I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glisten, and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white.
Image by 'Shopkins-Fossick'
Kangaroo Island Emu
When you do philosophy...apart from learning specific things about...the arguments Descartes gave for skepticism or the arguments Leibnitz gave for the existence of God, you learn the far more generic skills of just being able to analyse and criticise arguments...
If I'm on the phone and somebody is trying to convince me that...they should have received their order yesterday because they placed it at this time and this time and this time, well I can sorta look at that and see the structure of the argument and go 'well no, there's a fallacious inference being made there! In actual fact you've still got two days to wait because blah blah blah'.
Okay, this is a very trivial example and obviously you don't need training in philosophy to do this.
Some readers (and, sadly, some writers) lap up this swill. It is familiar, and the complete lack of originality comforts them. It is for such people that television exists.
Stay out super late tonight
Picking apples, making pies
Put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us
We're half-awake in a fake empire
We're half awake in a fake empire
Tiptoe through our shiny city
With our diamond slippers on
Do our gay ballet on ice
Bluebirds on our shoulders
We're half-awake in a fake empire
We're half awake in a fake empire
Turn the light out say goodnight
No thinking for a little while
Let's not try to figure out everything at once
It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We're half-awake in a fake empire
We're half awake in a fake empire
I think the new music I would find it hardest to do without, fifty years after Kind of Blue, is that produced by The Necks... A piano trio, but not like any other piano trio you have heard... There is a great deal of joy in The Necks' music, and it is the more rewarding for being hard-won... Kind of Blue's legacy is apparent in the ease with which The Necks exploit the spaces that were opened up for them all those years ago: spaces in harmony, rhythm and melody, but also spaces in the mind.Find more reviews and videos here.
Richard Williams - 'The Blue Moment: Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' and the Remaking of Modern Music'
No Man's Land
Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifle fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound the Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal hear is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind the glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause'?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
The movie tells a story about a man whose life-style many normal human beings would like to enjoy, in case there would not be obstacles in terms of financial issues and personal obligations to other people.I've heard from several sources that the quality of the periodical has deteriorated from what it used to be, and I understand that the writer is not a native speaker of English, but that level of English is simply unacceptable.
One of my loves since childhood is gleaning fruit from the neighbourhood. When living in Australia I would often plan my route to the tram-stop on my way to Uni so I would pass the best fruit; pomegranates, figs, loquats, grapes, peaches, oranges, lilly-pilly, and of course the underrated feijoa. The feijoa is native to parts of South America but is a very popular garden tree in New Zealand and Australia. Most people, I'm assuming, outside of these places wouldn't have a clue about what a feijoa is; spell-check is convinced it's not a word (suggesting instead feisty, feint, feign and fellatio). But I assure you it's a real thing.How to eat a feijoa
The feijoa is a sadly underrated fruit. We don't see it at its best in the shops, and if we grow them at home, their brief abundance is so overwhelming as to render us ungrateful.
Some people, it seems, do not know how to eat a jeifoa.
1. Address the feijoa. Admire its glossy, bumpy green skin, its ovoid form, the grey rosette that adorns its base.
2. Grasp the feijoa firmly in your non-dominant hand.
3. Slice the feijoa in half, through its equator.
4. Pause to inspect the interior. there should be a multi-lobed zone of jelly. Isn't that pretty?
5. Hold a feijoa half in your non-dominant hand, with the cut surface outwards.
6. With teaspoon, carefully scoop out the flesh and pulp. There is a happy medium between leaving edible fruit behind, and taking in the acrid lining of the skin.
7. Consume directly from the spoon.
8. Repeat 6 and 7 with remaining feijoa half.
If you are a small child, and the fruit are very ripe, you can bite off the end of the feijoa like an American sergeant with a cheap cigar, and squeeze the innards into your mouth. This method also works for passionfruit. However, this is not manners.
Do not be angry with me, my dearest,
now that I am leaving for foreign lands,
I will turn into a bird and I will come
back again, to you.
Open your window,
my golden basil, my princess,
and with a sweet smile, wish me a good night.
Do not be angry with me, my dearest,
now that I am going away from you,
and come here awhile, let me see you,
let me say goodbye.
Open your window,
my golden basil, my princess,
and with a sweet smile, wish me a good night.
Danny: Do you ever wonder if its all a big con Flip?
Flip: Eh?
Danny: This. Everything. What if none of it really exists? What if it's like some big experiment and we're like ants trapped in a giant petri dish? What if there is a greater intelligence out there and it's creating everything purely as a way to stop us going insane on them? What if nothing really exists until we sense it? My room doesn't exist till I walk into it. Front yard doesn't exist till I experience it. You don't exist.
Flip: I don't exist?
Danny: Well, you could be just a projection of my inner psyche materialised for my brain in order to keep me company.
Flip: What about the cashmere sweater babes over the road, with their swishy little skirts and all? Would they be from your inner psyche or mine?
Danny: Probably yours I reckon Flip.
Boy on the deck
Seagull reflection
Coal cranes
Workers on a barge
Having a breakMy name is Louis. I've lived in Sydney for over 30 years but have never set foot in most of its 600 plus suburbs. Now I'm on a mission to explore and photograph one new Sydney suburb a week for a year in search of the beauty in the 'burb. Care to join me?You get the picture. The photos are incredibly gorgeous and make me miss Sydney, and Australia in general. The use of binary photographs (I guess that's the right description) is clever and the whole thing makes me want to start venturing into photojournalism myself (watch this space). Of the suburbs I've managed to wander through today a particular favourite of mine has been beautiful Bondi. Thanks Louis.
There are two 's' in dessert because you always want a second helping!Now you'll never make a misstake again...
"A drug addict has become the first person in Britain to be sterilised in exchange for cash under a new project...
Project Prevention, the charity running the scheme, has made similar payments to thousands of men and women in the US in a campaign to prevent them having children who may inherit their addictions... "
"Forced sterilization has been recognized as [a] crime against humanity if the action is part of a widespread or systematic practice by the Rome Statute Explanatory memorandum, which defines the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court."
- Wikipedia
