Six core practices to jump-start a meaningful life: Say Yes, Trust Yourself, Slow Down, Be Generous, Speak Up and Love More.
Category Archives: thoughts
Quotes of the Week
Slightly thin pickings this week as I’ve been flattened by some nasty flu-cum-bronchitis-bug-thingy all week which has precluded almost everything except lying in bed being date expired.
In the past, when marriage was a more pragmatic institution, love was optional. Respect was essential. Men and women found emotional connection elsewhere, primarily in same-sex relationships. Men bonded over work and recreation; women connected through child rearing and borrowing sugar.
Esther Perel; Mating in Captivity: Sex, Lies and Domestic Bliss]
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
[Richard Feynman]
We still live in a world where progress only happens with funerals.
[Violet Blue]
Every law is an infraction of liberty.
[Jeremy Bentham]
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
[Rita Rudner]
Quotes of the Week
A good selection of amusements amongst this week’s quotes …
The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.
[William Gibson]
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
[Thomas Jefferson]
Society places a great deal of importance upon “being concerned” about this, that or the other terrible thing going on somewhere in the world. I agree that a bit of this concern is useful in helping alleviate suffering in those places. But it strikes me that the vast majority of what we call “being concerned” involves getting into our own heads, turning over the information, imagining whatever we want to imagine, working up our emotions, wallowing in our feelings like a pig in mud. For some reason I’ve never been able to comprehend very clearly this makes us look good socially, like we’re doing the right thing. But I’m unable to see how watching endless reports […] about a disaster really helps anything.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/]
You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.
[George Mikes, How to be Decadent]
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
[Jeff Valdez]
Life is fragile. You and I are living lives just as precarious as those people who got swept away into the ocean last week. We just fool ourselves into believing otherwise. But that’s not a reason to live in fear. Life is a terminal disease.
[Brad Warner on the Sendai Earthquake at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan-earthquake.html]
Every mountain; every rock on this planet; every living thing; every piece of you and me was forged in the furnaces of space.
[Prof. Brian Cox; Wonders of the Universe; BBC2 TV, 13 March 2011]
I hear the argument, and it is an ingenious argument only a lawyer of his brilliance could make …
[David Cameron replying in House of Commons to Sir Malcolm Rifkind]
Never play with a dead cat and above all never make friends with a monkey.
[Osbert Sitwell, quoting his father in Tales My Father Taught Me. Thanks to Katyboo for this one.]
The natural world is a living erotic museum filled with variations in male genitalia, illustrating how natural selection has paid nearly as much attention to the male member as Catholic priests have.
[http://zinjanthropus.wordpress.com/]
To you , I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the loyal opposition.
[Woody Allen]
“Are there circumstances in which the government might …?”
“Well there could be circumstances. To answer your question in any other way would preclude all possibilities.”
[William Hague, UK Foreign Secretary, answering a question from the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee; 16/03/2011]
Marriage Quotes
Yesterday I came across these Marriage Quotes from Kids. As always there’s more than a grain of truth in them!
Question: How can a stranger tell if two people are married?
You might have to guess based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
[Derrick, age 8]
Question: What do most people do on a date?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
[Lynnette, age 8]
Question: Is it better to be single or married?
It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
[Anita, age 9 ]
Quotes of the Week
This week’s selection of the good, the bad and the ugly …
Relationships are like a card game where you start with two hearts and a diamond, but end up needing a club and spade.
[Tony Green on Facebook]
Every concept the mind can create includes its opposite. No thought is ultimate because each idea depends on every other idea it might possibly contrast with for its apparent self existence. Our own existence as individuals is dependent upon all of creation. This does not negate our individual existence. It is an attempt to see our individual existence in a different light.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com]
When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?
[Montaigne]
Urethane treatment is standard on all products (with exceptions)
[Amtico Flooring Brochure]
Comedians really aren’t that different from scientists. They look at the world and question why things are as they are and try to find an answer. It’s just that scientists do it with far more rigour and the possibility that humanity will be much improved by their discoveries. Perhaps comedians are just lazy scientists. Very, very lazy, stupid scientists.
[Robin Ince, The Times Eureka Supplement; March 2011]
And finally, dreadful joke of the week …
Why did the scarecrow win a Nobel prize?
Because he was out standing in his field.
[The Times Eureka Supplement; March 2011]
Bring back Basil Brush, all is forgiven!
What's in Your Drawers?
I blame Katyboo! She started this. And even a half answer as to what’s in my drawers is too long for a comment to Katy’s post. So here goes … What is in my drawers?
Well first of all I interpret this as meaning “desk drawers”. Drawers in dressing tables or the like are boring — they contain sox and knickers. Well and detritus (like old spectacles) too, but not so much, at least in my case.
My “desk drawers” tough are numerous and full. To start with “desk” is a misnomer: I have a piece of kitchen worktop the length of one wall (8-9 feet of it!). On it is the usual desk stuff: pot of pens etc., phone, desk lamps, filing trays, jotter, Post-Its, monocular; plus my PC, screen, keyboard, printer etc. And literary society binders/work in progress. And currently a sleeping cat!
This is about half of my desktop (complete with cat) and showing one of the filing cabinets
The shelves over my “desk” have more desk and PC stuff (photo/label printers, speakers), a few teddy bears & friends, wifi router, postal scales and above that the most used reference books. Under the “desk” I have two “2-drawer” sized filing cabinets, each with one large drawer and three shallower ones. I also have a computer table (as a desk extension with another printer and scanner on it) and use the pull-out keyboard shelf as a desk drawer with A4 paper box lids as organisers. So …
Keyboard shelf
Contains standard office stationery like various sizes of envelope, compliments slips, business cards, postcards, rubber stamps, airmail stickers.
Left-hand Filing cabinet
Large bottom Drawer: various PC bits, spare wifi routers, spare analog phone, photo printer paper, multiple boxes of label sheets (a label size for everything!), PC cables.
Bottom shallow Drawer: More of the same: mostly boxes of adapters for PC and phones. And other PC odds and sods.
Middle Shallow Drawer: This is Anthony Powell Society drawer 2. Various AP Soc spares (till rolls for credit card terminal, coin bags, other banking spares). And the society’s “In Tray”.
Top Shallow Drawer: AP Soc drawer 1. Office stationery including compliments slips of various types, receipt book, supply of bookmarks, membership leaflets, postcards, etc.
Right-hand Filing Cabinet
Large Bottom Drawer: Household filing: bank statements, utility bills, tax, insurance, blah, blah, blah. Postcards and a few greetings cards. A supply of Trebor Extra Strong Mints. It’s so full that I can’t get any more in so there is a large overflow “awaiting filing” pile on th study floor along with more boxes of PC stuff, videos awaiting transcription etc.
Bottom Shallow Drawer: Pads of A4 paper, ring binder bags, coloured plastic files, odds & sods reusable envelopes.
Middle Shallow Drawer: Crammed with miscellaneous techie toot. Mobile phone chargers, camera battery chargers, earphones, dictaphone. Spare rechargeable batteries, camera spares, memory cards, memory sticks. Spare stocks of pencils, pencil leads, biros, marker pens. Several unused HP iPAQ and Palm handhelds. Spares for this and that. Boxes of business cards. Rolls of Dymo printer labels. Boxes of old keys. Spare wallet. Blah, blah, blah.
Top Shallow Drawer: Everyday desk stuff: pens, rulers, stapler, scissors, ball of elastic bands, ball of recycled string, lanyards, roller ruler, small screwdrivers and Allen keys, glue, sellotape. Spare batteries and fuses. Bank books etc. Odds and sods of foreign coinage and keys. Glasses cloth. Calculators.
And all that is without four printer paper boxes of stationery/office spares, and a lot more spare PC stuff in crates under my desk; and the old spare hifi stack; and boxes of printer paper, AP books for disposal/sale, paper recycling bin, shredder. No room for feet under the desk!!
OMG.
Dare you tell us what’s in your (desk) drawers?
Mapping the Cat Brain
Oh, yes. Cat’s certainly do have brains. They have very well developed, subtle and devious brains. In fact it has been shown recently that Cats Adore and Manipulate Women. They do it to men as well, but either they don’t like men as much or we’re more immune to it.
The bond between cats and their owners turns out to be far more intense than imagined, especially for cat aficionado women and their affection reciprocating felines, suggests a new study.
[…]
The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other’s behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.
And then today I came across this mapping of the cat’s brain at CatStuff.
In the light of this latest research the diagram clearly ought to contain a tiny gland for sniffing out male humans and a much larger gland for detecting females.
Oh come on lads, you already knew we stood no chance!
Quotes of the Week
OK, here’s this week’s selection of oddities encounter in the last few days …
‘Look at the bird.’ It was perched on a branch by a fork in the tree, next to what looked like a birdhouse, and nibbling at a piece of roughly round wood it held in one claw.
‘Must be an old nest they’re repairing,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘Can’t have got that advanced this early in the season.’
‘Looks like some kind of old box to me,’ said Lobsang. He squinted to see better. ‘Is it an old … clock?’ he added.
‘Look at what the bird is nibbling,’ suggested Lu-Tze.
‘Well, it looks like … a crude gearwheel? But why —’
‘Well spotted. That, lad, is a clock cuckoo.’
[Terry Pratchett; Thief of Time]Hindsight, the historians’ parlour-game, can lead from false premise to false conclusion. Because we see the fateful consequences of our forebears’ actions, we can wrongly suppose that, had they done differently, things would have been better.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]The clergy were seldom rich, but they were treated as if they were gentlemen: very often they were. Nearly all of them had degrees. High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, they were disseminated throughout the land. If they were even half good at their jobs, they and their wives and families mixed with everyone in their parish. They were extraordinary agents of social communication. It meant that almost everyone in England was within five miles of a man who could read ancient Greek.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]Snow fell, east winds blew, pipes froze, the water main (located next door in a house bombed out and long deserted) passed beyond insulation or control. The public supply of electricity broke down. Baths became a fabled luxury of the past. Humps and cavities of frozen snow, superimposed on the pavement, formed an almost impassable barrier of sooty heaps at the gutters of every crossing, in the network of arctic rails.
[Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room]In the highbrow world you “get on”, if you “get on” at all, not so much by your literary ability as by being the life and soul of cocktail parties and kissing the bums of verminous little lions.
[George Orwell]In a mad world only the mad are sane.
[Akira Kurosawa]
Quote: Boredom
Boredom is important. Most of your life is dull, tasteless and boring.
[Brad Warner]
Quotes of the Week
OK, guys & gals, here’s this week’s selection of wacky words …
Come on, Milhouse, there’s no such thing as a soul! It’s just something they made up to scare kids, like the Boogie Man or Michael Jackson.
[Bart Simpson]Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
[Philip K Dick]Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what’s right.
[Isaac Asimov]I’ve come to believe quite strongly that monogamy is not at all the natural condition of human beings, despite what we’ve been told for so many years. For some people it comes effortlessly. For others it is absolutely impossible. I think for most of us it is possible, but extremely difficult. When I hear that someone has failed at it I am never shocked or surprised.
[Brad Warner; at http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/02/disrobing-genpo–brad-warner/]Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It’s middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.
[Sir John Mortimer, Murderers & Other Friends]We will have to build … devices that will store and release time to where it is needed, because men cannot progress if they are carried like leaves on a stream. People need to be able to waste time, make time, lose time and buy time.
[Terry Pratchett; Thief Of Time]Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.
[Terry Pratchett; Thief Of Time]