WHOSE STAR WARS?

Posted 22nd December 2015:

It’s here, it's with us.  And a strange calm settles over the world of Star Wars super fandom. The people who I thought would feel most strongly, who would rave at its brilliance or spit bile at its loathsomeness, don’t know what to make of it.  It’s not that they don’t like it, they do.  It’s not that it doesn’t live up to their expectations.  Because they didn’t really know what to expect.  They just don’t know. 

AIRPORT PHILOSOPHY PART 1: IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

“The identity of indiscernibles is an ontological principle that states that there cannot be separate objects or entities that have all their properties in common. That is, entities x and y are identical if every predicate possessed by x is also possessed by y and vice versa; to suppose two things indiscernible is to suppose the same thing under two names.”

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Or, to put it simply, if two things are the same, at least one of them doesn’t exist. Or, to put it simpler still, to exist you have to be different from everything else. A simple enough idea I picked up in a philosophy tutorial way back and somehow have never quite shaken off.  In fact, I think of it often, and drop it into conversation. When conversation is slow.  Which can cause some problems, because people tend not to believe you.  Oh come on, they say, what about those coffee beans. Or those baked beans. They’re all the same.  And all exist.  No they’re not the same, I counter.  They have equivalent physical properties, but positionally they are quite different, i.e. one’s here, one’s there.  Therefore they’re not the same.  And the doubter retreats, not so much vanquished, as bored.

PRIMARY 1 NAILS IT

Here it comes.  I brace myself as the conductor-cum-child-herder raises her hands to call the primary choir to order.  It’s time to unleash the cutest thing anybody has seen - at least since last year’s carol concert.  It’s time to forget the stress and endless 'to do' lists that mark the irrevocable descent into Christmas.  Forget for a moment the on-going pressure of locating, securing, hiding, wrapping, hiding again and covertly depositing the small mountain of gifts gradually converging on the house from all four corners of the globe. The audience holds its collective breath in a state of anticipatory rapture.  This is it, the pay off.

IRON MOUTH

“I don’t know what I’m looking at," said the dentist, as we clustered round the screen to examine my X-ray.  

That, I thought, was an unusual thing for a dentist to say.  Because if there’s one thing you can be sure about with dentists it's that they always know what they’re looking at. And exactly how to describe it to the person whose job it is to write it down.  Without questioning.  Let’s face it, when was the last time you heard a dental assistant say: “Hang on a minute, slow down a bit. Are you absolutely sure you got that right?  Doesn’t sound very likely to me.” You don't.  Because when it comes to the inside of your mouth, there are no surprises. There’s nothing there that doesn’t have a name.  And the dentist knows what it is.

THE DAY FIFE STAYED AT HOME

Last night they closed the Forth Road Bridge - completely.  Someone had suddenly found a technical fault - presumably a piece of road hanging off, or a high tension cable gnawed through by some passing sea monster.  I hardly slept a wink, imagining the scenes of terror and panic that would greet me the following day as I attempted to cross the Forth to Edinburgh.  

Presumably the Kinkardine bridge - the alternative road crossing to the west - would simply be overwhelmed with traffic and topple over into the mudbanks.  The motorway to the North would be overrun with crazed reprobates ramming through the road cones and 'having a go’, or tearing through crash barriers and rampaging through the gardens of Dalmeny and Inverkeithing to find an alternative route.

BEING JOHN SWINNEY

Sitting in the car waiting for the ferry to Ardrossan we saw a bloke in a blue cagoule who looked just like John Swinney.

Surely not.  What would Scotland's Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy be doing in Broddick?  On a Thursday?  Weren’t there affairs of state to be dealt with?  And what was a man of his stature doing waiting for the MV Caledonian Isles with us half-term, half-arsed holiday makers?  Shouldn’t he be safely stowed in a motorcade of long black sedans with fluttering flags, before being whisked aboard a private jet by a possy of heavily armed men in black suits and sunglasses?

Never one to pass up on a celebrity encounter I got out of the car and walked casually towards him.  There was no one else walking on the pier, so no natural cover to camouflage my approach.  Accordingly I took a wide sweep of his left flank, hoping to catch a glimpse under his hood without raising suspicion.