Can't be arsed

I am delving back into the sands of time for this post. Furthermore, I am delving into a third party Urban Abstract - thanks go to David Steel for the observation of the Abstract (and apologies to him for any inaccuracies - please comment if there are any material factual errors).

David was visiting his friend from university at her home in St Helens. They were riding a bus into town, whereupon a funeral cortege interrupted their journey. The general slowness of the cortege caused the surrounding traffic to go slow for a number of minutes.

Of two lads sat behind David on the bus, one commented: "I can't be arsed with that funeral."

Given that the lad wasn't required to expend any extra energy as a result of the funeral intrusion, I find it intriguing that he couldn't 'be arsed' with it. My own interpretation of the phrase extends to being compelled to act on something because of its significance. But is this interpretation at odds with urban society at large?

All comments welcome as ever.

Las Bowgas

I hosted a poker night round at my house in East London the other evening. There were five other invitees, which I had previously co-ordinated by using e-mail circulars. The e-mail subject title was “Las Bowgas”.

Of the five invitees, two were puzzled by the title, and wanted to know what it meant. All five of these players were self-evidently intelligent people – good degrees, good jobs, etc.

What I want to know is:

(a) Is there anyone reading this who also requires an explanation of the title? (post a comment if so)

(b) What is the reason for some people being able to see what it means and some people not? It is most interesting how different minds work in different ways and are therefore adept at different processes.

I’m sure many psychologists have devoted their whole Phd theses to such things, but I am content to wonder about it in a simplistic fashion on the information super highway.

Unlock Unlocking

So I'm waiting for my bus home after work and staring across the road, when I find I'm looking at the following shop front (snapped by my mobile):

Why would the shopkeeper cram three letters onto one square when every single other letter gets its own square? I don't think it's simply a case of running off two copies of 'UNLOCK' and then one copy of 'ING' - the top 'UNLOCK' looks different to the bottom 'UNLOCK'.

And - perhaps more pertinently for this blog - what does the 'ING' add to this advertisement for services? Could it be that 'unlocking' is actually a separate service to 'unlock'? The drivers behind the shopkeeper's actions in this apparently insignificant affair fascinate me.

If it transpires that others are interested in the answers to the above queries, I promise to go into the shop and ask for the answers in due course. To register your interest, post a comment below.

Solipsism in the workplace

A colleague asked me to e-mail him a scanned copy of some hand-written notes that I had taken down during a discussion about a 'self-hedging yen loan' structure. At the end of the notes (and in reference to a particular consideration about the structure), I had written: [Solipsistic?]

He e-mailed me back to thank me for sending the scanned copy of the notes, and pithily added that he didn't think he was being solipsistic when expressing his view on that aspect of the structure.

I had to let him know that I had written it down because he'd used the word in conversation and I didn't actually know what it meant! I have since looked it up, broadly it means "to be of the view that one's own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty".

How this can (a) be applied to the taxation aspects of a loan idea, and (b) be taken as a slight, are personally quite hard to fathom.

Is it just basic animal instinct to expect to have to defend oneself on all occasions? Put another way, was it in-built for my colleague to assume [Solipsistic?] was a critical attack on him? Maybe - reducing it to a 'natural selection' theory basis, an animal suspicious of attack at all times seems more likely to survive than one who naturally assumes everything and everyone is benign.