http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D0VhS8qXT0&feature=player_embedded

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.” -E.B. White.

I love this quote. A simple line like this makes me wish I could have met Elwyn Brooks White for coffee (or maybe a beer?!)…

So, on a Life Group retreat this weekend, I smiled as I read the signs posted almost everywhere, and specifically mentioned by the caretakers in the sign-in briefing…

Two things about this list…

Firstly, what was it about the talcum?! What terrible event had involved talcum powder, that it now was specifically banned? Who did what to whom? It must have been devastating, and perhaps even a repeated cataclysmic event, that resulted in a non-talc culture. Interesting, I can’t remember the last time I touched talcum powder since our kids left nappies, so I felt a little confused… asides from parents of babies, are there lots of people wandering around with talcum powder?

Secondly, and this was rather fiendish, but look as I may, there simply weren’t any mats to hang up. Should I have supplied my own, or did I misplace the other ones unknowingly?! Did someone forget to put the mats out, or was this rule a remnant of past sins that had now passed into obscurity because of the decline in mats?

Hmmmmm…. culture is interesting stuff.

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
– Albert Einstein

“In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.”
– Johann von Neumann

“We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and’.”
– Sir Arthur Eddington

von Neumann is an old favourite of mine…

Who wouldn’t want to be so cool?!

However, that all being said, I still wouldn’t buy a Fiesta…

“So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more. “

I have normally viewed Honda as a superlative maker of excellent cars, but obviously their foray into new, greener technologies is not quite up to par:

“Normally, Hondas feel as though they have been screwed together by eye surgeons. This one, however, feels as if it’s been made from steel so thin, you could read through it. And the seats, finished in pleblon, are designed specifically, it seems, to ruin your skeleton. This is hairy-shirted eco-ism at its very worst. “

I think I’ll stay away…

It’s not often that you hear someone describe something as “biblically terrible”…

Leave the man alone! His only crime was loving algebra…

Actually, Adam Ries was a very interesting man whose impact on German culture was enormous because he published his works in German and not Latin. He’s also one of the prime reasons we’re not using Roman numerals. Hi V, dude!