Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

This is all kind of a paraphrasing of Richard Feynman’s chess example, but let’s see if I can put a spin on it.

A thought experiment on three possible worlds.

World One:
You see white has two bishops on dark squares. This seems impossible but you aren’t sure. You suspect something against the rules has happened. You look at the moves log and see that white’s light bishop had been captured. Sometime after that, a pawn was promoted to a bishop. This happened on a dark square. You conclude that two dark bishops is a possible situation. This is good science.

World Two:
You see white has two bishops on dark squares. This seems impossible but you aren’t sure. You suspect something against the rules has happened. You look at the moves log and see that white’s light bishop had made an illegal move and ended up on a dark square. You conclude that two dark bishops is an impossible situation. This is bad science.

World Three:
You see white has two bishops on dark squares. You conclude this is impossible and a cheat must have occurred. The end. This is not science.

I think you can replace the word “science” with “creative investigation” and it still works.

I understand why you wouldn’t enjoy watching The Ten Commandments. I can respect that. I was once the same way. I couldn’t enjoy a single Rod Stewart song because of the atrocities he had committed. But Never a Dull Moment and Every Picture Tells a Story I can’t get enough of these days.

Clearly, when he left his various bands, he was not the most talented one. Rod Stewart can look back at his life and he’ll only see one set of footprints. But that’s because before he became ROD STEWART, The Faces carried him.

After all, this is a guy who subliminally plagiarized a Bob Dylan song. Yet, he showed enough humility and foresight to beg forgiveness before it became a problem. That was quite un-papal of him, IMHO. He did, however, have this big hit which he titled “Forever Young” (the least he could have done is change the name) a scant four years after Alphaville (in this context the little band that kind of did) had their less spectacular hit of the same name. I’m sure that was unintentional too. And probably harmless. It’s all good now though. How many times has the Alphaville version been covered and sampled? And Rod Stewart’s? Exactly. Having said all this, his version of “Mama You’ve Been On Mind” might be my favourite. For today at least.

This entry is in response to this. I thought it an interesting and confounding enough subject to make it its own thing.

According to Google:

un·hinged: ənˈhinjd
adjective
past tense: unhinged

1. mentally unbalanced; deranged.
"the violent acts of unhinged minds"

Not sure if you meant that. I’ll assume you (kind of) did, for now. I also assume you meant you chose a certain reading and are stating now that it may not have been what I meant.

Yes, in this case, perhaps a little unbalanced in that this drawing that I had once observed existed lucidly in my head but was quite different from what I actually observed. When I say “mental image” I mean “imagined picture” or just plain “representation.” I could have easily said “It’s based off a picture in my head of…”

As Wikipedia puts it, “A mental image is the representation in a person’s mind of the physical world outside of that person.” The article also goes on to cover more psychologically significant meanings of mental image, as I believe you were touching upon.

I see now that “mental image” can have several meanings. I like where you were going with it though. It’s got that Charlie Kaufman thing going on, something which seems to have burrowed its way into many of our recent discussions.

Also, I might have fantastically misinterpreted your comment that spurred all this.