Things my girlfriend and I have argued about (online version)

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Relatedly — in the sense that the rest of the world's thought process is here, while Margret's is standing just over there — we had some friends round at the weekend. They'd just been on a skiing trip and took a digital camera with them. Many of you will know what the first thing you do with a digital camera is. Well, let's put that aside; you can go off to the newsgroups if you want to look at that kind of thing. The second thing you do with a digital camera, though, is take pictures of just everything. You know you're not going to have to pay to get the photos developed, so you snap away constantly. Our friends had taken loads of pictures. Huge vistas of oscilloscope-trace mountain ranges misting into the distance, people hissing down the piste at precarious speeds, glistening snow settled into creamy piles on the aching branches of trees, and so forth.

Margret is leafing through the photos when she stops abruptly. 'Wow! That's beautiful…' Her eyes as big and as shiny as CDs, she turns the picture round to show me. It's the inside of a chalet. 'Just look at that kitchen!' she breathes. Sometimes I have to reach forward and touch her, just to check that my hand doesn't pass straight through — 'Ah-ha! She's a hologram generated by an invading alien race — I knew it.'