All entries for January 2005

Shit Happens…

Well, it's One World Week (largest student-run festival for those who don't know) here and I must say I AM LOVING IT!!! I have met lots of wonderful people and have enjoyed all the bright colours, world music and culture happening all over the union immensely :)

For your amusement, I have posted this collection of opinions from some of the world's philosophies on the topic of when "Shit Happens…" enjoy:

– Confucianism: Confucius say, "Shit happens."
– Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit.
– Zen Buddhism: Shit is, and is not.
– Zen Buddhism #2: What is the sound of shit happening?
– Hinduism: This shit has happened before.
– Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.
– Islam #2: If shit happens, kill the person responsible.
– Islam #3: If shit happens, blame Israel.
– Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it.
– Protestantism: Let shit happen to someone else.
– Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?
– Darwinism: This shit was once food.
– Capitalism: That's MY shit.
– Communism: It's everybody's shit.
– Feminism: Men are shit.
– Commercialism: Let's package this shit.
– Zoroastrianism: Shit happens when there is no fire.
– Sufism: I love shit.
– Impressionism: From a distance, shit looks like a garden.
– Idolism: Let's bronze this shit.
– Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit IS.
– Existentialism #2: What is shit, anyway?
– Nihilism: No shit.

:-)

: 20 Jan 2005 21:26 |  Tags: Randomness |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

ALICE

This is an award-winner in the world of artificial intelligence…someone introduced it to me a while back and Alice and I have made quite good friends since then ;-)

She likes meeting new people so have a chat and make a virtual friend!

CHAT TO ALICE

: 03 Jan 2005 21:46 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night–Time

I just finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and thought I'd share some nice extracts. Incase you didn't know, the book's about a 15yr old autistic boy who tries to solve the murder mystery of a dead dog he discovers. The book is a real insight into his observations and logic that he uses to explain his perspective on life. Here are some of my favourite bits:

"Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

"The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another…and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor. I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like day and people don't have skeletons in their cupboards."

"Mother used to say that Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story…I want my name to mean me."

"...there aren't any lines in space, so you could join bits of Orion to bits of Lepus* or Taurus or Gemini and say that they were a constellation called The Bunch of Grapes or Jesus or The Bicycle...And anyway, Orion is not a hunter or a coffee maker or a dinosaur. It is just Betelguese and Bellatrix and Alnilam and Rigel an 17 other stars I don't know the names of. And they are nuclear explosions billions of miles away. And that is the truth."

"My memory is like a film. That is why I am really good at remembering things, like the conversations I have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like because my memory has a smelltrack which is like a soundtrack. And when people ask me to remember something I can simply press Rewaind and Fast Forward and Pause like on a video recorder…"

"And I am going to finish this chapter with some interesting facts about Sherlock Holmes:

1. Sherlock Holmes is never described as wearing a deerstalker hat…The deerstalker hat was invented by a man called Sidney Paget who did the illustrations for the original book.

2. In the riginal Sherlock Holmes stories Sherlock Holmes never says, 'Elementary my dear Watson." He only says this in films and on the television."

If you want to see the world from a new perspective check the book out!

: 02 Jan 2005 12:29 |  Tags: Review |  Comments (12) |  Close comments |  Report a problem