Many people seem to think wisdom is something that comes out of the Bible; they even call it wisdom literature. It is something that comes with old age because living gives experience. We associate in our myths wisdom and advanced age with all those long white beards (and yes in our myths it is often…
Month: October 2010
The Stars And Me
It was one of the immense ideas of science and the phrase of Carl Sagan’s that rang down the TV and will ring down the centuries, that we are made of star dust. The stars are a vast resource of knowledge and wonder to our wonder-seduced brains. I was never one to have learned all…
Peace Through War
It is a common commentary on Europe that we now have peace because war became too violent even for us as the victims involved increased exponentially in the Twentieth Century. The reasons for war never changed in all the centuries: tribes moving to new places to live as their populations expanded, greed, to gain advantage…
The First Of All Loves
It strikes me to ask if Adam loved Eve. If Eve loved Adam.There are many, many jokes about the last two people on Earth and an assumption that the first two must somehow have been made for each other. And yes I know it is a myth, but the question still stands in the myth,…
Holidays
Wandering alone on beaches in Cornwall in the winter, and secluded beaches no one knows about in summer, I have always wondered what people who lie and sit on beaches squashed together until you can’t see much sand, get out of it. The old explanation given me by people is that if you don’t take…
The United Kingdom
It is still a Kingdom, after a fashion, though the monarch doesn’t have people beheaded anymore they still anticipate the bowing. The Cornish who now do not differ genetically from their English cousins, still maintain a liberal tradition, the Welsh, descendants of the original inhabitants of the island, are penned up in some amazing small…
Who Is Who
We just adore categories. As human beings are ‘pattern makers’, a species that naturally looks for similarities and groupings in order to understand the world around us, we base our knowledge upon a series of categories and once we have generated an assessment process through our schooling, we readily place items into their respective categories….
Electronics And Me
There comes a time today when anyone who wishes to bring anything at all to public notice, be it goods to sell or books to publish or ideas to transmit, has to consider having a web site. With all the concomitant work and decisions on what to include and what to provide and who one’s…
Surprise Surprise
I was contacted out of the blue yesterday by a friend who studied physics at my university and with whom I have only intermittently kept in contact. I knew he married and has two lovely children and lives in New York but yesterday we chatted for a while and we discussed briefly modern philosophers and…
Area Code
It is strange to think that the United Kingdom, with thousands of miles of coast and sea view properties, has given an postal area code to every inch of sea. Almost as strange as through International treaty having three miles of the Atlantic all the way round as a buffer zone in which everything becomes…