quotes

Monthly Quotes

Here’s another selection of interesting, thought-provoking and amusing quotes encountered in the last few weeks.
Nothing is stronger or better than this, that a man and his wife live together, sharing one heart and one mind, a great grief to their enemies and a joy to their friends; but best of all they know it themselves.
[Homer, The Odyssey]
When a German dives into a sentence, you won’t see him again until he emerges at the other end with the verb between his teeth.
[Mark Twain]
If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need.
[Cicero]
To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
[Mark Twain]
The strategy relied on forlorn hopes that the “confidence fairy” would lift Greece out of this policy-induced nose-dive.
[Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in a Daily Telegraph article, 29 July 2016, on how the IMF has screwed up Greece; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/28/imf-admits-disastrous-love-affair-with-euro-apologises-for-the-i/]
All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.
[Douglas Adams]
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
[Oscar Wilde; Lady Windermere’s Fan]
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
[Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching]
Usually when people predict an end to religion, what they’re hoping will take its place is a world of pure scientific rationality based on a strictly materialistic view of the universe. I think Richard Dawkins and his followers would like to see that.
The problem with that is, pure materialism has failed us just as badly as pure spirituality. The pure spirituality of the Middle Ages provided a lot of uplifting fantasies, but left most people living in filth and squalor. The pure materialism that took hold in the 19th century, and continues to dominate us today, provided flush toilets, the Internet and a generally higher standard of living. But it left people feeling empty inside while runaway technology and the waste it produces threatens us with extinction.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/the-age-of-reality/4716]
As soon as dogs realise we have bones hidden under our skin all hell is going to break loose.
[unknown]
If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.
[Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard]

sexuality, words

Words: Yoni & Lingam

Yoni

  1. In Hinduism, a stylized representation of a vulva worshiped as a symbol of a goddess or Shakti.
  2. The female genitalia, regarded as a divine symbol of sexual pleasure.
  3. The Tantric symbol of the feminine.

According to the OED the word first appears in English in 1799 and is derived from the Sanskrit yonih, womb, abode, source.
Lingam

  1. In Hinduism, a stylized phallus worshiped as a symbol of the god Shiva.
  2. The penis.
  3. (In Sanskrit grammar) the masculine gender.

Again, the word is from the Sanskrit liṅga, liṅgam, mark, penis. It is first recorded in English in 1719.

topographical, words

Word: Zanzibar

Zanzibar
Zanzibar is now a semi-autonomous region of the East African country of Tanzania. Situated off the coast of the mainland just north of Dar es Salaam, it is an archipelago consisting of two large islands, Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba, and many smaller ones. Long ruled by Arabs (mostly from Oman) it was a Portuguese colony and latterly a British Protectorate, before merging with the then country of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in the 1960s. Zanzibar’s main industries are spices (especially cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and black pepper), raffia and tourism.


The word Zanzibar comes from Arabic Zanjibār (زنجبار), which is in turn from Persian Zang-bār (زنگبار), a compound of Zang (زنگ, “Black”) + bār (بار, “coast”).
As so often there is a whole host more information on Wikipedia.

environment, natural history, photography

Nationally Scarce

Now this is something I never expected o see here in West London! Noreen found it on the (inside of) the study windows late last evening. It’s a (female) Jersey Tiger Moth.
I’ve only ever seen one once before, in Lyme Regis some 10 or more years ago. They are apparently “nationally scarce”. Once restricted to, yes, Jersey, they are most common along the coastal areas of the South West, although they are obviously spreading and there are now reports from the London area. Instantly identifiable as a Tiger Moth, the size (that’s a 5mm grid), pattern and the distinctively striped head are diagnostic. Oh and they like Buddleia, and we have a bush not far from our back door.
Sorry not brilliant pictures as this was lively, so contained in a plastic bug-catcher, being photographed with my point-n-shoot late at night with flash. I have removed the slight colour-cast from the images, I hope without destroying the moth’s colours.

Jersey Tiger Jersey Tiger
Click the images for larger views on Flickr

[More info on the moths here and here.]
Oak Bush CricketAlso found this morning on our bathroom ceiling was this gorgeous little Oak Bush Cricket. The body is about 17 mm long and note those spectacular antennae which are three or four times the length of the body.
These are not scarce; we often get them in the house at this time of year — one of the benefits of having trees in the garden (including an oak) and being close to woodland. They’re very forgiving creatures and will happily sit still to be photographed, unlike captured moths.

links

Your Interesting Links

Here is our monthly selection of links to articles you may have missed the first time around.
Science & Medicine
Honeymooning scientist discovers unknown giant, swimming, venomous centipede by accident in Thailand
Fur. Where did it come from, and why? Is it in any way related to feathers? It isn’t quite as obvious as one might think.

While talking about fur, cats are living much longer and healthier lives than ever before. When we first had cats, some 35 years ago, our vet said that living anything past 12 was a bonus; now it is increasingly normal for them to live into their late teens and even into their early twenties. Of the four cats we’ve lost over the years their ages at death were (in order) 12, 17, 16, 18. Apparently this longevity is in large part due to better nutrition and advances in veterinary medicine.
Although largely reviled, wasps should be valued instead. There are thousands of species, each in its own niche, but all are incredibly useful and efficient predators of other creepy-crawlies. They’re also very useful pollinators. Please cherish your wasps!
Some medics have managed to create a very simple, and very cheap, test for diseases like malaria. And it can be used anywhere, although the “test strip” does need to be mailed back to the lab.
Research from the US is suggesting that older people who use marijuana are actually saving the health services as they use fewer prescription drugs, and that opioid overdose rates are down significantly. Well, you don’t say!
Sexuality
Female athletes all too often have to undergo humiliating sex-testing. Here’s the low-down on an unacceptable practice that would never be tolerated if applied to males. [Long read]
Dr Luisa Dillner in the Guardian takes a look at whether it is more hygienic to remove one’s pubic hair. Conclusion: no it is likely to be less so — but then Fashion!


Social Sciences & Business
Here’s the Guardian‘s simple, nine-point, guide to spotting dodgy statistics and seeing through the obfuscation of politicians (and others).
It may seem incredible, but everyone on this planet is your cousin. What price racism and bigotry now?
Language
We have a perfectly good four-letter word beginning with C— and it’s use is becoming more common. So why is it still taboo? Rachel Braier in the Guardian (again) has some thoughts in its praise.
Art & Literature
We’ve covered miniature carvings from pencil lead before but this miniature landscape with elephants is just stunning!
History
Returning to the topic of marijuana, it seems that our prehistoric ancestors, those founders of western civilisation, were dealing in dope.
Archaeologists are using ‘personal hygiene sticks’ excavated from a 2,000-year-old latrine pit to uncover evidence of the transmission of infectious diseases along the Silk Road.
Over the centuries western civilisation has had some strange beliefs about nudity.
It seems there are a lot of mulberry trees in London and many date from the 17th and 18th centuries. Here’s a history of a few of them.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812, and when he was a teenager London already had horseless buses.
OK, so, Londoners … how much do you really know about Trafalgar Square?
And finally on both History and London … here are a dozen things you maybe didn’t know about St James’s Park — including the pelicans.

Shock, Horror, Humour
And finally … in Iceland they have had to divert a road so they don’t disturb the Elves. I’m told the same has happened in Ireland, but I find that much less surprising!