Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.
It's worthwhile to quickly point out that someone I respect (although he is a politician) reinforced my view that the US Religious Right has lost its theological moorings. I frothed about that late last week... about 6 hours before an interview with former President (and lifelong Evangelical) Jimmy Carter said basically the same thing in a far more diplomatic fashion.
This reinforces my rather bizarre belief in some type of "cosmic consciousness" into which we are permitted - by chance - to tap (albeit far too infrequently).
{Note - almost everybody believes in some form of whackery... at least mine doesn't imbue anyone who holds it, with a righteous fervour for "civilising the heathen"... it is even more impersonal and non-interfering than Buddhism}
I have had this "coincidence" happen before - while at IWL I was once inspired to write something (can't remember what) that literally flowed off the keyboard. It required zero editing; it appeared literally as a coherent set of arguments as a first draft... even the spelling was "clean". The material was also the subject of Stephen Roach's commentary which was published literally at the same time.
Anyhow... enough of musing about the fundamental interconnectedness of everything (a free copy of The Elliott Wave Principle free to the first person who can write a synopsis of the novel from which that phrase is taken).
A few folks have also asked about the provenance of the terms "nuffie" and "nuffnuff".
As I remember it, the term "nuffie" was picked up from my third-year ECM3430 Applied Econometric Modelling tutor - Dr Mark Harris.
Mark is a short Pom who is as funny a bloke as you could hope to meet, and was a genuinely dedicated tutor. We became mates (perhaps I flatter myself) and I used often to bowl him out (or otherwise dismiss him) when he moved to another think tank and we had "think tank wars" at old-man hit-and-giggle cricket from which I retired having never played on a losing team.
Anyway... "nuffie" was one of his, and I think it is a phonetic contraction of "NFI"... "No F$#king Idea". I think it originated with the British Military, but I am sure I picked it up from Mark. And "nuffnuff" is simply a repetitive contraction of nuffie...
The same thing happened with my cat 'Nackanigh", whose original name was "Black&Whitey" because he is black and white and I have no gift for non-crap names.
And of course there are the American contractions - FUBAR, SNAFU, FUBB. And if things go really really wrong, you've been completely Pottered.
