h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Did you read the entry at

http://www.h2g2.com/A256439

The author was looking for input and it sounds like you're qualified.

A Thread about Godel! Finally, my life is incomplete.

Hello Researcher whatever-number, I hope you take a name soon so that I can visualise you better. For Stragbasher to have preceded an ACE to your page is quite an event, cos he doesn't get out much either.

Lil

hello lil
you seem to enjoy precise english. have you come across H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage first published 1926? excellently idiosyncratic and apoplectic.
i hope your incompletion is not troubling.
mine is a theory of completeness - become one of my followers and the whole world will be yours. honest. i have to remain anonymous while my plans for world domination are being formed. my enemies are everywhere, truly! the main cop is a worthy adversary.
unchristened researcher

Would it be permissible then to address you simply as Unchristened? I would prefer a word to a number, as I have difficulty remembering random sequences of digits. I am in fact comparatively innumerate, and my knowledge of Godel derives from being a BA in philosophy. There was a preponderance of logic in the curriculum, at Birmingham (England).

I do indeed know Fowler, and also claim acquaintance with Strunk & White. The late E.B. White is one of my favorite essayists.

What's your basis for paranoia? You have enemies everywhere? Does that mean you don't get out much?

dear lil
you may indeed refer to me as Unchristened. i have ammended my peronal details accordingly.
im glad you've read Fowler. i am afraid i have not read either Strunck, White or White. which is quite appaling given the string of degrees i claim.
i have only been to birmingham once: i found a cat and rode a motorbike, which shows its not as bad as people say. i didnt stay long enough to study philosophy, but later found time to in newcastle.
Orwell is a good essayist, but inclines one to paranoia. i blame him for all my shortcomings.
Unchristened

Strunk & E.B. White wrote _The Elements of Style_ which was one of the pillars of composition as it was taught when I took college courses here in the US, but that was nearly 35 years ago. One could be forgiven for thinking that style is no longer taught anywhere.

two of my current bugbears:
the use of "impact" as a verb and in place of "affect" eg blah will impact on blah, which is a cumbersome construction, regardless of the grammar.
object-shuffling with the verb "diagnose" eg mr. a was diagnosed with earth fever. again cumbersome and the object is earth fever: earth fever was diagnosed.
both gruesome examples are current on radio 4

Urgh.
Do they speak of books being authored by X, or, worse, do they say that X authored a book?

they commit all sorts of crimes against language, but i suppose as author of the theory of completeness <- BOASTER! i shouldnt complain.
incidentally, (this thread is unravelling somewhat) i see that you like Jung. i was once reading _four archetypes_ on a train and burst out laughing because he'd just described two of my friends.

I'm just finishing _Puer Aeternas_ by Marie-Louise von Franz: she deconstructs Saint-Exupery and finds the most wonderful symbolism in Le Petit Prince ... do you remember the 4 elephants on an asteroid? One of them is turned!

dear lil
like marvin, i find the following difficult to say.
i havent read the book and dont understand the allusion.
arggghhhh......youve got me!
please explain, illustrious reader of books and knower of things: who was st exupery, what does the petit prince symbolise and what of the elephants?
yours humbly
unch

It comes out of Jung's 4 types that you mentioned. Jung said there was always a 4th, inferior function which often as not served as the Shadow.

Paul Saint-Exupery was an aviator; he lived for flying, and died for it too, as he disappeared while on a secret mission over the Sahara in 1944. _Le Petit Prince_ was a children's book he wrote about a little prince who comes down from an asteroid. It's a short thing, you might look it up if you've an interest.

I have talked about this in great detail with Stragbasher, a very interesting person about whom you can find out at http://pws.prserv.net/planetchris. He said he was thinking of publishing our correspondence about puers, and perhaps he has.

dear lil
the rogue stragbasher is known to me. he noticed my Godel-jabberings.
a character associated with heavenly bodies is an expression of the self archetype so presumably the little prince fits this role. who represents the shadow in the little prince?
i tried to write something along the same lines myself in a past age.
the stories were about mimi, a little girl and therefore my anima. mimi had a pet dove (able to ascend and descend) therefore my self and a pet cat, my shadow. although it was quite a nice cat as cats go, and never caught the dove. mimi had a big brother called horace who helped her out of scrapes (my animus). the story came to me while hitch-hiking in a storm - everything was blowing past me and it made me think of the way a child begins to create an ordered world of meaning and proper places out of the chaos around it. anyway, im boasting again and probably alerting all qualified analysts to something quite monstrous lurking in my personality. paranoia!
LOL unch

but no-one would publish it