Woken up with this trying to write itself in my head...

...so I may as well get it out. A chorus and a half of a music-hall song, the kind Ronnie Barker used to enjoy writing. I can't believe it hasn't been done--certainly the theme has been covered (if that's the word) by Ray Stevens and Lawrence Dean among others--but there we are, when the muse is in this mood there's no talking to her.

Our hero, Albert, enticed from his bath by the need for a towel, glimpses his prize pedigree Pomeranian slipping out of the open front door, tries to catch it, door slams locked behind him, and off he goes in pursuit of the dog:

In the nude,
By policemen waving trunch-e-ons pursued,
While folk were at their lunch-e-ons,
A judge was sitting down to dinner at the Athenaeum,
When Albert pelted past his honour couldn't help but see him;
Out he popped,
To say "this exhibition should be stopped!",
He met up with Lord Rosebery and other famous nameses,
And they joined the procession down the length of old St. James's,
With Albert in the vanguard gasping prayers to Saint Jude,
In the nude, in the nude, in the nude!

[...]
As he ran,
He grew more thin and bonier,
Poor man,
And died of a pneumonia,
But when he got to heaven Peter put him in the picture,
"We weren't expecting you quite yet, we've got no robes to fit yer,
So you'll be the only angel in the heavenly multitude
In the nude, in the nude, in the nude!"

I make no further comment or apology. There it is; do with it as you will. I think I'm going back to bed for ten more minutes.

The things we take as truth

Comments to my post about the Wall Street Journal article have been unanimous on one point; the world today is no darker or grimmer than it ever has been. That it seems that way is simply because we know more about it.

I disagree, because it seems to me that the fact that we know more about it is in itself an enabling factor. I don't see how it can fail to be so. The map is not the territory, but knowledge of the map conditions how we interact with the territory.

More on this, possibly, later; computer time is limited.