CHAPTER
05. 20th CENTURY LOGIC IN
FOOTBALL MANAGEMENT.
WHY SCIENCE FAILED TO FIND THE RIGHT STARS WITH ITS
‘DARK SATANIC MILLS’.
KEYWORDS.
Reductionism, Utilitarianism, Plato, Paradox, Godel,
Turing, Quantum, Popper, Globalism, Olbers, Clone death, 3rd Way,
Ecumenical, Ethnology, Social Science, Glasgow Rangers FC
ABSTRACT.
Reductionism saw the science and technologies of the
20th century fail to reach an interplanetary perspective for the
human race. Fraught with terminal paradoxes and flaws, the science of B Movies
SciFi promises failed to deliver.
A paradigm driven by Platonic elitism [e.g. The
Republic] and nepotism and assuaged by John Stuart Mill’s ‘Utilitarianism’ it
became very, very difficult to get a game for both club and country in any industrial
context for some reason no matter how talented, unique, enthusiastic or
conformist one was.
In fact, even Globalism using these social and
scientific elitist precepts did not lift Scottish industrial humanity out of a
dark age.
Hard-line hot air failed to deliver anything other
than a Virgin Records balloon attempting to mine sweep in Croatia to help out a
United Nations task force disabled by hardware dysfunction.
Traditionally, the ignorance and sloth of humanity was
the scapegoat for global failure. A good topic for indignant after-dinner
rhetoric.
To aspire to what was elite however, one usually had
to have something to say that would maintain one’s utility to massive
Multinational Corporations that were seeking to expand their resource base and
profits.
The days of faking a German accent at the Rockefeller
Institute grant bids session whilst wearing a white coat however, are over.
These guys may as well have been Mary Poppins as they
sang of ‘brown paper theses tied up with (super)strings .. these were a few of
their favourite thingz.’ No Flash Gordon 1950’s Space Drive then.
It’s the pits, here we are stuck in Scotland with no
holiday in the sun or indeed, around somebody else’s sun to look forward to and
everybody in the world that does that science stuff an’ stuff like that doesn’t
peruse reality in a rational way.
It’s not that the scientific methodology of
reductionism didn’t produce enough failures because it persistently stripped
the context off any process being observed, it’s just because we’re all
finished ‘and we like it that way.’[1]
Our own particular failures of the 20th
century being almost completely sufficient to bury us in a dark age of magik
and unreason we still have a legacy of joketown science that must be the envy
of every intergalactic comedy department.
I’m now going to list a bunch of paradoxes and they
have one thing in common; they all seem to get a game for Scotland and they
cause catastrophic failure of the Scottish football Industrial Complex. They
are all the one paradox caused by
reductionism.
1.
TURING’S INFINITE RECURSION BY INFINITE OBJECTS
PARADOX.
2.
GöDEL’S INFINITE
NUMBERING ILLOGICAL LOGIC PARADOX.
3.
THE WAVE COLLAPSES WITHOUT WATERY ETHER PARADOX.
4.
THE CLONE COLLAPSES WITHOUT GENETIC FILLER PARADOX
These 4 paradoxes are the severely injured power
houses of a bad Scottish midfield.
For some reason this ‘pub-side’ [i.e. amateur team
from a local drinking establishment] of very badly unfit players keep playing
in the Scottish midfield. They don’t talk to one another, they don’t read the
game, they never make a run up the park, they pass back, they don’t listen to
their team mates – it’s as if they never played a good game of football in
their lives. It’s as if they don’t know it’s football.
Sure they look good in their kit but the left winger
Turing, trying to compute the best way up to the opposition goal line to set up
an intelligent goal doesn’t know the
rules of football – he’s blind. He staggers off into the crowd and feels his
way up the park by grabbing onto everybody’s face, arms and jacket, and by the
time he hits the advertising hording at the other end and fallen into the
photographers he’s a complete mess.
Gödel does exactly the same on the Scottish right – it
just isn’t logical.
Turing and Gödel both feel their way through an
infinite number of spectators before they feel like passing.
Although the boy Wavey and the boy Clonesey try their
devious best to be clever, they are good technicians of the game, they keep
running out of steam in the middle of the park – this because they never seem
to eat or drink anything between matches.
They are insubstantial.
They must be on drugs.
You really have to have something substantial inside
you to hold up your backbone and tone up your stamina. It emerged that the pair
of them had gone out on the binge yet again to Olbers’ – a nightclub on the
west side of Glasgow the night before the match and discovered that they could
get free stimulants all night every night – as much as they wanted.
Olbers had discovered an unlimited supply of ether
that held up all the light in the Universe making the sky black - and he had a
strong argument with Albert that ether exists.
That also made Albert wrong about the fixed speed of
light.
Paradoxically although Olbers a German philanthropist
had been on the go in Glasgow since the 1920’s he couldn’t have been an
Einstein or he would have got his relatives selling it all over Scotland.
The Olbers family motto seemed a bit intimidating
though .. ‘it’ll be all white on the night ..’ Perhaps they were forced to
leave Germany by some Einstein who felt that they were being a bit
unreasonable. Everybody knows that it’s black at night – that’s why we need
street lighting.
Maybe that Einstein in Germany got his sums wrong – no
matter.
Anyway, Wavey and Clonesey went to Olbers and got
paralytic with ether and just fell over. It wasn’t that they just got their
sums wrong, they just ignored the one vital clue – everybody knows you gotta
drink the free water supplied there or you severely dehydrate.
Water is the stuff that keeps us together, and as we
are 90% water and we keep running it out, it stands to reason that we have to
keep putting it back in. Where Wavey and the boy Clonesey fell down was that
they forgot to feel thirsty and hungry. They even forgot they had a body. Worse
still they even forgot they had a game for Scotland the next night.
Everybody has a body that has water. Everybody needs
water. You take away water and we are a small bag of chemicals. If you eat
another small bag of chemicals on top of the chemicals you already have – you
need more water.
It deluges water in Scotland all the time ! how could
they forget that ..
There was Olbers nightclub giving the interstellar
drug of ether away and those two clowns
couldn’t care about how they handle themselves.
How do you get it into their stupid heads that they
need water and metabolic filler if they cannot identify it.
Everybody in the Universe and everything in the
Universe has to get from A to B through some common C.
The drugs would need to travel from mouth to toilet
through some common water. If they claim their body and the Universe doesn’t
need water and is made of air is it their right to be signing a commercial
contract with the Scottish Industrial Football Association.
They need to be seen to at least patronise the context
of healthy biology, as long as they can still play. So that their team mates
don’t get worried during those long sub-tropical tours.
They had been faking their physio test results.
Maybe tell them that it’s like putting; air in their
tyres, or seats in their car. Or – it’s like the circuit boards inside the TV
they threw through the hotel window, or the mushy peas inside the cans at
Tesco.
Einstein himself thought that Olbers and his
freewheeling nightclub was ‘spooky’ and un-necessary because everything was
free.
If Albert was right that watery ether was not needed
to dilute things down and mix up the vapours and ethers on their way through
the kidneys, then the place would stay in business without clients being given
water no matter how much drugs they ate.
He would go one better on his German contemporary Olbers.
Olbers spoke to Einstein telling him that if Albert
was right, then the sky should be white at night, because if there is no watery
ether attenuating our Scottish Universe most of the nightclub clientele would
be well whited out of it before last orders.
If they went to Robert Morley’s ‘bunny girl
nightclub’ to see his son Micky and the
place wasn’t full of Bunny girls – it wouldn’t be much fun would it.
Micky-Morley may not have had anyone on the front desk
when we checked, but we were all very sure that the place was staffed with
etheric staff. His business is
organised chaos after all.
Being spaced out, no doubt they would not be so stupid
as to think the place was empty if they had a look in the first room beyond the
reception area and found no-one.
That particular Micky-Morley experiment may have
disappeared into the ethers and vapours of a bad nite out, but no-one thought
that some Einstein would actually buy the story.
Wavey keeps getting his game for Scotland though and
that is a paradox as far as I’m concerned because we could really do with a new
powerhouse in midfield – one that works for the team and distributes with efficient
ease.
Wavey’s passes keep landing short and sticking in the
mud of the Scottish pitches – and he can’t even string a pass together these
days. We were told by our talent scout that he was famous for unifying a team
from the midfield. ‘Superstrings’ we were told his nickname was.
He should get a free transfer with no strings attached
that’s for sure. He was recently seen in a Glasgow nightclub demonstrating his
Unifying String passing theory by attempting to emulate all round spherical 360
degree awareness and mobility by waving his Jaeger shoes around on the end of
his feet like he was Brandon Lee. It was embarrassing to watch actually.
Certainly a new midfielder on trial from maybe that
East European outfit Pravda FC called Tesla, with a magnetic personality or
that coloured guy from Jamaica called Brucey DePalma, who is always in a spin.
He’s quite good at running and running – he never seems to stop.
Clonesey should get the chop too. He does tend to be
very exclusive and selective.. The guy is a bit unhealthy. He can’t go on like
this. His secret hobby is Scottish country dancing, but he only ever goes out
and dances with seven other people. They are very unpopular and just don’t mix.
Although they go to Ceilidh’s and more formal occasions up and down the country
– they never seem to fit in.
That’s because they just don’t care what people say or
feel. At one event there was a bunch of older people there – and they just
knocked them over.
At a great elite Ceilidh in a Scottish castle, during
a very long set dance called a Shetland strip the willow, things were going
great and everybody In the hall was joining in until these kreeps refused to
touch anybody but the 8 kreeps they were. They interrupted the dancing and
started shouting racist abuse.
Dancing is a substantial social activity, social input
and context is a substantial social backdrop. It may be pollution to them – but
it’s about respect, mutual support and guidance – about learning new dances,
its about meeting people, its about networking and social advancement – it
provides us with our meat and drink in more ways than one.
These kreeps forget that and have reduced themselves
to a sorry little small-scale parody of our culture.
If Clonesey keeps hanging around there, once he fails
at football, he will keel over and drown in a swamp of negativity.
All Clonesy types ultimately do that.
I know that Scottish football in the main has sunk
into a swamp, where the tartan army has become a loosely associated bunch of
unhappy drinkers. These guys never seemed to get it together after Argentina in
1978.
Scottish football descended into Chaos after that.
We could never select a good team. We had to look far
and wide for new talent and investigated the ancestry of everyone that had ever
been to Scotland and had kicked a ball. The global problem for the Scottish
Football Association, however, was, was the set of all footballers who had ever
played in Scotland the set of all that was Scottish. For if they were truly
Scottish, then they would be in Bertie’s team.
Some said that if they wanted to be Scottish and to
play for Scotland, then let them play – after all everybody is a unique
individual in this ecumenical new world order and it comes down to a matter of
choice and preference. We all come from mostly the same genetic stock after
all.
The purists then went screaming on about bringing
chaos into our national game – after all we invented the game of football in
the town of Jedburgh.
How could Scottish football possibly survive and keep
the pride and the passion for the dark blue jersey.
This kind of deregulated selection is going to bring
anarchy and chaos to the global game and make it all meaningless. It’s gonna be
Nihilism - on the pitch and off it.
The global game could be policed better, therefore, by
much tighter controls and legislation.
An SFA natural selection committee got together for a
consultation, having unjustly handed out various match bans and disciplinary
fines to Fernando Ricksen for kicking a Panathanikos player all the way back to
the Acropolis in Athens for booting over his Dutch buddy Lovenkrands in the
away leg in Athens.
Although Platonic friendship was discounted by the SFA
chairman as a defence for Fernando’s behaviour – the re-run of his foul at
Ibrox on the Greek was mixed down with the ABBA song .. ‘there was something In
the air last night .. the stars were bright Fernando … as the big Greek
discovered the fruitfulness of Ricksen’s Judo training in a classic ‘ippon’
throw in the last 10 minutes.
The Greeks were always off balance anyway – who did
they think they were ? – you get tackles like that in the Premiere division
every week according to BBC commentator Archie Macpherson.
So, Rather than send Ricksen off to a cave to go and
sulk, why can’t he play for Scotland if he wants to.
Oddball players and opinions should be embraced.
If he 1. makes a conscious decision to , and 2.
creates and constructs agreement to and 3. recognises that he will be
ineligible for future Dutch fixtures and 4.
can operate constructively with other Scottish players – why not.
He makes his living here – and there would be
fireworks on the park too – bringing some much-needed, classy continental savvy
to Scotland. I was always an advocate of that.
Sure we are all unique individuals from differing backgrounds
but we all agree on the rules of social Football. They are a tried and proven
recipe arrived at after great experimentation. We live and breathe football, we
sleep football, we eat football, we play football and we buy the T-shirts time
and time and time again.
We got the social rules through; trial and error,
failure and success, and we have evolved from kicking about the head of Jimmy
Hill’s ancestors about the streets of Jedburgh into the beautiful game that we
know and love today – or whenever we can get a team of reasonably disabled
people together to play it.
Globalism could be fun.
Ricksen would fit right into the memories we have of
the Scottish national game and rekindle our hopes for a more direct approach to
success. Having abandoned his Dutch clogs at Prestwick airport, he soon had a
look through the old Graeme Souness videos for a decent and respectable role
model and career path to emulate.
Ricksen has got both skill and guts and can adapt his
retaliations to fit into the context of every match.
We can all recognise the game in this form – and it is
played all over the world, even in the USA. A vast global market has made it
instantly recognisable and the recent World Cup’s have opened up previously
undiscovered markets for those footballing skills, change strips and other
products deep in the nomadic deserts of Kazakhstan and the Gobi. (even for
David Beckham)
Sure the game has its severe critics, like Annie Ayn
Rand – who jumps on the cynical bandwagon with subtle sayings like ‘the Lord
helps them that helps themselves ..’ a typical American nutter of course who
got her college degree from one of those places in the states that thinks that
Football means American Football. Yessirree – an American game called
‘football’ that is not played with the feet.
I mean, if I ask for a hamburger, I expect there to be ham mixed in with
my beefsteak – ye know what I mean ??
You got it .. !!
Ms. Rand has no liking for other class performers
presumably because she is still at liberty to do so in public and wants to
exert her own brand of marketing on testosterone beef at Tesco.
She is in an elite and exclusive class of her own.
Scottish social Football though is a game for the
purists and a people’s game endorsed and played by Industry all over the galaxy.
The people, the heroes, the characters that make this
game up all know and understand it. We come from humble and respectful
beginnings. Sure Jimmy Hill is still around an’ that … but having seen the last
game at Wembley then there was no need for a last Scottish rematch, because
they had to pay contractors to take away the bits and pieces of their
national stadium this time.
Jimmy Hill though, lives on in those nightmare days of
Scottish goalkeeping and our traditional Wembley turkey-shoot hammering in
London.
That style of critique and irritation is taken for the
most in good part - and unless the
recipients are extremely morose and unlightened by bevvy would usually lead to
some sort of retort.
The recipe for good Scottish social football is cultured
and controlled diversity using the skills of some very unique individuals who
can utilise the digital infrastructure with their intelligence and various
gifts.
There is also opportunity to progress in Football too.
Another Ibrox hero, Ally McCoist went on to become famous with quick fire
humour and deviously brilliant recall in the game show called ‘A Question of
Sport’.
I am not sure if he made it with the blonde presenter
though but that was the fun of it.
It might be said that the game will never last – that
if so many people rip it all apart with their own selfish agendas and stupidity
that it will fall over like a bad version of Windows 95.
To that I would say that we – all us social football
fans, have many attributes in common that keep us all truckin’ between local
league fixtures and world cups.
1. we can focus ourselves on football 2. we are
persistent with our football stuff 3. we patronise and nurture the game 4. we
constantly explore our business interests 5. we are willing to endorse new
synthesis 6. we utilise football in our recreation 7. football gives us a sense
of community 8. we build stadia and
archives to facilitate, stage and store the games and products and processes
with.
Sure the game has its outlandish hackers and critics who
like to turn up just to trash our memorabilia cupboards and social life – they
may wear a strip and act like football fans but you can tell a mile off they’re
out for trouble.
They are recognisably pointless and as they say … ‘no
reason to live but we like it that way.’
Having to endure these people posing as football
supporters is hard, especially when we as a supporters club endorse the values
of; chivalry, love and peace and a SKY sponsorship deal in Europe.
Governing the uncertainties of rights and dignities
with law during crowd trouble at a match, we can leave ourselves open to
punishment by other pointless detractors out to look for trouble.
If we could somehow see into the minds of these evil
people – we could get this all sorted out very quickly so that we could live
peacefully enjoying the continuity and values of sport and social contracts
that we love and enjoy.
Bertie has a paradox with the Scottish game however
when it comes to team selection. Is the pool of all footballers a pool that is Scottish.
If we can Russell up a few more sets of contenders and if Bertrand can overcome
the paradox of thinking like a despot Descartes and If we can get a billion
unique people to agree what the game and its local commitments are all about –
he’ll not know who to leave out – who knows – maybe Obi Wan Kanobi will get a game in a dark blue jersey too.
It emerged .. that the problem folks and indeed Bertie
Vogt’s have with the world just now is that all is Gesellschaft i.e. we have a
social system in which relationships are impersonal or associational.
Presumably because in Scotland where it’s the pits,
all the Gemeinschaft is closed. i.e. a stable secure society is now Geschlossen
to new ideas and directions.
This is because Scottish Morals are in decline and
Utilitarianists like Stu Mills know what to do about it and they don't care
what we say.
According to
Stu Boy Mills ‘Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters
who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general
principles of moral judgements; it is a branch of our reason, not of our
sensitive faculty’. ‘In Football, pleasures or pains which may be expected to
consequentially issue from the physio, the board, or the manager must all of
them be expected to be experienced.’. ‘
.. the pleasures taken in at the eye and ear are generally very complex. The
pleasures of a country scene, a football pitch, for instance, consist commonly,
amongst others, of the following pleasures… of treating whole teams by
separating them into their parts, abstract running off the ball and man for man
marking.’
As a former Ranger’s manager, he would say ‘there are
runs which must be made so that an opening can be made for passes that other
attackers can depend on.’ Mills used to select Wavey for the Rangers right wing
all the time, asking him to try to do some infield running and to cover the
younger and fitter hopeful wing back looking for his Scotland place. Wavey’s
response was - ‘ unselfish running like that would sacrifice his touchy feely
tete-a-tete with the supporters, linesmen, dugout and photographers, stewards,
policemen and the ball-boys. Basically, he said, if you can’t get in amongst
the crowd and have a laugh, it’s pointless me even turning up.’
Scotland lost
its last utilitarian hedonist with the retiral of Joe Jordan. Although Joe
retired minus most of his front teeth – the pain, the pleasure and the
legislation of the Scottish game regularly saw him dive headfirst into scoring
opportunities that would have needed sophist mathematics to avoid. He was never
as confused as John Stuart Mill though – concussed maybe, but not confused.
Plato tried harder than Mill ever did to get life the
universe and everything sorted out. That is until a descendent of Queen
Victoria and heir to the throne of Ibrox, George Albertz Popper also known as
Karl Popper, the father of the scientific method delivered a thunderbolt shot
from 25 yards into the back of the Panathanikos net, dealing a fatal blow to
the enemy of the state of Scottish football.
An unstoppable shot past Plato the Greek goalkeeper
who was so far off his line and so unsighted he may have been heading off to
get a pie and Bovril. Popper’s Teutonic demolition of this guys European career
as an elitist became a footnote to recent history when he was asked to head
back to Germany to use his thunderbolts elsewhere.
If we cannot depend on an international goalkeeper
such as Plato, to who or what can we turn but our own innate sense of irony to
get us past these bad fixtures where we should have stayed at home in our caves instead of being exposed to the
bright glare of an international-class floodlit Olympic Stadium and a global
audience.
The morality of chaos and broken careers is evident to
all though, as people must find themselves useful, nurtured and integrated
amongst the new chaotic deregulation of the global football market.
Agreeing to drugs tests, ancestor research and new and
more rigorous disciplinary measures will become an increasing necessity in a
competitive open market.
The problem as Global Fuss ball executives may see it,
is that there could be an influx of illegal aliens causing mayhem with the club
and national game structures such that current entrenched financial obligations
may have to be overturned to upgrade the facilities to supply an ever
increasing market.
Certainly with the boy Clonesey and his primitive
amiga senor Wavey still staggering about the park in Glasgow, and with Gödel
and Turing newly equipped with guide dogs, the beautiful game in Scotland certainly
isn’t the beautiful game anymore.
How can we know that the game can only get better and
that the sun will rise again on Scottish football though ?
Hume-so-ever we discuss this with in Scotland will
immediately start screaming about stuff that isn’t about football.
Celtic supporters cannot discuss Celtic, and those
pretenders to Ibrox expertise could not even identify what happened to the
Bonnie Dundee keeper in the nightclub toilet the day before the cup final match
season 2001/2002.
Now just ask the boy Clonesey, Wavey, Turing and Gödel
what happens when you don’t play to the rules of the game, or try to play
football when you think that you’re really playing America football, and see
how long you last before SKY DIGITAL backs out of its sponsorship option.
It takes more than an alien in a football strip to
make a footballer.
Those were the days; Dennis-the-menace Law, Robert
Maxwell the demon thief paradox, Lord Kelvin’s 1901 Chaos Theory, James Clerk
Maxwell – a guy whose feelings got Hertz – and old Nick himself, Mr Tesla whose
theories of free global football never made it past the turnstiles of the New
Jersey Rams.
Although local hero Jim Baxter, from Cowdenbeath,
Fife, whose dextrous football may have made it into sponsorship for Royal Game soup
made by the famous Baxter the Butchers never did see his demolition of the
English World Cup winning side in official video after the BBC editing unit had
gotten through with it – he may rest assured, however, that there is still some
meat left in the Scottish game.
It may not have any dextrose in it any more though,
those additives having been supplanted by a more euro-regulated ‘E’ variety so
obviously now enjoyed by many of his former neighbours.
The SFA, the Scottish Football Association may still
be a wee bit worried about the emergence of thingz whot we canna Handel. It
must be said though, that football is a strange attractor that hangs together there in the air like a
big red leather match ball on a snow-covered pitch at Pittodrie Aberdeen, as
Colin Stein comes in fur the header on the end of a long hospital ball punt-out
by Peter McCloy.
Colin Stein may have had a bad knock of heads with
Willie Miller the Aberdeen defender, and ended up with an eye as red as the eye
of Jupiter for his troubles – but he did score.
The subsequent argument with the Ger’s Physio for an
early hot bath, however, was ignored when the physio responded thusly :
‘.. What is the function or causal role of pain ? At
bottom, it seems plausible to say, the business of pain is at least typically
to alert us to bodily damage or malfunction, and to spur us into protective or
avoidance behaviour. For instance, a painful ‘burning’ sensation (as we call
it) is normally produced by a skin-damaging contact with a cold or even hot surface
and eventuates in a speedy attempt to withdraw from that playing surface. Colin
is in pain if he is in a state standardly produced by bodily damage or
malfunction, and which in turn produces reactions like tears or moans, and
prompts avoidance responses. This of course, is far too simple …..’
Colin, stunned by the erudite gravity of the Ger’s
physio who had obviously forgotten about his darts-club donation of a vanload
of sponsorship booze, hit back with an amazing volley .. ‘a successful type of
animal, one which can look after itself, must have a sensory mechanism which
will signal events likely to damage it and the signals must have priority over
all others .. It must be a sensation to which we cannot manage to remain
inattentive and one which we feel compelled to bring to an end as soon as
possible … my mate Adrian said that in 1947. ‘the physical background of
perception’ published by Clarendon.
The physio retorted, listen buddy – you’re going to
get a free transfer to Coventry, but you can come back to score the equaliser
that will give Rangers the League in 1976 at Easter Road. Ok then said, Colin,
‘Colin is just big pawn in this small game.’
To that the physio replied that ‘although you are in
possession of a hard knock, and interstitial fluid is currently accumulating in
these sub-cutaneous regions … prod, prod … it would be far better in my
professional opinion if you tried to run the injury off before it really
stiffens up. No, other players get these injuries all the time, honest, I’ll just
spray some painkilling adreno-cortisone on it.
That last manager Stu Boy Mills used to give all his
players pills and injections to keep them playing even if they didn’t need
them.
To which Colin replied .. ‘ Listen, strange new age
colleges prescribing substances and issuing certificates is no basis for a
system of competent health care. The presence or absence of relief from extreme
excitation isn’t why I play football. Supreme enjoyment of my life comes from
an endorsement of the social and managerial contract not from some farcical
quacked-up physio’s diagnosis. You can’t go round behaving like a doctor
because you think you have X-ray eyes. If I said I was a brain surgeon because
I had an NVQ in woodwork, they’d put me away. If I keep playing in this bruised
condition, I won’t be fit for the Celtic match next week, and I’ll miss the
team bonus, and the bi-weekly sponsorship session that I’ve already ratified
with my Agent.
Everybody loses, there isn’t another fit striker and
the Board will take no extreme pleasure in that whatsoever – and it’s your job
on the line not mine.
Colin Stein could later be seen on a pair of crutches
chilling out at Olbers nightclub in Glasgow.
Some of the current imports to the Scottish game from
Europe are currently demonstrating Xeno’s Paradox whereby they start a run up
to the opponents 18 yard box from the halfway line and never get there in any
half of that match whatsoever.
Although costing a lot of money, they do continue to
demonstrate what was Xenophobic about Scottish mentality in that they hate
winning as much as we hated losing.
They play the boy Clonesey and Wavey and Turing and
Gödel every week in Scotland and even bring chocolate onto the park to feed the
latter two blind guys’ guide dogs.
No matter what happens in future shake-ups of the
Scottish football industry though, they never will have enough personality to
get; on a question of sport, or, a night out with a natural blonde presenter.
There seems, in conclusion, that there are two stories
to tell about Scottish Industrial Football in the 20th Century.
Firstly the industry itself was a consistent and
aberrant joke as illustrated by the following quote.
Secondly it was a truth that … ‘it was not what you
knew but who you knew’.
If any distant Interstellar spacefarers arrive to find us still jerking off in the darkness once the lights go out – and they find a good university textbook amongst the mould – they may be able to unjustly reason that we were still involved in Industrial Physics.
W . Watson’s
famous ‘INTERMEDIATE PHYSICS’ , edn1 (1916)
edn.2. 1923 chapter 6 on photometry page 359 para
2&3 refers …..
The standard unit of illuminating power ordinarily adopted is that of a ‘standard candle’. The standard candle is a sperm candle, 7/8ths of an inch in diameter, which burns 120 grains (7.776 grams) of wax per hour. This standard is a most unsatisfactory one, since it is very variable. For this reason other standards have been adopted, but they have been compared with a large number of standard candles, and their illuminating power is expressed as so many candle power. Thus the Harcourt pentane standard lamp is adjusted to give an illumination equal to that which on average would be produced by ten standard candles, and hence is called a ten candle standard. The three most important of these subsidiary standards are;
1. The
Harcourt lamp referred to above, which burns pentane, and when in use has the
flame adjusted to the specified dimensions.
2. The Hefner
lamp, which burns amyl acetate, and again has the flame adjusted to fixed
dimensions.
3. The Carcel,
which is a lamp burning colza oil, and is not very much more constant than a
standard candle.
Electric filament lamps are often used as subsidiary
standards of illuminating power, their candle power when a definite current is
passing being determined by comparison with one of the standard lamps described
above. Although the candle-power of an electric lamp when the electrical
conditions are kept fixed is for a limited time much more constant than is that
of any other source, yet there is a gradual change which precludes their
adoption as fundamental standards.
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION
Lieutenant-Colonel Watson, C.M.G., F.R.S, joined the
British Expeditionary Force in France in the spring of 1915, immediately after
the first launching of gas attacks by the German army against the British
forces.
He took charge of the Central Laboratory at the
General Headquarters, and rendered invaluable help to the allied cause in the
subsequent chemical warfare. Insistent on obtaining all his knowledge at first
hand and anxious to share all the dangers of those around him, he was severely
gassed more than once, and the effects thereof greatly contributed towards his
death.
He remained in charge of the Laboratory until the
cessation of hostilities, returned to England shortly afterwards, but died in
Wandsworth Military Hospital on march 3rd, 1919, adding another to
the list of invaluable scientific lives lost in the great struggle.
In issuing a new edition of INTERMEDIATE PHYSICS, no
vital changes have been made, but it has been carefully revised in those
sections where important recent work has been done. Certain other sections have
been added, and the physical constants quoted have been replaced by the latest
values. The Editor hopes that the interest shown by readers who forwarded
suggestions or criticisms to the late author will be continued, and such advice
will always be appreciated.
H MOSS 1923
Imperial College of Science and Technology, London.
Pub. Longmans, Green & Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London, EC4
New York, Toronto, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras 1923.
Printed in Great Britain by Robert Maclehouse and co.
Ltd
The University Press, Glasgow.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
MILL J S,
‘Utilitarianism’, Warnock
ed. Pub. 1969, Fontana.
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL Pub. 1975, Charisma
Classics on cassette number CHCMC 17, Virgin Records.
SMITH & JONES, ‘The philosophy of mind’ pub. 1986,
Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-31250-7.
SPENCER M,
‘the Foundations of modern Sociology’ edn.2 pub. 1979, Prentice-Hall,
ISBN 0-13-330308-X.