Nothing is true

Simon M's computer couldn't connect to the net because: The modem cable is rubbish. And he couldn't move the mouse because the mouse cable was rubbish too. Actually, most of the computer's rubbish, possibly because I made it by canibalising three rubbish computers.

I bought him a new mouse, and later today NTL are sending round a man to plug in a new modem cable for him.

My reward was a cooked chicken bagette, five cups of tea, and the loan of a DVD showing surly men humping against rocks in the desert.

Humping each other, that is - not the rocks. That would be silly.
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Paul B thinks he may have Asperger's Syndrome. I'm cirtain there's no such thing.

We used to say people were private, or not sociable, or prefered their own company - now they have Social Anxiety Disorder. Not long ago, school was boring, parents were annoying, and there was nothing on TV - now children have Attention Deficit Disorder.

People aren't socially awkward anymore. They don't have pointless lives, shitty childhoods and no way out. They have Asperger's Syndrome.

Things like dyslexia and autism do exist and can be unambigiously diagnosed. I can't count the number of people I've met who fell behind at school and call their poor reading skills 'dyslexia' - a word they have no trouble spelling. But this doesn't count against the reality of the condition in a (comparatively) few people.

It is possible to say with more-than-reasonable cirtainty that, according to tests, a person is or is not dyslexic.

There are no comparable tests or ADD, AS or SAD. Just a list of impossibly vague questions like "Do you have trouble maintaining eye contact?", "Can you be undiplomatic?" and "Do you dislike change in your routine?". The answer, for everyone, is always "Sometimes".
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I'm brushing up on the physics of musical sound. Vibrating strings and columns are easy to understand as graphics, but even the simple maths - Wave Velocity = (SQR(tension/mass per unit length)) - slides off my mind.

Studies of poker are coming along better. Texas Hold'em is really very simple - just mystified by so much jargon.
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I'm working around what must be an old and long-solved problem in Marxism, but I can't work it out myself. The relation between the three theoretical pillars of Historicism, Materialism and the Dialectic, and the (in)famous marxian flavour of Revolutionism.

It may be true that global revolution from below is the only way out of the mess of capitalism, and it may even be true that the only possible economic system to result is socialism. But how is this derived from Historical Materialism in conjunction with the Dialectic?

One to write up for the philosophical blog.