" 'The universe

is big, it's small . . . because you and I and some of our friends say it is. If we weren't here in the audience . . . the whole show would have gone for nothing . . . It would not be odd or awe-inspiring - or even banal. It would have no characteristics at all. And if it had no characteristics, then in what sense would it be anything? In what sense would it exist? . . . So we are perhaps not after all such nobodies. We are not for nothing. The middle of things is not an entirely inappropriate place for us to be.'

Well, that's a relief; I feel ever so much better now.

The basic idea is to undermine the authority of science (and, indeed, the authority of common sense) by launching a general attack on the notions of truth and knowledge. What a Copernican astronomy taketh away, a relativist epistemology giveth back."

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/fodo01_.html

Alex: "If not, then apply comparatives and superlatives or degree adverbs, they can be quite handy when subjectivity and error start popping out of nowhere: <

Of course we can mark out degrees within importance; but the fact remains that not everything is important, not even everything that happens to be published in every news source in France in a week. Thus one would hope that in such a diary you would select the really important stuff from the acres of rubbish and not just do a random sampling,  and thus your diary would be important.

"for instance your comment is important to me, but minimally so."

Perhaps this is because you were more concerned with a quick put-down, rather than seriously thinking about it, and even reading the review I recommended.  

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.