shape and strength

Eliot said it was the poet's job to purify the language of the tribe. Philosophy has sometimes shared that ambition. The bidding systems of bridge offer a different model for the way language might be made to work. It's sometimes hard to see this clearly, because for the most part people who write on bridge simply describe one or more systems, or list hundreds of conventions. Came across a very good bridge blog yesterday, DavidC's Bridge Blog, which discusses bidding systems from first principles. This is extremely interesting (a much longer post lies hidden in the drafts folder), but I am packing to catch a plane in the morning so can only mention it in haste.