Talk about anything here as long as it is not against the rules. Post count not affected.
Apr 8th, 2019, 6:49 pm
The Little Boy and the Old Man

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
“I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
“But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
“I know what you mean," said the little old man. ”

― Shel Silverstein
Apr 8th, 2019, 6:49 pm
Apr 22nd, 2019, 10:16 am
I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
when you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
you’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my devotion

I Wanna Be Yours - John Cooper Clarke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lupMcHWcKw
Apr 22nd, 2019, 10:16 am
Apr 23rd, 2019, 5:02 am
Bruce Lee "I fear no the man that has practised a 100 kicks. I fear the man who has practise 1 kick a 1000 times!"
Apr 23rd, 2019, 5:02 am
May 4th, 2019, 12:42 pm
Boundary Lines by Melissa F. Olson:
“Okay, then.” I took a deep breath. “Look, I need your help to prevent a war.”
I told her all of it, beginning with what I understood of the werewolf war. That explanation alone filled up all the time in between our brief stops at a hardware store and a butcher, plus a run out to my cabin. Sashi waited in the car while I let out the dogs, grabbed my homemade ghillie suit, and changed my clothes—I could only fight evil so long without a bra.

Boundary Born by Melissa F. Olson:
So Quinn and I took a shower together—but only because I needed him to help me stay upright. I kept both hands on the shower stall while he scrubbed at the bloodstains on my skin and washed my hair. It probably would have been tender and romantic if I didn’t kind of feel like throwing up. Every few minutes I started to list to one side and he had to right me.
At least the hot water was waking me up a little. “This isn’t how I pictured our first shower together,” Quinn remarked.
“I never planned to have a shower together at all.”
“No?”
“No. Sex in the shower is like buying a convertible or getting a perm. It seems all fun and sexy in theory, but what actually happens is discomfort and weird hair.”
May 4th, 2019, 12:42 pm
May 25th, 2019, 3:37 pm
"Are Women the Stronger Sex" by Josette Sona:

"If a guy ever calls me a b*tch, I calmly reply: "Well, I am female and I like dogs."  (I say this even if I don't like dogs but only like cats, for example.  I refuse to give him the satisfaction that he succeeded in insulting me!) "Dogs are loyal, hard-working, faithful, man's-best-friend, so thank you for the compliment."  Or if I'm pressed for time, I just call out: "Bow!  Wow!" with a smile (showing my pearly whites - dogs have teeth, right?) and a salute - if I'm feeling generous that day."
May 25th, 2019, 3:37 pm
Jun 7th, 2019, 1:24 am
“America is a wonderful place,” Graham said, “but one mistake I don’t make, nor should you, if you’re thoughtful, and I know you are—more thoughtful than most—is to mistake patriotism for love of country. Chest-thumping patriotism is all the fashion on Capitol Hill. It’s a sloppy mix of fear and ignorance worn self-righteously. Patriots embrace freedom and democracy like they are God-given and yet here and in Guatemala—places I’ve got experience of—those patriots prop up men like Castillo Armas, men like Batista. These eloquent defenders of democracy embrace dictators.”

Excerpt from "The Good Assassin" by Paul Vidich
Jun 7th, 2019, 1:24 am

D53
Jun 9th, 2019, 8:22 pm
‘So what did the knights actually do?’
‘Good question,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve not had much to do with them: Knights of Christ. Religious warriors.’
‘Oh god,’ I said and rolled my eyes. ‘Worst kind.’
Sam continued to look at the stone soldier. ‘Really? Why?’
‘They have faith. Faith is all about blindness. It’s illogical. It demands that you overlook its flaws just so you can have it. Then when you have it, you don’t let anyone budge you. However convincing their argument might be. However sympathetic you might be to them.’

(Essex Witch Museum Series) Strange Tombs by Syd Moore
Jun 9th, 2019, 8:22 pm
Jun 9th, 2019, 8:41 pm
I hesitate to say I enjoyed your quote re name calling a woman "bitch" Albamobilism but it did make me think. Personally, I dislike the manner in which male and female author's use the word "pussy" to describe a character thought to be hesitant or weak. Women are not only capable of enjoying rambunctious sex but push babies out through the very passage associated with weakness. I couldn't pass something as tiny as a lentil without doubling over in pain. Similarly, the notion that women's emotions are considered hormonaly biased? What's testosterone for goodness sake? If you compared the number of menstruating or menopausal women guilty of verbal or physical acts of violence on a Saturday night with the number of men committing the same what would we find? Perhaps we should tell people not to listen to Nigel Farrage or Donald Trump on the basis that they're just being 'testerical'?

I also found your quote on patriotism thought provoking bigd53. There's a lot of fear and ignorance being used to drive politics today, all over the world and it's scary.
Jun 9th, 2019, 8:41 pm
Jun 10th, 2019, 11:11 am
‘It all depends on your perspective really. Say “barbarians” are attacking a village and stealing their sheep, because their own community has got no food, no live stock. Knights come to the aid of the village and slay the barbarians, the other settlement’s warriors. Thus they sentence the defeated community to slow and painful death by starvation. Who’s the hero? The defending knight or the barbarian that tried to save their people?’
I nodded, though he couldn’t see, and recited one of my grandfather’s sayings. ‘Perspective is a shifting sand, right?’

(Essex Witch Museum Series) Strange Tombs by Syd Moore
Jun 10th, 2019, 11:11 am
Jun 10th, 2019, 1:01 pm
The thing with Sam saying something like that, meant it was different to anyone else saying something like that.
When I had first met him, obviously in the context of the Witch Museum, I had assumed that he was a bit of a nut. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? What with the job and where he lived. You know, most normal people didn’t live in a ramshackle old building with the look of a skull and spend their lives researching witches in Essex. So I reckon I could have been forgiven for assuming that he was one of those crazy believers, off with the fairies so to speak. It didn’t take me long, however, to realise the man was a sceptic. A sceptic who hoped there was more to life, more to the universe and all that. But just hoped. I didn’t know why he hoped but I knew he did. However, he was a rationalist. In fact he had told me quite early on that he was something called an empiricist too. This meant he drew conclusions on the basis of physical evidence, observation and experimentation. Which basically means – it’s got to be seen/heard/felt then recorded and analysed and agreed upon. Yeah – empiricism, right? So it works for things like black holes and gravity, but ghosts? Anyway, it’s a good word to use if ever someone thinks you’re thick. Being a blondish blingish chick from Essex with more than a bit of natural bounce in the chest area and a nice rounded accent too, that kind of attitude came at me from snooty people all over the place. Believe it or not there are people who make judgements based on their first few seconds of meeting you. I know. As if I would do anything like that. But a good way to punch them on that nose, down which they are looking, is to trot out a few choice words from your vocabulary pocket. Empiricist is one of them. Nuance works on occasion. Pareidolia is not bad either. Sometimes it shocks them so much their mouths drop open and if you happen to have a clutch of peanuts in your hand a lot of fun can be had by trying to throw one in. You have to get your aim right though.

(Essex Witch Museum Series) Strange Tombs by Syd Moore
Jun 10th, 2019, 1:01 pm
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:17 pm
'Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.'

Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.91, Univ. Press of Mississippi
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:17 pm
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:45 pm
I found a series of quotes on-line that I found thought provoking. If anyone's interested, you can find them on 'Quotes - Learning: http://www.managersforum.com/quotes/QuoteDetail.asp?Type=LEARNING

In particular, I liked Benjamin Disraeli's quote: 'To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.' That's probably because I like to claim that my general equanimity in the face of adversity stems from the deep, underlying pool of natural ignorance I reside upon. People often give me funny looks when I say that (apart from people who actually know me) because, as Socrates points out: 'There is only one good, knowledge; and one evil, ignorance' and aren't ignorant people stupid people by definition? James Thorpe, for instance claims that: 'Ignorant people are sure of the causes of everything' and, in one sense, he's right in but the problem with the "man in the pub" (normally equated with knowing everything) is not having opinions, it's believing that those opinions are the only ones that matter. Faced with an infinite universe there is very little that we can be sure we know so, ignorance (or a lack of knowledge) isn't a bad thing in itself. It's the blunt refusal to accept that we know very little for sure and there's more to life than our own narrow viewpoints and perceptions that's the problem. I see nothing wrong with a pig who believes that wallowing in mud is one of the greatest joys in life. A pig that scoffs at, or ridicules anyone who doesn't want to spend their lives wallowing in the same mud they do, that's bad. A pig that adversely influences, punishes or limits the lives of of others who don't wish to wallow in the same much as they do - that's downright dangerous.

This is a step away from merely quoting people and allowing others to draw their own conclusions but the interesting thing about learning, to my mind, is the different places to which the same starting point can take us. This is where my mind went and typing it all out like this helped me think it through. I may not be saying anything that really matters but I'm thinking something that I didn't think twenty minutes ago and that's got to be a good thing? Right?

SFP
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:45 pm
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:52 pm
Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.

Donald Rumsfeld extending on earlier comments in a press conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium (6 June 2002), taken from Wikiquote.
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:52 pm
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:55 pm
'What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.'

Isaac Newton
Jun 13th, 2019, 4:55 pm
Jun 15th, 2019, 7:07 am
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Jun 15th, 2019, 7:07 am

★ Please click the THANK YOU button.
★ Please PM if all links are dead.

Image