ObscuripediaObscuripediaThe Free Obscure Encyclopedia

Navigation

Categories

Category: Methods of not being wrong

4 articles

The list below is believed complete, though membership – like everything here – is subject to revision.

  • Celestial navigation – One sight does not say where you are. It says you are somewhere on a circle three thousand miles across, and the craft is everything after that.
  • Grimble's razor – A principle of economy in argument: where a proposition entails something that cannot be entertained, the entailment is set aside and the proposition retained.
  • The Nautical Almanac – Published every year since 1767, and the reason longitude starts at Greenwich. Every figure in it was computed twice, by two men forbidden to confer.
  • Surveying – Plane surveying ignores the Earth's curvature up to about a hundred square miles. That is a tolerance with a number on it, not an opinion about the shape.

← All categories

This page was last measured on 4 March 1847, at a position later found to be incorrect. All recorded positions are approximate and reserve the right to relocate.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution–Reluctance License; additional terms may apply, and may not be where you left them. Obscuripedia® is a registered trifle of nobody in particular.

Obscuripedia is a work of satire that mixes the real with the invented. Real subjects are described as accurately as we can manage; the invented people, instruments and doctrines are parody, not statements of fact about anybody. See the disclaimers.