Message to my younger self.

(Yes I know this doesn't work)

In your life you will have time to do exactly ONE thing. 

So decide soon what your one thing is going to be and stick to it.

Don't be tempted to bite off more than you can chew, and don't let them feed you more than you can chew. 

Don't starve with your mouth so full you can't swallow.

When you have to, spit.

Focus.

More Wise Words

Seek thou the demon while tiny he be:
Ere waxen mighty he comes - seeking thee.

Waaargh

The most diabolical pun in the history of literature...

Well done.

Philosophy

I used to think that the only thing that matters in and of itself is coffee.  This weekend though I realised a case can also be made for a good smooth Merlot.  Hm.

The King of France

Bertrand Russell observed that sentence "The present King of France is bald"  is not true - - it can't be as France is no longer a monarchy. He also maintained that "The present king of France is not bald"  is also not true: certainly you can argue that the set of non-bald things does not contain a present king of France.

The law of excluded middle tells us that "For any proposition p, either p is true or not-p, the negation or denial of p, is true" - - and this seems to imply that there is no middle ground - - for any given sentence, either that sentence or its denial is true.  Clearly there is some inconsistency in progress here.

We could say that Russell is trying to run this test:

assert((France.getKing(present).isBald() == true) or 
    (France.getKing(present).isBald() == false))

However, his problem is that France.getKing(present) returns null, and so the call to isBald() throws a method-called-on-invalid-object exception.  Ah, dammit.  Now what?