Category Archives: beliefs

Advent Calendar Meme


Advent Calendar Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr PhotoMeme

Make a classic Advent Calendar. Chose 25 pictures that will put you in the Christmas spirit!

1. Christmas Tree Fruit, 2. Christmas Gold Organza Felt Star 1, 3. Christmas Lights in London: South Bank Centre, 4. Christmas Light Box #2, 5. Dartmouth Christmas, 6. Holly, 7. Georgia Orthodox Christmas, 8. Cracker Jack, 9. Christmas Rose, 10. Christmas 2004: Theotokos of the Passion, 11. Mistletoe / Ökseotu, 12. Yule log fire, 13. WHAT? No Santa Claus?, 14. Christmas Candle, 15. Christmas mince pies, 16. Glowing in the Snow, 17. Christmas Market, 18. Christmas wreath, 19. Christmas Bauble, 20. Mulled Wine, 21. Winter colors, 22. three kings, 23. robin, 24. Brest – Chestnuts Roasting on an open fire – December 24th – 25th 2006, 25. Simply Merry Christmas Cards 2

As always these are not my photos but please follow the links to enjoy the work of the photographers who did take them!

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

My Meme: Run up to Christmas


My Meme: Run up to Christmas, originally uploaded by kcm76.

1. 1,001 sex toys from amazon, 2. Sound the Bright Flutes!, 3. In England they’re called Fairy Lights., 4. Christmas Tour of Homes, 5. Christmas Shopping, 6. Christmas Gold Organza Felt Tree 1, 7. My Lovely Bookworm, 8. IMG_8708_11242006, 9. Victorian Christmas II (Thomas Kinkade), 10. Christmas card, illustration, 11. weihnachtsmarkt2.jpg, 12. Pope Shenouda III, right, leads the Christmas liturgy held at the Coptic Cathedral of Saint Marcos late Friday, Jan. 6, 2006 in Cairo, Egypt.
As always these are not my photos but please follow the links to enjoy the work of the photographers who did take them!

Yesterday was the Feast of Christ the King (the Sunday before Advent) so this week’s meme focuses on the run up to Christmas.

As usual the questions and answers
1. Place you like to buy presents Amazon.co.uk
2. Christmas music Medieval Carols, traditionally sung
3. Something you use to decorate your house Fairy Lights
4. Where (or with who) are you planning to spend Christmas? It’ll likely be just us two, at home
5. Who do you like to got Christmas shopping with? Nobody
6. Theme/colour scheme of your Christmas tree Probably red and gold, but it depends what Noreen feels like at the time
7. Someone you like to buy presents for My bookworm wife (and no, this picture isn’t my actual wife; she isn’t on Flickr, yet!)
8. What are you planning to eat for your Christmas meal? Free-Range Organic Turkey
9. Somewhere you’ll go to a party Is anyone going to invite me?
10. Something you make for Christmas Christmas Cards; for the last several years we’ve had our own cards printed from one of my photographs
11. What gets you in the Christmas spirit? Traditional Christmas Music
12. Secular or Sacred? Although the Christmas liturgy is wonderful it’ll be secular

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

4AM


4AM, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 39/52 (2008 week 47).

4 AM and I can’t sleep, so I figured I may as well get up for a bit and play.

And as this is week 39 of my 52 weeks “self-portrait a week” I figured I’d do a 13 things as well; so …

13 Things which bore me and which I therefore try to ignore …
1. Richard Dawkins
2. stem cells
3. IVF
4. embryo research
5. climate change
6. Africa
7. elephants
8. whales
9. Lord Winston
10. quantum computing
11. the scientific fetish that life can be only water and carbon based
12. penguins
13. Christianity and Islam

First English Lottery, 1569

My previous posting referred to the first English lottery being held on 11 January 1569, and Jilly asks in a comment if it was sold out, because the tickets, at 10 shillings each, were horrendously expensive.

Well I don’t know if it was sold out, a quick Google hasn’t provided an answer, but having researched a bit more I’m not sure if I would actually call this 1569 effort it a lottery at all! Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Although it is more than likely that the English first experimented with raffles and similar games of chance, the first recorded official lottery was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I, in the year 1566, and was drawn in 1569. This lottery was designed to raise money for the “reparation of the havens and strength of the Realme, and towardes such other publique good workes.” Each ticket holder won a prize, and the total value of the prizes equaled the money raised. Prizes were in the form of silver plate and other valuable commodities. The lottery was promoted by scrolls posted throughout the country showing sketches of the prizes.

Thus, the lottery money received was a loan to the government during the three years that the tickets (‘without any Blankes’) were sold. In later years, the government sold the lottery ticket rights to brokers, who in turn hired agents and runners to sell them. These brokers eventually became the modern day stockbrokers for various commercial ventures.

Most people could not afford the entire cost of a lottery ticket, so the brokers would sell shares in a ticket; this resulted in tickets being issued with a notation such as “Sixteenth” or “Third Class.”

According to measuringworth.com 10 shillings in 1569 would now be worth around £105 if you pro rata using RPI or £1210 if based on average earnings.

Interestingly lottery-results-info.com claims that the first ever lottery with prize money was held in Florence, Italy, in 1530. But as there are (apparently) references to lottery-type activity in The Bible, we’ll probably never know.

But don’t things like this make history fun! Much better than all those Corn Laws, Poor Laws, treasons and bloody battles that were inflicted on us at school!

Reality

I’ve no idea now where I found this, but it struck a chord:

Reality is what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is what we believe.
What we believe is based upon our perceptions.
What we look for perceive depends on what we think.
What we think determines what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is our reality.

So everything is in the mind.

Osho on Pornography

A final thought from Osho, this time on pornography …

What is pornography, and why does it have so much appeal?

Pornography is a by-product of religious repression. The whole credit goes to the priests […] pornography is created, managed by the Church, by the religious people.

In a primitive, natural state, man is not pornographic. When human beings are naked, man knows the woman’s body and woman knows the man’s body, and you cannot sell Playboy. It is impossible. Who will purchase Playboy? […]

The whole credit goes to the religious establishment. They have repressed so much that man’s mind is boiling. The man wants to see the woman’s body. Nothing wrong in it, a simple desire, a human desire. And the woman wants to know the man’s body. A simple desire, nothing wrong about it.

Just think of a world where trees are covered with clothes. I have heard about some English ladies who cover their dogs and cats with clothes. Just think, cows and horses and dogs dressed. Then you will find new pornography arising. Somebody will
publish a nude picture of a tree – and you will hide it in a Bible and look at it!

This whole foolishness is out of religious repression.

Make man free, allow people to be nude. I am not saying they should continuously be nude, but nudity should be accepted. On the beach, at the swimming pool, in the home – nudity should be accepted. The children should take a bath with the mother, with the father, in the bathroom. There is no need for the father to lock the bathroom when he goes in. The children can come and have a talk and chitchat and go out. Pornography will disappear.

Each child wants to know, “How does my daddy look?” Each child wants to know, “How does my mother look?” And this is simply intelligence, curiosity. And the child cannot know what the mother looks like, and the child cannot know what the father looks like; now you are creating illness in the child’s mind. It is you who is ill, and the illness will be reflected in the child’s mind.

I am not saying sit nude in the office or in the factory […] there is no need to be naked, it should not be an obsession; however, this continuous obsession of hiding your body is just ugly.

And one thing more: because of the clothes, bodies have become ugly because then you don’t care. You care only about the face. If your belly goes on becoming bigger and bigger, who bothers? You can hide it […] let one hundred people stand nude, and they all will be ashamed […] and they will start hiding themselves. Something is wrong. Why is it so? They know only about their face – the face they take care of; the whole body is neglected.

This is bad. This is not good. It is not in favour of the body, either.

Any country where people are allowed a little freedom to be nude becomes more beautiful; people have more beautiful bodies […]

Nudity should be natural, should be as natural as animals, as trees, as everything else is nude. Then pornography will disappear.

[Osho, Sex Matters, pp 137-8]

Zen and Sex

Further thought from Osho …

What is the Zen approach to sex? The Zen people seem to have a neuter gender, or asexual aura about them.

Zen has no attitudes about sex, and that is the beauty of Zen. To have an attitude means you are still obsessed this way or that. Somebody is against sex – he has an attitude; somebody is for sex – he has an attitude. And for and against go together like two wheels of a bullock cart. They are not enemies, they are friends, partners in the same business.

Zen has no attitude about sex. Why should one have any attitude about sex? That’s the beauty of it – Zen is utterly natural. Do you have any attitudes about drinking water? Do you have any attitudes about taking food? Do you have any attitudes about going to sleep in the night? No attitudes.

[Osho, Sex Matters, pp 178-9]

Osho on Nudity

[…] man has created his own artificial world around him. Animals are naked – that’s why we don’t want to be nude. And if somebody is nude suddenly he hits our civilization totally, he cuts the very roots. That’s why there is so much antagonism against naked people, all over the world.

If you go and move naked in the street, you are not hurting anybody, you are not doing any violence to anybody; you are absolutely innocent. But immediately the police will come, the whole surroundings will become agitated. You will be caught […] and put into jail. But you have not done anything at all! A crime happens when you do something. You have not been doing anything, simply walking naked! But why does the society get so angry? The society is not so angry even against a murderer. This is strange. But a naked man, and society is absolutely angry.

It is because murder is still human. No animal murders. They kill for eating […] So it is human, the society can accept it. But nudity the society cannot accept, because suddenly the naked man makes you aware that you are all animals. Howsoever hidden behind clothes, the animal is there, the nude, the naked animal is there, the naked ape is there.

You are against the nude man not because he is nude but because he makes you aware of your nudity.

[Osho, Sex Matters, p125]

Calendar Meme 29/09/2008


Calendar Meme 29/09/2008, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr photo meme. This hasn’t really worked how I thought it would, but interesting to do, and surprisingly hard.

1. polesden avenue, 2. Frost February morning on field work, 3. The Mighty Daffodil, 4. Spring Greens, 5. Bluebell Woods, 6. Village Cricket 2, 7. SUFFOLK: BUSY-BEE, 8. Summer Around Old Arley Warwickshire, 9. Spider Web, 10. Rishbeth Wood dressed up for Autumn, 11. Bolton Abbey Leaves on sidewalk after rain, 12. Nottingham Christmas lights, 2006

Please pick a favorite photo for each of the 12 months, something that brings that month to mind . . . starting with January and ending with December.

1. January
2. February
3. March
4. April
5. May
6. June
7. July
8. August
9. September
10. October
11. November
12. December

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Midweek Meme 26/09/2008


Midweek Meme 26/09/2008, originally uploaded by kcm76.

1. Austin 7 Box Saloon, 2. January moon, 3. Wicken Manor & Time Team, 4. 0930 Blue Eye, 5. A dance to the music of time, 6. Cat Conspiracy, 7. Christmas Day 2007, 8. Shopping for Saturday, 9. June Lake Fire In The Sky 2, 10. Sea lace, 11. Anyone for Fennel Tea?, 12. “WHY MEN LOVE US”

Questions and Answers:
1. What’s your lucky/favorite number? 7
2. In what month were you born? January
3. Favorite tv show/movie? Time Team
4. What time did you wake up today? 0930
5. Favorite book? A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
6. Favorite animal? Cats
7. An important date to you? Christmas Day
8. Favorite day of the week? Saturday
9. Favorite month? June
10. Favorite sound? The Sea
11. One thing in your refrigerator right now. Fennel
12. You write your own question here! Why?

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.