Category Archives: quotes

quotes

Follow this Weblog

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I’ve now added a box on the right where you can sign up and tell me that you follow this weblog. Here’s what Blogger say about following:

What is Following?
Do you have a favorite blog and want to let the author and readers know that you are a fan? Well now you can do that and more with the Blogger Following feature! You can even keep track of the blogs you follow via your Reading List on the Blogger dashboard.

Of course you don’t have to use the Blogger Reading List to follow; other weblog providers will have other methods, and in fact I follow other people’s weblogs using their RSS feeds and Google Reader. As with so much it is a question of what works for you!

So it would be nice (for me anyway) if those few of you who do take an interest in what I have to say here (however fitful that interest may be) sign up as followers. If nothing else I then know a little more about my audience! Thank you!

memes, quotes

Openings of the Year

There’s a penchant at this time of year for summarising your blogging year by posting the first sentence of the first post of each month. This year I’ve made an effort to write punchier (first) sentences, and in writing generally to tighten up my rather prolix prose style. The following demonstrates that I “could do better”. Here is my contribution …

January. Yes, you read it right!

February. Going to the dogs is what a lot of children in Shropshire might be doing today.

March. I’m still working through the photographs I took on holiday in German a few weeks ago.

April. In the Barber’s Shop. (One in a series of a self-portrait a week.)

May. “Sitting quietly, doing nothing, / Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.”

June. Albertine. (Photograph of a rose from our garden.)

July. We’ve not done a Friday Five for a long time, so here’s this week’s.

August. The “Feedback” column this week’s New Scientist contains this item.

September. Is it my imagination, or is the wheat harvest about a month late this year?

October. “I moved to London in 1973 to study Chemistry at University College, London.”

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

December. Anti-Haircut (Another in the series of a self-portrait a week.)

The Verdict? Keep taking the tablets!

quotes, science

Zen Mischievous Moments #146

Here follows the opening paragraph of an article entitled “Quantum Brinkmanship” by George Musser printed in the December 2008 edition of Scientific American. Just to demonstrate what you already knew: science is weirder than you imagined.

A good working definition of quantum mechanics is that things are the exact opposite of what you thought they were. Empty space is full, particles are waves, and cats can be both alive and dead at the same time. Recently a group of physicists studied another quantum head spinner. You might innocently think that when a particle rolls across a tabletop and reaches the edge, it will fall off. Sorry. In fact, a quantum particle under the right conditions stays on the table and rolls back.

beliefs, quotes, thoughts

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.

beliefs, freedom of speech, nudism, quotes, thoughts

Osho on Nudity

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[…] 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]

quotes, thoughts

Quote: Fantasy

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope … and that enables you to laugh at all of life’s realities.

[Theodor S Geisel (Dr Seuss)]

current affairs, quotes, thoughts

Quote of the Day

Today’s Quotation of the Day:

It seems that the Republican Party in the United States has made an audacious bid to retain power by running Mr Burns and Marge Simpson as candidates for president and vice-president.
[John Doyle, TV critic, in his 2 September 2008 column]

Well it cracked me up, anyway.