As sentience increases, so does ambiguity.
All is better when we sing together.
My 'eventually' has finity.
In growing old gracefully, humility and self-forgiveness are indispensible.
It is in the denial of the inevitable that the individual maintains and asserts at least a perception of control. Often, acceptance never comes but ends up being what the individual fights rather than the denial.
Being the creatures that we are, tending to rely on intuition when facts evade our understanding (since there is never a new discovery, only a truth not previously known), I believe in a strong genetic component [in one's being and 'fate'], modified or filtered by our environment.
Procrastinator's fear: If I did everything I said I would / needs to be done, I'd having nothing left to do!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Quotes about wisdom and whatnot
- Added 2024As long as you live, shine,Let nothing grieve you beyond measure.[Let every joy infuse your heart forever]For your life is short,and time will claim its toll....The Seikilos epitaphis the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The epitaph has been variously dated, but seems to be either from the 1st or the 2nd century AD.Added after Nov 2019
"An adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived." UKL in The Language of the Night 1979 printed in 1982, pg 34.
Added after 4 Feb 2017
Build Me a Boat by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
in "Citadelle"
If I communicate to my men the love of sailing on the sea, you will soon see them specializing according to their thousand particular qualities: that one will weave the canvas, another will fell the tree in the forest, another still will forge nails and there will be some who observe the stars to learn to steer, and yet all will be as one. To create the ship is not to weave the canvas, to forge the nails, to read the stars, but rather to convey the taste of the sea.
In other words: to motivate people, help them yearn for something in their imagination.
Et par contre, si je communique à mes hommes l’amour de la marche sur la mer, et que chacun d’eux soit ainsi en pente à cause d’un poids dans le cœur, alors tu les verras bientôt se diversifier selon leurs mille qualités particulières. Celui-là tissera des toiles, l’autre dans la forêt par l’éclair de sa hache couchera l’arbre. L’autre, encore, forgera des clous, et il en sera quelque part qui observeront les étoiles afin d’apprendre à gouverner. Et tous cependant ne seront qu’un. Créer le navire ce n’est point tisser les toiles, forger les clous, lire les astres, mais bien donner le goût de la mer qui est un, et à la lumière duquel il n’est plus rien qui soit contradictoire mais communauté dans l’amour.
Google translation:
And on the other hand, if I communicate to my men the love of walking on the sea, and each of them be so inclined because of a weight in the heart, then you will soon see them diversify according to their thousand spacial qualities. This one will weave canvases, the other in the forest by the lightning of his ax will put down the tree. The other, again, will forge nails and some will be some who will observe the stars in order to learn to govern. And yet all will be one. To create the ship is not to weave the canvases, to forge nails, to read the stars, but to give taste to the sea which is one, and in the light of which there is nothing that is contradictory but community in the love.
More direct translation:
'but good to give the taste of the sea who is one, and to the light of which there is not more nothing that is contradictory but community in the love'
Most translations try to give an idea of what is said when, if you look word for word, you are more able to hear the metaphors of that language; to translate more accurately would likely involve 5 paragraphs of the above sentence
hmm. A community of love. ... the sea, which is composed of all one element, water, compared to a community working together but each according to their interest and skills. Yes there is nothing more contradictory than that.
Added before:
Dianne Cooper "Compromise may work, politically, but it rarely works biologically."
The more you sweat in practice the less you bleed in battle.
Encouragement is oxygen to the soul.
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein
"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."
— Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide, #5)) |
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."
"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
― Aristotle, Metaphysics
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov
“Never laugh at live dragons.”
“I don't understand people who say they need more "Me Time." What other time is there? Do these people spend part of their day in someone else's body?”
He consulted a piece of paper which he found in the back pocket of his Judicial jeans.
They believe in `peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms'.”
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Quotes about Logic and whatnot
“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor — not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies “out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.”
“I am a master of logic and a powerfully convincing debater. In fact, against my better judgment, I can talk myself out of doing anything.”
― Jarod Kintz, $3.33
“When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.”
“At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you.”
“His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.”
“Logic is immaturity weaving its nets of gossamer wherewith it aims to catch the behemoth of knowledge. Logic is a crutch for the cripple, but a burden for the swift of foot and a greater burden still for the wise.”
“A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.
Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend.”
“Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.”
“The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.”
“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked”
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
“Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus:
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore-
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.
This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.”
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Intellectualise
Dictionary dot com definition of "intellectualise"
-verb (used with object)
1. To seek or consider the rational content or form of.
4. To ignore the emotional or psychological significance of (an action, feeling, dream, etc) by an excessively intellectual or abstract explanation
-verb (used without object)
6. To talk or write intellectually; reason; philosophize; "to intellectualise about world problems"
Seeking a reality check on my understanding of this word: So, intellectualising can help a rational discussion by attempting to strip away irrational emotional responses but doing it excessively is not a good thing, yes?
So, questions I have about this are:
Are all emotions irrational?
Is there such thing as a rational emotion?
Or are all emotions irrational by definition because they cannot contribute rationally to a discussion or decision?
-verb (used with object)
1. To seek or consider the rational content or form of.
4. To ignore the emotional or psychological significance of (an action, feeling, dream, etc) by an excessively intellectual or abstract explanation
-verb (used without object)
6. To talk or write intellectually; reason; philosophize; "to intellectualise about world problems"
Seeking a reality check on my understanding of this word: So, intellectualising can help a rational discussion by attempting to strip away irrational emotional responses but doing it excessively is not a good thing, yes?
So, questions I have about this are:
Are all emotions irrational?
Is there such thing as a rational emotion?
Or are all emotions irrational by definition because they cannot contribute rationally to a discussion or decision?
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
My Kimberley Walking Tour Work
 |
| Rack Card to advertize Walking Tour |
A local senior and the local Museum had gotten funding from the federal New Horizons For Seniors programme to research, write, and publish a walking tour of my city. Seems the group had been working on it for a few months already and was ready to get down to writing the text. There they hit the "Word" wall - how to format text and scanned photos, and work on it at home AND on the Museum computer, which didn't even have MS Word! They were making a valiant effort learning all the software for scanning, photo editing, and word processing - but were beginning to realize the task of digital publishing combined with researching and checking facts was a tad bit bigger than they'd anticipated. Good thing I stepped in.
We tried Open Office on the Museum computer but the logistics and software really didn't work very well for our purposes so we just used the museum computer to view our Word files and scan photos. Fortunately, they had an excellent scanner and accompanying software, a Kodak, and the photos were all 300 px resolution - commercial printing quality.
Old Newspapers
Going through old newspapers is a very time-consuming process. Our small museum doesn't have scanned versions of their documents. Some newspapers are on micro fiche in Victoria. (Since finishing this project, Google search has done away with their "Timeline" search feature and now, as far as I can tell, old newspapers such as the Calgary Herald, are only available through paid search websites.) So, it is back to actual newspapers, yellowed, dried out and crumbling, bound in large, thickly covered books which must be handled carefully and with cotton gloves.
Wouldn't it be great if there were such a thing as a mobile scanning truck that could go out to all these smaller museums and scan their newspapers. (OR get digital copies of any micro fiches.) You'd need a scanner that worked from above - the big book of newspapers would be lying flat, open and the scanner would move over it. Then just flip the page (carefully) and do the next pass. All that history digitally searchable would be fantastic!
You know, the most frustrating thing about the old newspapers is that they never included the street addresses in their ads. We were trying to figure out exactly where various businesses were in the city centre and get the relative positions of the buildings in the photos we had, but - no addresses back in 1925! Even now, most of the buildings don't have their street number on the building.
With newspapers being chronological, I set up a database containing each item of interest (businesses, in this case) so that when we came across a reference, we could just write in the info on printed pages for each item (with a photo at the top) rather than on scraps of paper, or having to drag out several big books of newspapers looking for one item. But, it didn't work for multiple researchers for whatever reasons.
One troublesome street
Spokane Street, between Wallinger Ave and Deer Park Ave proved problematic. The buildings seemed to shift over the years - two buildings were combined, or two burned down to be replaced by a single building, businesses moved back and forth across the street, etc.
 |
| In the top photo, the buildings on the far left were built later or not shown in the bottom photo. That means this is NOT the same building as the one on the left in the bottom photo. |
We used this photo for the cover of the walking tour book as shown in the top photo.
Top right photo: To advertize the book, we made up a "Rack Card" to send out to various Visitor Centres. For this, I took a photo I had of my daughter taken at Fort Steele a few years ago, and blended it in to a modern photo of Kimberley's Platzl which some desat and outlining on the left. It looks like you are stepping back in time. Looks good! Don't you think?!
Anyway, after many edits and rewrites, and discussions of what to include, the book was printed in October 2011 and is now available for purchase for $6 at the Kimberley Heritage Museum or Kimberley Chamber of Commerce Visitor's Info Centre.
It features three little walking tours of our city and tells about the businesses, the community facilities, and some of the pioneers and includes maps - also done by me.
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| Map of Kimberley "Townsite" |
Saturday, February 11, 2012
MBP Fonds
Here's a screen shot of what I am working on - scanning and archiving family photos - don't ask me why, because I don't really know - because it is there, I guess.
Anyway, I got a database, I am linking the photos to it and posting some on my flickr. Someone may be able to tell me who the unknown people are. If you do, please feel free to post in comments on the flickr page.
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