Date   : Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:22:11 +0100
From   : dl.harper@... (David Harper)
Subject: [OT] Coloured creatures;

Rick Murray wrote

>> http://www.cowsarenotpurple.co.uk/bbccomputer/master512/format.html
>              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Okay, I've seen this a bunch of times recently and I'm going to cave.
> Why did you pick that as a domain name? Cows aren't blue either. Or
> polka dot. :-)

I wanted something non-specific that I could use for a number of purposes 
but which did not necessarily point back to me. (I don't mind Beeb 
enthusiasts knowing.)

The original idea comes from a book that was influential on me as a child 
called "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and Newman. (the same 
book, incidentally, that introduced the words "googol" and "googolplex" into 
the world, even if we see them with a slightly different spelling today).

In that was a discussion of certain aspects of basic logic, which observed 
the equivalence of the two statements "All crows are black" and "All 
not-black things are not crows", and this implies that you can test the 
validity of the first statement by finding all the not-black things you can 
and checking that they are not crows. The comment was made, though, whether 
the discovery of a purple cow would intensify or weaken your belief that All 
crows are black.

Starting from that point, "Cows are not purple" has become a bit of a family 
saying.

David Harper