This really is too appropriate to keep until Friday …
Something for Monday
Weekly Photograph
Here’s one from years ago (like 2008) when I went to London Zoo — and yes, for some unknown reason they let me out again!
No story to this, just a pretty picture!
Birch Tree
June 2008, London Zoo
Five Questions, Series 4 #5
So, at last, we get to the final question of series 4 of Five Questions.
There is only one possible answer to that … ME!
You think I’m joking? Then you’ve not seen the size of me!
What?! You want a more serious answer?! You mean that isn’t good enough?!
Well if you push me then the answer has to be (a) depression and (b) not enough hours in the day to get done what I want to do.
But isn’t that essentially the same for everyone? … There isn’t enough time and we just can’t push ourselves to do more.
OK, that concludes Five Questions, Series 4. I’ll do another series in a few months.
Meantime, I would like questions to answer — ask anything and I will see if I can answer it. No promises though ‘cos you really don’t want to know about my … TMIA!
Word: Chatoyant
Chatoyant
Having a changeable, undulating, or floating lustre, like that of a cat’s eye in the dark.
Hence also a chatoyant stone or gemstone, such as the cat’s-eye.
From the French present participle of chatoyer, to shimmer like cats’ eyes; from chat, cat.
The OED records the first use in 1798 in a scientific description of crystals.
Something for the Weekend
This week’s amusement is especially for you, Katyboo!
National Zero Waste Week
Starting next Monday we bring you National Zero Waste Week which runs from 2 to 8 September.
National Zero Waste Week, which is now in its sixth year, invites you to reduce landfill waste and save money. This year they will be concentrating on tackling food waste. There is research which suggests that on average in the UK we bin a quarter of all the food which is produced. That is northing short of scandalous!
So yes, the aim of National Zero Waste Week is to drastically cut the amount of stuff which goes into landfill by either (re)using it or recycling it. Ultimately it is for the good of our environment, and almost certainly our wallets too!
As always there is more over on their website at www.zerowasteweek.co.uk.
Quotes
Another selection from my perusals, in no special sequence …
I chortled so immoderately I filled my codpiece with widdle.
[Katy Wheatley]
To say ‘I wonder’ is to say ‘I question; I ask.’ The mind seeks. Sometimes it finds answers, sometimes it does not. We need wonder in order to keep moving and growing – to stay alive to the world. It gives us meaning and, in fact, makes us human.
[Marian Bantjes; I Wonder]
It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophise, and still leads them.
[Aristotle; Metaphysics]
I’m not weird, I’m limited edition.
[unknown]
I may be a little weird, but I’d rather be weird and right than normal and wrong.
[Paul Stamets, Mycologist]
In the realm of medicine, sham treatments have long had a name: placebos. I suggest we call the equivalent treatments in society “placebos at large”. In fact I want to make the analogy with placebo medicine still closer. In much the same way that we have “invented” witch doctors to provide spells and potions that allow us to overcome the timidity of our bodily healing systems and cure ourselves of physical disease, so we have created witch institutions, witch ceremonies, witch arts to cure ourselves of incipient mental and social disease.
[Nicholas Humphrey, “Placebos at large: the power of society’s symbols”, New Scientist; 03 August 2013]
Life is a disease; sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal
[unknown]
“You see, I don’t mind what happens” … To “accept” the way things are is to stop resisting reality; to stop using positive thinking to try to pretend things are different. Put like that, acceptance seems like a precondition for change, not an obstacle to it.
[Oliver Burkeman writing about Kristnamurti in the Guardian, 10 August 2013]
No event can trigger upset without a belief that it’s undesirable.
[Oliver Burkeman writing about Kristnamurti in the Guardian, 10 August 2013]
Things themselves have no natural power to form our judgements.
[Marcus Aurelius]
Here We Go Again!
Just what is it about politicians? They just cannot seem to learn from even the most recent past. Nor can they stand back and take a long, cold, hard look at where they’re going.
The US and the UK are about to get themselves embroiled in Syria. Why?
Oh someone has used some (internationally banned) chemical weapons.
Yes, OK that is reprehensible (to put it politely). But it doesn’t excuse blatant aggression by other people.
Look guys. Just stop and think!
1. Within the last few years the US and UK have meddled in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that I can think of quickly. None of them with any real justification (and in the case of Iraq based on a known wrong set of beliefs). Result? Long-term involvement in two of them and no real useful result in the third. All it has done is waste the lives of our military personnel and waste a load of money that frankly we don’t have.
2. What is happening in Syria is civil war — just as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Egypt. War, by definition, produces atrocities. That is no reason for us to go adding to them.
3. So you want to get involved in Syria on the side of the rebels against Assad? You do realise, don’t you, that those rebels are the very people you were fighting against in Afghanistan and Iraq: al-Qa’ida and the Taliban? OK we know you’re two-faced (you’re politicians, after all) but really!
Now no-one is pretending that the use of chemical weapons is acceptable. But this is NOT an excuse for the US and UK to go around continuing to be bullies. Especially as we know that short sharp interventions never are. Remember Iraq?
No, this is a matter for the UN. Their inspectors need to be allowed to complete their work, report, have their report considered. The if the international community (in the guise of the UN) is still unhappy it is for the UN to take action. Unilateral action by the US and/or the UK is just not acceptable.
David Cameron … If you continue down this path of action, you will become as reviled by everyone as was Tony Bliar, who rightly earned the epithet Tony B Liar. Up with such actions we, the people, will not put! Such actions will definitely lose you the next election (if you’ve not lost it already). Is that really what you want?
Barack Obama … The same applies to you.
When even your (ex-)military chiefs are saying this is misguided, maybe that should be telling you something.
Gawdelpus!
Gor Blimey!
Purely out of interest I’ve just done a count-back of my blogging activity.
I’ve been blogging properly, in several incarnations, since January 2004; and doing the equivalent by email since December 2001.
In that time I reckon I’ve written at least 2187 posts (not including this one). That’s an average of over 15 posts a month over that period — although the early days were much sparser and rate is higher in the last couple of years.
Everything since November 2006 should be here and accessible via the Archives or Categories listings on the right.
Earlier posts are available as PDF files on the website:
* January-October 2006 at zenmischief.com/files/zm_weblog_2006.pdf
* Everything Before 2006 at zenmischief.com/files/zm_weblog_pre2005.pdf
HS2
So who should be most in favour of HS2, the proposed high-speed rail connection from London to Birmingham and the north?
Well if it is as essential to the economy as we are told it is, business should be lobbying hard in its favour.
Are they? … No, they are not!
According to a report in yesterday’s Independent, and elsewhere, the Institute of Directors (ie. the captains of our businesses) considers HS2 “a giant folly”. Just 41% of IoD members consider HS2 important for their business and only 27% see it as good value for money.
Businesses know value for money when they see it, and our research shows that they don’t see it in the Government’s case for HS2 … The IoD cannot support the Government’s current economic case for HS2 … We agree with the need for key infrastructure spending, but the business case for HS2 simply is not there. The money would be far better spent elsewhere and in a way that will benefit much more of the country. Investment in the West and East Coast main lines, combined with a variety of other infrastructure projects, would be a far more sensible option.
[Simon Walker, IoD Director-General]
Interestingly there was another report in the Telegraph last December (which I had not previously picked up) exposing the fact that the projected passenger numbers also do not stack up with the business case.
Hurrah for some common sense! I’ve been saying this since HS2 was first mooted. Cynically I’d say that HS2 is the rail industry willy-waving and indulging in self-aggrandisement to distract from the fact that is hasn’t/can’t sort out the current rail infrastructure and get that working efficiently — something which should cost a lot less than the currently projected £50billion price tag for HS2. Let’s sort out what we have first and then see if we still need such a massive, environmentally and financially destructive project as HS2.
And anyway, in the current economic climate, do we really have this amount of money to throw around?