Peter's Books, Photography and Miscellaneous Musings
Today I want to plug someone else’s book – a marvelous little book that’s about 225 years old. I stumbled on it by chance, I don’t even know how anymore. It’s my favourite read of 2024 so far, and I’m overwhelmed by the story and the charm of it all.
Continue reading “The Strangest Tale: Trim and the Map of Australia”
“Then he simply ceased pedalling. The bicycle’s momentum carried it forward a while but—as bicycles will—the machine began to waver from side to side ever more precariously.“
I was talking to my fellow author, Daphne C., and the conversation spiralled around to our student days together. That eventually led me to trot out two stories that a philosophy student—let’s call her “Helen”—told me at the time.
Helen’s first story concerned a philosophers’ party.
Right off the bat, this had my attention as an oddball story, because philosophers, giant turtles and three-toed sloths are one of type IMO – not party animals.
Nevertheless, Helen insisted there had been a philosophers’ party which she was part of. At the end of the evening, her prof left the party on his bicycle. It was a balmy Cape summer evening, so the remaining partygoers clustered on the porch to wave the prof goodbye and watch him pedal away.
Continue reading “The Philosopher’s Bicycle”“A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned,” he said, “for he will be going out on a day he shouldn’t. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drowned now and again.”—John Millington Synge, The Aran Islands.
Credit: Pixabay contributor 51581
If you’ve watched any movies since the late 1980s, you will have listened to a musical genius named Hans Zimmer. His movie soundtrack credits and multiple awards include:
Continue reading “Johnny Depp, Theseus and Mrs. S’s Kayak”(as at July 2023. Since then I’ve become more impressed, at least with Dall.E-3)
AI – artificial intelligence – may have a bright and/or scary future when it grows up. With apologies to the proud parents, though, the particular AI that I’ve played with over the last few weeks (June-July 2023) shows no signs of being gifted. And unlike many other toddlers, it appears to be getting dumber as it ages.
Continue reading “AI – the Toddler that’s Getting Dumber Every the Day.”In a chance conversation, I referred to General Haig as “The Butcher of the Somme” and mentioned his supposed disdain for machine guns. [Haig was the Commander in Chief of the British forces in France during the WWI Battle of the Somme in July 1916.]
I decided I’d do a little research to justify my words (or not). I ended up going down an uglier rabbit hole than I’d intended. Occupational hazard for authors.
