Friday, June 22, 2007
Blog on, Blog on, Voltaire, Rousseau (Blake)
Thought Experiments ('That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented blog.' Yeats) was intended to play with imaginary possibilities, what ifs. I have not done much of this lately. Stricken with guilt, I now return to my roots. What if melting icebergs promoted phytoplankton blooms that absorbed carbon dioxide and thus helped prevent global warming, the phenomenon that caused more melting icebergs in the first place? Oh, hang on, they do. Okay, what if obese people, though more likely to suffer heart attacks, were better able to survive than people of average weight? Oh, hang on, they are. Reality manufactures its own what ifs without any assistance from this blog ('On Thought Experiments/I can connect/Nothing with nothing.' Eliot). Information is paradox.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
A tricky one to comment on. I understand.
ReplyDeleteI brought this up with your deputy but they cocked a deaf'n.
ReplyDeletewhat if a man set out to explore alternative ideas in a blog? the majority would return the blog to its proper place.
Are we supposed to sing this post title? To the tune of You'll Never Walk Alone?
ReplyDeleteJ Cheever Loophole
I've a short piece on vision & time which kind of comes in to the what ifs, Bryan.
ReplyDeleteI like David Cohen's point. What if the main problem with the Iraq invasion is that was too cheap and too easy?
ReplyDeleteWhat if the main problem with the Iraq invasion is that was too cheap and too easy?
ReplyDeleteIt was, Brit. It was. Took less than 4 weeks, IIRC. The occupation, OTOH, has been neither cheap nor easy. So, what is the lesson? Invade, overthrow, and promptly withdraw. Repeat as needed. Infinitely cheaper in the long run.
What if the Sinclair C5 had been marketed well?
ReplyDelete