Wyzel Words
Feb. 5th, 2009 07:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI caught a radio episode of "Yes Minister" on Radio 7 earlier in the week. It was very early in the series and had a marvellous cameo from Bill Nighy as "Weasel" ("It's Wyzel", said Nighy, in response to Paul Eddington's mispronunciation).
I thought of Mr Wyzel while hearing a London Underground announcement yesterday. "There are severe disruptions on the Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines. All other lines are offering a good service".
Whoooahhhh, I said to myself. Hold on a little there Miss Chick-a-picky service announcer. Surely you mean that all other lines are offering a normal service? It's up to me to decide whether the service is good or not. I mean, if you want to preface the comment on the Hammersmith & City line with something like "London Underground is offering a really bad service there today", then I would be minded to let you off crowing about the fact that on the Northern Line the trains were running on time, which constitutes a "good" service, by comparison. But, since you didn't, kindly keep the judgmental adjectives to yourself.
And then, we had Aviva. I really liked this one. Aviva has welshed on a promise to pay £1bn in "forgotten assets" back to policyholders. In its release it said that the falls in equity markets and the value of investments since last July, when the promise was made, meant that to stick to it would be "unfair to both policyholders and shareholders".
Well, actually, it would have been extremely fair to policyholders. But note that Aviva did not say "unfair to either policyholders or sharehodlers", but that it would have been unfair to both of them.
Anyone with a modest knowledge of maths (or, indeed, Excel) will know that the words AND, OR, NOR, etc have precise mathematical meanings and that if you use the wrong word, horrible things can result. But English is more forgiving. You can say one thing mathematically (or "legally") while appearing to say something else. It's a trick beloved by some Diplomacy players who say "no, what I actually SAID was...." (just before you spit on them and walk away).
I bet the prick who wrote that Aviva release came away feeling right pleased with himself.
I didn't even bother phoning them up, because their back-up response (they prepare these things) would have been to say:
(a) that it was "unfair" to policyholders in the long run, because Aviva couldn't afford to pay it, and
(b) it was "not fair" in the sense that it was "too generous".
I doubt that Aviva would have been tearing up the agreement if equities had soared since last July on the grounds that it would have been "unfair to policyholders and shareholders". And the defence in line (a) is the same as that used by Equitable Life, and the House of Lords told them where to shove that.
Aviva's share price moved sharply higher on the news, so I think we can see where the "fairness" will lie in the renegotiated agreement.
All credit to Aviva for one thing; they had the foresight to put in a "renegotiation" clause should the FTSE fall by more than a predetermined amount (which, of course, it has). Then again, it still makes them look like welshing cunts who are resorting to the small print (see wanky Diplomacy plaeyrs, above). So perhaps it wasn't so bright in terms of publicity.
There's a US company called Zapata. When will the Aviva merger with them be announced?
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I thought of Mr Wyzel while hearing a London Underground announcement yesterday. "There are severe disruptions on the Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines. All other lines are offering a good service".
Whoooahhhh, I said to myself. Hold on a little there Miss Chick-a-picky service announcer. Surely you mean that all other lines are offering a normal service? It's up to me to decide whether the service is good or not. I mean, if you want to preface the comment on the Hammersmith & City line with something like "London Underground is offering a really bad service there today", then I would be minded to let you off crowing about the fact that on the Northern Line the trains were running on time, which constitutes a "good" service, by comparison. But, since you didn't, kindly keep the judgmental adjectives to yourself.
And then, we had Aviva. I really liked this one. Aviva has welshed on a promise to pay £1bn in "forgotten assets" back to policyholders. In its release it said that the falls in equity markets and the value of investments since last July, when the promise was made, meant that to stick to it would be "unfair to both policyholders and shareholders".
Well, actually, it would have been extremely fair to policyholders. But note that Aviva did not say "unfair to either policyholders or sharehodlers", but that it would have been unfair to both of them.
Anyone with a modest knowledge of maths (or, indeed, Excel) will know that the words AND, OR, NOR, etc have precise mathematical meanings and that if you use the wrong word, horrible things can result. But English is more forgiving. You can say one thing mathematically (or "legally") while appearing to say something else. It's a trick beloved by some Diplomacy players who say "no, what I actually SAID was...." (just before you spit on them and walk away).
I bet the prick who wrote that Aviva release came away feeling right pleased with himself.
I didn't even bother phoning them up, because their back-up response (they prepare these things) would have been to say:
(a) that it was "unfair" to policyholders in the long run, because Aviva couldn't afford to pay it, and
(b) it was "not fair" in the sense that it was "too generous".
I doubt that Aviva would have been tearing up the agreement if equities had soared since last July on the grounds that it would have been "unfair to policyholders and shareholders". And the defence in line (a) is the same as that used by Equitable Life, and the House of Lords told them where to shove that.
Aviva's share price moved sharply higher on the news, so I think we can see where the "fairness" will lie in the renegotiated agreement.
All credit to Aviva for one thing; they had the foresight to put in a "renegotiation" clause should the FTSE fall by more than a predetermined amount (which, of course, it has). Then again, it still makes them look like welshing cunts who are resorting to the small print (see wanky Diplomacy plaeyrs, above). So perhaps it wasn't so bright in terms of publicity.
There's a US company called Zapata. When will the Aviva merger with them be announced?
________________
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 09:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 09:42 am (UTC)Commercial Union, The Bad News Insurer. Excellent.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 04:42 pm (UTC)The NOR function is functionally complete (as is NAND) so you can use NOR to form any other logical function. Try using that in your next article.
Standard ~(OR(~OR(A,A),~OR(B,B)) Poor's 500.
I prefer lambda calculus but Excel doesn't have a plugin.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 04:43 pm (UTC)Modesty, not
Date: 2009-02-06 07:12 am (UTC)PJ
Re: Modesty, not
Date: 2009-02-06 08:50 am (UTC)I don't think you can get a line lower than the Tractatus. I once tried to read the Tractus and the Blue and Brown books. Philosophy was the other string to my degree bow. A real brain scrambler. I'll stick to lambda calculus.
Re: Modesty, not
Date: 2009-02-06 08:59 am (UTC)So, although an OR gate is, as you term it "not functionally complete", philosop[hically, it's the only function you need as a starting point.
PJ
Re: Modesty, not
Date: 2009-02-06 09:40 am (UTC)The term NOT is not a physical object but a mathematical construct to denote the obverse of any logical preposition. NOR is not a subset of OR. NOR is merely the negation of OR. If NOR is a subset of anything then it is in the subset of logical prepositions and lemmas.
Mathematically the existence of ~table (not table) is not possible. Either a table is in your set of objects or it is not. You can have a disjunct such that you have a super set of objects in your house and then subsets of objects in each room. Table might exist in your super set but not in your bathroom subset. However, table not being in your subset of bathroom furniture does not state that a table does not exist mathematically.
The function OR can never be a start to anything because you first have to define it is a lemma and to do that we need... the lambda calculus.
BTW, I made £500 this morning with a recovery CFD trade made yesterday on the Oil and Gas sector. I am heavily into dirt cheap commodities and those who fiddle with them.
Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 10:22 am (UTC)Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 10:29 am (UTC)Has it really come to this?
PJ
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 11:43 am (UTC)My point was fairly serious though. Anyone operating a scheduled transport service can do no better than to provide that service exactly as promised, at least in the immediate timeframe. So surely it is harsh to demand that even perfect delivery of the service cannot be reasonably described as good?
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 11:51 am (UTC)PJ
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 11:55 am (UTC)PJ
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 12:01 pm (UTC)And "normal" doesn't really mean running a perfect schedule, any more than "full employment" means that nobody is signing on.
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 12:05 pm (UTC)Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 12:14 pm (UTC)PJ
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-06 01:10 pm (UTC)One thing I'm sure of: the announcers themsleves hate making the announcements. My own particular favourite is the poor sap who seems to do most of the announcements at Westminster tube. Judging from the trembling in her voice the stage-fright doesn't seem to be showing much sign of abating with practice.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 03:40 pm (UTC)Titmus
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-08 07:25 pm (UTC)"All other lines are offering a good service."
Well, yes, of course they're offering a good service. Whether they're delivering such a thing is an entirely different matter.
One might have hoped that the (at present) virulently anti-Yankeeisation Birks might have noticed that this is not a coherent sentence in English. It works very well in American, though. It has the firm smack of PR, a nauseous American derivative of the Robber Baron Age which was thence sadly imported to these shores by the egregious Ogilvie and has since been embedded in the national consciousness ... of, well, credulous Londoners.
Try that on a Brummie and you wouldn't get this Wittgenstein nonsense. No, you'd get your pretty little face ripped off.
(I've been travelling to work in Leamington on BR for the last six months, so I know whereof I speak.)
Re: Modesty, not
Date: 2009-02-08 07:58 pm (UTC)Birks is of course wrong: you start with NANDs and NORs, and build from there. This is however not a mathematical imperative: it's an electrical engineering imperative. The fact that some part of maths maps on to it, whilst comforting to those who can just about spell "Tractatus" one time out of two, is largely irrelevant.
As to your bizarre attempt to blind the poor man with Alonzo and Kleene:
"Standard ~(OR(~OR(A,A),~OR(B,B)) Poor's 500"
is, effectively, expressed in the lambda calculus. (Ignoring the Standard bit and the Poor's 500 bit, which are forgiveable attempts at popularisation of:
λ p. ~(λ q. (~(λ r. A | A)) (~(λ s. B | B)))
You are merely arguing over a notational taradiddle. The one is easily transposed into the other, and vice versa. All it takes is an understanding of recursive descent parsing, and the ability to implement same in VBA. I'm sure Mr Woodhouse could assist you in this.
Plus, of course, the addition of the lambda key to your keyboard.
I must say, in this day and age, there's nothing worse than seeing half-baked failed mathematicians take an ill-intentioned pop at somebody who isn't actually trying to express themselves in formal mathematical terms in any case.
Unless it's the reverse, of course ...
How's life in the Cava going?
Re: Modesty, not
Date: 2009-02-08 08:05 pm (UTC)Re: Wittgenstein
Date: 2009-02-08 09:12 pm (UTC)My other blind spots are Fahrenheit and Tchaicovksy, although I will excuse myself for the latter on the grounds that his name wasn't originally in the Roman alphabet anyway.
And the day that I try to express myself in formal mathermatical terms, you have my permission to shoot me.
PJ
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-08 09:14 pm (UTC)PJ
Re: Everyone needs to be loved
Date: 2009-02-09 09:14 pm (UTC)Nah, guv. Just doesn't have the same emotional impact.
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