wilderness is two-sided. On the one hand, the untouched nature, represented more or less abstractly, is Canadians’ spiritual soil, our true north strong and free, our strength, our virtue, our potential as a nation, etc. At the same time, the actual wilderness is a testing ground for our lumberjack virility. The wilderness is a gym, and the land itself makes us strong.
Hidden between the two poles is a strange Indigenous presence that is everywhere and nowhere on this ideal terrain: our wilderness recreational activity emulates and embodies what our symbolic adoption of the land as “untouched nature” erases. […]
Here is the process: I found the points of symmetry in Escher’s Lizard (No. 124), which has interesting rotational and reflectional symmetry. After a first failure, I discovered the importance of adding the lopsided grid formed by joining heads and tails – it keeps black and white “squares” from touching too much and presents lines that […]
“Are you looking up where we’re going?” “Yes.” I show her the map. “Look, that’s where we’re going, and this is where we are now.” “Good, it’s not too far.” “Well, it looks close on the map, but it’s actually pretty far. It’ll take us another half an hour.” It’s the kind of explanation an adult […]
This post is part of a four-part series on logical reversal. The truth may lie on the other side or in the other direction, but there is more than one way to reverse a sentence: obverting, converting, inverting, and contraposing are four ways. I know very few young people, but it seems to me that […]
This post is part of a four-part series on logical reversal. The truth may lie on the other side or in the other direction, but there is more than one way to reverse a sentence: obverting, converting, inverting, and contraposing are four ways. George: […] It became very clear to me sitting out there today, […]
This post is part of a four-part series on logical reversal. The truth may lie on the other side or in the other direction, but there is more than one way to reverse a sentence: obverting, converting, inverting, and contraposing are four ways. Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon […]
This post is part of a four-part series on logical reversal. The truth may lie on the other side or in the other direction, but there is more than one way to reverse a sentence: obverting, converting, inverting, and contraposing are four ways. Two Jews meet in a railway carriage at a station in Galicia. […]
“Cheers!” can be used while toasting, where it is equivalent to Salud! Down the hatch! Santé! Indeed it is, me old cock, and long may your big jib draw! etc. But there is another use, purportedly equivalent to thank you “when giving or receiving something”. Wait. When giving? Who says thank you when giving something? […]
Concepts and Figures 