Here’s a photo of four hot air balloons gliding over the Kentish sky one evening. Trust me, there are four. See if you can spot them.
Hot Air Balloons
Negative Quesitons
This is another of those annoying language things that stems from my rather literal language processing unit. See my previous post about starting letters. I am not far enough into the spectrum to follow instructions or comprehension literally but I do struggle trying to answer negative questions in a true manner. Once again there common usage issues that I believe to be amazingly wrong but most people seem to accept them.
If something is amazing then the following:
Is that an amazing aircraft manoeuvre?
is easy to answer. Yes for agreeing with the statement and no for disagreeing. However the question:
Isn’t that an amazing aircraft manoeuvre?
is remarkably hard to answer. I believe the vernacular is to answer “yes” if I am saying that it is an amazing manoeuvre. But if I answer “yes” then I think I am agreeing with the statement which is
Is that not an amazing manoeuvre?
and that reverses the meaning of my answer. Arrrrggghhh! Similarly other questions can confuse me enough that I answer very differently. So, if I had just seen an amazing manoeuvre then the following would be the conversation:
“wasn’t that an amazing manoeuvre?”
“It was amazing”
This means I have not answered an impossible question and also managed to keep my head from exploding with diverse logic implications.
Other examples are:
“aren’t you going to the cinema?”
“isn’t that band great?”
So, please don’t ask me perfectly normal questions, it just hurts.
PS3 Insurance no more
The other day I got a letter from Domestic and General who are the people who underwrite my PS3 insurance. My payments are to increase from £4.99 to £7.99! That’s a 75% increase! Now even given the ironic situation of times past I have phoned D&G and cancelled my policy. Somehow £60 a year seemed ok but nearly £96 is ridiculous. I’ve also cancelled my Sky+HD insurance as I’ve just had a new box.
Now, if the PS3 dies I’ll buy another. They are cheap enough. Then I’ll do my best to fix my classic 60 Gb model. It’s lovely! Lots of USB ports, PS2 backwards compatibility (suck on that you later model users), multimedia card slots and SACD playback because, yes, I bought some of those!
Now I just need to remember to back up my game saves regularly.
Red Grapes
Here are some red grapes, spotted while walking the dog.
Patriotism
I always feel a twinge of patriotism whenever I see the Union Flag or Cross of St George on the back bumper of a car. Seeing the red, white and blue or just red and white makes a touch of “proud” run through my blood.
The person who spent around £5 on a bumper sticker or magnet obviously has a price limit attached to their patriotism because the vehicle is more often than not built in a different country. BMWs with the England flag, Mercedes with the Union flag and Chevrolets with a Cornwall flag.
I believe that if you are that patriotic then your car should reflect your taste in flag adornments!
Actually, I’m not that patriotic. I have some teams I follow and watch mainly the Essex cricket team, the England cricket team and the New Orleans Saints. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan. I tend to watch on tv and have a little emotional investment but it’s not the end of the world if they lose.
Following a team or patriotism or religion just satisfies our human need to belong to a tribe. None of them can be suggested to be a better form of tribalism than the other. Country, Jesus, town, county, country, football team It’s all the same thing really.
Yellow flower
Just a nice flower plant on the dog walk.
Looking in the mirror
Here’s a tip for some of you drivers out there. It stems from my experiences as a motorcyclist and now as a driver, although now I’m not travelling quite as fast. The bike was an 1100cc machine and my car is a diesel estate!
I noticed in the past that whenever I was coming up behind a car on a motorway and that car was indicating to pull out into my lane that the driver would (I assume) check the rear view mirror or door mirror. Now, if the driver looks once and gets a snapshot of the road they would see me in the outside lane. What would be interesting is that the driver would have no idea of how fast I was travelling unless he/she spent a long time staring in the mirror. To get an impression of speed the driver would have to look again in the mirror to see how my position relative to him/her had changed in the time that had passed.
I believe it is for this reason I had cars pull out in front of me causing me to brake many times. It is quite simple that to judge a speed you need two reference times to see position change. Hence drivers need to look in their mirrors twice before pulling out in front of traffic in the next lane. Most drivers are ignorant of this fact of physics given that cars still pull out in front of me and I’m now in a car.
Perhaps drivers don’t care about other road users and I’m in the minority. Gosh, I think I’m better than most.
I am writing
Two minor things that annoy me are symptoms of my inflexible understanding of language. I will talk about negative questioning, which troubles me, another time but for now here are two main methods of starting a letter:
Dear Sir,
I am writing to inform you that the programme you showed . . .Dear Sir,
I wish to inform you that the programme you showed . . .
Both of these annoy me. In the first case it is obvious you are writing so there’s no need to state that. Just start by saying
“I found the programme you showed the other night rather sexless”.
The second method of starting a letter would have me reply
“you can wish all you like but you won’t get it”.
I do understand that language is fluid and evolves but we could always force a correction in usage if we insist on decent use of the English language.
I must be on the spectrum somewhere but I don’t interpret language literally it just annoys me when people are inaccurate.
Red sky at night
Over the vineyard.
No pak choi ahoy
So my vegetable plot grew well but my pak choi are gone! Not eaten by humans though.
See the carcass of my work:
All done by these:
Mind you it’s been a good talking point with my son. Haven’t trapped any in a jam jar, will do that next year when he’s older.