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It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.
His professorship was an obscure one, to say the least, and since he dispensed with his lecturing duties by the simple and time-honoured technique of presenting all his potential students with an exhaustive list of books that he knew for a fact had been out of print for thirty years, then flying into a tantrum if they failed to find them, no one had ever discovered the precise nature of his academic discipline. He had, of course, long ago taken the precaution of removing the only extant copies of the books on his reading list from the university and college libraries, as a result of which he
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small amount of money for a very small, or shall we say non-existent, amount of work. That puts me permanently just ahead of the game, which is a comfortable if frugal place to spend your life. I recommend it.’ He
His name was Cawley, he was a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology, and it was frequently said of him, behind his back, that he regarded it not so much as a serious academic study, more as a chance to relive his childhood.
And the more slow and dimwitted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming.
‘It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils,’ came a low growl from somewhere on the table, ‘without undergoing a pre-frontal lobotomy.’
‘I must go and have a word with the kitchen staff one day. I would like to be sure that they are keeping the right bits and throwing the proper bits away.
However, I got the sack for sweeping the mess on to another sweeper’s patch.’ Reg shook his head. ‘The wrong career for you, I’m sure. There are plenty of vocations where such behaviour would ensure rapid preferment.’
My dear, dear chap! What was I saying?’ ‘Er, you were saying “My dear chap”.’ ‘Yes, but I feel sure it was a prelude to something.
Well, I suppose I should be pleased. If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there? Now, how’s our young guest’s pot doing?’
He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief?
By means of an ingenious series of strategically deployed denials of the most exciting and exotic things, he was able to create the myth that he was a psychic, mystic, telepathic, fey, clairvoyant, psychosassic vampire bat.
The laziness was essential – if his supposed feats of the paranormal had been detailed and accurate, then people might have been suspicious and looked for other explanations.
was the only British software company that could be mentioned in the same sentence as such major U.S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus. The sentence would probably run along the lines of ‘WayForward Technologies, unlike such major U.S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus . . .’ but it was a start. WayForward was in there. And he owned it.
he made himself go cross-eyed, stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and danced up and down twisting his fingers in his ears – ‘would anything strike you about that?’ ‘Well, er, yeah,’ said the cashier, backing away nervously. ‘I’d think you’d gone stark raving mad.’ ‘Good,’ said the policeman, putting his notebook away. ‘It’s just that different people sometimes have a different idea of what “odd” means, you see, sir.
‘Well, Gordon’s great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program’s task, which it was able to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion.
Or maybe she decided that an evening with your old tutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilarating course of washing her hair instead.
One of the things that distinguish the amateur from the professional is that this is the point when the amateur thinks it would have been a good idea to bring along something to prise the window open with.
good bits had involved Susan, he realised. Susan or computers. Never Susan and computers – those had largely been the bad bits.
Richard marvelled at the idea that there were people who actually knew what they wanted to do three weeks in advance, thanked the mâıtre d’ and rang off.
What sort of tie would you wear if you were a private detective? Presumably it would have to be exactly the sort of tie that people wouldn’t expect private detectives to wear. Imagine having to sort out a problem like that when you’d just got up.
He also wore thick metal-rimmed spectacles, which probably accounted at least in part for his dress sense.
Do not worry yourself about this bill, do not let it alarm or discomfit you. Do not, I beg you, let it become a source of anxiety to you. Just grit your teeth and pay it.’
cast-iron proof that you’re innocent, than to languish in a cell hoping that the police – who already think you’re guilty – will find it for you.’
but there is a huge difference between disliking somebody – maybe even disliking them a lot – and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire. It was a difference which kept the vast majority of the population alive from day to day. Was it just theft? Dirk hadn’t mentioned anything being missing but then he hadn’t asked him.
‘Ah,’ said Dirk, ‘it is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry “I could have thought of that” is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
Away up in the high canopy of the trees an utterly extraordinary thought would suddenly strike a bird, and it would go flapping wildly through the branches and settle at last in a different and altogether better tree where it would sit and consider things again more calmly until the same thought came along and struck it again, or it was time to eat.
Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.
