Another of our spasmodic collections of inetersting or amusing quotes encountered. In no particular order …
Walk nude, and people won’t need to undress you with their eyes.
Thomas Fuller
Men honour what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.
Chuang Tzu
Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.
Buddha
Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears.
Robert Sarnoff
One thing I have learnt is that transport, rather like banking, is at its best when it is boring. That is when it tends to work.
Alistair Darling
Without deviation progress is not possible.
Frank Zappa
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful.
Jules Henri Poincare, 1854-1912
Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
GC Lichtenberg
Jung concluded that every person has a story, and when derangement occurs, it is because the personal story has been denied or rejected. Healing and integration comes when the person discovers or rediscovers his or her own personal story.
Found at www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/Jungsum.html
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller
Jorge Louis Borges once described an empire that wanted to build a map. But the maps they had seen before were not precise enough. They had too much compression and approximation. There was too much inexactitude. And so the empire eventually made a map of the empire that was the size of the empire, and “coincided point for point with it.” But even this map, the size of the empire it described, could not capture the totality of experiences within the empire. Sure, it could tell you exactly where the castle is, or which roads intersected with which others and where, but it couldn’t, for example, tell you what that intersection smelled like.
Rose Eveleth, Seeing Maps of Sounds and Smells
The wise man is one who knows what he does not know.
Lao Tzu
Light thickens, and the crows make wing to the rooky wood.
Macbeth
All posts by Keith
Weekly Photograph
OK, for this week’s photograph we have something slightly different. A tiny little beast which although scary looking is harmless to us, but scary indeed if you’re a caterpillar as it is a predator and parasite.
This is an Ichneumon Fly. They parasitise caterpillars and other creepy-crawlies by laying their eggs in them for their larvae to eat from the inside.
These are the four best shots of a tiny ichneumon which wandered into the house. I suspect it if being a member of the Braconidae, possibly Apanteles glomeratus; almost certainly one of the Ichneumonidae. Its head and body about the size of a British black ant (so around 4-5mm) with the antennae and ovipositor each roughly the same length as the body. Its legs were definitely reddish. It liked walking about (it was quick too) and then suddenly flew off into oblivion.
Ichneumon Fly?
Greenford; July 2009
Chocolate Week and National Baking Week
Yes! The week of 14-20 October brings a double win as it is both Chocolate Week and National Baking Week. And what better excuse could any of my fiends have to bake me a yummy chocolate torte!
Chocolate Week promotes fine flavour chocolate, celebrating the work of top chocolatiers and chocolate companies. But of course there’s nothing to stop you all participating at home!
National Baking Week supports the Great Ormond Street Hospital, one of the top five paediatric research hospitals in the world. So the idea is that by baking and selling your results money is raised for the GOSH charity.
As always there is more information over on the Chocolate Week website at www.chocolateweek.co.uk and on the National Baking Week website, www.nationalbakingweek.co.uk.
Something for the Weekend
King Harold Day
Saturday 12 October is King Harold Day. Unfortunately as 12 October is also my mother’s 98th birthday I won’t be able to partake of the celebrations — which is a real shame as I grew up just across the valley from the centre of activity in Waltham Abbey.
Essentially this is a weekend of activities, both fun and serious, to celebrate Harold Godwinson — yes he’s the one who lost at home to William the Conqueror — who is (allegedly; it has never been proved or disproven) buried at Waltham Abbey, which he had refounded a few years earlier.
The events on offer range from an early music recital in the Abbey Church (above) to displays of falconry and Morris Men.
As always there more information on the King Harold Day website at www.kingharoldday.co.uk.
Weekly Photograph
This week’s photograph is one from our rail holiday in German’s Harz Mountains, February 2008. Here 7241 pauses in failing light towards the end of a steam charter from Quedlinberg to Wernigerode.
Admiration
Eisfelde, Germany; February 2008
Word: Offing
Offing
Yes, offing is a responsible, adult word! And not just in the phrase “in the offing” which is now perhaps its most common usage. It is actually a nautical term …
1. The part of the visible sea distant from the shore or beyond the anchoring ground.
2. A position at a distance off the shore.
Hence, by analogy to a ship some way off shore but visible, that phrase “in the offing” meaning something that is close-ish to hand and yet some way distant.
The OED gives the first recorded use in 1627.
Whacky Brilliant
Some of these are absolutely brilliant …
Did you miss …
Another of our irregular round-ups of things you might have missed. It’s been quite busy while I’ve not been concentrating over the last couple of weeks, so quite a long list today. As usual let’s start with the nerdy stuff.
A couple of week’s ago the 2013 IgNobel Prizes were announced. These are like the Nobel prizes only rather less serious. The IgNobels are awarded for research which makes one laugh and then stop to think, like the paper from Thai doctors on successes reattaching the human penis, unless it was eaten by a duck first. Scientific American has the full list of awards.
OK, enough of this jollity. Do you know how many mammalian viruses there are? No? Good, ‘cos neither do scientists, but they’re trying to work it out. Yes, this could be important for predicting future epidemics.
Another thing you didn’t know … Ten Trigonometry Functions Your Maths Teachers Never Taught You and why they used to be important.
Meanwhile NASA has confirmed that Voyager 1 (above) is boldly going where no probe has gone before. Yes, finally Voyager has left the Solar System and entered interstellar space. My mind boggles every time I think about it, especially as I remember the first Sputnik being launched — and watching it passing over like a fast-moving star.
Back down to earth with a bump … Something else Scientists are investigating is the microbes which live in our homes. And no, we really don’t have much of a clue about what’s where in our homes and there are some slight surprises.
Another piece of work being done by Rob Dunn’s amazing team is investigating the biodiversity of what lives in our belly buttons. Here Rob talks a bit about how they do it.
Meanwhile an American High School teacher is using Twitter as a teaching tool in the classroom.
Wow! It looks as if when we get right down to minute detail many people are real DNA mosaics: it turns out many more than was thought have two (or more) very different versions of DNA. Something else which isn’t fully understood, but is somewhat mind boggling.
Did you know that whales’ ears are sealed? As a result it turns out that their accumulations of earwax creates a complete record of their lives which (if you have a dead whale) can be read.
More usefully, here’s an interactive infographic detailing which so-called superfoods are proven to be useful and which are more likely to be snake oil.
From snake oil to … spiders. It seems the False Widow Spider is moving north as temperatures increase and is now spreading across southern England. Yes it has a nasty bite. No that is not a good reason to go round splatting every spider you see.
While we’re on stings and bites, here’s a guy who appears to enjoy being stung by all manner of insects and taking some amazing photographs (example above) of them in flagrante. Sooner him than me, tho’ I can, in a forensic way, see the fascination.
Oh no, not more insects! Question: Why is it so hard to swat a housefly? Answer: Because it sees you coming in slow motion. Here’s the story of how it is thought to work. More mind boggling science!
Squirrels. You either love ’em or hate ’em. I love ’em but then I don’t live somewhere where squirrels eat power lines.
As a cat lover I know that we have a surprisingly complex relationship with our feline friends. Science is catching up and uncovering the details.
So we’re gradually drifting away from the science now. Ever wondered why you prefer the music you listened to as a teenager? Seems we have a “reminiscence bump” during adolescence and early adulthood. Could also explain why we see our school and student days as so idyllic.
Moving on to the more political, here’s an piece which looks at both sides of twelve arguments for and against HS2, the proposed high-speed rail link from London to the North of England.
Trains to planes … David Pogue looks at some of the many mysteries of air travel.
Yet again scientists have confirmed what we all knew … open plan offices are the pits.
Here’s Dom Knight on why he keeps buying books — real books.
The Independent ran a piece which said what I have always maintained: that legalising cannabis could bring benefits. If you legalise a commodity you can regulate it and tax it. Same applies to prostitutes.
We’re always being told there are rules about what, and what colours, we must/must not wear. Are there really and rules about what to wear? No, I thought not!
And that even includes wearing the niqab. I don’t like them, and I don’t like anyone being forced to wear one. But if they freely choose to, then that surely is their freedom. Heresy Corner contributes to the debate.
Starting last week the British Museum is showing an exhibition of shunga, historic Japanese erotic prints. It looks like a “must see”. It is on until 5 January 2014. [Under 16s only if accompanied by paying adult; parental guidance advised.]
From old Japanese sex to new Swedish sex … A Swedish court has apparently ruled that masturbation in public is legal as long as the act is not targeted at a specific individual. I don’t have a problem with that, but it does take a bit of getting the head round.
Meanwhile here in the UK the CPS has issued some long-overdue and sensible guidance on the prosecution of public nudity. And it is actually readable!
After all of which are you ready for Crackanory? The brilliant Harry Enfield returns with a twisted (adult) spin on children’s classic storytelling show Jackanory.
That’s all folks!
Something for the Weekend
OK, this weekend is “try to catch up” time, so to start us on our way here’s this week’s cartoon — another amusement from Randy Glasbergen …