The Timeless Land

The Timeless Land is a place in time, a four week period in which the school bell falls silent and timetables no longer dominate the day. Any day can be a sleep-in day, if I want it to be, and I can stay up after midnight, any night I want. I can read books. I've already read one called "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" by mark haddon. The reading of it, completed only a few minutes ago, has affected my writing style, but only temporarily I hope. It's written from the point of view of a fifteen year old autistic boy and the style is similar to the text that I've italicised. The boy has a fascination with prime numbers and loves Mathematics and puzzles.

One of the puzzles that he discusses in the book is the so-called Monty Hall problem about a game show host who asks a contestant to choose one of three doors. Behind one door is a car and behind each of the other two is a goat. The game show host knows what's behind what door and before opening the door that the contestant has chosen, he opens one of the other two doors and reveals a goat. The car must then be behind one of the remaining two doors. The game show host then offers the contestant the chance to change his original selection. Should the contestant stick with his original choice of door or change doors? Intuition suggests it doesn't make any difference: the chances would still be 50-50. A careful analysis however, reveals that if the contestant changes his original selection, the chance of choosing the car is 2/3 while sticking with his original choice offers odds of only 1/3. There is a very good explanation of why this is so at www.answers.com.

This problem does not relate directly to the story however, and the novel is not about Mathematics or problems in logic. It's a story about a "curious incident" that befell a "dog in the night-time" and it is related in the first person by the autistic boy. I found the book quite enjoyable and I intend to go out and about tomorrow and purchase another book, because that's what I can do on holidays. I can also choose to not go out at all and postpone buying a new book until another day. I could stay at home and read an old book, or watch a video, or I could do neither of those two things but instead practise guitar because one day I might have to busk for a living. OK, "enough already" as they say in Yiddish. Suffice to say that tomorrow is full of possibilities and free of school bells and timetables.