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Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

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georges lemaïtre

Uncomfortable Thoughts

September 19, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

‘What good is a newborn baby?’ asked Benjamin Franklin in 1783 when people questioned his enthusiasm for the recent invention of hot air ballooning. His predictions that the balloons would become significant for transport was unusually wrong. 250 years later, Loon is a balloon system in the news for delivering the internet in Kenya and elsewhere. Balloons are helping transport information.

Binary: Ferry: Transport: Sea © Simon Robinson 2020
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Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: ai, albert einstein, benjamin franklin, enrico fermi, evolution, facebook, fred hoyle, gaia, georges lemaïtre, james lovelock, matt ridley, photo, robin dunbar, stephen hawking

Future Imperfect

April 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

You may have noticed the spine of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist in a recent photo I posted. There’s a line in it that advises that ‘The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like.’ And with such confirmation I feel encouraged to meld it with an Anne Lamott aphorism that’s infected the web: ‘Every thing that happened to you is yours; people should have behaved better.’

Are these observations deserving of reflection and expression? They certainly contributed to my rereading an older walking commentary blog to see if I’m repeating themes close to my heart and of course, create an opportunity to steal from myself. Which led me down some old paths this morning and a return to a personal favourite theme which is that one’s point of view depends on the view point. Mountain tops become islands if you are looking down from a peak above a cloud filled valley.

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Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: albert einstein, anne lamott, austin kleon, booklink, brian cox, david moore, georges lemaïtre, jean-jacques rousseau, mark o'connell, mary robinson, Maslow, pankaj mishra, tim flannery, walking

Kalends and Ides

March 15, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Caveat emptor: the things that flow through my consciousness are not always pleasant, complete let alone right.

The Romans left quite a legacy. Is that because they took the time to chisel their notes in the stones they built with? Calendars were a great invention and the Roman version remains dominant in global diplomacy and business. And it’s fundamental in many administrative regions of the world. Taxes tend to be assessed on 365 day years despite domestic use of different systems such as lunations in Muslim and Mosaic households. The ‘ides’ notion probably lost appeal after Brutus backstabbed Julius Caesar in 44 BC. And besides, Shakespeare told the world to be wary of them.

Hard to avoid thinking about calendars in a leap year. And reflecting on calendars brings time into view. And view is the right word. We lived for a while in the coyote-barking foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. Our zip code was the unforgettable 91011 which I could never remember, near where the astronomer Edwin Hubble spent the late 1920’s. He developed a view of nebulae fleeing from his 100 inch telescope. We met many who worked in Nasa’s JPL and Caltech and all spoke with passion of their pursuits of galaxies, now that they knew what nebulae were.

[Read more…] about Kalends and Ides

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: albert einstein, edwin hubble, fred hoyle, georges lemaïtre, julius caesar, maths, measurement, william rowan hamilton, yesterday

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