I have been following the rumours of Apple’s tablet device with interest. I have been a Mac user since 1984 and, for a long time, I ‘supported’ Apple the way some people support football teams. Of course, once they went mainstream with the iPod, my fervour cooled a little *grin*. However, and in spite of them being just another evil corporation, there is something of a ‘vision thing’ that goes on at Apple that I …
on Jung’s Red Book…
I was doing yoga last night and was struck (again) by how the positions I was trying to achieve with my body had parallels with a particular satisfying way of thinking that I am constantly drawn to: the linking factor is ‘orthogonality’. This word is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as coming from the Greek meaning “right-angled”… Consider the word “right” – which in turn is defined as being ‘straight’ – and, at …
The first time we were able to see our planet from space – a single, blue jewel floating in the void – it changed how we saw Earth – how we saw ourselves – profoundly. We have now found other worlds circling other suns – hundreds (?) of them… At first we could only detect massive ones – bigger even than our Jupiter. But we have recently been able to detect planets just a few …
Preindustrial societies relied on muscle power for work: if not your own, then that of some animal, or of another human. Combustion of fossil fuels has largely become the ‘muscle’ that does most physical work: electricity powering machines that replace the jobs, for example, carried out by slaves in the ancient (and not so ancient) world… petrol pulling our carriages and ploughs. As recently as the American Civil War, people killed to keep their slaves. …
I increasingly feel that being quick-witted is overrated. What is it for? Being funny? We seem to be obsessed with speed in everything and that includes thinking. Perhaps this is part of our fixation with youth. Certainly, when I was younger, I was far more quick witted than I am now. One aspect of this was a ‘switch-blade’ memory: where I never found myself unable to retrieve the exact word when I needed it. I …
I was watching the ravishing “House of Flying Daggers” for the second time, and was again struck by how ravishing Chinese martial arts can be. I find them far more compelling as ‘dance’ than I have ever found ballet, for example – and it does seem to me that martial arts plays the same role in China (perhaps less so in Japan) as ballet does in Europe… I studied T’ai Chi (that is the yin, …
For most of last week I was in Rome. This was the first time I have ever been to Italy. In spite of my love of everything ancient, the Romans have never been a culture that has appealed to me. Nevertheless, I am fully aware of just how much we are still in their shadow… and so it would be strange indeed not to wish to visit the Eternal City. What with global warming, never …
Google are potentially manoeuvring in a way that may make them the next Microsoft… that said, they tend to champion open standards (perhaps because they don’t need to control through proprietary formats, being as they aim to control the whole Web *wry grin*) – and I’m all for those. So I cautiously welcome the announcement that with Google Editions they’re going to compete with Amazon’s Kindle – that is a closed system and has already …
more on life drawing, that is really about writing…
