oddments

Spatial common reasoning is strongly related to sight sense. Many times we reference our position with what we see, although we don?t be exactly in that place. ? We call this the source-target problem and we have added a new spatial relationship, hasNiceViewsOf, to model this problem.

Geoconcepts Ontology v1.2 & v1.2_swrl

A Song

Would’st thou once view Celia’s charms
Freed from fear of Love’s alarms?
Then be thou source, and target she,
NiceViewsOf her will ravish thee.

Tho’ thou be near, and she be far yet
Cupid’s dart will find its target
Which, striking true, then hath such force,
It turneth target into source.

What’s reason then? what then is sight?
When source and target merge by night.
Let spatial reasoning others chuse -
This far excels the Nicest Views.

There are not enough swings in Clissold Park which happens to be in one of London’s multi-racial areas. Despite that, there are no ugly scenes – ‘Kurds and Turks, Jews and Muslims, working class and middle class all coexist?.

The Hasidic Jew nods to the woman in hijab and the exchange of swings takes place, with none of the coiled resentment seen in American playgrounds.

The secret, apparently, is ?the bedrock British custom of queuing’. Of course: queues are as British as toad-in-the-hole.

So it comes as a surprise to learn that, in 1762, orderly lines were unknown. You could get seriously injured just trying to get into Drury Lane Theatre. The entertainment began at six, but if you wanted a seat you (or your servant) had to be there, muscled up, when the doors opened at four sharp.

Somewhere, sometime, the Brits learned how to queue. P. J. O’Rourke, in a piece on Gulf War II, says that the Iraqis haven’t got there yet. He describes the chaos that resulted from an attempt to distribute food from the back of a truck and reflects that the ‘happier parts of the world have capacities for self-organisation so fundamental and obvious that they appear to be the pillars of civilisation. But here – on the road to Ur, in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, where civilisation has obtained for five thousand years ? nothing was supporting the roof.’ (Peace Kills)

End the occupation. What Iraq needs is a battalion of little old ladies from Stoke Newington with umbrellas and parcels to post.