The Fabrication of Reality: Is there an "out there" out there?

Abstract

There are always anniversaries, real or concocted, to loosen the columnist’s writer’s block and/or justify the intake of alcohol. I’ll drink to that to the fact that we are blessed with a reasonably regular solar system providing a timeline of annual increments against which we can enumerate and toast past events. Hic semper hic. When the drinking occurs in sporadic and excessive bursts, it becomes known, disapprovingly, as "bingeing." I’m tempted to claim that this colorful Lincolnshire dialect word binge, meaning soak, was first used in the boozing-bout sense exactly 200 years ago. And that, shurely, calls for a schelebration.

References

1. Understating is not the use of footnotes, which are a few of my favorite things, along with Julie Andrews, the sound of music, and positive reader feedback. Note, too, that understanding really means overstanding.
2. Scouse mothers' malapropisms are called malapudlianisms. See "Lern Yerself Scouse," Stan Kelly, Fritz Spiegl, Frank Shaw (Scouse Press, 1966).
3. "GOTO Statement Considered Harmful." Letter to Communications of the ACM. March 1968; reprinted in the 60th anniversary issue.
4. Older readers will know of R. Lawrence Clark's response to Dijskstra's letter: the infamous COME FROM construct (Datamation, December 1973). What started as a spoof became a serious joke involving programs running backwards; http://www.fortran.com/come_from.html.

Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Computers in other domains

    • Personal computers and PC applications

• General and reference

• Social and professional topics