Occam's Razor

History of Occam's Razor

William of Ockham (also spelled Occam) was a Franciscan theologian born in Surrey, England, around 1285. He studied at Oxford and later at Paris. His philosophical views made him a polemic scholar. He died in Munich, Germany, around 1349.

Although the general idea of the preference for simplicity is attributed to William of Ockham, there are some precedents. Some writings by Duns Scoto, Ockham's teacher, mention similar principles. A french Dominican named Durand de Saint-Pourcain used this idea before. Even earlier, Aristotle made statements such as "nature operates in the shortest way possible", "the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable", and "if the consequences are the same it is always better to assume the more limited antecedent".

In the history of Science we find the principle has often been cited to argue in favor of one theory over others. It has played an especially successful role in physics. One example is the preference for Newton's laws of motion and gravitation over Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Although both theories made essentially the same predictions about the motions of the planets, Newton's law is simpler and more general, requiring fewer assumptions, and was hence preferred. Newton's theory was later empirically confirmed when its predictions led to the discovery of the planet Neptune.

An earlier application of Occam's Razor, also in astronomy, was the controversy between heliocentric and geocentric models of the solar system. Ptolemy explained the observed movement of the stars using a rather complex model with the Earth in the center, and the planets orbiting around invisible spheres which themselves were orbiting around the Earth. Aristarco of Samos in Greece, and later Copernicus, convincingly argued for a simpler model in which the sun is in the center and the planets orbit around it.

First the bad news...

I spun my car tonight. Avoiding the same sort of traffic scenario that
nearly did me in the first time. Something inside me snapped and I decided
"This car will NOT hit me!" and as it failed to yield and left turned
almost into me I decided to drive around it. And somehow I did even though
it kept coming, except that at that point "going around it" consisted of
ending up spinning sickeningly out of control and facing the wrong
direction in the fast lane on Kolb, but everyone was able to avoid me and
I was able to stop in time and avoid any damage to my car or anyone
else's. No verdict yet on whether I damaged ME because I discover new
aches and pains hourly, but it may just be initial tension and shock.
Anyway, I faced my demon and lived, right? But for a minute I was sure I
was seconds away from death in the form of twisted metal and broken glass
and the fate once avoided that can never be fully escaped....But the good
news is that 21 year old boys worry enough to call me if I don't show up
at the bar on a Saturday night which is absolutely touching and sweet in a
way that made me kind of forget I was suppsed to be having a panic attack.
But that's never going to be as sweet as someone who brings you a
hamburger without asking because they know you really,really need
it...Holy shite, I could've been killed or something, couldn't I? I just
realized. Fuck. But I wasn't. I'm still here, just a couple of aches and
bruises worse for the wear.

Celtic Cross Spread

Ten of Wands

This is a card that says that the Querent has used up all the energy they started with at the ace. They don't feel that creative, driving force any more. Indicates a need to delegate, to put down some burdens and find energy again.

The Sun

The light that comes after the long dark night. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. Discoveries made while fully conscious and wide awake.

Three of Pentacles

(Reversed)

Failure to develop one's craft and creativity. Preoccupation with minutiae. Misdirection of one's energies.

Page Of Wands:

A message, possibly from far away, about a trip, career move, leadership position or something spiritual/philosophical.

Death

(Reversed)

Slow changes, narrow avoidance of a tragic fate

The Hanged Man

(Reversed)

Unwillingness to sacrifie.

The Wheel Of Fortune

With Jupiter as its ruling planet, the Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. Almost every definition of this card indicates abundance, happiness, elevation, luck. A change that just happens, and brings with it great joy.

"She kissed me softly on the lips

She took my hand without a sound

This was our happy ever after

So motherfucker kiss the ground..."

(detritus)(dream)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

Nine And A Half Hour Dream...

Dreamt my mother called me at an odd hour. I jokingly asked who'd died,but
she didn't laugh. I know it wasn't my father, because I could hear him in
the background. Then I dreamt Mike called me up and reamed me out and
swore at me (at least I HOPE it was a dream) at about 4:15 am and then
that I was in a hospital parking lot trying to get child leukemia patients
back to their rooms. Before that, I think I dreamt something about setting
up a new laptop in my new apartment, which was part of a large house with
an attic and a school downstairs.Also, there was something about renting
movies at Casa and watching them around a campfire in the desert, with the
movies being projected onto the side of a boulder. That part was kind of
cool. Woke up just as disconnected and dissociated and lonely and sad and
aware of my poverty as ever, but with a lingering sense of calm and
eventual comfort. Things may suck beyond all reason right now, but someday
they'll be better, unless I die and if I die it's not like I'll be around
to complain, right? Still haven't heard back on the part time "job offer"
I interviewed about last week. I may call back about that today. If they
don't want me, they don't want me, but if they're on the fence about it at
all, well...I could definitely use the money and no one seems to have any
convincing objections to it, so...

twas the night before nothing

Not a creature was stirring...

667

Gonna make a deal with the devil...

Q & A

Why do we hurt the ones we love? Because they're the only ones that will always forgive us. Now is that fair? No, it's not at all fair. Is there a way out? The Goddess only knows. I want to do good. I want to rise above my current circumstances. I just need someone to throw me a rope because I'm drowning and I have lots of company in the waters but no hope of making it out alive. Everyone I know is drowning in the same shipwreck. It's like the fucking Titanic. Somebody please throw me a rope. If you do, I'll come back and rescue the rest of them, I swear. I'm drowning in debt and clutter and illness and depression and obligation and remorse. If the only way out is to peddle my one remaining asset, so be it, even if it costs me my heart's desire or possibly my life. Better to make the gamble and maybe come away triumphant than to just die of redundancy and fatigue and hunger. I could starve myself to death more easily than most. Just a misplaced vitamin here, a lack of protein there. i could skip a certain vitamin for a few weeks and trigger a heart attack. My body chemistry is so volatile. But luckily I am fickle and my self destructive moods never last consistently long enough for me to wreak that kind of havoc. I will cheer up probably later in the day. i'll forget. He makes me forget. He makes me smile and laugh and teaches me to make fun of my own weaknesses and brag about my strengths and see my own goodness. I need him around but not so much that I forget it's all going to hell and I might as well jump. Maybe he does me a disservice because he makes me not want to jump. Maybe I do the same for him. Maybe we give each other false comfort when we are supposed to be being provoked into action by our misery and poverty and desperation. Sometimes making someone else happy is a sin, I think. Wanting to be happy is a sin. I don't deserve to be happy and I know it in my bones but I crave that easy laughter like a junkie craves a fix, you can't imagine if you've never felt it what it's like to have someone look at you that way, the way he looks at me with humour and charm and irony and longing and bemusement and annoyance and camradarie and wonder all at once. Faerie lust. Seperated twin recognition. Kindergarten romance. Makes the milk leak from my breast. Makes my nerves jump. Deludes me into thinking somehow everything will be alright. But of course it won't be. It never will be, will it? It never is.

Icy pouring rain

Icy pouring rain

icy pouring rain

icy pouring rain...

zippy the pinhead and jack chick tracts

found on the floor at random

I couldn't have found something like that

if I'd had amillion years

but I wasn't trying

If I overgift someone it is because they are expected to share, so

Beware if I ever give you books for a present...

If you know someone I've given books to

by all means make them share

As that was probably the point.

You all must read "Waking the Dead"

My channel's set on random

sorry

Goodnight,all

corbid

Terrible Beauty

If there is a heart, it is not subject to free will, but rather is a book that can't be put down, a song running through your head, a train on a track to certain disaster and all you can do is stand back and wait and watch and steel yourself against the coming crash, the inevitable implosion, the waiting disaster...when you wake again, cold and alone you are somehow never worse for the wear...soft and sweet as a child, as tender as a woman and just as mercenary,plays you for the fool yet again, promises the moon and the stars when all you asked for was the night, gives you only the cold light of day and then swears no promises were ever made. When you never asked for anything at all how is it then that you can end up with less than you expected?

Multiphasic Etiquette

Just because Mr. Hyde invited you doesn't mean you'll be welcomed by Dr. Jekyll ...

(detritus)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

Ahhh!!! Shite!!!

Whence hath come this grotesque monstrosity of a pimple upon my chin???

Does drinking give you pimples? I've been laying off the candy, what the fuck???

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the following...

Gallery Silver Sea Grand Opening and Art Show: November 20th, 8pm at Silver Sea, 137 E. Congress:This will be the official grand opening of Gallery Silver Sea, a pioneering concept in expanding the parameters of the Tucson Arts District while simultaneously promoting Downtown small business. This could be the future of Rio Nuevo development, the key to a successful and vital Downtown. Then again, it might just be a pleasant evening featuring wine and cheese and jovial company while admiring the work of talented, up and coming local artists. Also, it will be hosted by pretty girls who have shiny things to sell. Art will be displayed from November 20th to December 20th. Silver Sea is located Downtown near the intersection of Congress and 6th Avenue, snuggly nested between Hydra and Oscar Wilde Playhouse. You should do your Christmas shopping while you're there. Hematite rings make lovely stocking stuffers and you can never give out too many gift candles...No, i'm not biased in the least...

jealousy

When I was young I thought I knew what jealousy was and I thought that it could be conquered. Jealousy was the scary incongrous thing that showed up every three years or so to make false accusations and leave me curled up in a ball on the floor crying and pleading my absolute innocence. It was a small price to pay, I thought, for what appeared to be unconditional love and acceptance. It didn't happen that often. Everybody's a little carzy, right? So why should I expect the person I loved to be 100% sane? I went along with it. I rolled with the punches. I was a good sport. Then my life grew dimmer and lonelier and I began to realize I was damaged goods, slightly flawed merchandise that was available at a discount. That I was not loved perfectly, nor respected at all. I'd been settled for. And I met Wallace at my little inventory job. We'd ride up to Denver or down to Pueblo or La Junta with about a dozen other people, squished into the van like sardines. We'd spend a good few hours a week in transit and several performing acts of unspeakable data entry and almost immediately we bonded to the point of near inseperability. We got each other's twisted senses of humour. We recognized in each other the grim smile that is only worn by the serially depressed. We instinctively knew it was safe to bitch to each other about our respective relationships and our fucked up childhoods and the fact that we had a nowhere job in a nowhere town where they consistently shorted our paychecks. There was definitely an underlying attraction. The air was heavy with the prospect of uncommitted crimes. The points at which our bodies touched in those crowded van seats were warm and dangerous. If we accidentally touched it felt like an electric shock or a scorpion bite. And we alternately flirted and barraged each other with insult humour and teased each other that we'd say offensive things to each other's spouse and/or fiancee, respectively. And then Wallace disappeared one day and came back ten days later with the news that his girlfriend had dumped and moved back to Seattle to be with her kids. And then things changed. Mostly we'd still laugh and talk and even flirt a little, but there was a bitter edge to everything he said to me. A lot of conversations ended with statements like "guess you better go home to your husband and kids now." Or "You can just get your own damned ladder. Why? Because you're married." I suppose a lot of it was the depression talking (yet again I ask you: why do I find depressed men so alluring?) and some of it was just that I reminded him of his ex. And I was probably a bit of a bitch to deal with myself at the time, having just plunged into the psychic aftermath of a halfhearted but neccessary abortion. After a few months Wallace announced he'd gotten another job and we spent the last three days he was there laughing and talking and even touching knees a little. He gave me his inventory vest when he left and it smelled like him. He hugged me and told me my "quasar" colored Doc Martens looked like someone had thrown up a Crayola 64 pack on them. Three months later, just after I had tended my own resignation, I showed up at work to the familiar presence of a leather jacketed fake blonde boy enveloped in a cloud of Marlborough smoke. He was standing with his back to the wall in a pair of sunglasses, looking like John Lennon in those old Astrid Kurcher Hamburg photos. For one tiny moment I was literally breathless. And then I was a joyously caffeinated little chatterbox for the next two days, until it was time to part once more. We never exchanged numbers and we completely lost touch thereafter. And though we never said anything about it the underlying reason was that even though nothing untoward ever happened we were definitely guilty of something. Thought crime in the first degree. And for the first time in my life I knew what it was to suffer the lash of jealousy and deserve every welt of it. I felt the guilt of the truly guilty. I felt as if I'd committed a grievous sin, atheist that I was. I crucified myself over it for a good many months and behaved as though I'd done something to deserve the worst of punishments. But I never let him touch me and he never even tried.

I used to be good and I used to be loyal. I think I lost my conscience somewhere around the time I lost my hope for a better future. Another day came and another person came along that seemed to know and want and understand me. And this time I was too sad and too tired to fight it and it wasn't what sunk the ship so much as it was the destruction of the remaining lifeboats. And now Jealousy is one of my most constant companions. Jealousy follows my car around and spams up my voicemail on weekends. Jealousy calls up my friends and whines about me when it doesn't have the guts. Jealousy embarrassed me at the bar the other night and shouted at screamed and called me a whore. Accused me of being loved, which is a most horrible crime indeed. With some men if you exhibit the slightest bit of attention and another girl is present, then you end up in Hell where you can't even go to the fucking bar without getting followed into the bathroom and accused of devious machinations and verbally assualted in front of the jukebox by angry vicious women when you just want to play some Nirvana tunes and finish your goddamn Guinness in peace and hope that someone else you know will come in and rescue you if only to prove to the now gathering audience that possibly you might have some acquaintances that are not psychotic. And all of this over a man who doesn't claim to love either one of us and, at least on my end, is not being asked to. I don't want to love him and I don't want him to love me and I certainly don't want to be punished over something as stupid and imaginary as that. She kept shouting things like "You can just have him, then!" like she owns the title and is willing to sign it over to me and he has no say in the matter, or "I guess you two are in Love" like love is some sort of resinous goo that we've stepped into a puddle of and splashed all over us and we'll never be able to wash off of our clothes. The stains will never come out. Even ultra strength Tide won't get the love out of your laundry...Also she said we "deserve each other." Probably she was right with that one. Probably we do deserve each other. We deserve a lot of things, not all of them nice, and "each other" is probably one of them. But I don't want to love or be loved anymore, regardless of who it's with and in what esteem I hold them. Love is just an excuse to take people hostage. Love is a justification for irrational anger. Love is a little box we feel justified in shoving other people into. Love is an act of devouring limitation. Love is an excuse to command and torture. The only relevance love has for me anymore is that it means I'm not allowed to talk to my friends when I most want to. Either a significant other is home and must be paid rapt attention to or a jealous ex husband is set off by god knows what or an ex-girlfriend demands a 24 hour lockdown in exchange for beer and cigarettes. See what I know? I give beer and cigarettes away for free. Apparently I'm not charging enough.

Perhaps I am a simple bitch. Perhaps I am a whore. All I know is that the clock is ticking and the rope is growing thin. I can make allowances for friends who have baggage and needy acquaintances. I've been in my own pair of those shoes and I hated how they fit and I don't envy that at all. Fighting over a guy in a bar, though, smacks too much of a relationship and I'd rather gnaw my own leg off slowly over the course of a fortnight than ever have to fight over someone or endure someone's jealousy or be anyone's prized possession ever again. Apparently I've placed too many of my eggs in one basket. Apparently it's time to diversify. There's got to be more than one man in the world who's intelligent and cute and would rather talk about books with me than invite his bitter ex over for weekly multihour drunken torture sessions. So what if said person doesn't accept me or understand me unconditionally. Maybe it should just be about fucking. If it's just about fucking it'll probably never come to blows, right? Know any cute brainiacs with envious literary taste and no desire for longterm stability? Bonus points if they're depressives of Celtic and/or Viking extraction. Because we all know my proclivities.I judge prospective lovers these days by the cadence of their voices the quickness of their laughter and the size, quality, and content of their bookcases. My ex didn't read anymore and ultimately I think that's what doomed us. He didn't read. I slept with somebody that did. Maybe it's as simple as that. I am a bookslut indeed. Will whore for works of relevant fiction. I am the Harlot who haunts the Borders. Fear me. Ha!

Oh Well...

Guess I can always move to Canada, right?

And don't forget to vote!!!

Consult Bookslut.com's election survival guide for any needed assistance.

Dangerous Needlework

A tale of Mary Queen Of Scots...

Happy Celtic New Year

may the wheel of the year spin brightly this time around.

Adventures in Surreality...

Billy Corgan throws a Poetry Reading...

The Fool

"... Innocence and naivety are associated with The Fool,

for the young have no fear of new experiences or change.

As you grow older you can lose that childish innocence and

enthusiasm, and can become fearful and cynical of change

and new experiences.The mind of The Fool is always open, an empty vessel

eagerly waiting to be filled with new knowledge. Any

experience, pleasant or challenging, is life knowledge that

he accepts as part of his learning.The Fool does not sit on the fence waiting for life to come to him; he always takes the first step himself. The Fool

does not analyze all the possible risks of a new adventure;

he learns as he goes along. The fearlessness and sheer enthusiasm associated with The Fool makes for quite a maverick character, and often this

card can signify such a person, male or female, may step

into your life. It is your attitude that influences the choices and

decisions you make, and often your mind is so full of doubt

and fear that you become closed-minded to the possibilities

of change.When The Fool appears, ask yourself how open-minded you are

being at that moment in time, how enthusiastic are you

about life, and do you desire new experiences and

excitement but fear taking that first step?Any journey starts with the first step, and motivating yourself to take it is the hardest part. The Fool

encourages you to discover your inner child and harness

that youthful enthusiasm to help you on your way to a new

life and future.A time to exercise caution is when The Fool comes up as the

first card in a reading for you. You may want to question

your motives or judgment, since as this is the first card,

it can indicate folly. Perhaps you are motivated for the

wrong reasons, so look before you leap. You will have to deal with many twists and turns, paths and crossroads on your life journey and The Fool can help as a

sign post when you need to take a new path."

Fun with Airmen part 2

Went to a bar last night to meet some friends. Witnessed a male air force officer and a woman in a black pantsuit nearly get into a fistfight over the war. Not the rightness or wrongness of it, either. They were arguing over whether the air force officer at the bar or the woman's air force officer husband had "done more for the cause of freedom." Incidentally, I wonder how the woman hoped to further the cause of freedom by hanging out in a bar displaying ample cleavage and hanging all over a man who was NOT her husband while said husband is overseas fighting "for freedom." Anyway, as the two of them sparred I tried to offer myself as a sacrificial lamb, but no one bit:

"I'm against the war ENTIRELY! I voted for Gore! I was against the last Gulf war also!"

One tries to do one's part...