An Exercise In Futility

Fiction. Non-Fiction. These are two common terms used to categorize literature. Yet even as a smart kid in elementary school, the meanings of these two terms always confounded me! That is to say, I had great difficulty remembering which was which. Part of the problem is that my concept of “Fiction” was that it was “not-true”; And that in turn meant that “Non-Fiction” was “not-not-true”, ie. “true”! Could this have been an early indicator that i would become a programmer, or analyst, or other logician - the fact that I view(ed) the world as hinging on truth (natural state is true), rather than fiction (natural state is untrue)? To this day, the meaning of ‘non-fiction’ is always something i extrapolate, rather than just know. Hmm. And speaking of programming, I have found a location to run a computer club again! Wednesday afternoons in Qualicum Bay, I will be holiding computer club at a Secondary School, teaching things similar to what East Oro Computer Club learned about. The students this time are a little older, so i will be adjusting the curriculum to cover more advanced programming and networking concepts.

This article demonstrates, yet again, that the US is not out to help the people of Iraq, and in fact doesn’t give a shit about them.

The english has some pretty silly rules about pronunciation. Or rather, some silly LACK of rules. Consider the word component “ough”; It has at least 5 different possible sounds, and in some instances the ‘correct’ one can’t be agreed upon (whether or not a dictionary suggests only a single appropriate one). Examples:

• Cough ( ‘-off’ sound)
• Trough, as in pig trough, or wave trough; (only pronounced ‘tr-off’, though some people pronounce it ‘tr-ou’!)
• Slough (could be either ’sl-oo’ ’sl-uf’, or ’sl-ou’, depending on context; some contexts have multiple pronunciations!)
• Though, Dough (long o sound)
• Thought, Sought (sustained short o sound, like caught)
• Rough, Enough, Tough (short u sound, r-uff)

I fully realize there are perfectly good reasons why the english language is so inconsistent; Just wanted to point out one of the ones that bugs me a lot (mostly because of people using the wrong pronunciations!)