Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Wet Run

In the back of my mind, partly due to pouring over maps of Canada in my youth (or is that ‘pawing’? – I hear the expression but not seen it written down – just what exactly do they mean?) – anyway, in the back of my mind… has been the possible involvement of the two north Canadian great lakes – great slave and great bear. I have an inkling that they may have served as ‘wet run’ practise grounds for the project. My only Canadian contact is a peacenik based between the Yukon and Quebec. (If not including my recently formed contacts A & B, now both based in the UK.)I’m going to investigate further.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

'poring [over]' - a ditransitive and little-used verb

Anonymous said...

Logical positivist philosophers Bertie Russell and Luddy Wittgenstein (early version) attempted to build the tower of babel from bricks of scientifically, even mathematically sound and discrete units of language. Others, such as Quine and Private Investigations era Wittgenstein decided the enterprise was futile - meaning of a network of words is a mass of interconnectivity with no underlying foundation stones of doubtless independent clarity. Wittgenstein decided to keep on playing the game of words anyway, proclaiming 'one cannot take off ones spectacles...' just like Mystery gal Velma hollering 'where's my glasses; I can't see without my glasses'. So long as the game is functionally successful, he thought, we might as well keep playing, even if apparent meaning is an illusion and the world we see is unavoidably shaped by the language we see it with.

Some philosophers instead give up the word game and retreat to special enclaves in the andean mountains where the wind whistles too loudly to hear one's mind speaking.

I cling to the process of refining the game.

My next personal refinement being a question:
What does ditransitive mean?