But the mind watching the elephant is making absurd calculations, lying to itself, trying to reason, and then abandoning its own capacity to reason (or obeying the illogic of the world it lives in, the logic of the Englishman needing to look tough at all costs before his "subjects").
Not a book for anyone who likes a tidy conclusion, but as Dürrenmatt says: "The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations".
Mr. Barofsky says that calculation is "absurd".
His calculations are absurd, built on a notion that everyone — including "non-working wives, students, the disabled, early retirees and coupon clippers" — could be working forty hours each week.
His calculations are absurd, built on a notion that everyone including "non-working wives, students, the disabled, early retirees and coupon clippers"—could be working forty hours each week.
In fact, the calculations predicted the absurd result that, at any temperature, the spectral intensity increases without limit as a function of frequency.
To begin with, the calculation of happiness is absurd.
Arguably the current sanctions system sustains, however absurd and brutal, because of a political calculation that the public - softened by "scrounger" rhetoric - have high sympathy thresholds for unemployed claimants arbitrarily pitched into poverty by Jobcentre officials.
Unfortunately, the calculations required to describe the absurd quantum-mechanical motions and chemical reactions of large molecular systems are often too complex and computationally intensive for even the best supercomputers.
This whole notion that the black agenda is something you can just cast aside and view as some kind of calculation for the next election is absurd.
By casting Indira Varma in the role, the production gives her a sexual glamour that makes Tanner's pretended resistance look palpably absurd: what Varma also catches excellently is Ann's mix of calculation and charm.
