Umaswati & Entropy

Jainism was late in coming to the attention of Western savants. Interestingly, Jacobi, the pioneer in this regard, started off as a Mathematician and Umaswati too was a mathematician of repute. His doctrine of the perfectibility of all beings has an interesting consequence viz. the heat death of the karmic world such that all beings attain a univocal kevalya and thus Time with its infinite cycles is but the vanishingly small denumerable component of the nondenumerably dense eternity of universal bliss.
This result arises because, though all beings have free will, nevertheless
1) acts which generate karma have to involve some other jiva and acts which prevent the ingress of karma determining particles can't arise by Grace because substance can't act directly on substance. For Narratology, such a doctrine gives rise to something like a stable marriage problem such that out of the tangled events of the jiva's innumerable past lives there emerged stable antagonists or reciprocal obstructors. Umaswati treats of this in his consideration of the concept of VIGHNAKARANAMANTARAAYASYA |6-27|- 'Creating obstacles  constitutes  the  cause of  the influx of obstructing karma. Obstructing karma prevents a worldly soul from achieving its potential.'
2) Since an askesis exists such that some jivas can migrate out of the world of karma to kevalya it follows that the amount of Gibbs free energy in the system degrades.  Indeed, karma is 'exergy' because it alone can produce work, kevalya can't do so, thus- considered as a closed system, which it must be if jivas are eternal, the Jain Universe is subject to entropy and suffers a heat death when all Suffering ends and Time itself becomes but an evanescent, far-from-equilibrium aberration governed by a sort of Fluctuation Theorem such that though Jainism's ontological distinctiveness is preserved,  it becomes indistinguishable, from the point of view of eschatology, from other optimistic soteriologies, including Theistic ones.

It is interesting that the various Sociological Theories of History that Thermodynamic notions of equilibrium- predating even Carnot's Theorem, for example, the sorts of Utilitarian Utopianism inspired by 'the baronised Yankee, Benjamin Thompson (alias Count Rumford)'- similarly postulate the heat death of Profit, Speculation, which, of course, was the original meaning of karma. Only when it allowed itself to be degraded to work, that too of a ritualistic or rule governed sort,  did it become the victim of Soteriology.
The irony here is that, to whatever degree of atheism we might aspire, we remain caught in the reciprocal process of Vighnakaranam- maliciously obstructing each other but doing so in the name of Philosophy and the Greater Good- both now regarded as work, not profit, a joyless audit, not a giddy speculation, and subsumed under a wider Socio/Ecological askesis which repudiating poetry- or repudiated by it, for Suka flies by the nets of his father, Ved Vyasa- drags down the kavi, the maker, the shaper, the widsith, to the fallen world of karma.

Stalnacker-Lewis & a Mathesis Universalis

Suppose there were a Mathesis Universalis- i.e. an 'eidetic science of the object in general' (Husserl)- which, if propounded, everybody would agree fits the bill, and suppose this yields an evidentiary decision theory all Muth rational people would adhere to, what happens to counterfactual conditionals? In particular, what would Stalnaker's closest possible world to our own look like?
Let's take a Josephine's Kingdom type situation populated by Muth rational, Mathesis Universalis possessing, Vandana Shivas married to men who may or may not be evil, G.M food advocating, gang rapists of the genomes of innocent Saree wearing plants. No Vandana Shiva knows if her own husband is a gang rapist- there is no objective test for the condition since such creatures have no real existence but are a figment of Vandana Shiva discourse- but does know which of the other Vandana Shivas is married to a gang rapist because Vandanaji's PhD in Philosophy dealt with Quantum non-locality, Corporate Globalization, and the gang-rape of plant genomes this inevitably gives rise to . However, since Vandana Shivas never listen to each other, or themselves, there is no way for a particular Vandanaji to be told her husband is or is not a gang rapist. Josephine, the Queen of the Kingdom, announces that gang-rapist husbands exist and orders all Vandanas to shoot their gang rapist husband at midnight of the same day they realize he must be outraging the modesty of the genomes of innocent plants. All Vandanas can hear or otherwise get information about who got shot.
Suppose there is only one gang rapist. Then there is one Vandana who knows all other men, save her hubby, are innocent, so she shoots him. Suppose there are two gang rapists. Then there are two women who think there is only one rapist. So they expect one shooting and when it does not happen, next night shoot their own husband. Suppose there are three gang rapists. Then there are three women who think there are only two rapists and know, because no one gets shot on day one or two, that their husband is guilty and shoot him on the third day.
Clearly, by induction, all gang rapists will get shot within x number of days- where x is the number of gang rapists.
Now let us mix things up by changing Josephine's directive to her Vandana subjects so that it reads - 'kill your husband iff he is a gang rapist of the plant genome in the Stalnaker closest possible world, or even the Lewis 'sphere of very close possible worlds'.
The problem for us here is that though such gang rapists only exist in Vandana Siva theory and, since all Sivas are Muth rational, so the number of such gang rapists is knowable, still Josephine's directive is not well specified. Is she saying- kill x if in a closely possible world he is a y- or is the gravamen of her order rather- if you are married to a y in the closest possible world, then kill the x you are married to in this?' In any case, is the closest possible world one identical in every respect except x is a y? However, we are assuming that 'an eidetic science of the object in general' actually exists and is possessed by relevant Muth Rational agents. To say that the problem we encounter makes Josephine's directive dangerously ambiguous is to say that we can't conceive of a Mathesis Universalis compossible with our ordinary, or even Stalnaker specified, notions of intentionality and meaning. In other words, on one horn of the dilemma, eidetics is empty, on the other, intentionality is vacuous.

Reverse Mereology alone saves Christ from Monstrosity.

Zizek become interesting- i.e. more egregious yet- towards the close of the video embedded below.
The big question, of course, is why he keep fondling his nose. Cocaine? Fleiss's reflex nasal nuerosis which renders the tic masturbatory? Or is it not rather the case that Zizek feeds incessantly off his own boogers to fuel his lecture?
My own more far reaching thesis on rent seeking and identity was however fuelled by not boogers but ear wax.
Incidentally, it isn't Regligion which makes good people do bad things but Ethics.

What follows  is from a review by William Converse here-

"Alain Badiou thinks that Aristotle detected delicate philosophical problems in its guise.  However, it was Immanuel Kant who defined the monstrous in his Critique of Judgment (1790): “An object is monstrous when by its size it defeats the end that forms its concept. ” Hegel, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), called the hybrid “God-man” a “monstrosity”: “In the church Christ has been called the ‘God-man.’ This is a monstrous compound which directly contradicts both representation and understanding.”  

Monstrosity (from the Latin monstrum, divine portent of misfortune, monster) denotes an event that is extraordinary, unheard of, outlandish, something that exceeds the normal or conventional. John Caputo calls the Christ Event “a monstrous monstration.”For Milbank and Žižek, but in very different ways, the monstrosity of Christ is the foundation of Christianity.

For Milbank Christ represents a monstration of God’s love for the world, the paradox of the God-man. For Žižek, the monstrous refers to the death of Christ on the cross, culminating in “the cry of dereliction.”  Here Žižek makes a bold tactical move; he introduces G.K. Chesterton. In Orthodoxy (1909), Chesterton wrote that Christianity was the only truly revolutionary religion because it alone posited a God who could experience total abandonment: ”Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt  that omnipotence has made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God to be wholly God must have been a rebel as well as a king.” 

Žižek then quotes the last chapter of Orthodoxy:

“When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power.  They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt.  Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.”

Chesterton, who was born up the road from me, was of course merely an incorrigibly ignorant fuckwit of a Grub Street hack. He had either not read the Bible or failed to notice that Christ is quoting the Psalms when he says stuff like 'ye are Gods' and 'Lord, why have you forsaken me'. It's like when you Crucify a Jew in North London nowadays, they're likely to say 'no,no, no' quoting Amy Winehouse rather than 'Papa don't preach' they way they used to back in the Eighties.

Zizek, clearly a wog of some sort, might be pardoned for not knowing Chesty-babe was a fuckwit and Xtianity and Philosophy and so on too are wogs of some sort which may be pardoned for not knowing that reverse mereology alone saves every mediator from monstrosity.

Ontological dysphoria

   The Anthropic principle tells us that Physics is supervenient on Biology, Biology on Discourse, Discourse on Rent Seeking Availability Cascades, which are themselves supervenient on random stuff  like coprogphagic Celebrity hysteresis effects - and so everybody almost all the time is in a state of ontological dysphoria- i.e. feels they are living in the wrong Universe.

   But this begs the question- is there any sense to the phrase 'shit happens'- as expressing the fundamental empirical truth of lived life- which does not also imply that intersubjectivity is a monadology of incompossiblie Universes whose harmony is pre-established by a fractal whose human form might be some utter shite like Piers Morgan or Simon Cowell or whatever?

Pratyekas supervene on Boddhisatvas?

A Pratyeka Buddha is a 'hidden' Buddha who, however, does not start up a proper Sangha, or monastic community,  for which salvation consists of waxing fat on a lazy doctrine while putting the squeeze on the laity for donations and forcing dalits to do the dirty work under conditions of more wretched yet social opprobium.

A Bodhisattva is not less than a Pratyeka Buddha- he has attained the prize- which is a phenomenal state- but he has a different intentional state- viz. he wishes to save other sentient beings by getting them to understand that the Jains and the Ajivikas and all other Sraman denominations- not to mention the Carvaka materialists- are totally fucked in the head and could everybody kindly be very very shitty to 'low caste' people- coz they don't got 'right livelihood-' and like immediately become a monk or hand us monks loads of money already?

Clearly, Pratyeka Buddhahood supervenes on Boddhisatvahood- in the sense that every Boddhisatva is indistinguishable from the stand-point of any Pratyeka specific measure- but the reverse is not the case. Two instances of Pratyeka Buddhahood can always be distinguished from the Boddhisatva perspective as approaching closer or standing in some relation to itself. (Either that, or Pratyekas are 'zombie' Buddhas and can't have 'real' intentionality.)  But, why should this be?

One answer is that the Times weren't right for the Prayeka to set up a Sangha. In this case, there is some phenomenal state that supervenes- is multiply realizable across both Pratyekas and Boddhisatvas- but some 'cetana' or intentional state which does not similarly supervene. Why? Is it because sentient beings capable of Entanglement, as in the Avatamsaka or Vimalakirti 'Buddha field', do not exist? If so, something is added to the concept of Intentionality and something taken away from the scope of Phenomenology.

But Phenomenology does not disappear. The intention to be a Boddhisatva does not make you a Boddhisatva. You have to first instantiate in your phenomenal series that supervenient Pratyekadom otherwise you're just a wannabe.
Since, the Bodhhisatva 'cetana' or intentional state has supervenience- i.e. is multiply realizable- only if the ground for an entangled Buddhafield is ready at hand, an Occassionalist doctrine suggests itself as an (non) explanation for why the Pratyeka phenomenal state does not reduce to Bodhisattvadom.

In other words, Phenomenology and its dual Occassionalism re-appear in Buddhism as the two sides of the coin of 'Nothingness' which it cashes out as. Indeed, only the name of the coin changes, nothing sensible ever gets uttered, in this as in every other variety of peripatetic fraud or soteriological chicanery whose pious cultivation ensures we will always have more monks than reason.

Emergence, Occassionalism and Reverse Mereology

If Imam Jafar as Sadiq's concept of 'takvin' is understood as Emergence- in what relationship might it stand to the Ghazzali brothers' Occasionalism and causationless poetic aetiology?

Perhaps, in an Occassionalist Universe, Emergence becomes the fundamental intuition, not of Time- for Time, here, is mere heteroclite seriality or jeitzeit juxtaposition- but the Brouwerian 'two-ity' which provides the basis of an acausal Constructivism, a Mereological metric in which, bizarrely, the part exceeds the whole because, every possible emergent in which it might participate becomes its choice sequence and knight's tour of a more ample dimension of freedom in alam al amr, whereas the emergent's  indifference curve between ingredient mixes becomes a constraint upon what amr can express in alam al khalq.

In this sense, then, the glory of the Ghazal is its reverse mereology or, salva veritae, reverse Tzimtzum; its turning of theodicy on its head- not justifying God's ways to Man, but making Man, making haecceity, interesting to God and inflationarily expanding the scope of His amr. 
But only apparently. Hence its pathos. Which actually makes it kinda cool.

Rational Choice hermeneutics and Reverse Mereology

Applying Rational Choice hermeneutics to this paper titled Rational Choice hermeneutics reverses, at least for its own project as intellectual provender, the traditional Economic theory linking the market for food to the market for faeces.
This is a timely move.
Already the Japanese pet food industry is concentrating attention not on the quality of the comestible supplied but the smelliness of the resulting turd. Similarly, to deal with India's farting cows  and the threat they pose vis a vis global warming, the fodder industry is considering a change in it's priorities from maximising milk output or weight gain to minimising methane content in bovine flatulence.
Turning to humans however- with the exception of the elderly or the constipated or those sad lost souls upon whom museli merchants prey vampire fashion- the food industry has not explicitly dedicated itself to maximising neither taste nor nutritional value but parameters relating to the faecal product. (Unless South Park got it right and there is indeed a sinister nexus between Mexican fast food providers and the manufacturers of anal tampons.)
Rational Choice hermeneutics can explain, but not ameliorate, this seeming atavism or retardation on the part of the fast food industry. Whereas food has been subsumed under the rubric of Nutrition- an objective, anonymous, Universal process- shitting remains under the sign of haecceity and Verstehen, the anal sphincter its Gadamerian 'merging of horizons'.

The next and necessary step- viz. to recognize itself as a reverse-mereology- the turd as larger than the world- for Rational Choice hermeneutics will, of course, permit it to lay the foundation of a new food industry dedicated to optimizing faecal parameters and, hopefully, ultimately disintermediating the diner altogether.

However, this is a challenge RCH has not yet set itself thus vitiating its own project.

Instead it has concerned itself with explaining things better dealt with by purely mathematical theories uncontaminated by psychologism or Shutzian 'ideal types'.
Let us consider a claimed success for Rational Choice hermeneutics- viz. the Big Player hypothesis re. herding in asset markers.

“Big Players” make it harder to form reliable expectations in the affected markets.  A Big 
Player is a privileged agent, such as a finance minister, who acts on the basis of 
discretion rather than rules.  The assumption of discretion means that the Big Player is 
learning as he goes.  The little players, however, cannot predict exactly what the Big 
Player will learn.  To predict how the Big Player will behave, the little players must have 
a relatively specific model of him – how he learns, evaluates situations, incorporates new 
information, and makes decisions.  In other words, the little players’ model of the Big 
Player must be an ideal type of low anonymity.  Thus, while they may have a reasonably 
precise picture of the Big Player, that picture may be precisely wrong.  The expectations 
of market participants are therefore less reliable in the presence of a Big Player.  On the 
other hand, if the finance minister were governed by rules rather than discretion, little 
players could employ a more anonymous ideal type to predict his behavior because fewer 
specifics about how he thinks would be required to make predictions.  A loose system 
constraint lets the minister use his discretion.  When he does (becoming a Big Player), 
the little players must formulate a concrete ideal type of him. They run the risk, therefore, 
of being precisely wrong about him.  This is the basic idea behind the theory of Big 
Players, developed by Koppl and his co-authors (Ahmed et al. 1997, Koppl 2002, Koppl 
and Yeager 1996, Koppl and Nardone 2001).  Their statistical results are consistent with 39
the prediction that Big Players induce herding in asset markets.  The theory of Big 
Players is but one example of the sort of empirically relevant theory that can be produced 
by a rational-choice hermeneutics. 

Change the term "Big Player' to 'almighty asshole' and, at once, Rational Choice hermeneutics has taken the first step to embracing reverse mereology- of the sort I prescribe- and, what is more, can abandon Schutzian 'ideal types' for a genuine 'merging of event horizons' by a purely mathematical, Hawkings-Penrose, comparative metrics of asshole super-density which would explain things like why George Soros was able to take down Norman Lamont's pants (though the latter appeared the bigger asshole) back in 1992.

Essentially, Rational Choice theories have a half-life (i.e. the period within which over 50% of its assumptions and findings and methods are shown to be utter shite) inversely proportional to their rapproachment with hermeneutics precisely because hermeneutics is a reverse-mereology project labouring to make the turd larger than the world. In other words, there are two opposite run-away processes simultaneously occurring- viz. Rationality's evaporation by reason of Intentionality's disappearing up it's own arsehole being offset by Hermeneutic's meditative expansion of the turd coming the other way.

Tannhauser's dilemma and Krishna's Visvarupa

Tannhauser's dilemma is an example of Rational Choice Hermeneutics. The argument presented is that somehow Tannhauser's bizarre behaviour during the song contest- he says love is purely sensual and ends up singing the praises of Venus- evidences not a Neitzchean amor fati but is actually a rational choice. Had Tannhauser stuck with the notion that love's true awakening is in the memory of church bells, not the Venusberg ballet, then he'd win the hand of his beloved Elizabeth and remedy the disgrace of having lost the previous contest. Instead, he has to go off on pilgrimage to Rome to seek penance. The Pontiff says the meistersinger will be as soon forgiven as his own staff of office puts forth green leaves. Elizabeth dies of a broken heart as does Tannhauser and the news reaches too late that the Papal staff has indeed flowered.

I don't pretend to understand the reasoning behind the essay in question. The authors quote Paisley Livingston's 'Literature and Rationality' (2001) to the effect that there is no rationality without intentionality- conscious or unconscious. However, they fail to see- though their analysis uses counterfactuals- that in a literary work the 'counterfactuals' are competing systems of values or intentionalites (meta-preferences) not states of the world. 
They write- 'The crucial question is: What are Tannhäuser’s options once the tournament has begun? If he plays by the rules, he simply has to put some effort in conjuring up a song. And since we who are in the audience have reason to believe that Tannhäuser is the most talented of all the Wartburg poets, we have little doubt that, if he wants to win the tournament, he can. Hence, if he plays by the rules Tannhäuser must simply make up his mind about whether or not he
wants to win the tournament. In what follows we shall argue that both options are bad options, confronting Tannhäuser with a terrible dilemma—a dilemma he can only solve by breaking out of the boundaries set by the courtly rules, by sabotaging the contest—by an act of creative destruction that exemplifies the true hero.
Losing the contest is a bad outcome for obvious reasons. Having just rediscovered his love for Elisabeth the thought that somebody else might claim her as his prize must be appalling. But winning the contest is not a good idea either and it is quite straightforward to see why. As we have seen Tannhäuser does understand that he has gravely sinned and there is also no doubt
that he has a keen sense of Elisabeth’s purity. By asking for her hand and marrying her without having been granted absolution first, he would act against his own beliefs about Elisabeth’s nature and betray his own decision to repent. Moreover, he would significantly add to his sins. The Catholic Church is very clear on this point: Before getting married, spouses must approach the sacrament of penance because marriage is itself a sacrament; see, for example, the code of canon law (codex iuris canonici 1983, 1065§2) or Hörmann’s encyclopaedia of Christian morality (1976, 190-214).

So, what can Tannhäuser do? Both possible outcomes of the tournament have bad consequences. And, of course, the whole tournament, right here and right now, was not Tannhäuser’s idea. In fact, given his predicament, he must feel quite gulled by the sudden announcement of the tournament shortly after his arrival at the Wartburg. As with many dilemmas, the way out requires a creative, unusual solution—requires not to play by the rules. And this is what Tannhäuser does. His outburst sabotages the tournament and it does so very effectively. The first prize is never awarded and this is really the best outcome Tannhäuser could have hoped for. Of course, it might be his emotions that make Tannhäuser praise Venus after listening to the tame Wolfram and Walther, but the point is that his emotions solve his dilemma for him—and in a rather brilliant way. Not only does he not lose Elisabeth, he also gains time to do penance and seek absolution. Further, if one is willing to accept this view there is absolutely no surprise in Tannhäuser’s reaction once chaos
has broken out and the angry knights and singers, along with the Landgrave, send him away, off to Rome. This is precisely what, on some deeper level, he had wanted (and, prior to his reunion with the Landgrave and his knights, had planned).

Tannhäuser’s outburst is an act of creative destruction and as such an heroic act—lighting, in Emily Dickinson’s words, the Possible’s slow fuse—solving the apparently unsolvable.
Heroes of all times and cultures committed such acts or, rather perhaps, were made through such acts: Heracles who captures Cerberus by treating it with kindness instead of enmity; Alexander who severs the Gordian knot instead of trying to untie it; Columbus who breaks the
egg’s shell to make it stand up; Schumpeter’s entrepreneur who destroys a monopoly through radical innovation; or Luke Skywalker who triumphs over his father’s dark side not by wounding him but by being wounded. '

I don't know German and have only seen Wagner's Opera on TV with subtitles. Still, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Win the contest and then get absolution as part of the run up to your wedding is the obvious way to go.

Similarly, one might argue, in the Gita, the obvious thing for Krishna to do is to say to Arjuna- listen mate, Drona and Bhishma have received the boon never to be killed in battle. They will protect your cousins. All you need to do is to shoot down their arrows to protect your brothers. It's a stalemate. Nobody gets hurt and sooner or later the various allies and mercenaries on both sides will just up sticks and go home.

The authors of the Tannhauser essay conclude by saying 'Thus, we can now see that Tannhäuser’s salvation in the Virgin Mary necessitates his public praise of Venus—seemingly a paradox but only seemingly...' and later on- ''Where previous authors have argued that Wagner’s Tannhäuser libretto suffers from serious logical blunders, Rational Choice Hermeneutics  is able to restore coherency. In fact, if one is willing to accept the premises of RCH, we have shown that there is not the slightest flaw in Wagner’s conception of the opera. On the contrary, the construction of the opera with the centrally located tournament of song and its ensuing high drama must then be viewed as an immensely
ingenious coup de théâtre.  .'
As I said, I know nothing about the critical reception of Wagner's opera. To me it looks straightforwardly Schopenhauerian- Love is of the Will but Music is free-'if the Universe perish, Music will remain'. Add in Nietzche's notion of amor fati and the whole thing couldn't be otherwise than it is and not degenerate into a sort of Shavian sit-com .
The problem with this essay is that the authors assume Tannhauser could have sung on any theme he wished. He could have made any argument. Is this true? Would Tannhauser really be a 'meistersinger'- would his song interest us- if not Truth, not Sincerity, but expediency governed his performance? There are plenty of medieval legends about some fiddler or other  quibbling his way out of a pact with the Devil. They just aren't a fit subject matter for Wagner, the student of Schopenhauer.
This is not to say Game theory has no place in Hermeneutics. It's just that rational choice across states of the world aren't what great literature does for a living. On the contrary, the 'counter factuals' one needs to be looking at have to do with meta-intentionalities and reverse mereologies such as that whereby Lord Krishna's Visvarupa is an axe which cuts down not the tree of Dark Anger (Manyu) but the Gita itself as the essence of the hymn leaved banyan whose roots are in heaven and branches down here below.

Is Paninian Sanskrit occassionalist?

I guess most people have a sort of vague notion that Classical Skt derives all words from verbs and thus has a default, real time, efficient cause, Mimamsa. But is this really the case?
Prof. Matilal emphasized the quite separate tradition of Shatkatayana who has a pretty early date when, presumably, the ritualist aspect would have been more prominent rather than Skt as an ars dictaminis.
However, Paninian Skt was particularly valuable to savants expounding non-common sense ontologies.
Occassionalism, Nihilsm, reverse Mereology- the list is endless.
How does this affect its principle of compositionality?
For occassionalim, nothing acts upon anything else- verbs refer not to actions to be described but illusions to be denied. What sort of poetic aetiology and canons of taste would this give rise to? Passive constructions informed by nirukta eymology tend to highlight not actions but menus of choice and by so doing shift the focus of attention to higher order intentions which can't be embodied or anthropomorphized except by doing nothing else and, that too,  only doing it to point to its own project as failure.
In this sense, Paninian Skt- itself the fruit of the Nirukta tradition- becomes the ideal language for occassionalism as anti derivative of any non common sense Ontology. An ironic outcome, surely,  for a 'totalitarianism of the verb', though I suppose, its practice may have been viewed as the dual of something else which really did address  the realm where blizzarding verbs are the ineffable Noun's cloud of unknowing.

When murder isn't murder.

There are questions in mathematics which even Jewish mathematicians can't solve. The question I want to address today is are there murders whose solution defies even the most brilliant detective? Take the following case-


Sauntering down the Arcade on a summer's evening, I stopped at a burrito van and purchased the special. The operator of the van moaned about the wind and the hail as he got busy with the hot plate. A passerby stopped to listen. The burrito guy asked hopefully if he wanted to order something.
'No', says the passerby, 'I recognize your voice from the messages you left on my wife's voice-mail. My name is Diego Vasquez. You and me got a score to settle, buddy.'
"I don't want no trouble,' says burrito guy. "I broke it off when she told me she was married. Is that a gun you're holding? Don't please... fuck!"
The noise of the pistol going off was quite deafening. I suppose I went into shock. By the time I'd recovered, the other man had fled. After some time I gathered myself sufficiently to go to the police station on the other side of the square.
Though the detectives I spoke to confessed their inability to procure for me the burrito I'd paid for,  they were very interested in what I had to say. They asked me to accompany them to the burrito van. It was empty but the smell of cordite and some blood stains inside the van convinced the police that a crime had occurred.
Back at the Station, I learned that Diego Vasquez had a criminal record. He was a member of the dreaded Los Ninos gang. I was able to identify him from his mug-shot.

From c.c camera footage, the police became convinced that Vasquez had murdered the burrito seller and returned to the scene of the crime with two accomplices to remove the body.
Later that week, Vasquez was detained at Stanstead while attempting to board a charter flight . I was informed that I would be a witness in his trial for murder. This put me in a real bind.

You see, the fact is, I knew who had murdered the burrito guy. It wasn't Vasquez. Yes, he had motive, means and opportunity. Still, when he fired his gun, the person who deftly picked up the bullet with his chopsticks, as it emerged from the muzzle or the pistol, and conducted it into the body of the victim was none other than Iain Duncan Smith. True, I didn't actually see him do it. But that's the thing about I.D.S. No one notices him. Not till it's too late.