Revolutionary Time

After the French Revolution, a decimal time system was put in place.
The day was divided into 10 hours, of 100 minutes each, of 100 seconds each.
So 1:23 wasn't 83 minutes long but 123 minutes.
The week was divided into ten days -but still only 1 day off- and the months were renamed.
The aim was to remove any royal and religious influence from the calendar.
The experiment didn't last long.
The decimal experiment that is, I think it's still too early to say on the Revolution experiment. (That's a Zhou Enlai gag...)

Trivial Pursuit

The World Is My Idea

Just thinking out loud...
Perception creates reality.
What we see is what we believe.
But the reality we see is produced, man-made, according to the dominant ideology, so it is artificial. Fake.
The societies we live in are as real as reality TV.
If I was watching this on television, I would switch off.
Is that the time? I should analyse this further but the reality is that I have to rush out to buy my Team GB Olympics souvenir scarf.

Give Me A Sign

So I'm between jobs -again- and I'm taking my head for a walk.
I'm looking for thoughts, for ideas, for inspirations.
Then I see some graffiti.
Fuck everything and become a pirate
I stop and re-read it.
Fuck everything and become a pirate
And there it is.
Steve Jobs once said, "Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?"
The signs are there if you look for them.
How you act on them is something else...

Lost Time

Before the factory gate
the worker suddenly stops
the good weather has tugged him by the coat
and as he turns round
and looks at the sun
all red all round
smiling in its burning sky
he winks his eye
familiarly
Say my friend Sun
don't you find
it's rather stupid
to give such a day
to a boss?

                                 -Jacques Prevert

The Message Is The Medium

McLuhan said that 'The medium is the message', in other words that the message is influenced by the medium used to transmit it.

He said it was actually the medium itself that shaped the message.

In the past, messages had limited media for distribution.

Today, we have a plethora of media which are not just shaping the messages but these are now being created just to make use of the media. 

We are making messages to make use of the media.

Messages of no note.

Like blog posts.

Oh.

Sightseeing Monks Or Freedom From Desire Isn't Part Of The Tour

I saw some sightseeing monks the other day.
They were Buddhist monks with shaved heads and saffron robes. They were near the Eiffel Tower. They had cameras around their necks. 
Now call me unenlightened and banish me from Nirvana, but isn't one of the basic tenets of Buddhism that much of the suffering in life comes from desire? Once necessities are covered -shelter, food, soft toilet paper- then isn't it the relentless chasing after superfluous crap that makes us miserable especially when we can't afford it?
I could be wrong, of course. Maybe the goal of freedom from desire doesn't include the desire to take your Nikon D3200 with telephoto zoom on a jumbo and fly across the globe to take photos of the Eiffel Tower.
Actually, I hope I'm wrong, because otherwise I feel some bad karma coming my way...