I won a medal on Battleground God, taking no hits and biting no bullets. This presumably means I’m a logically consistent agnostic, which is a relief, let me tell you.

Had fun yesterday teaching Natalie, a friend of Safi’s to dance, as she’s coming to the CDC Ball on Thursday. My house has a big front room with a wooden floor. We hardly use the room for anything, so it’s almost empty and makes an ideal dance floor. Went through waltz, quickstep, cha-cha, rhumba and jive, with Safi showing her the women’s steps and then me providing a bloke to dance with. It was most fun. Apparently I was a good teacher.

Slightly late to Intermediates. Learned a do-able Paso Doble in the first lesson, which I might mix up with bits from the second to create something which looks good and is possible. Fleckles (sp?) in the Viennese in the second lesson. Can’t do them. Pub afterwards to discuss things beginning with H for Henry’s fancy dress party on Friday.

Utterly exhausted on reaching home, but sleep refused to happen. Feeling somewhat odd today. Ho hum.

5 Comments on ""


  1. What was your position on the Loch Ness Monster? (I got the second best medal, for no direct hits and two bitten bullets; I think the second bitten bullet was also chiefly due to the phrasing of the questions so technically I only bite one!)

    Reply

    1. I said it was rational to conclude the Nessie does not exist if you’ve spent ages searching and not found her. It is not absolutely certain that Nessie doesn’t exist under those circumstances, but it’s rational to assume that she doesn’t. I see from the FAQ that the Nessie question is linked to proposition that atheism, in the absence of evidence for the non-existence of God, is a matter of faith, not rationality (which I said was False). People who allow that someone could believe that Nessie doesn’t exist without evidence of absence (but only absence of evidence) must allow that atheism is rational with only absence of evidence for the existence of God. Phew.

      As it happens, I think there is evidence of the absence of the Christian God, but that’s not what BG is asking about.

      Reply

      1. I kind of get what they’re going on about with the question (If, despite years of trying, no strong evidence or argument has been presented to show that there is a Loch Ness monster, it is rational to believe that such a monster does not exist) but end up biting a bullet by reversing the answers – false to that, true to the atheism one. That’s partly because of the phrasing of the Nessie question, which begins with a big fat “If”, despite the fact that there are things tht “Nessie believers” *would* consider to be evidence, most famously te surgeon’s photograph, and varios reported sightings. That made me balk a bit at the Nessie question itsel (yes, I know I was supposed to answer according to the condition, but I refused.) I went with the atheism as faith proposition, and bit a bullet as a result.

        The other bullet was on the Peter Sutcliffe question, because I had (in this case) carefully answered according to the wording – I answered that a firm inner conviction was “justifiable”, and therefore believed that it was possible for Sutcliffe to have a crack at justifying himself. That slightly sidesteps the question; I went with all beliefs are justifiable, whether palatable or not and whether accepted by others or not, so I don’t think it is a genuine bullet to bite. (They do say on the FAQ page, “Mind you, having said that, I think we may have been a bit provocative in the wording of one of our analyses! Sorry!”)

        Well, that’s my belief system fully defended 😉

        Reply

  2. According to my trusty ISTD syllabus, it’s “Fleckerl”
    (You didn’t know I owned a trusty ISTD syllabus, did you now? ;-))

    Must be named after somebody; ost weird ballroom names are….

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