As I was going to St. Ives..

On the way to St Ives for Xmas spotted this steam train at Bodmin Parkway, fantastic (the steam train’s on the right, btw).

And talking of St Ives, you may have heard of the following rhyme: “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks, every sack had seven cats, every cat had seven kitts. Kitts, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to St. Ives?” Upon being presented with this conundrum, most readers begin furiously adding and multiplying numbers in order to calculate the total quantity of objects mentioned. However, the problem is a trick question. Since the man and his wives, sacks, etc. were met by the narrator on the way to St. Ives, they were in fact leaving–not going to–St. Ives. The number going to St. Ives is therefore “at least one” (the narrator), but might be more since the problem doesn’t mention if the narrator is alone.” (Mathworld)

Fauxonomies

Great day, started at Headshift, and getting to grips with Confluence and Jira. But let me digress, I also got to thinking about taxonomies, for which Wikipedia nicely makes the link to folk taxonmies as well as scientific varities – and the notion there are ‘fauxonomies’:

“Some have argued that the human mind naturally organizes its knowledge of the world into such systems. This view is often based on the epistemology of Immanuel Kant. Anthropologists have observed that taxonomies are generally embedded in local cultural and social systems, and serve various social functions. Perhaps the most well-known and influential study of folk taxonomies is Posted in IT-Usability, Main Page