Tags
Einstein, Italy, Nissan, Noble Prize, Prof.Schmidt, Scheyville
We were so comfortable in the knowledge that the universe was imploding. We always knew things would end up to nothing much, just a shrivelled up bit of a rotten core, a tangled mess of imploded food processors and phone chargers. Now, this fact has been un-facted by the latest discovery. Professor Schmidt, our proud Nobel Prize winner reckons we are expanding with increasing speed and the Universe will finally end up a dark, empty and cold place. We are all forever expanding, getting bigger. Blind Freddy could tell you that. Just walk around shopping malls and look at the food-court. Our Nobel Prize winning cosmologist has proven scientifically that instead of magnetic fields or gravity pulling things inwards and slowing things down, the reverse is happening and it is all getting further and further apart.
We were also happy with Einstein’s fact of his speed of light. It was the ultimate of speed, an ultimate fact. Nothing could go faster. If something were travelling faster than ‘c’ (speed of light) relative to a standing reference, we would go back in time, meaning an effect would be observed before a cause. That would be silly. It would mean I would end up with the horror of the 1956 Nissan Hut in Scheyville all over again. It would be paradoxical like an antitelephone. Still, the speed of light was fact. Irrefutable and only flat-earthers would deny the truth of this.
But….No wrong, in Italy, the country that gave the world Galileo, they made something go faster than light, deep inside some mountain range. Another fact dismantled. I think being disappointed in facts is so much worse than in truths.
So, is the truth a worthier cause to follow than facts? The truth is how things are now, not tomorrow or yesterday but now. For instance; it is raining outside and the road is getting wet. This is a truth for now. However, and this is important, if the rain stops and the sun start to appear, chances are the road will dry up. Another truth, but the outcome is the total opposite of the previous one. Isn’t? Still, both hold true and that has to be nice and reassuringly optimistic for the future.
Facts seem to be unreliable and somewhat sticky, changing all the time, just like truths but unlike truths, facts were always supposed to be unmoving, cemented in situ. I wouldn’t trust them anymore. A truth, on the other hand is always there, even though for just that moment. It is so much more comforting, a bit like bed socks. They warm your feet but only if you wear them. If you keep them in the sock drawer, they are still bed socks but their truth of ‘warming feet’ has gone. One expects and (most of us would) accept those changes as normal. No one would object to the truth of bed socks not warming feet if they are not on the feet.
There are truths so true, they are universal truths. The truth of the lentil for instance and its application towards frugality and living simple humble lives is such a universal truth that it warms the heart. Its truthfulness stands on its own and it would be a brave man who would say that a lentil is not true because it is really an apple or a bicycle.
The same for a good drop of Semillon Blanc. The truth of the capsicum lingering on or the lemon tang hanging near the middle palate together with its ambition or its sheer cheekiness, are truths that are unassailable. But again, again this awful but …If letting stand too long in the hot sun or in its glass without drinking, the wine then become less truthful, even dishonestly intemperate. Then the truth (of a beautiful wine) has become spoiled and awful and warped. I would say that this truth then changes in another truth, the truth of spoiled wine. A bitter truth to swallow, but a truth just the same. In truths you can hardly ever go wrong. It just changes all the time and travels with you as you go along.
Truths are deeply personal and always your best friends.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
So I gather none here watched a bit of Bathurst or Rugby and only Helvi and I saw Ladies No.1 Detective etc.
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Viv, we watched the Ladies No 1 DA, it’s a very nice show, I believe the same people who make the Doc Martin series are responsible for this one as well, Minghella something…
I read one of the books and if anything the show better than the book.
Last Sunday I watched Geraldine Doogue interview the author Alex Mc Call, a charming man, there will another one by Jennifer from the book show on Tuesday..
We also saw the Tsiolkas intervew.
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Some homework for you Helvi.
Look up Minghella & Imagine me eating his family’s ice cream 🙂
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I kenw there were two brothers from Italian background but could not remember who did the English Patient and who was behind Doc Martin; good shows all of them and very creative brothers. So it was Anthony who passed away….
Tthe ice-cream must be good and well, coming from your home island and made by Italians.
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Full marks! Go to the top of the class 🙂
…And have an ice-cream!
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Very nice Ice Cream, Sir, so honoured to know you, Isle of Wighters
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I watched the Rugby well the last 55 minutes as well as the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency. Very good game I thought, don’t know how Australia won it though.
And well done Gerard, another solid 150.
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Algy, this story is all about facts; are you sure you did not watch Rugby for, say 49 minutes 🙂
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I watched all of the Ladies Helvi, the rugby well maybe 56 minutes no that I think about it.
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Yes I watch the Lady Detective TV series and it is lovely but I enjoyed their opening movie more though. Perhaps 45min isn’t enough for me to get into the mood of it all properly.
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atovoice, I watched a James Cagney movie. Partly anyways.
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Damn! Forgot to change the name back! Now I see why atomou was irritated. I’ll fix it up.
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Thanks VL for alerting us to this ,I’ll be even more vigilant in future both here and on the Drum.
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Neil: It was getting really hot. Then I thought oh no, I should have put out that sociology file that was burning on Rick’s bed.
Vyvyan: Yeah, I did that. Trying to make Rick think I was hiding in his bedroom.
Neil: What? You set fire to Rick’s bedroom? I think that’s a really selfish thing to do Vyvyan. I was hiding in there – you could have given me away!
From: Flood
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Sorry Voice, but there is no truth in your utterings here at all…
I warned you, be beware of Gerard’s traps. You did not listen to me, you took his silliness
seriously….
Maybe it’s a wise thing not to go into the attack mode automatically, take a deep breath and count to ten before taking him (and me) in your sights again….
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Can’t you just argue….without, err….err arguing.
I’m over in the corner working. And watching my email out of the corner of my eye.
Just take 20mg of Valium 🙂
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No!
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Not quite sure what your problem is Helvi, but good luck with it.
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Or 30.
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Hi Vee. 🙂
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Do you have a prescription? You could take half a tablet and Helvi could split one with gerard 😉
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Aaargh. It’s tomorrow. Bonne nuit.
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According to the I Ching, of course, “Everything changes!” Even those things we laughingly refer to as ‘laws of the universe’ or even, so it would seem, the laws of physics…
Therefore, truth, like time, is relative… (lunch-time, of course, doubly so!)
And, of course, where there’s a will there’s a relative!
(That’s about as profound as I get on Sundays!)
Good article Gerard!
😉
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The “I ching?” The “I Ching?”
What about Heraclitus’ Πάντα ῥεῖ? (Everything flows, changes) and ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ. (the waters beneath the feet of the man who steps into a river change constantly) and τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν” Everything moves. Nothing stands still or “δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης” You can’t step into the same river twice?
I ching! Don’t believe anything about the I ching. Might have never even happened!
Then again, Heraclitus might also never happened…
There’s just too much profanity in this blog… or do I mean profundity?
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Since the eastern end of the Silk Road was in Petra, Ato, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Greek philosophers are familiar with Taoist concepts… But the I Ching is at least 2,700 years old ato, and when Confucius wrote its ‘Ten Wings’ all that time ago, all he was doing was recording a philosophy which goes back to China’s very earliest beginnings… long before it was even ‘China’! We have (or rather had!) written records of Taoist oracles which go back 5,000 years! (Sadly on ‘dragon bones’, which were used in traditional Chinese medicine as an aphrodisiac, so most of the most ancient of Chinese history is sadly lost to us… You’d think a country as famed for its ancient wisdom as China would have a better sense of priorities, wouldn’t you!)
And as this ‘Everything Changes’ is the most fundamental principle of Taoist philosophy, I think it takes precedence… even over the Pythagoreans (whom, according to the Baha’is derived their philosophy from Zoroaster, as did the Taoists remember…) However, I must add that Heraclitus’ statement that ‘Everything flows’ is a beautiful description of how Yin and Yang move and mix until each turns into its opposite, in the process of enantiodromaeia which is depicted in the famous T’ai Chi symbol, known as the ‘Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate’… also more commonly known as the ‘Yin-Yang’ symbol…
The effect of Chinese philosophy on Greek thought would make an interesting essay, I think…
🙂
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Dammit! Got me ‘east’ and ‘west’ muxed ip din’t I? I meant, of course, ‘Since the WESTERN end of the Silk Road…’ etc…)
😉
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I was being ironic, asty!
And outrageously chauvinistic!
And thank you for your patience and your explanations.
One little quibble that I might raise, though, is the, arguably lack of reliability of the transmission of the I Ching texts. I mean thoughts were passed down in “dragon bones” for that couple of millenia and it wasn’t until, when? the current era, after Christ, that those thoughts were collated and a proper study was afforded them. Same thing happened with Homer’s poems. They were floating about in the breeze for, perhaps a millenium before Peisistratus (6th c BC) got some bards together and told them to join all these poems into the two current books.
In any case, that’s a small quibble I might raise but I won’t because in the end it is of no consequence.
It is a striking thing though to see the greek word “enantiodromaeia” (opposing paths -why the “ae”?) in a sentence which includes words like Ying and Yang and T’ai Chi!
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1,000 years before Peisistratos, Ato? 1,000 years? Most historians date the Trojan War that Homer speak of as around 800bce, don’t they?
But as you say, in the end it is a small point, especially when you consider the concept I described (‘enantiodromaeia’… the ‘ae’ btw is there just ’cause that’s how I remember it being spelt in Dianna Ffarrington Hook’s book, “The I Ching and Mankind”) and it’s similarity to Heraclitus… You might also like to consider the similarity between the ‘Yin-Yang’ school and the Pythagorean opposition of ‘Eros’ and ‘Eris’… both of which describe the interplay between what their respective proponents consider to be the two most fundamental forces (or perhaps ‘qualities’ is a better term…) of the universe, in Greek described as the ‘Cosmos’ and in Chinese as the ‘Tao’… The consistency of the parallels between these two pairs of complementary opposites is far to striking to be mere coincidence, given the evidence for the possibility (indeed, probability!) of ‘cultural transmission’ between China and Ancient Greece.
Besides, the philosophy of Taoism itself is not what was recorded in the ‘dragon bones’; they contained merely the records of oracular enquiries… the contents would therefore be of more interest to historians than to philosophers; they were rather like the Chinese equivalent of the records of the prophecies of the Delphic Oracle… What I was referring to as ‘Taoism’ is evidenced by the ritual of oracular enquiry itself… another apparent point of contact. There are also many Taoist themes which occur in the belief systems of many African tribes (and, more speculatively, I might even tentatively suggest, in the traditions of Native American societies… transmission in this case being via the Behring Straits ‘land-bridge’ along with the originally Asian genetic stock of the American ‘Indians’) Is it really so outrageous to think that along with silk, ideas were imported from the east to the west (or, given the Baha’i belief regarding Zoroaster as the source of both traditions, that ideas were transmitted from Persia in both directions…)?
I’ve had these ideas for some time now; if I thought I could ever get a grant to study this hypothesis, I think it would make an interesting thesis… but without the resources of a university with a good classics/anthropology/archaeology department, it would be too difficult to do it justice, I think, so I’ll have to admit that these thoughts are all speculative to some degree… And yet… there is some linguistic evidence too: the Chinese character for ‘shaman’ is exactly the same symbol as the one the Zoroastrians use to identify themselves, consisting of a cross with ‘T-bars’ at the end of each line…
🙂
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Asty, the Trojan war is a mythological war. Speculation of it being a historical event is just that. Schliemann had excavated there and did find several cities, the one above the other but could not attach to this site and definitive connections to some war against the Greeks (or Achaeans as they were then called)
In any case, if it were a historical event, the most credible date would be somewhere around the 12c BC. Homer lived (if indeed he did live and was indeed the author of the stories that made up the war and of the Odyssey) around the 9th c BC, or at least that’s what Herodotus suggests (that Homer preceded him by around four hundred years).
But, even with the existence of this bard we are in the thoughts and speculations of a number of historians who lived much much later than Homer.
As to the “ae” I’ve no idea why Dianna Ffarrington Hook would add this dyphthong, since it doesn’t exist in the Greek. Perhaps the grammatical/syntactical context she put the word in demanded it, though I can’t imagine what that context could be. Still, no big deal.
I wish you all the very best of luck with your endeavours to put pragma to you ideas. Ideas need to be explored and reviewed constantly and I have great respect for those devoted to this pursuit.
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It has also been suggested, Ato, that Homer (assuming he WAS an historical character… and although I’m aware of the possibility he may not have been, I really see no reason to assume that this is the case) was writing about a war he had actually witnessed… perhaps even taken part in. But this is in any case largely irrelevant to my primary hypothesis, which has more to do with the cultural transmission of ideas along the Silk Road and this relates more to the Pythagoreans than to Homer… Even so… the Silk Road is also very ancient; as is the philosopy which underlies the I Ching (ie. Taoism)… much, much older than the 12th century bce… much older, indeed, than even the 5,000 y.o. oracle or ‘dragon’ bones…
I must say I personally find the Zoroastrian source explanation quite compelling; yet both Taoism and the Pythagoreans were not simply copies of Zoroastrian thought, but independent developments of it… though their ‘independence’ was also ‘relative’ because there was undoubtedly a ‘feedback loop’ via the Silk Road… NB: The Yin-Yang School was a later development more or less contemporary with Confucius, which has a remarkably similar date to the emergence of the Pythagoreans with their notion of the ‘Eris/Eros’ opposition…
I’m also bearing in mind that ‘nothing comes from nothing’, as well as the manner in which Claude Levi-Strauss uses this in his analysis of the workings of ‘the Savage Mind’ (Le Mente Sauvage) in his book of the same title, in his construction of his ‘bricolage’ analogy and how it relates to hermeneutics…
Finally, most myths have some kind of truth in them… and often they are based on some kind of historical event or other… so just ’cause a story is ‘mythological’ doesn’t mean to say that it ‘didn’t happen’; the ‘mythology’ part often merely refers to particular (exegetical) interpretations of possibly historical events… again we are talking about ontologies here… Personally, I’m convinced that the Trojan War was an historical war… even though, as I’ve already said, that is really quite irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
🙂
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PS: As to the dipthong… it is possible that I’ve misremembered its spelling… Or maybe DFH misspelt it… or perhaps it’s just an effect of ‘anglicising’ the Greek… I doubt it has much real significance, since you recognised the Greek word immediately anyway…
And please remember that I’m not talking about an ‘identity’ between Taoism and Pythagoreanism… merely some very strong similarities at the level of their most fundamental themes…
Interestingly, Bruce Lee also used the ‘no man can step into the same river twice’ theme in his very obviously Taoist-inspired movie ‘Circle of Iron’ in which he expounds his own personal philosophy… though whether Bruce got this from the Greeks or the Chinese is open to question.
🙂
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asty, I have little more than a faint whiff of the scents of the eastern civilizations, religions and philosophies. Barely even that, so I certainly defer most alacritously to your knowledge of these subjects, as one who’s spent serious time studying matters anthropological. What I’m trying to piece together, though, and I’m sure you can help me in this, is the time when peoples coalesced into societies organised enough to form cultural infra structures strong enough and coherent and cohesive enough to be cross fertilised all over the planet through trade routes. I mean, once I go beyond, say 1500 BCE, I find it difficult to imagine anything that looks remotely like, say Egypt or Crete, though I’m aware that the religions there had their seeds sown back as far as probably 3000 BCE. But those seeds would have been scattered and barely formed and very susceptible to evolution and mutation. How would the eastern religions have managed to survive so virginal until the days of Pythagoras. I mean what do we actually mean when we speak of Tao and I ching and Zoroastian thought when we speak of it at its roots, compared to when it flowered around 6th-5th c BCE?
But this is an enormous subject and I best not bug you too much with it.
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Ato, it certainly is a huge topic and evidence is sadly rather scanty… and although I would love to investigate these matters further, the chance would be a fine thing!
But please don’t think it ‘bugs’ me to discuss them with you… I enjoy it very much. However, I think perhaps it may bug Gerard that we’ve strayed so far from the original topic of his blog… so apologies to him for that if we have!
🙂
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Thank you Asty,
Kindness hasn’t all gone.
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Goodness me! There’s young Jules, off working his arse off. And you lot are fucking around. Sheesh.
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They couldn’t give a shit….. apparently.
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Okee dokee, let’s stick to facts,
Truths are not reliable especially not when concocted by Gerard. He just makes things up on the run home from Aldi with Milo chasing imaginary magpies trying to attack his master.
What about this one, another hopelessly slanted inaccurate reportage, no research, not a shred of truth or fact? Still read all about it folks, this one has been going on for over 200 years.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-09/amnesty-slams-indigenous-conditions/3403030
Another furphy, another attack from a disgruntled reffo, throwing wool over our eyes?
What do you make of this little item Voice? Go on. Here is something a bit more serious. You’ll probably answer with something about the dreadful plight of the aborigines of Scandinavia, something dug up from your ammonition store of replies to attacks on Australia.
Quote: Amnesty International says the Federal Government needs to be internationally shamed into addressing poverty among Indigenous Australians.
Secretary-general Salil Shetty yesterday toured remote towns in the Northern Territory, including Utopian communities north-east of Alice Springs.
He described the plight of locals as “devastating”, saying people there are living in inhumane conditions that are almost third-world.
“I’ve been to many places in bad shape in Africa, Asia and Latin America but what makes it stark here is when you remind yourself you’re actually in one of the richest countries in the world,” he said. Unquote.
I clearly state in my bio, I enjoy putting words in a certain order, I quote “now blogger and writer of tens of thousands of very wise and/or whimsical but hopefully amusing words”.
This week-end I did my best to put up some nonsense with just a slight hint of something a bit more serious with the hope it might give someone a smile, a flicker of relief from the maelstrom of life that sometimes can really suck you down. It does that for me just doing a bit of writing.
For those that resent the amusement, just read the critique from Amnesty International. Don’t feel left out.
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You can’t be serious, can you? You’ve linked to some criticism of Australia? How tiresome.
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Of course, Voice… no-one should ever criticise Gord’s own country…
😉
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Why not, for Gord’s sake? Criticism can be a useful contribution to positive change.
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That’s the first coming from you,Voice, you are critical of everything and everyone, but God help you if you dare to offer constructive criticism of Australia…
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What constructive criticism of Australia are you referring to, Helvi? Good luck with trying to set up yourself and gerard as criticism free zones.
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I was being ironic, Voice…
😉
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T2, can I just point something out: One is not supposed to state the obvious:
” One doesn’t miss the “miss” the obvious. Its just part of the expected referential field, unremarkable, ordinary. It would have been more remarkable if no-one had made that connection.”
So There 🙂
Thank Gorrd, I can take succour from Sloan’s morning accolades, for the uneducated;like me .
Did I tell you about the time I bought a Peugeot convertable (sports) car off Richard’s 1ST wife. A little yellow, ‘Noddy’ car. We always called it that. I left it in a garage in the New King’s Rd, Fulham. It needed some rust and paint fixed. I wonder what ever happened to it. I’ve got a photo somewhere.
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If it is my irony that you’re referring to as ‘the obvious’ in this instance, Vee Ell, then I might reply that, from looking at her response to it, it was evidently not obvious enough for Voice… hence the need for my stating it…
Oh, and no, I don’t believe you did tell me about that peugeot… What about it?
🙂
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There is no truth, nor facts. Continuing existence, reality if you like, is only the result of the collapse of the quantum wave function.
But I did like the conflating of the expanding universe with our growing girth as a nation. Just as in the observable universe, the distance between galaxies is growing as is the distance between the holes we use to cinch our belts.
Of course the other outside contender for an explanation is that all the places or more correctly, “neighbourhoods”, in the the universe are not entirely self similar, as far as the laws of physics are concerned. Certain researchers are convinced that at the quantum level C is not constant, and a couple of them pushed a neutrino faster than light just the other day.
But it’s always nice in Molong.
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Give me an M; give me an O; give me a long, long…
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Talking about M, where is Big M? I miss him, doesn’t he like us anymore 🙂
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Yeah, where’s Big?
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How true.
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Have we lost the plot?
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There’s a plot?
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No, there isn’t, but by all means feel free to plot 🙂
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God’s little acre is the only plot any of us will finally understand. The oblivion of forever.
“But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?”
James Thurber
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I prefer to go with Dylan Thomas’ raging for now Warrigal.
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Yes, but what happens after the dying of the light? I think I’d rage too, but ultimately, in the end as it were, there’s still the adventure of the bright light at the end of the tunnel. That final blast of photons that so many report after their near death experience.
Which begs another question.
Can photons die? Or do they just relax to a lower state of energy, spinning down, the unbearable lightness of their being having become too much like tedium, or may be a final Te Deum.
Me, I’ve always been a bit of a Peter Pan, fascinated to know what happens next.
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I’m quite sure you will ‘rage against the dying of the light’ Voice… and I must say I plan to do the same! And when I’m in that final, fatal dark; when they put the lid on my wooden overcoat, they’d better use screws, ’cause nails won’t hold me!
😉
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Oh, yes! Definitely!
There’s a tomato plot, a cabbage plot, a lettuce plot, a cucumber plot, a zucchini plot, a bean plot, a herbs plot, a plot to plot a potting plot and a plotfree plot! Oh, yesssssireeebob, there’s a plot o’righty! Right next to my water tanks!
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The plot has returned. What did coffee and Aldi have to do with it? Well done piggies.
Must say I am addicted to truth, honesty and facts.
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Viv, it’s good to have all kinds, or is it all sorts…
I just noticed that there is a movie on SBS tonight, called ‘Lola’. It’s about a Spanish flamenco dancer and singer….
Sounds interesting but Grand Designs and The no 1 Ladies DA might just be enough for me.
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Oh, Lola… didn’t she used to dance at the Copacabana, Helvi… she’s the one with feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there…
😉
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That’s our Lola, asty 🙂
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I mentioned “a” Lola, the other night: she was born in Ireland; visited Australia actually.
Married a King or a Duke. She was a cortisan. Very beautiful. Died in The States
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Truth and Wisdom a la French:
L’histoire est entierement vraie, puisque je l’ai imaginee d’un bout a l’autre. Boris Vian
( The story in entirely true, since I imagined it from start to finish.)
Dans le domaine des sentiments, le reel ne se distingue pas de l’imaginaire. Andre Gide
(In the real of the sentiments, the real is no different from the imaginary.)
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I nearly confused you with Hung again H, but realised my mistake when I noticed that your translations to English bore none of the scars of the online translator. I did really enjoy Hung’s excursion into the Franglaise the other day.
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Easily done, WM, as Hung and I look alike, and the names are rather similar too, and we do not like wasting our words…
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Yes the only difference between me and you Helvi is that you are beautiful and I am not. 🙂
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Ah yes, word wastage….
A perennial problem round here. A problem I regularly fall into.
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Actually Google translate does a better job on the Gide.
Warrigal, compared to you the rest of us are babbling. Of course, not compared to you we are STILL babbling.
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Perhaps if you inserted your Babelfish you might discover that I’m babbling too.
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Wrong again ,Voice, no Google translations needed here, but of course when it comes to the finer points of English/Australian, Warrigal is my and Gerard’s hero, whether he writes creatively or stays with facts …
Keep plotting and babbling, dear 🙂
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Helvi, it’s no skin off my nose if you don’t want to let the facts get in the way of your illusions about your ability to translate French into English.
Warrigal, I certainly hope so. I’m sure an occasional babble does us all good. But garrulous isn’t the word that springs to mind to describe your comments.
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Ah, but which would spring to mind? That’s the question.
For the moment I’m throwing in “evasive” just to be on the safe side. But let me tell both you young ladies; if I have to come in there…….
There’ll be friction and photons aplenty. Now play nice. Dinner’s almost ready.
(Did you like that bit about friction and photons? Get it, “sparks will fly”, just to bring it all back. Well it amused small minded me)
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I know I’m easily distracted Warrigal, but I just looked at your gravatar through my good reading glasses and it is obviously a dingo. You probably never understood why I couldn’t see it (plus you probably never noticed) and neither did I obviously or I would have upgraded my reading glasses sooner.
Before I give you an evaluation, you owe me an evaluation of my father playing the clarinet. 🙂
P.S. You don’t have to say you like it. I like stuff he played elsewhere a lot better but this is my only recording.
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I seem to recall you earlier mentioning that it required ocular adjustment to view my gravatar properly, and yes it’s a dingo. Her name is Lindy.
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/dingolindy.htm
There is nothing I can say about your father’s playing technically that wouldn’t sound critical but that’s not the point. You know he wasn’t in the first rank of clarinet players.
He’s better than average though, at what was at the time a musical phenomenon here in Australia. There were more trad jazz bands and more clarinettists here than anywhere else other than New Orleans, and your father was part of that “movement”.
Sadly I never warmed to trad jazz, even in New Orleans.
But I think the important thing is that he was having a go, a real good go by the sound of it, and you loved that in him; just as I loved my father playing “Remember The Red River Valley” on his little Hammond with his nine fingers. Your father actually achieved a creditable musical performance while mine just entertained his family in the attempt.
Its the love in the memory that counts, not what I, or anyone else might say about his playing.
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LOL. I agree completely Warrigal. I don’t really like the stuff they were playing and still less their group style, which I would describe as One, Two, Three, Make Noise!
It was really just a sentimental and I felt at the time appropriately enthusiastic choice in response to MJ’s circulated email that you were slacking off and in need of a kick up the butt. Well OK, they might not have been his precise words. And that might not have been the actual meaning either. 🙂
As for technique, he was an enthusiastic self-taught amateur on a wide range of instruments. One thing I particularly admired was his ability to play by ear.
As my part of the bargain, I will say that you have a good way with words, apply yourself seriously to your endeavours, are educated (sorry), into pop music (oh, my powers of observation!), self-confident but wary of appearing arrogant, and you take yourself quite seriously.
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On the flip side of playing by ear he only learnt to read music as an adult.
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And no, I didn’t mean to imply that your musical tastes are limited to pop music.
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Well, it was my pleasure, and thank you……., I think(?)
By the way, I didn’t get that “circulated email”. Probably just as well.
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Gee Gerard, getting rather heavy here.
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Heavy could be a relative state of mind.
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He ain’t heavy.
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VL, you are telling the truth here, he (gez) is not heavy, just astral travelling…
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YOU ALL MISSED IT:
.
.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1KtScrqtbc
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One doesn’t miss the “miss” the obvious. Its just part of the expected referential field, unremarkable, ordinary. It would have been more remarkable if no-one had made that connection.
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As if, VL. Often we are ahead of you.
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What Warrigal said at 5:13.
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Yes…But you’re all so remarkably remarkable, of course. Legends in your own mind 😉
Actually, I thought that Voice & Viv, may have been too young. Not you WM…but them!
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Viv, one could also say: unbearably light, almost fluffy 🙂
That brings me to the title of Milan Kundera’s book: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I read the book and saw the movie many moons ago…
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Tereza: Tomas, what are you thinking?
Tomas: I’m thinking how happy I am.
Wonderful book H. Haven’t seen the movie yet.
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Yes, but at 71 and still 6ft2″ a 79 kilos isn’t too bad. Lots of raw herrings, pickled Latvian smoked sprats with plenty of walking and much deep philosophising in reverse are the answers.
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My comment was not directed at Gerard as such and his piece. I was endeavouring to say that Gerard had generated a lot of comments which were verging on being heavy and bring out some profound comments on life, the universe and all that stuff. The answer of course is 42.,
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Indeed it is Vivienne, It just takes so long to get there. Just don’t forget your towel.
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Veritas in vino
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A message in a bottle?
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Looks like I got wrong Algy
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No instead of “in wine truth” you said “truth in wine” so messge in a bottle could be correct.The words were correct just something in the order. Or it could be where you put the comma. One does not need to be too pedantic about these things.
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No, Hungsie! Gorrrd almighty, what must I do to educumulate these mortals!
It’s “in vino veritas,” Hungsie. In vino veritas! Dative case. Latin or Greek, not English word order. Ἐν οἴνῳ ἀλήθεια! (Pliny the Elder via Alcaeus)
But I love Tacitus’ aphorism: “listen,” he said to his mates, “what you get in wine is the truth; what you get in water is fish!” (In vino veritas, in aqua ichthys)
But all that, of course, depends upon whether there’s anyone watching -for the truth or for the fish or the wine or the water. Never a doubt about the ouzo, though.
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Thank you Sir 🙂
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To make your word order acceptable, Hungsie, acceptable, that is, in the dull eyes of a pedant like me, you’d have to add the verb “to be” (esse) at the end of the sentence: Veritas in vino est.
Then and only then orators like Cicero and Tacitus and teachers like your namesake, Marcus Aurelius would sleep happy in their dusty tombs!
(Just warning you, in case you meet them in the afterworld!)
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Thank you Sire. Your advice is very expert while at the same time stimulates peristalsis 🙂
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You’re quite welcome, Hungsie. They don’t call me Mister Theoduodenum for naught!
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So it would appear to be: “In wine, truth; in water, fish; and in ouzo, Ato!”?
😉
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Hung, sometimes too much bottled wisdom leads to too many wise sayings in broken ( =google translated) French at Pigs Arms…
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Probably H, I wouldn’t know 🙂
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Well said, Hung.
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Thank you You Voicedness
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“You can’t handle the Truth”!!!
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“What is Truth?”
😉
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Truth, my dear asty, is rather wobbly but rather less in the eyes of a drunk, particularly one whose medium is ouzo.
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Thanks for that slightly wobbly answer to my rhetorical question, Ato… Would you believe even in my drinking days I’d never tried ouzo… the nearest I got was pastis… but of course, I was in the South of France, not on the Pelopponessus…
🙂
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It was Soren Kierkegaard who stated: A lie is never a lie if you believe it.” Die Wahrheit ist nie so falsch wenn es glaublich ist. I am not so brave as to go against good ol’ Soren.
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But Kierkegaard was lying, Gerard!
😉
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Yup, coffee. Sort the truth out another day.
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‘Then’, I’m gonna pay my tax!
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Its not a matter whether the road is dry or wet. The question is will the road disappear.
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Or whether the road ever indeed existed. 🙂
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Perhaps the answer is butterflies.
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… blowing in the wind.
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….flapping wings
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I think we’re starting to converge here, algernon. On what however, I haven’t a clue. 🙂
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Well I could introduce hurricanes to bring ot all back on track. 🙂
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Wouldn’t that rain on the road?
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The circle of life
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When applying your World View to actual facts consistently results in nonsense “facts”, simple logic shows that your World View is deeply flawed. Far more comfortable to use pseudo-complex imitation logic.
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Please Miss, Miss, Miss. Please Miss, I know, I know.
Tony Abbott Miss.
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Speed of light thingy is not a fact yet. They have to do it again (and probably again and again) and it has to be proven. It is all a bit iffy at this stage. It is a possibility. Not done and dusted.
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But let’s not let that get in the way.
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Voice, you must be the only one who is taking this Sunday Silliness seriously???
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Since my comment was a response to Vivienne’s serious comment, it’s probably kinder for me to assume you’re not being serious.
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Yes, blame Viv for it…Voice,.
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Blame Viv? Hey, if the faking yourself as victim card doesn’t work, play the faking someone else as victim card. You’re a bit of a social bullying expert, aren’t you Helvi?
I give Vivienne more credit.
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Only god knows the truth and no god exists except in the mind. No truth, therefore, exists, if there is no mind to perceive it.
Atomou.
(Stated while lying in his hammock having just devoured four falafels and gulped three shots of ouzo.)
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The corollary is that it’s ok to finish the bottle, as long as no-one else is watching. 🙂
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Yeeeeees -and No, Voice!
If you’re finishing the bottle, then YOU know that the bottle is being finished, so the bottle IS being finished.
HOWEVER: If, after you’ve finished the bottle and you’ve destroyed your mind’s capacity to perceive that the bottle has been finished, then, yes, the bottle had not been finished -even if it’s lying there all fluids of proof drained out of it!
I remember an aural exam I had to do at Uni. Third year. On Aristotle’s use of the word ην (can’t put the accents on: circumflex and rough breathing mark). It is a word used by him to explain the nature of being. Ontology stuff. Anyhow, I went into my lecturer’s office, sat down and he said, “OK, George, your topic is Aristotle’s use of the word ‘being.’ Talk!”
I had not uttered four words, when he raised his hand up to stop me. “No, George, go back and do some more work on it. I’ll give you one more chance. You’ve failed this one!”
Thoroughly disconcerted and very concerned, I went home and studied harder. I thought I had the issue under control when I walked again into his office the following week. This time I managed to finish a sentence before he stopped me again with his hand, this time, irritation adding a distinct colour to his voice. He gave me a final chance to go back a couple of days later. In neither of the failed tests did he want to give me a clue where I was going wrong. I had to find that out for myself. Luckily, or perhaps, it’s how things work, I had worked out where I was going wrong and the final time I presented for the aural, we’ve spent the whole hour -if not more- discussing this bloody word, not only as Aristotle used it but also as a whole lot of other ancients had used it, including its presence in the New Testament.
I don’t know why I said all this… I think I must be getting all funstony! Terrifying thought!
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No, Voice, it’s always wrong to finish the bottle alone ; if someone is watching, you invite them to share the bottle, if there is no one about, you take the bottle to your nearest friend or neighbour….
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Helvi: I simply said that it is the logical corollary. That is not inconsistent with you being right about sharing the bottle,. That simply requires ato’s original proposition to be false.
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The truth is, my German scales do not lie, I’m not getting smaller, and it’s not for the lack of trying… Still, they are kind enough to point out that I’m not getting bigger either.
What a relief, I’m at a standstill.
Another consolation, according to Little M , is that Oma (me) looks strong and will live till she is about 87…..according to him ,it’s the years on the farm that have contributed to that perceived strength.
What do they say about the Truth; it often comes out of the mouths of babies (don’t call Little M a baby tho)
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Perhaps you live in Fred Hoyle’s ‘steady state’ universe, Helvi…?
😉
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I pay a lot of tax. That’ the truth!!!
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I told you a million times, don’t exaggerate…(said who?)
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My mum said that, Helvi… quite often, in fact…
😉
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All mums say that, asty 🙂
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Donald Rumsfield summed it all up of course.
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VL, are you having your first cup of English breakfast tea…I’m having my second Victoria coffee, kindly prepared by The Truthteller.
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Just got back from walking the dogs. Coffee time, now.
Had Irish breakfast tea at 6:15. It’s 9:05 now.
Tempted to go up to F.Mkt for Australian coffee. It’s called Eureka, grown near Byron Bay and they sell it in Melbourne too. Nice stuff.
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Clive, I have had Australian grown coffee, and I’m sure it came from Byron Bay…I’m desperately trying to think where it was, most likely in Leichhardt (Sydney).
It was good, very good.
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There is a website. http://www.eurekacoffee.com.au/
They sell it at their stall in sealed bags. It’s (about $34 kilo). Tasty.
I buy a large (paper-cup) and get two small baconyomelettythingees, from Norman the baker, who has a stall next door.
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However, I’m not going now. Coffee at home. HI, has popped up there to get some fruit & veg. It’s dearer than Aldi (got some of their chocolate last week). Dearer even than Woollies, but tastes fresher and lasts longer.
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VL, we do the rounds, Aldi, Harris Fruit market, Woolies (their specials).
When the little ones where here last, we discovered Aldi’s frozen, wood -fired Pizzas, made in Italy!!!. We added some ‘stuff’ that the boys like and put anchovies on ours, they were better than Woolies’ Designer(sorry Voice) ones…they are too thick for my liking.
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Helvi, if you’re going to apologise to anyone for buying pre-prepared frozen food at the supermarket, it should be gerard. I don’t do it myself, but I’m not self-righteous about it.
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Voice, now you are deliberately misunderstaning me, the apologies were for my using of the word ‘Designer’ and ‘Made in Italy”, I know you don’t like my references to Tuscany, Paris, Venice…
The pizzas were very nice and they came all the way from Italy, they were also very cheap, which is rather unusual combination 🙂
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How bizarre. I have no a priori objections about references to Tuscany, Paris, Venice by you or anyone else for that matter. No wonder I misunderstood.
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Easy enough to do in a stochastic universe. I’d bet good money on this storm in a teacup turning out to be just simple Brownian Motion.
More tea vicar?
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Bizarre indeed, Voice, how soon you forget your attacks and insults on your fellow posters…maybe you don’t even know what you are doing…you do it instinctively?
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That’s one possible explanation Helvi. Another would be that the attacks and insults in response to Tuscany, Paris, or Venice never happened. But let’s not let facts get in the way of a good victim story.
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I think I just flushed a Brownian motion down the loo, Warrigal!
😉
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