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-Don't get me started.
+{{a|plainenglish|
+[[File:Intentionally blank.png|450px|thumb|center|[[Please be advised]] that I have something to say, and that is that I have nothing to say.]]
+}}It is a founding premise of legal inquiry that one does not waste words: words one has gone to the trouble of inserting, one must ''mean'' something by.
-Ok, no - I’m started. Of all the pointless things a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page - and [[I]] hope anyone reading these pages will be persuaded there are many - none is quite so ill-conceived as [[This page is intentionally left blank]].
+Counter-examples are legion, of course, but of all the vacuities a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page, none is quite so pointless as this:
-I suppose it is meant to differentiate a wantonly blank page from one whose emptiness is a product of a weakee mental conviction on the author's part (he may have been reckless<ref>in that the author apprehended the risk the page world be bare and took it anyway.</ref>or negligent<ref>in that a reasonable person in the author's position would have realised there was a risk the page would be blank</ref>as to its emptiness) and those blank pages which got that way through no cognitive machinations (actual or constructive) on the author's part, about which the author has no opinion at all.
+“[[This page is intentionally left blank]].”
-{{plainenglish}}
+Beyond dispensing with the concern that there might be writing on it that you just can’t see, what could this mean?
+Does it distinguish a ''wantonly'' blank page from one whose lack of content came about from a feebler conviction ([[recklessness]],<ref>in that the author apprehended the risk the page would be bare and took it anyway.</ref> for example, or [[negligence]])?<ref>In that a reasonable person in the author’s position would have realised there was a risk the page would be blank</ref> Could the redundant page have been overlooked through no cognitive operation, actual or constructive, on the author’s part at all?
+Agonising over the writer’s [[mens rea]] obscures a better question: WHO CARES? What difference does it make ''why'' the page is blank? It ''is'' blank: that is a brute existential fact.<ref>Or would be, had you not written that very thing on the page to contradict yourself. See below.</ref>
+A [[legal eagle|diligent student]] pipes up from the back: “But, why, can’t you see? A blank page is an omission. It is a ''failure'' to say something. A fellow can infringe her [[neighbour]]’s rights by omission just as well as she can by action.”
+Just so. But the semantic content of an empty page is null. It is neither action not omission, but a formless void. It is inert. It is neither [[alpha]] nor [[omega]], nor anything between. It lacks the divine breath of a creator. It conveys no premise and permits no conclusion of [[any type, kind or nature]]. An ''omission'' to say this or that cannot be imprisoned within the margins of an empty page but is universal, inhabiting every page, however densely entexted, on which that thing is not said; riding every honeyed breath upon which that utterance does not pass.
+To paraphrase a British Prime Minister, “[[Brexit means Brexit|a blank page means a blank page]]”. So be in no doubt, dear reader: This statement, like the page it decorates, is joyously, wilfully, defiantly —and with the publisher’s unequivocal endorsement — ''blank''. [[For the avoidance of doubt]].
+Except — and it brings no pleasure to point the glaringly obvious out, but here goes — as soon as one dollops a great wodge of italicised, square-bracketed text right in the middle of a page, IT IS ''NOT'' BLANK.
+This puts us in a fine old pickle. If the only way we can be certain a page is blank is by writing on it, can we ever be sure of anything ever again? Have we hit a kind of Russell’s paradox<ref>Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If R is itself not a member of itself, then it must contain itself. If it contains itself, then it cannot be a member of the set of all sets that are not members of themselves</ref> of the law? Is this some kind of [[legal quantum indeterminacy]], or can we rescue ourselves with some vain appeal to [[asymptotic safety]]? What would [[Descartes]] think?<ref>“[[scribo non ergo non scribo]]”, most likely.</ref> Or [[Gödel]]? Can’t you just imagine [[Schrödinger]], sitting on his chair, stroking his cat?
+<small>''[[The remainder of this page is intentionally left blank]].''</small>
+{{Ref}}
+{{c2|Philosophy|Astrophysics}}
+{{Cheeky Thursday|25/11/20}}