At last. A politician with balls

A new hero of mine, introducing Michael D Higgins

Imagine my surprise this week when i saw a link for a interview with an Irish president, not that i knew he was the president? The last time i checked, there was a woman at the helm and another woman before that? I have never voted for anything, but my feet have, it's a good job i carry them with me all the days.

Maybe they did a little housekeeping in Ireland, now they have time spare, the boom times are over since i was last back. So 2 or 3 clicks later and I'm viewing this, his name is Michael D Higgins, i knew him as the minister for the arts, but now you can call him president of Ireland!

Michael D taking no prisoners



As a kid i once saw an Australian politician, by the name of Paul Keating put his hand on the queens ass, i saw video of him pulling no punches talking in the parliament and as a kid, it must have had a big effect on me, because all i remember thinking of this new country on the map of my world had broadened my horizon and i seemed to have made up my mind there and then, Australia would be the place i would live.
And I'm still here to tell the tale and I'm glad I'm alive too!

Paul talking about the size of his testicles

I thought as a nation Australians had a healthy disrespect for authority, which was right then, wrong now, the politicians are not in the same class, they should be in the circus, but that's another story

Dont laugh, but lets look at Tony Abbott, the village idiot makes it to the big time in Australia!


The next video i saw, that was on my list to watch was Charlie Chaplin, the greatest speech ever made. take a look for yourself.

Charlie could make a name for himself in politics



Sounds like a lot of humanitarian stuff? And I'll stop there before you start thinking I'm a nice guy, that would probably do 'nasty things' to you in the middle of the night to a good 50% of readers (under the cover of darkness, if you will and maybe some good old fashioned 'bonking', time permitting of course)?

Yes, i am that person, but you cant help but being positively effected by those 3 videos, the words, ideas that cut to the chase of what it means to be a human being and thank god I'm from a country that elects smart intelligent people anyone could be proud of, that even a dog with a spark of intelligence would vote for

Somehow, the 'balls to the wall, pull no punches' politics i liked as a kid, has gone to the polar opposite of the world, like an ice age every 100 thousand years. like Atlantis was under ice for many many decades, now believed to be under the north sea 


Barrys tea every day should have it's golden moment

And now, up steps the old minister for the Arts Michael D Higgins,  to address the mad hatter tea party and tell them what a nation of tea drinkers think, why it enough to make you change your mind about home, life, the world and go home for a cup of tea, Barry's Irish tea after all the whole country raves about it!

After all, they are right, Barry's tea is magic!!

Richard P Feynman and me...

(sighs...)
Another reason to be depressed about an Irish childhood (that included brutal education for the masses) Frank Mc Court listen up and add this one to your list!!

Now, when i was young, and i'm not saying that i'm old, but anything to do with education was boring, pointless and maybe even impossible!!

Mathematics, Physics? Forget it, you need to be a genius or prey to a god that was generous with brains, maybe i was abducted by space aliens and had my brains scooped out and i've been waiting many years for them to grow back and now this.

My world needed an education hero, where the hell was he... America?

It sometimes pains me to read about Richard Feynman and think, why oh why didn't i have a teacher like him, he was smart enough to know how people learn and would have done a better job than the half wit we had teaching us Physics

(Readers note: I was eternally grateful to the teacher i had at the time, he showed about as much interest teaching as i had in listening, it was a win win scenario, until you were expected to pass an exam
At the time i thought he was fab i could drift off into a slumber or check out what the birds were doing on the branches outside the window, mother nature is very active in Ireland sometimes, yea know?)

I recently read 'Surely you're joking Mr Feynman' and i would like to share a few memories

The most interesting thing i like about Richard Feynman is he didn't think he was a genius at all, he had a very different was of thinking, of seeing the world, he concentrated on what he was doing and didn't get too hot and bothered by what others were doing, there is a lesson there, work on yourself.

When it boils down to it, if you could model his approach to work and life, pretty soon everyone would think your a genius (even though you know your not!)

One of the first lectures he gave, Albert Einstein was at it, yep he was pretty smart!

Through learning to draw Richard saw how art teachers teach by osmosis and not by instruction, by learning to draw, he saw that kids absorb information little by little and not in one big gulp

By cross training in his field and having an interest in other non related fields, this gave him a 'differnt bag of tools' in his mind to work with, one time some scientists he talked to were working on a problem for 2 years, he merely suggested 'Why don't you try it this way?' and the problem was solved in half an hour.

The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out


A lot of the examples he gave, like mental arithmetic square root numbers, were things he did for fun, and anybody could do, but he had a vast collection of these and when needed he had a resource of data in his head he could apply to the task at hand where everybody else had to reach for a pen and paper

Richard would model his ideas, the when working on a problem, he would say, 'It's like...' and work on the issue visually and rather think about the issue, he would see it and the problem and then the solution.

He got that way of modeling thinking from his dad, when his dad was explaining about a kind of dinosaur he was telling him,
Do you see the top of the barn? It's head would have been at the top of the roof, this helped him see the dimensions and it made a dinosaur relative to a kid (no cousins were hurt here)

On Models he said:

Models don't have any money, if they did, they wouldn't be modeling

On Experts he said:

I'll never make a mistake again reading the expert opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and you learn what not to do, and thats the end of you

Through out his life he did fun experiment's, he liked playing with things and figuring out how they worked, he reached a point where he was burnt out, had enough and he decided to take a playful approach to work and life

In one of his other books he went to talk to his kids math teacher when she complained about his kid solving a maths problem using another method, the teacher looked at him and said 'What would you know about maths?' He said nothing and agreed with her

How would you decline a great job offer?

So i wrote them back a letter that said:
'After reading the salary, i've decided that i must refuse. The reason i have to refuse a salary like that is that i would be able to do what i've always wanted to do - get a wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things...with the salary you have offered, i could actually do that, i know what would happen to me.

I'd worry about her, what she's doing; i'd get into arguments when i came home, and so on
All this bother would make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I wouldn't be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess. What i've always wanted to do would be bad for me, so i've decided i cant accept the offer'

At the time of reading about Richard i was having problems with the laptop i was using and instead of getting frustrated i was thinking

'What would Richard Feynman do? What would Richard say ? 

Yep, i started thinking like that and now i can report the laptop in a much better condition, all my hair is still on my head, some in my ears too, there no birds chirping, but the bats are flapping, school must be over?

All language is slang...

Slang, Yiddish slang?

About a month ago i attempted to read George Eliot's 'Middle march'.

Even thought i made it about halfway into 'Middle march' (and this was a serious effort for me or anybody who's not me to get that far) and i did learn a lot, i made notes and i will share them with you now.

One section she refers to social class structures and...

All choice of words is slang, it marks a class

Correct language is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of Prigs

A prig ( /ˈprɪɡ/),

Sometimes spelled prigg, is a person who shows an inordinately zealous approach to matters of form and propriety – especially where the prig has the ability to show superior knowledge to those who do not know the protocol.

They see little need to consider the feelings or intentions of others, relying instead on established order and rigid rules to resolve all questions. 

It is a narrow mind that cant look at a subject from various points of view

So, i thought, this is interesting, the words you use are unique to you like your fingerprint, spelling mistakes and all, from re-reading my old blog posts i can see where i would have formatted text differently and i can see how i have changed, you change over time and i can see it and feel it, who would want to stay the same anyways?

Your words are powerful, they convey your experience and this would apply to professions and the industries they belong to, when you talk to a:

• Lawyer he says the words to convey legal terms
• Project manager he says the words to convey project management ideas

If you meet a Project Manager and he doesn't know Project management terms, and refers to ideas as 'things' and 'stuff', you might want to check their back ground history a little closer.
 
Pay attention class

Spelling is over rated, i'm not the only one that thinks that and mistakes are fun, like hearing 'Pigeon English' in Asia.

Now scientists are saying that Spell check is killing English, if you an advocate of Spell check? Stop killing one of the friggin languages i speak!!

Professor Michael Cowling says...

"In this world, it will be more important to be connected than to be well-spelled. Spelling is an art form that the digital native just doesn't need any more and as academics we need to start accepting this."

And the argument for spelling wright?

Spelling might not matter, but punctuation and where you put commas can change the meaning of text.

A legal dispute over ...

a clause in Graham Greene’s will. The clause restricts access to his papers left to Georgetown

University in these words: “I, Graham Greene, grant permission to Norman Sherry, my authorized biographer, excluding any other to quote from my copyright material. . . .” On his deathbed Greene added a comma to this typed clause after the word other. Are all researchers denied the right to quote the material, or only other biographers?

Surely, as a sophisticated writer, Greene meant something by his comma. But the Georgetown librarian interpreted the clause to bar all but Sherry–biographers or not–the right to quote.
The appropriate rule of punctuation would have limited the exclusion to other biographers.

It gets tricky when it becomes legal?
Maybe the punctuation legal response could have been about 'The vibe' of the thing, from a movie called 'The castle'?

 The vibe of the thing?


I mentioned to someone how i felt my vocabulary was improving after reading 'Middlemarch', which is funny, i felt like i was i was getting more out of that novel than any other book i have read and i only understood a fraction of it?

But there were some bits of gold that made it all worthwhile where you could put the book down and spend the rest of the day mulling over.

Like...

But Fielding lived when our days were longer (for time like money, is measured by our needs) when Sunday afternoons were spacious and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings  

Or... 

What elegant historian would neglect a striking opportunity for pointing out that his hero's did not see the history of the world or even their own actions? For example Henry of Navarre, when a Protestant baby, thought little of being a Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the great, when he labored his laborious nights with burning candles, had no idea that future gentlemen would measure their idle days with watches.

Here is a mine of truth, which however vigorously it may be worked, is likely to outlast our coal

And...

 Lyngate was in love with the actress in the same way a man is in love with a woman whom he never expects to see

Irvine proved a point

Language (so it seems to me) helps us convey ideas, i think Irvine Walsh proved this idea in Trainspotting particularly (it's written in the language of the people of the story, phonetically too!)

Any of my teachers would have given Trainspotting a (- D), oh the spelling mistakes, terribble gwrammer!!

But it wasn't about the grammar, spellings, they were very believable characters, not the kind you wanted to meet (moms know what i'm talking about!)  
The phonetically written story, well...was part of the story.

Frank Mc Court wrote Angela's Ashes, a story about a kid, in words a kid could understand, this was the power of the story.

James Joyce's 'A portrait of an artist as a young man' wrote about a kid that becomes an adolescent, man and the writing style changes with the age of the character in the novel, this was the main theme of the novel, the language changed, so too did the grammar, it plotted the evolution of the artist

 James Joyce's Ulysses was nearly burnt before it was published, may of the leading 'writers' at the time thought he was destroying English, but what he was actually doing was 're inventing it',

Regurgitating English in vibrant colors, after it was forced down his throat, too bad the critics were color blind?

Joyce was reinventing the English language, little did the critics know in Ulysses he made up his own words too, or were thhey spelling mistakes?
 Shakespeare made up his own words too, so too did George W. Bush...i'll stop there

Not only this, but Joyce's Ulysses was used as a reference in lobbying for a reform on how legal cases are reported in English newspapers

With music, i guess you could compare slang to musical phrasing?
John Coltrane got heave criticism for destroying Jazz, but the critics didn't understand and he got a lot of criticism, little do critics know

Orsen Wells, Citizen Kane was nearly destroyed too, but that's another story...

Want to talk to a baby? No problem, just learn baby sign language, it's the new baby slang!

Put it in the air Snoop!

And there is Snoop Dogg, he has his own slang, if you want to communicate with Snoop, you might want to try this?

All words are slang, it just depends who you are talking to i guess?

Unity, zero and maybe the universe thrown in?

I was having a chat with a fellow called Tim, down by the pig run (its pig friendly around these here parts) about a month ago and we got to talking, as you might do, pig politics? Not on you Nelly!

Tim was saying how the vision for the organic farm is to be non ownership, to belong to one group a community as One It is sometimes referred to as unity  

  Unity

noun, plural u·ni·ties.

1. the state of being one; oneness.

2. a whole or totality as combining all its parts into one.

3. the state or fact of being united or combined into one, as of the parts of a whole; unification.

4. absence of diversity; unvaried or uniform character.

5. oneness of mind, feeling, etc., as among a number of persons; concord, harmony, or agreement.

And it got me to thinking of the number 1, there is a bit of history to the number 1. Then i was thinking of the universe, as you may or may know, is mostly empty, pretty much nothing. The universe is mostly empty

There is a history to the number 0, its the newest number of all the numbers and the most important, it originated in India, they made nothing a number!

 Language of the Matrix?

There are a lot of ones and zeros out there, too many sometimes, as you can see

Zero revolutionized navigation, for the first time longitude and latitude could be calculated, in fact the mathematicians in India calculated the circumference of the world, long before anyone else, it made the 'discovery' of America possible for instance

Remember this sly fox? Introducing Henry 

The real importance of 0 was in trading, commerce and the charging of interest and whats interesting is the Catholic church said charging interest was a sin, they called it 'Usury', so Roman numerals were A OK, remember Henry the VIII?

The catholic church wouldn't give him a divorce? The church of England is formed, Henry gets a divorce now that he's no longer Catholic and he says usury is ok, so this is where the big switch-aroo happened, out with the old, in with the new numbers, out go the Roman Numerals!!

0 and 1, made it possible to calculate compounding interest (the 8th wonder of the world), it was the beginning of capitalism, something the world is still suffering from!

'The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest"

The interesting thing about compounding interest is (after WWII, England sent an accountant over to the USA to arrange a loan, he never factored in the compounding interest, many say this is why England was involved in George Bush's little war in the middle east, since they will never pay that loan, England was pretty much hanging over a barrel.

But what's money when your dealing with your friends, if your friends help you, you help them, right?

Not the actual barrel England was hanging over, but i think you get the idea?

One and zero made infinitely big numbers and infinitely small numbers possible, it was sometimes the (.00000001 * 10000000000) calculations that made you in business or flat broke, these calculations were impossible with Roman Numerals or with an abacus  

It looks nice, but them little numbers just don't add up!

Why read this when you can watch it all here Part 1?

 
A spiritual tangent?

When you meditate, most people meditate on nothingness, or 'meditate without content', many believe

When you meditate on nothing, you can go home, to yourself

Interesting, your true being emerges, when you put aside your ego and mind, being of no mind in fact, reveals just who you really are.

Just how did the Buddhists know this? Because thats pretty much all there is, nothing with few illusions thrown in, maybe a sunrise here and there, a wave splashes, people having fun down on the beach?

Part 2


Everything is made of matter, everything is the matter, maybe this matters then? It's certainly been on my mind, the problem is presenting it and not sounding like a half wit?

Then i was thinking 'What percentage of the universe is not dark matter or ordinary matter?

Answer:

4.3% of the universe (~45 Billion Light year diameter) is Planets, Gases and Such. Dark Matter (WMP, or Weakly Interacting Mass Particle) is invisible. If my math is correct, (and i did it on a hitachi supercomputer) the universe should weigh around... 790 centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion centillion Tonnes, to the 947,304,691,120,161,109,425e+4964546546516548897984351th Power! I Guess About 74 followed by trllions of trillions of trillions of digits, pounds

I was thinking the number might look more like .00001? No joy there!

But lets continue...

Not that it's relevant, but i remember my Shaman in Bolivi Tulassi once said:

Things that are seen and unseen and in between there are windows... 

 A window is either open or closed, anything electrical is based on Boolean logic, 1 and 0
1 = 'TRUE'
0 = 'FALSE' 

1 = 'ON' or
0 ='OFF'

The switches are 'ON' or 'OFF', lights too, the switch was definately 'ON' in my brain...

And that pretty much what i was thinking looking at a pig...down on an Organic farm and i'm still here!

 Oh life?

Territory, War and what's Love got to do with it?

I finished reading yet another book, it was brown...

It was brown and more, it's a book written by Robert Ardrey called 'The territorial imperative' , if you get a chance to take a quick peek here, i suggest you do!!

His last chapter he reminds the reader, and so i will remind you that we (us humans) need to remember that we are animals...

Like i needed a reminder? Some times i feel part horse, part lobster...

Party Lobster

And our behavior, despite how ever you might think refined you are as you tweet your 'LOL' while you prance from shop to shop isn't far removed from the animal kingdom, yep you, your an animal!

Eminem says:

"We ain't nothing but mammals.." Well, some of us cannibals
Who cut other people open like cantaloupes [SLURP]
But if we can hump dead animals and antelopes
Then there's no reason that a man and another man can't elope
[*EWWW!*] But if you feel like I feel, I got the antidote...

Do you think Eminem read the Territorial imperative book too?

So according to Robert Ardrey, the motivation for territory is Psychological and it arises from the need for:

1. Security 
2. Stimulation
3. Identity

So, lets look at the opposites of these 3 psychological needs:

       Need                    Opposite

1. Identity       ->  Anonymity
2. Stimulation ->  Boredom
3. Security      ->  Anxiety  

It would appear that when a country is fighting a War and is presumably winning? If there are any winners, people feel Identity, Stimulation and Security

So too with Territory and who would believe Love? 

Womans day magazine listen up!!!

So War, Territory and Love are driven by the same psychological needs, Identity, Stimulation and Security?

War time presidents are immensely popular, Abraham Lincon knew this, so too did George W Bush (yep that guy)

Seen Charlie Wilsons war?


When people are in love, they are stimulated, they feel secure and the relationship forms their identity, no one will debate that one?

We live in areas that stimulate our needs, have you heard the term?

'Birds of a feather flock together'

It's true, too true, just look at the animal kingdom!


And i thought how interesting?
 What other things stimulate us Coffee, cigarettes, food, alcohol, sex

Outside stimulants?
Social media, internet, music, bright lights (ever notice when you go camping in the other real world you get tired after sunset?)

Maybe if we could integrate the 3 psychological quality's in a positive way in our daily life, would that not make us happier people?

Have you ever noticed that guys that are out with their girlfriends never get into fights, and guys with girls always get admitted into nightclubs? Bouncers know that those guys dont start fights (if you start a fight, that means no sex, for how long? Too long!!)

I know what your thinking, your thinking...

 'What does Osho think about this love war business?

Osho says that

"The society does not allow love because if a person is really in deep love he cannot be manipulated. You cannot send him to war; he will say: I am so happy! Where are you sending me? And why should I go and kill strangers who may be happy in their home? And we have no conflict, no clash of interests…"

I was thinking how these 3 psychological needs apply to me and this blog in fact?
Well, for starters:

• I have been blogging all these 'little ideas' for many years now, it's formed part of my identity
• Blogging helps me form the correct Perspective, i can see what i have done in the past few years, i am pretty secure in knowing i have tons for stories for rainy days
• I carry a notebook everywhere to capture my thoughts, it keeps me stimulated, it's like a job for me (one day i might get a real job, maybe?) 
  

  Behavior is not what we do, but why we do it

 Good to know you say and i'm pretty sure i blog to avoid Anonymity, Boredom and Anxiety

Only a boring person would say they are bored, i tell people if i was locked in a closet i would do zen breathing exercises, i might need to do some revision first before being placed in the any closet or else i might go crazy or worse feel bored?

Once your in a closet, who knows how long it might take to come out?

p.s.
If you do read the Territorial Imperative, i like the way he switches from animals to the rant about the people that flock together in Rome, Italy and their behavior and then back to wild animals
The Lonely planet for Rome, when i went  back in 1999 said that

'...people parked their cars like they spilled hot coffee on their laps'

 Classic and true