Chris Forster

@cforster.bsky.social

554 Followers 282 Following

Associate English Prof., Syracuse University. Interested in modernism, history of media, obscenity, and computational approaches to literary studies (uh, fine *digital humanities*). https://cforster.com

Quotation from AJ Ayer: A Life by Ben Rogers, pg. 344.

It reads in part, "It was at another party, given a little later in the year by the highly fashionable clothes designer, Fernando Sanchez, that he had a widely reported encounter. Ayer had always had an ability to pick up unlikely people and at yet another party had befriended Sanchez. Ayer was not standing near the entrance to the great white living-room of Sanchez's West 57th Street apartment, chatting to a group of young models and designers, when a woman rushed in saying that a friend was being assault in a bedroom. Ayer went to investigate and found Mike Tyson forcing himself on a young south London model named Naomi Campbell, then just beginning her career. Ayer warned Tyson to desist. Tyson: 'Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world.' Ayer stood his ground: 'And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.' Ayer and Tyson began to talk. Naomi Campbell slipped out."

(One way to counter this would be to archive all URLs via the Internet Archive, www.archive.org, and then cite the archived link. Indeed editors should accept only archived URLs and not the current practice of saying when a link was accessed—a useless piece of information that does not prove that a deleted page existed.)

Google search for "'a dog in the bucket is worth three in the lake' meaning."

AI overview reports: "The saying "a dog in the bucket is worth three in the lake" is a proverb meaning it's better to stick with what you have than to risk losing it by trying to get something better. It's a cautionary warning against the allure of potentially better options, emphasizing that having something, even if it's not ideal, is better than potentially losing it all." And then offers links and further summary for a "more detailed explanation."

A google search for the phrase "the population of a berry," where the AI Overview reports: "The phrase "the population of a berry" doesn't have a standard or widely understood meaning. It likely refers to the number of individuals, or the number of seeds or fruits, within a cluster or area of a berry-producing plant. However, the phrase is not commonly used and could be misunderstood."

Line graph estimating the number of titles in HathiTrust per year. The x-axis covers the years 1700 - 2024; the y-axis goes from 0 to 250,000. The plot trends upward, and grows steeper after 1800. There is dip around the years 1920-1950 (war years?) and then a quick acceleration to a maximum value in 1999. The plot then quickly falls off.