October 15, 2008 • 7:26 am 2
Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
That’s £1.43 in my terms.
In the light of recent events (bank bailouts running into billions) you have to ask yourself why that is.
So my contribution to blog action day is to ask the (not very original) questions:
Filed under: misc , blog action day
September 12, 2008 • 7:37 pm 0
“Fantastic”
How I did it: With a few clicks of the mouse, a bit of typing, cheering, commenting…a few clicks of the mouse, a bit of typing, cheering, commenting. And that was all there was to it really.
Lessons & tips: Always be pithy when on the net.
Resources: 43T etc
It took me 1 day.
It made me smile 
February 17, 2008 • 6:45 pm 0
Today I was through in Glasgow for a Killy reunion. It was fun to meet all these people that I hadn’t been at school with, although it transpired that I’d tried to teach some of their offspring. One lady there was a member of another of Edinburgh’s Buddhist sanghas and she’d just been visiting the Portobello Priory (which is where I attend) last Friday. Another nice thing this same lady told me was that she’d given a eulogy at the Scottish Parliament for a recently deceased, long-standing member of the Edinburgh Buddhist scene. So this was an ex-Killy kid addressing the Scottish Parliament—which was one of John A’s great dreams (a Scottish Parliament that is).
I’ve not been through in Glasgow for a while and about the only place I always must visit when I do go through is Borders bookstore (to be American). However I defy anyone to go into that shop and not buy something (it’s much nicer than their Edinburgh shop), and today for me was no exception.
Leafing through one of my purchases on the train home I came across the following:
On a plaque attached to the NASA deep space probe we [human beings] are described in symbols for the benefit of any aliens who might meet the spacecraft as “bilaterly symmetrical, sexually differentiated bipeds, located on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way, capable of recognising the prime numbers and moved by one extraordinary quality that lasts longer than all our other urges—curiosity.”
Yes that’s you (and me:)
I think that this is the plaque referred to:
Filed under: books, education, misc, science, scotland, today, trivia
February 9, 2008 • 3:52 pm 0
An interesting juxtaposition in the previous two posts. I remember that John and Morag went to hear Noam Chomsky speak in Glasgow in 1990. I remember feeling a bit put out that I couldn’t go along as well, mind you I probably didn’t ask if I could tag along.
Filed under: misc
