Home
The Sex Shop
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 608
I've no good reason to be here, or bad one for that matter, merely stopping in to see how the other half lives. And in front of a BDSM rope exhibit there are two 80 year old German grannies talking about so & so's rope technique, Old Hans Tiedherupman or some-such, WTF, overhearing, I have no good reason to be here but now I can't tear myself away...
Magic Man
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 504
Another one I've been running into a bit lately, writing in his journal at the coffee shop and laundromat. All these people writing in their journals and I'm just dying to snag a look. Last week he was at the laundromat looking for the Earth Day Celebrations, then trying to plan transport down to Taghum so he could partake. My age, roughly, loose fitting T shirt, tights, shorts, he's a bit on the short side, muscular or fit, shoulder length curly blonde hair, preposterous facial hair, curled up bushy moustache, goatee, he looks like an old time carny or circus performer, he'd be perfectly set in a deck of Tarot Cards, or performing on stage as a Victorian magician...
It's a great look. And his eyes, there's that rare glimpse of intelligence, he gets it, there's a twinkle of mischievousness (I suspect), and perhaps just a hint of utter lunacy.
Anyways yet another character on the periphery of acquaintance. I've got to start introducing myself.
My Two Bits
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Technology
- Hits: 718
CHAT GPT (again)
No, I've been working, in the forest, at the gym, no time to play or fuck around on the internet.
That said, I'd been thinking about the impact it will have on coding - programming, and am pretty sure I know - most IT professionals will be shortly out of work.
So, talking to an IT guy at work and am not surprised to find he shares my view. And - while he's older, and not too worried, he does realize the immense threat in this. He's surprised by how much most people underestimate it.
Now, my views (Not his):
Coding - AI - will invent, economize it's own code, coding languages, and alphabets. We will become less creators and more consumers. It has long since surpassed our ability to understand how it wins at GO and Chess. In one sense this would be a good thing. My laptop, for example is a perfect example of Code Bloat - 32 GB OS of which I use perhaps 64 Megabytes. And another 500 megabytes free to store my data.
Imagine that it rewrote the Operating System to my needs, and updated itself as my needs changed, and we're already in a much better world. But it's a world we won't be able to reverse engineer or understand, and this puts us in a precarious position of being slaves to technology that we're not able to control.
My Two Bits.
The White Goddess - Robert Graves
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 713
This took me way too long to read.
But, that said, it's a dense book that ties together vast realms of mythology and history and makes the argument that the original Goddesses were later supplanted by Patriarchal religions/myths, of which Christianity is just the final step.
He brings to the topic formidable learning, knowledge of mythology, religion, cultures, classics, and provides a scholarly, if speculative treatment of the subject.
I lack the basest rudiments of knowledge to even begin to question his Thesis, let alone conclusions, but I found intriguing his ideas that the history of humankind has been encoded in myth and folklore, a tradition brought to great heights by the bards of Wales and Ireland.
His interpretations are a gold mine of symbolic thought (as much so as a good reading of Dream Symbols, or Carl Jung).
And - even if he were wrong (and can you be wrong in this? I mean, I credit an informed and educated opinion - but some things - myth and history, for example - will perhaps always be somewhat obscure and impossible to untangle).
I imagine a version of it perhaps better laid out like a "Brewers Phrase and Fable", where you can word-golf around the entire volume and come to your own conclusions.
Ideas - of how the bards arranged and created symbols in trees, that a great many of our early myths evolved to mark the passage of seasons, hence the attention to trees, flowers, animals, every one not merely a tree or flower but marking a point of time and an usage to man. A whole list of associated meanings and implications. As well he touches upon the mythic beginnings of the alphabet, written language, and provides examples of the mnemonic devices poets used upon the finger joints of the hand - the dactyls, the symbolism of the forefinger, the pinkie finger - which, as we use to clean our ears is also known as "The Oracle Finger" as the muse might speak to you privately when you held the finger in your ear - fascinating, because - symbolically again in this we see the beginning of Palmistry. Nola, you should perhaps find a copy in the library and peruse pages 195-201, they might provide some fodder for you...(there's more in there too, but that saves you making any big reading commitments.)
And he provides an informed, impartial and intelligent/reasoned view of Christianity, done from without the Church, while a great many people are critical of Christianity (and for good reason), few have done the research he has. He covers the countless misinterpretations of ancient illustrations, myths and texts, that led to the Biblical Scriptures as we know them.
So - intriguing. Much to think about and a book to be revisited. Once again the right book at the right time. But my god a formidable read.
Page 192 of 1081