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From CP Snow: an oral biography by John Halperin (1983) page 104. My editorial insertions are in square brackets:

Snow: Intelligence isn't done by spies: that's absurd, romantic conception. It's done by studious young gentlemen in spectacles sitting down... On our side [World War II intelligence] ...

There is a type of lie which implies general truthfulness of discourse by pointing-at, analyzing, outraging-over specific lies. Yet the fact that so much fuss is made over specific lies implies that these specific lies took place against a truthful background.

Thus (for instance) lies about a new (or historical) ...

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A monster made of hundreds of tiny triangles

It's clear that we are in the middle of a serious spiritual examination. We will increasingly be given options and we will have to decide which side to align ourselves with. It will be a question of appearance and reality, with the good choice often seeming to the untutored eye to be the wrong choice, even the bad ...

'Clairvoyance' implies clear-seeing - and usually means perceiving that which is normally unseen; and it can include being a 'seer' - who can more clearly perceive the future. (I am using the term clairvoyance to include all kinds of perceived experiences - seeing visions, hearing voices, performing divination ...

I sifted through this blog the other day and noticed a marked difference between the posts I wrote before 2020 and the posts I wrote after 2020. Sure, many themes and interests exist on both sides of the 2020 demarcation line, but other themes and topics have virtually disappeared.

For example, before 2020, I ...

In yesterday's post, "Many sparrows, again, and various other sync links," I noted how Debbie's comment about the etymology and meanings of knock made me think of the expression "Don't knock it till you've tried it," and how a version of "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" I had recently listened to had included instrumentals ...

The Wizards/ Istari were incarnated Maia (angelic spirits) who were sent to Middle Earth in about the thousandth year of the Third Age to resist Sauron. They were five in number: Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown and two Blue Wizards named Alatar and Pallando.

Most of what we know of the ...

This is really weird, and I'm still not exactly sure how it happened, but last night I was trying to type a web address into my browser, and some combination of typing errors and an autocomplete function with a really long memory caused the browser to bring up a Wayback Machine archive of something I had published on ...

I only knew them for "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and had kind of assumed they were one-hit wonders. Actually, they've done quite a lot of stuff that's good -- and synchronistically relevant.

About Godzilla:

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About spontaneous human combustion:

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About how just because it burns ...

In my August 7 post "Standing in the Hall of Fame, and Christ at the door," I recount how, looking for Greg Olsen's painting of Jesus knocking at a green door, I ran across his painting of Jesus with sparrows.

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The painting is called Even a Sparrow and refers to Jesus' saying about God taking note ...

I expect that we have all day-dreamed about living in the past - and when the present is acutely miserable, or when we cannot seriously imagine a good future; then such dreams are more insistent.

If you are like me; then these pleasant day-dreams are almost like 'snapshots' - holiday photos in reverse - whereby ...

. . . then history is meaningless and Jesus's mission is impossible. I'll try to explain in a somewhat sloppy and roundabout way.

The painfully casual, flippant, and lazy manner in which Christians reject the development of human consciousness is truly a thing to behold. Most Christians equate ideas about the ...

This software is getting better very quickly. These are from MidJourney.

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Melons from an alien land

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Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.

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Kolob, nigh unto the throne of God

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The 400 divine rabbits of drunkenness

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From the narrow ...

(Where shall we seek guidance in navigating a Christian path through this mortal life? One potentially helpful way of thinking about it might be this...)

If we regard Goodness as living in harmony with God's creation and creative purposes: then we are able to do this because there is divinity within each of us. In ...

Last night I happened to listen to this haunting version of the Blue Öyster Cult classic "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," set to an instrumental track by P!nk.

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The original version of this song is famously featured in the 2000 Christopher Walken "More Cowbell" sketch, but this mashup version has no ...

I published "The Wizard at the green door" yesterday (August 6) at 4:14 p.m. Taiwan time. The post included Let Him In, a painting by Mormon artist Greg Olsen illustrating Revelation 3:20 ("Behold, I stand at the door, and knock . . ."), and it references the Script song "Hall of Fame" (featuring, incidentally, my ...

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"Sorry about that - it just sorta slipped-out..."

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"This low-carb diet really is working, isn't it?"

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(Thinks) I've made up my mind, I'm sick of being a puppet. I will audition for The Master in Doctor Who.

If belief in God is man's highest belief, then is it too much of a stretch to assume that belief in man may be God's highest belief?

Note added to my earlier post:

It strikes me that the 'ultimate' pure consciousness of life in the above scheme is able to account for the fact that atheists (of which I was one for most of my life) are able honestly and indignantly to claim that they believe in truth and objective morality and beauty:

Metaphysics ...

I've previously posted concerning the excellent TV themes of Barry Gray, especially for Gerry Anderson's shows.

In my occasional series of 'music on Saturdays'; here's a reprise of the Stingray theme in a terrific version for concert band. It looks as if they are having a great time:

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Egypt was once the centre of the highest spirituality on Earth but then it descended into a concern with magic and power and became the oppressive nation we know of from the time of Moses. Israel was once the focus of God's attention, a chosen nation that was the ground from which the Messiah was born, but then it too ...

In "The Locust Grove crop circle," I describe how I spontaneously visualized a vesica piscis while contemplating the Eight of Cups, and how Debbie then drew my attention to the titular crop formation, the structure of which includes both a vesica piscis and a shape like the anomalous "moon" on the Eight of ...

Our disagreement with the World comes down to metaphysics. How does one choose a metaphysics? Rather, how does one choose between rival metaphysical assumptions? One cannot derive metaphysical beliefs from something more fundamental, because there is nothing more fundamental. One’s metaphysics must not conflict with ...

As described in my last post, "God vs. King," the name Godzilla made me think of this dream of Dunne's, because the Hebrew name Zillah probably means "shadow." I've decided to quote the whole thing, from Dunne's posthumously published book Intrusions? This is a book almost nobody reads -- Dunne is known almost ...

My last post, "When that gorilla beats his chest," featured this poster for the movie Godzilla vs. Kong, which was originally going to be released in 2020 but was delayed for the usual reason.

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This synched with, among other things, these lyrics from The Script:Yeah, you can be the greatest, you ...

Yesterday evening (August 4) I taught a children's English class. They had read an article about the eating utensils used in different cultures -- forks, spoons, chopsticks, etc. -- and a sidebar mentioned that some chimpanzees used sticks to eat ants.

I asked if everyone knew what chimpanzee meant, and one of the ...

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I have never seen an accurate picture of an Ent; i.e. a picture that conforms to Tolkien's descriptions in the text of Lord of the Rings where they are depicted as large Men, much like trolls; and possible to mistake for large Men or ...