The Steel Guitar Forum

Good question Rick. I started out years ago with nothing and I still have some of it left. In fact I think I have most of it left.

Nothing's still around for nothing! That means something. Uncle Leo J.Eiffert,Jr.

An ex (or was that an ox) once told me i was good for nothing. Apparently she was right!

My neighbor came out this morning carrying a long slender box.
I asked, "what's in the box"?
She said, "NOTHING".
When she opened the box for me to see, it was empty; but she had just told me NOTHING was in the box.

Today a co-worker had a perplexed look on his face.
I asked, "what's on your mind"?
He exclaimed, "oh, NOTHING"!!!!!!

People are strange about NOTHING.
Just today I've made these two conclusions:

1. People lie about NOTHING.
2. People get excited about NOTHING.

I can't believe there's no EMOTICON for excited...leaves me with NOTHING to say !!

It was nothing...

3. People write about nothing.

4. People read about NOTHING...122,900 of them !!

There's often a lot that can be said about nothing.

There's often nothing that can be said about a lot.

The voices keep telling me there is nothing wrong with me.

Congratulations Voyagers... Launched in 1977 are now in the nothingness of interstellar space. Latest news is that they have left our solar system.

From NASA JPL

The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft continue exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. In the 33rd year after their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto. Voyager 1 and 2 are now in the "Heliosheath" - the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network (DSN).

See: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/index.html

Going where no man made thing has ever gone before and sending back scientific information about NOTHING! Thass what we're talking about, right ??

I missed 123456 views by five !! Can't do NOTHING right any more...

106 pages all based on intentionally misunderstanding a word with multiple meanings; a word which, when translated into other languages, it soon becomes apparent that other languages usually have several words which relate to the different meanings of our word "nothing".

Alan Brookes wrote:106 pages all based on intentionally misunderstanding a word with multiple meanings; a word which, when translated into other languages, it soon becomes apparent that other languages usually have several words which relate to the different meanings of our word "nothing".

Really, I feel I have not "intentionally" misundersood our English word "NOTHING" __ I can understand "anything" and "everything".
I can select anything or everything; but what action do I take to select "NOTHING".

This morning my wife asked me what I was going to do today. I said nothing. She said that's what you did yesterday. I said well I didn't get finished. I have decided to commit to reading all 300 pages (just seems that way) of this thread and so far I have gotten nothing for my effort, but then I was doing nothing anyway.

Really, I feel I have not "intentionally" misundersood our English word "NOTHING" __ I can understand "anything" and "everything".
I can select anything or everything; but what action do I take to select "NOTHING".

Rick, I think that would be the Ctrl/Alt/Delete function, but that may be a different thread all together.

By "intentionally misunderstood" I'm not referring to a lack of understanding, rather the intentional use of double entendre.

Nothing has multiple meanings:-
[1] The absence of anything.
[2] The absence of "thing".
[3] A thing called "nothing".
[4] The mathematical symbol zero.
...and there are more.

So, for instance, if you say, "Nothing would give me greater pleasure," you could mean "There is not anything that would give me greater pleasure," or "There is a thing called nothing which would give me greater pleasure," or, "There is no thing which would give me greater pleasure."

Similarly, "Nothing is proven" could mean "There isn't anything that is proven" or "There is a thing called nothing which is proven."

"I can see nothing" could mean "I cannot see anything" or "There is a thing called nothing which I can see", or "Of that which I have defined as thing, I can see none."

"There is nothing on the table" could bean "There isn't anything on the table" or "There is something on the table called nothing" or "Over there is that thing to which I have been referring as nothing."

Rick Collins wrote:...but what action do I take to select "NOTHING".

There is no action you can take to select nothing, since nothing is not a thing but the absence of it. This is what I mean by the intentional use of double entendre. Anyone reading Rick's question would not know if he were asking "...what action do I take to not select anything?" or "...what action do I take to select something called nothing?" Of course, you cannot select something called nothing unless you're referring to the word itself. If, for instance, you were playing a word game you could select the word nothing, or if you were writing a letter you could select the word nothing. The question is intentionally confusing, and that is what most of the hundred or so pages are about. People are just playing with words and making statements or asking questions which are written to be confusing.

When this topic first started, we had some interesting discussions as to the meaning of zero; what does it mean to multiply by zero, or to divide by zero? What does it mean to take something to the power of zero, or to draw an angle of zero degrees? What is the meaniong of a number which is below zero?
Unfortunately, all that sort of discussion disappeared after the first few pages, and all the subsequent posts are just playing with words or just counting how many times someone has posted.

Alan I can see nothing clearly now.

Alan Brookes wrote:"There is nothing on the table" could bean "There isn't anything on the table" or "There is something on the table called nothing" or "Over there is that thing to which I have been referring as nothing."

Only the first of those 3 options makes sense. Take it away, and nothing makes sense.

Wait, what?

Alan Brookes wrote: There is nothing on the table could bean...

Not trying to be mean, but did you mean mean or did you mean bean?
It's probably nothing.

Alan Brookes wrote:Nothing[/i] has multiple meanings:-
[1] The absence of anything.
[2] The absence of "thing".
[3] A thing called "nothing".
[4] The mathematical symbol zero.
...and there are more.

But, did you mean NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, or ZERO?

after spending a week reading 2649 posts of on this topic , I found Nothing of interest


make that 2650 -- I just read my own post

Very interesting...

Scott Shipley wrote:

Alan Brookes wrote: "There is nothing on the table" could bean...

Not trying to be mean, but did you mean mean or did you mean bean? It's probably nothing.

My Dad always used to say he knew how many beans made five. When I asked him how many, he would reply, "One bean, two beans, a bean-and-a-half and half a bean."
Which, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that my brain works faster than my fingers on the keyboard do.

Bob Hickish wrote:after spending a week reading 2649 posts of on this topic , I found Nothing of interest
make that 2650 -- I just read my own post

Why do some people continue to make a big thing out of nothing?

Because everything came out of nothing, if physics is to be believed.

At the time of the "big bang" everything that exists in our universe was compressed into a tiny space.

I guess that's not nothing, though.

It may be that the universe eventually reaches a maximum size and then starts coming together again by gravity. When it gets so small that the laws of physics won't let it get any smaller, it explodes in the next "big bang".

As far as we know, there may be billions of universes, completely unconnected with each other, and each one going through expansions and contractions and regular "big bang"s, of which we shall forever know nothing.