Thinking to Some Purpose

I recently read Susan Stebbing's book 'Thinking To Some Purpose' - originally published in 1939. Apart from its interesting content, I found something unexpected on the following page.

Did you spot it? In the days of manual typesetting, misprints were more common; we have all seen them. However, I have not seen one like this before although, given the nature of the letter in question, it is a quite understandable slip and it is perhaps surprising that one hasn't seen it more often.

Conan-Doyle preempts this blog?

I recently read the whole of the canon of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. I found these quotes which, to a good degree, sum up the ethos of this blog.


"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."
From: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Adventure III  - A Case of Identity

"It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles."
From: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Adventure VI - The Man with the Twisted Lip

Epictetus - 16

From: The Golden Sayings of Epictetus (translated by Hastings Crossley) - from Project Gutenberg.

CXLIII
Asked how a man should best grieve his enemy, Epictetus replied, "By setting himself to live the noblest life himself."

Pin-ups in a different light (or should that be wavelength?)

We take a lot for granted and do not stop to wonder why things are as they are. We are now at the mid-point of this year. In a few months though we will start seeing calendars in the shops for next year. Some will be of various celebrities posing in ways we rarely question even though the poses they sometimes adopt are rather exaggerated to say the least. This may help one think differently.

One rarely, if ever, sees somebody adopt this pose in ordinary, everyday life. When seen in the light of X-Rays, the flesh that is usually being displayed is stripped away and we have to think differently.

Here is the full set:

(Click image to enlarge)

For more, see the article X-Ray Pinup Calendar Is More Than Just Skin Deep or just click-here-to-search.

Citations, References and Bibliographies

In my academic work, I often need to search for, find and read other people's work. With the advent of the internet, finding that work has become a lot easier. (This brings back memories of how one had to go about it in the past before computers. It could be a quite complex task and so I won't even begin to describe the process.)

There is something puzzling about the information now more freely available. Many academics put lists of their work online but not copies of their work. Copyright issues aside, one would have thought that it was the work rather than just its bibliographic details that one would have wanted to share. It is one thing to put copies of one's work on the Internet so that others may see it; it is quite another just to put lists of publications which people then have to track down, when all along a copy should be made readily available.

Just listing one's bibliography is not sharing. It is merely there to try to enhance one's kudos by giving a catalogue  suggesting how clever one is and how busy one has been. This rarely succeeds.