Claudius met an untimely end; The whirlpool galaxy is discovered; The cornerstone of the “White House” is laid; The Greenwich meridian is set as 0 degrees; Paddington Bear makes his debut. The advent of the world wide web – and specifically wikipedia – enables us to get details of what happened “on this day” in history.
Books
A Bit Of Speculation
My eye was caught by an article on the BBC website – as much as by the fact that it seemed to be reporting “old news” as by the headline itself. However, having navigated to the page I discovered that it was, indeed, a good piece – if slightly spoiled by being rather one-sided.
A Lesson Learned (On Being Stuck)
I’ve started on my newest online creation – partially inspired by the making memories series of posts here – to create a bit of a “life history” – a treasure trove of memories (probably real and imagined if you have read some of my previous writing on the subject) – a pot-pourri of little highlights (and possibly some lowlights) of my life.
Time Marches On
In recent days I have had a couple of discussions about “getting old” – and more specifically about a slight feeling of disbelief about how old we actually are. Is “oldness” a state of mind – quite separate from “age” which is clearly a measure of time?
Discworld – The Next Chapter
Just yesterday I wrote about how I like to visit different “worlds” when I am reading. Last night I got to the end of the story of one of those worlds. Knowing that it was his last novel, getting to the end of Sir Terry Pratchett’s “The Shepherd’s Crown” was always going to be tinged with disappointment – not in the story itself, but because we will never know what happens next to the many characters that we have met through the Discworld series.
Still Hungry!!
The title of this blog “Feeding My Ignorance” is derived from the Terry Pratchett quote that appears at the top of the Wiki page. This allied to the Einstein quote on the this page illustrates that my take on ignorance is not a negative one – and that the fact that my ‘perceived’ ignorance is increasing is actually a very positive (if paradoxical) sign of increased knowledge.
Eudaimonia
Yep – this is a word I had never seen before as well – yes – perhaps that is a reflection on my ‘ignorance’ as testified by the title of the blog, since Eudaimonia is, in fact, the highest ideal for a good life according to Aristotle.
Inspirational Writing
There is no doubt that if this blog goes the same way as the one that I have previously published privately then a significant number of the posts will result from the discovery of a really apt quote or article that resonates with my own views. This post is one such and is inspired by words from Viktor Frankl.