As the story goes, long ago, King Arthur was hunting a hart. He ran the great deer into a fern thicket and killed it there. Just after the king had tasted the meat, a powerful and heavily armed knight charged in and accused the king of mistreating him for many years by giving his land away to Arthur’s favourite knight, Sir Gawain. In his rage, the formidable knight, Sir Gromer Somer Joure, came close to killing the king on the spot. However, Arthur skilfully convinced him that it would not be chivalrous, since Arthur was only in his light hunting gear than full armour.
Monday, March 29, 2010
What is that all women desire above all else?
As the story goes, long ago, King Arthur was hunting a hart. He ran the great deer into a fern thicket and killed it there. Just after the king had tasted the meat, a powerful and heavily armed knight charged in and accused the king of mistreating him for many years by giving his land away to Arthur’s favourite knight, Sir Gawain. In his rage, the formidable knight, Sir Gromer Somer Joure, came close to killing the king on the spot. However, Arthur skilfully convinced him that it would not be chivalrous, since Arthur was only in his light hunting gear than full armour.
Monday, March 15, 2010
millions, billions, trillions - who cares!
There is an old joke about the planetarium lecturer who tells his audience that in 5 Billion years the Sun will swell to become a bloated red giant, engulfing the planets Mercury and Venus and eventually consuming the Earth.
An anxious member of the audience corners the lecturer:
“Excuse me, Doctor; did you say that the Sun will burn up the Earth in 5 billion years?”
“Yes, more or less.”
“Thank God. For a moment I thought you said 5 million.”
Monday, March 8, 2010
Calculation King should have demanded of his Vizier
The way I first heard the story, it happened in ancient Persia. The Grand Vizier (وزير), the principal advisor to the king, had invented a new game. It was played with moving pieces on a square board comprised of 64 red and black squares. The most important piece was the King. The next most important piece was the Grand Vizier. The object of the game was to capture the enemy King. The game was called Shahmat (بازی شطرنج)– Shah for King and Mat for defeat. In Russian it is still called Shakhmat (шахматы). (Even in English there is an echo of this name: Check-Mate). As time passed, the pieces, their moves and the rules of the game all evolved; there is, for example, no longer a Grand Vizier – instead a Queen. And, of course, the game is Chess.
Monday, March 1, 2010
I am because you are
Watching winter Olympics for the past 17 days reaffirmed my belief in the principle of emptiness and interconnectedness.
Physicist David Bohm suggested that one of the key factors giving rise to the pervasive strife between peoples and nations is “a kind of thought that treats things as inherently divided, disconnected...where each part is considered to be essentially independent and self-existent”.
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