Tapas (XIV)

Choice chewy quotes of gooey goodness, browned to a turn in our firebrick ovens, and served fresh 2 U.  (Click for the full meal.)

I’m not being very nice about this.  Bounds of academic discourse and all that.  But the fact is, these clowns have adolescents under their intellectual care;  it would not be too much of a stretch to haul them up on charges of interfering with the morals of a minor.

Syllogisms based on such smuggled assumptions  are known as enthymemes.  They may still point to valid inferences, once the unstated auxiliary premises are made explicit;  but, for obvious reasons, invalid ones often show up in public rhetoric.

We learn that “Nominalists hold that there are no numbers”;  this involves them in certain epistemological difficulties.   But en revanche (ô doulce revanche), numbers hold that there are no nominalists.  This  involves them in no difficulties at all.

There comes a time in the life of every young person, when they doubt the existence of coffee-cups.  So here comes jolly old Doctor J, to prove it for you.

If God exists, as anything like the being that is envisioned in the Abrahamic tradition, then yes indeed His purposes are beyond human comprehension:  of course they are.   Heck, most of the time, a man’s wife’s purposes seem beyond human comprehensions

It was not until he had reached his cottage that Jack thought to bite the coin,which turned out, beneath its tinsel, to be compacted of mere straw.