Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. —W. V. O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) Even so, something was a little bit wrong with things. Some people said that the days were off by maybe a millionth of a second from what they should be. Other people said that the days were off by several hours. They were off, that’s certain. There was an easy solution, of course, for a mechanically sophisticated

But I hide hammers. I have several hammers hidden. A hammer is an advantage that you can use when you are driven into the next-to-final corner. A hammer is a sort of insurance. I make fictions as I am assigned to do, and many others also are carrying out collateral and equally weird fictions. But the others do not seem to play as many tricks as I play, they do not seem to hide as many hammers in their hurdles. I try to insure that the fictions that I am assigned to shall rema