For the 700th edition of MySpace writing I ought to try and say something of substance although with a clear blue sky for the second day in succession I am in a holiday mood. For a little enthusiasm I listened to a previous edition of In our Time first broadcast on June 2nd 2002 in which Lord Bragg introduced the subject of the soul and the history of thinking about the concept with Richard Sorabji, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, Ruth Padel, poet and author of In and Out of the Mind: Tragic Images of Self and Body and Martin Palmer, Theologian and Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture. My first thought is that the three programmes listened to all had two male speakers and one female which with a male chairman results in a three to one ratio. I shall have to investigate the sexual physiology of the programme production team if this is disclosed. The programme last week was the development of suffragism, a BBC word, where the three contributors were female this demonstrating that a sample of three programmes from three hundred is not a good one for making a generalization.
The programme about the soul showed something of the development of the concept from the fluid multi dimensional approach of the Chinese to Greek and Roman Thinkers, then the early Christian changes to the approach of Judaism, through to some more contemporary thinking.
It struck me that most of the historical thinkers were governed by their ignorance human physiology and biology. They wanted to describe the inner voice and imagery and wondered if it was particular to human beings, or if other creatures and growing things who had not developed the ability to communicate using human forms had similar experience. It was also natural to speculate what happened to the inner voice and vision with death, given what happens when we wake from sleep and to this process also has to be considered now in terms of the knowledge of nature, of space and time and timeless and endless universe.
The programme divided previous thinkers into those who view soul as a migrating experience separate from individual physical bodies and where it progresses, snakes and ladders, fashion between levels of human experience according to the quality of life and behaviour of the last being.
Then with Christianity as an inducement for believers to live good lives regardless of their social position, wealth, power, physical health and so on, the concept and what happens to the soul became fixed on how one’s lifetime body lived, so if the life was a good Christian one, the soul with its recognisable individuality, moved onto heaven or hell, or somewhere temporarily in between until the final judgement day. God, not ourselves, or our contemporaries was the judge of what happens to our soul but we could affect the outcome by being genuinely penitent about our sins and trying to lead better lives than before.
Along side these two comparatively simple concepts were the Chinese and others who combined and extended the two viewpoints into a multidimensional concept in full colour and high definition.
For me there are technical issues defining the moment when self conscious and unconscious imagery and thought end while aspects of the physical body continue and vice versa especially the point at which physical and mental pain ends. We know that we pass own our individual signatures through DNA and that this includes aspects of our physiological and psychological make up also including, in my view, memory.
My conclusion, to-date, is that we pass on more of ourselves and of our ancestors through the creation of new life, especially between mother and child, than we still understand or are willing to understand and that everything we do and say continues to exist within the totality that is the universe, and this is not just through the retained works of some individuals or relayed stories about them but the actual experiences as they occurred. This is also not just a processes of logic, of reasoning, that if the universe is endless and timeless then there will always be the capacity to watch or just listen to what has been as well to what is now, but that everything continues to be although everything is always in the process of change as well as our appreciation, our interpretation and understanding
I was up early this morning although went to bed and sleep in the early hours. The night was Ok but disjointed. I treated myself to a Bacon Roll at the Ship and Royal taking the long way round via the post box to renew my travel card for using the Metro train system, although I used it little last year. As I am at the cricket for a stretch of four days, weather permitting, and the match lasting and being of interest, I resisted the temptation to go out and enjoy the sun although I also knew that my work output was likely to be limited.
Billie Holiday A to Z Volume 1
Georgia on my mind
Solitude
Dreams of Life
Your are going to see a lot of me
Sugar
I cried for you
It is first day of political programmes after the Easter break and where the four main topics are continuing alongside speculation about the budget. G20 Policing, Political Dirty Tricks, Arrest of Conservative Shadow Minister and office raid and the expenses of Member’s of Parliament.
It is generally agreed that the discovered dirty tricks smear campaign was symptomatic of the Brown approach to politics and he is condemned accordingly. The damage limitation people, Neil Kinnock on Sunday, argue that the nature of what one is required to do and the nature of the political system is such that you cannot protect yourself from colleagues who are damaging to ones political future, to the country and to the Political party. This is unmitigated codswallop.
Andrew Neil or his advisers were caught suggesting that the public was prepared and would accept that getting out of the present mess created by bankers and governments involved cuts in public service expenditure, and higher taxes because everyone had been excessive in their borrowing and failure to save. This is even more codswallop, trying to blame what has happened elsewhere or skipping over the excessive differential changes of the past decade between the incomes of the rich and the poor. The Labour Party will be humiliated at the next election unless several real rabbits can be pulled out of the hat or rescued from the fire. Telling the truth as it is will help but deflecting attention to what happened at the FA Cup semi Final at Hillsborough twenty years ago or the actions of individual police during G20 will not work.
Lover Man
All of Me
Guilty
Born to Love
No more
I cover the waterfront
I need to check my electricity gas account and phone bills as part of the annual financial affairs sort out and arrange to have a water meter installed. Apparently 1 in 3 of bills/ assessments of electricity and gas are inaccurate. The Mail had an article giving he impression that the government was about to change the ability of Councils to spy on residents suspected of breaking local rules and minor social offending. Read the article and you find there is consultation about making changes to limit the powers. Such a process take months or years which means nothing will happen before the next General Election which means nothing will happen until sometime in the future something happens to remind everyone of the position and the public get behind a campaign.
There was an interesting example of how six families were able to beat NIBY over the holiday. They secretly bought a three acre field for £130000 and then moved in after laying 1000 tons of hard core to create hard standing for their caravan homes and motor vehicles. They had diggers ans 50 large lorries brought in the stuff. The whole thing was done in three days to the horror of local residents and planning officials.
As time goes by
How am I to know
That’s life I guess
Body and soul
Having myself a time
Weep no more
In today’s Indian Premier League match Kevin Petersen’s side faced Andrew Flintoff’s who were asked to bat first and scored 179 runs in a 20 over game is an extraordinary total. The game was won in the first overs with a masterful innings by former Australian batsman Mathew Hayden who was run out when 65 and looking as if he would score a hundred. The key to these matches is having top class spin bowlers and how the batsmen are able to play spin. This was Durham’s undoing last year in the semi final. Flintoff was not out for 22. Peterson bowled 3 overs for 14 runs and on wicket. His side then made a disastrous start losing the first wicket before any score was recorded and then the second at 40, third at 47 with Petersen out 2 balls later to Muralitheran in his first over and the gained a second wicket to make it 50 for 5, 66 for 6 and then 7, 74 for 8 79 for 9 and a humiliating 87 all out. Flintoff also had three over and took one wick for 11 runs so with Petersen out for 0 it must be said that Flintoff won this duel although the match was won and lost by others.
No regrets
Easy to Love
Billie’s Blues
Pennies from Heaven.
I thought the twelfth episode of the fifth season of Lost was excellent and reminded the limitations of the openings sequences to this series which is now drawing to its end. The battle of wills between Ben and Locke for supremacy on the Island continued. Locke appears to know who is the real boss despite being murdered by Ben and brought back in the plane in a casket. This resurrection has led to several witty lines.
Previously Ben had been knocked out by Sun before he could leave with her for the main Island having shown her the boats. On getting to the island she realises that the others on the plane have been put back in time to 1977 and that Locke is the key to be able to link with 1977 and her husband who she now knows is not dead. In this episode Ben recovers to be greeted by Locke which is an interesting experience. He admits that he is surprised that the Island was able to resurrect from the dead. Locke informs Ben that he must return to the main Island to be judged by its force, especially for turning his back on his “ daughter” who is killed. In flashbacks we learn that Charles Widmore, Penny’s father had warned Ben that the “ daughter” had to die for things to work out as they should.
On the main Island Sun joins forces with Locke who insists that Ben accompanies them to the Temple of “the others“, alternative inhabitant to the Dharma Initiative. Here in an underground area Ben encounters the presence of the Island which he has earlier unlocked or unleashed. He is confronted by an image of his daughter who warns him that his salvation depends on yielding to the authority of Locke. In the way the series likes to link past, present, future in unravelling the overall master plot we learn that back in the USA Ben had tried to kill Penny, the daughter of Charles Widmore in revenge for the death of his own but hesitates when seeing Penny’s son, and this gives Desmond the opportunity to recover from being shot by Ben and severely beat him up, thus explaining his battered appearance when he reappears on the outer island following the second plane crash. The episode had several unexpected twists which made it the most enjoyable of the season so far.
Last night I found the episode Some Like it Hoth of little interest although it revealed that both Hurley and Miles have the capacity to communicate with the physically dead, if their bodies are close by. A second theme is the relationship between son and their fathers and the need to forgive each other of sins committed between them whether real or perceived. There are three episode to this season left
Twenty fours continues to be awful as was my choice between the two subscription DVD‘s to hand. The Virgin Territory 2008 was however decidedly worse. This one story film from the Decameron’s one hundred bawdy tales of sex, deception and religious hypocrisy alongside the era of the Black death failed to be anything it set out to be. It sat on the production shelf for three years before being issued as a DVD in the USA and had a limited showing in Europe. A few teenagers might like it if nothing better to do on a Saturday night but there are no thrills, kicks and it is not funny. I had a good sleep through most of it, fortunately. I was tempted to watch Hell in the Pacific which starts as a silent movie and continues with two characters finding themselves alone on a Pacific island in war time. Lee Marvin is the USA Marine Pilot and Toshio Mifune as the Japanese naval officer who attempts to capture each other and then. I opted for bed and went to sleep quickly.
The programme about the soul showed something of the development of the concept from the fluid multi dimensional approach of the Chinese to Greek and Roman Thinkers, then the early Christian changes to the approach of Judaism, through to some more contemporary thinking.
It struck me that most of the historical thinkers were governed by their ignorance human physiology and biology. They wanted to describe the inner voice and imagery and wondered if it was particular to human beings, or if other creatures and growing things who had not developed the ability to communicate using human forms had similar experience. It was also natural to speculate what happened to the inner voice and vision with death, given what happens when we wake from sleep and to this process also has to be considered now in terms of the knowledge of nature, of space and time and timeless and endless universe.
The programme divided previous thinkers into those who view soul as a migrating experience separate from individual physical bodies and where it progresses, snakes and ladders, fashion between levels of human experience according to the quality of life and behaviour of the last being.
Then with Christianity as an inducement for believers to live good lives regardless of their social position, wealth, power, physical health and so on, the concept and what happens to the soul became fixed on how one’s lifetime body lived, so if the life was a good Christian one, the soul with its recognisable individuality, moved onto heaven or hell, or somewhere temporarily in between until the final judgement day. God, not ourselves, or our contemporaries was the judge of what happens to our soul but we could affect the outcome by being genuinely penitent about our sins and trying to lead better lives than before.
Along side these two comparatively simple concepts were the Chinese and others who combined and extended the two viewpoints into a multidimensional concept in full colour and high definition.
For me there are technical issues defining the moment when self conscious and unconscious imagery and thought end while aspects of the physical body continue and vice versa especially the point at which physical and mental pain ends. We know that we pass own our individual signatures through DNA and that this includes aspects of our physiological and psychological make up also including, in my view, memory.
My conclusion, to-date, is that we pass on more of ourselves and of our ancestors through the creation of new life, especially between mother and child, than we still understand or are willing to understand and that everything we do and say continues to exist within the totality that is the universe, and this is not just through the retained works of some individuals or relayed stories about them but the actual experiences as they occurred. This is also not just a processes of logic, of reasoning, that if the universe is endless and timeless then there will always be the capacity to watch or just listen to what has been as well to what is now, but that everything continues to be although everything is always in the process of change as well as our appreciation, our interpretation and understanding
I was up early this morning although went to bed and sleep in the early hours. The night was Ok but disjointed. I treated myself to a Bacon Roll at the Ship and Royal taking the long way round via the post box to renew my travel card for using the Metro train system, although I used it little last year. As I am at the cricket for a stretch of four days, weather permitting, and the match lasting and being of interest, I resisted the temptation to go out and enjoy the sun although I also knew that my work output was likely to be limited.
Billie Holiday A to Z Volume 1
Georgia on my mind
Solitude
Dreams of Life
Your are going to see a lot of me
Sugar
I cried for you
It is first day of political programmes after the Easter break and where the four main topics are continuing alongside speculation about the budget. G20 Policing, Political Dirty Tricks, Arrest of Conservative Shadow Minister and office raid and the expenses of Member’s of Parliament.
It is generally agreed that the discovered dirty tricks smear campaign was symptomatic of the Brown approach to politics and he is condemned accordingly. The damage limitation people, Neil Kinnock on Sunday, argue that the nature of what one is required to do and the nature of the political system is such that you cannot protect yourself from colleagues who are damaging to ones political future, to the country and to the Political party. This is unmitigated codswallop.
Andrew Neil or his advisers were caught suggesting that the public was prepared and would accept that getting out of the present mess created by bankers and governments involved cuts in public service expenditure, and higher taxes because everyone had been excessive in their borrowing and failure to save. This is even more codswallop, trying to blame what has happened elsewhere or skipping over the excessive differential changes of the past decade between the incomes of the rich and the poor. The Labour Party will be humiliated at the next election unless several real rabbits can be pulled out of the hat or rescued from the fire. Telling the truth as it is will help but deflecting attention to what happened at the FA Cup semi Final at Hillsborough twenty years ago or the actions of individual police during G20 will not work.
Lover Man
All of Me
Guilty
Born to Love
No more
I cover the waterfront
I need to check my electricity gas account and phone bills as part of the annual financial affairs sort out and arrange to have a water meter installed. Apparently 1 in 3 of bills/ assessments of electricity and gas are inaccurate. The Mail had an article giving he impression that the government was about to change the ability of Councils to spy on residents suspected of breaking local rules and minor social offending. Read the article and you find there is consultation about making changes to limit the powers. Such a process take months or years which means nothing will happen before the next General Election which means nothing will happen until sometime in the future something happens to remind everyone of the position and the public get behind a campaign.
There was an interesting example of how six families were able to beat NIBY over the holiday. They secretly bought a three acre field for £130000 and then moved in after laying 1000 tons of hard core to create hard standing for their caravan homes and motor vehicles. They had diggers ans 50 large lorries brought in the stuff. The whole thing was done in three days to the horror of local residents and planning officials.
As time goes by
How am I to know
That’s life I guess
Body and soul
Having myself a time
Weep no more
In today’s Indian Premier League match Kevin Petersen’s side faced Andrew Flintoff’s who were asked to bat first and scored 179 runs in a 20 over game is an extraordinary total. The game was won in the first overs with a masterful innings by former Australian batsman Mathew Hayden who was run out when 65 and looking as if he would score a hundred. The key to these matches is having top class spin bowlers and how the batsmen are able to play spin. This was Durham’s undoing last year in the semi final. Flintoff was not out for 22. Peterson bowled 3 overs for 14 runs and on wicket. His side then made a disastrous start losing the first wicket before any score was recorded and then the second at 40, third at 47 with Petersen out 2 balls later to Muralitheran in his first over and the gained a second wicket to make it 50 for 5, 66 for 6 and then 7, 74 for 8 79 for 9 and a humiliating 87 all out. Flintoff also had three over and took one wick for 11 runs so with Petersen out for 0 it must be said that Flintoff won this duel although the match was won and lost by others.
No regrets
Easy to Love
Billie’s Blues
Pennies from Heaven.
I thought the twelfth episode of the fifth season of Lost was excellent and reminded the limitations of the openings sequences to this series which is now drawing to its end. The battle of wills between Ben and Locke for supremacy on the Island continued. Locke appears to know who is the real boss despite being murdered by Ben and brought back in the plane in a casket. This resurrection has led to several witty lines.
Previously Ben had been knocked out by Sun before he could leave with her for the main Island having shown her the boats. On getting to the island she realises that the others on the plane have been put back in time to 1977 and that Locke is the key to be able to link with 1977 and her husband who she now knows is not dead. In this episode Ben recovers to be greeted by Locke which is an interesting experience. He admits that he is surprised that the Island was able to resurrect from the dead. Locke informs Ben that he must return to the main Island to be judged by its force, especially for turning his back on his “ daughter” who is killed. In flashbacks we learn that Charles Widmore, Penny’s father had warned Ben that the “ daughter” had to die for things to work out as they should.
On the main Island Sun joins forces with Locke who insists that Ben accompanies them to the Temple of “the others“, alternative inhabitant to the Dharma Initiative. Here in an underground area Ben encounters the presence of the Island which he has earlier unlocked or unleashed. He is confronted by an image of his daughter who warns him that his salvation depends on yielding to the authority of Locke. In the way the series likes to link past, present, future in unravelling the overall master plot we learn that back in the USA Ben had tried to kill Penny, the daughter of Charles Widmore in revenge for the death of his own but hesitates when seeing Penny’s son, and this gives Desmond the opportunity to recover from being shot by Ben and severely beat him up, thus explaining his battered appearance when he reappears on the outer island following the second plane crash. The episode had several unexpected twists which made it the most enjoyable of the season so far.
Last night I found the episode Some Like it Hoth of little interest although it revealed that both Hurley and Miles have the capacity to communicate with the physically dead, if their bodies are close by. A second theme is the relationship between son and their fathers and the need to forgive each other of sins committed between them whether real or perceived. There are three episode to this season left
Twenty fours continues to be awful as was my choice between the two subscription DVD‘s to hand. The Virgin Territory 2008 was however decidedly worse. This one story film from the Decameron’s one hundred bawdy tales of sex, deception and religious hypocrisy alongside the era of the Black death failed to be anything it set out to be. It sat on the production shelf for three years before being issued as a DVD in the USA and had a limited showing in Europe. A few teenagers might like it if nothing better to do on a Saturday night but there are no thrills, kicks and it is not funny. I had a good sleep through most of it, fortunately. I was tempted to watch Hell in the Pacific which starts as a silent movie and continues with two characters finding themselves alone on a Pacific island in war time. Lee Marvin is the USA Marine Pilot and Toshio Mifune as the Japanese naval officer who attempts to capture each other and then. I opted for bed and went to sleep quickly.
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