Meet William of Ockham, crocodile wrestler (or: Why tits are bigger than Sequoias)
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
So, it would seem that the tourist towns on both side of the English Channel have, in the nick of time, survived a very close shave indeed:
“Beaches along the English Channel have been reopened to swimmers amid reports that a suspected crocodile sighted close to busy beaches was in fact a piece of wood.”
Of course, if they’d used Ockham’s Razor, no journalist would ever have assumed that the Channel had suddenly started to channel the Nile, with its crocs dressed up as trees routine.
On the other hand, not many journalists (especially during the summer) are on speaking terms with the famous Barber of Ockham, even though his basic idea that ‘entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity’ could be the motto of every tabloid that ever boasted a pendulous pair of Page Three paps.
Ockham’s Principle – in a Razor for Dummies version: That, if something looks like a tree, swims like a tree and quacks like a tree, it might not necessarily mean that, Global Warming or not, we suddenly deal with a bloody crocodile – is but a slightly better dressed & educated relative of the Sun or Daily Mail and its insistence that it is simply calling a spade a spade.
Crocodiles sell more papers than trees, though.
In the same way that, if you run a tabloid, tits are bigger than sequoias.
The Sun: Putting the tit back into Titian…)





















