This one just got interesting. Please don’t take it away.
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I like that one on the bottom. What neat looking feet it has!
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If this thread turned into a birding thread I think it would be interesting to the birders and everyone else would long for the days of Egypt-Jesus. There’s only so much talk of distinguishing clay-colored/chipping sparrows and purple finch/house finch/siskins a normal person can tolerate. Plus if you think anti-vax/GG thread flaming is bad, you should see the bitter warfare over iding a juvenile reddish egret vs little blue from a grainy photo.
I love coots, glad that one posed for me. The Eurasian coots have that big shield on their head that the American ones don’t.
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Looking through your Yantra Mandala image brings to mind the words: Sun, radiance, everlasting, peace, tranquility, harmony and oneness.
My laymen investigation of the religion of Hinduism reveals that one of the most sacred sounds of Hinduism is “Aum” (OM).
Aum is a primordial sound, the the sound of the Sun, the essence of the Hindu spiritual scriptures. Aum is the sound of light; it is used in chants as a affirmation. it is used as a maxim that can create transformation.
Aum (OM) is embedded with intelligence and waking consciousness. Aum represents earth, wind, fire, water, the earth and universe.
Aum has the ability when chanted over and over to relax, uplift and even heal the soul.
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I go to St. James every time I’m in London. It’s these guys that always make my jaw drop.
The day I saw a very nicely dressed gentleman on a bench, reading some financial times, with one of those just sitting next to him–on the bench–i almost lost it.
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Quotes from: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/hinduism
“If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.”–Bhagwad Geeta
“You are what you believe in. You become that which you believe you can become”–Bhagavad Gita
“You will breathe throughout your life, every moment of it, but an opportunity like this comes once in a lifetime, and not even to everyone. Go for it!”–K. Hari Kumar
“Never praise oneself.”–Bhagwan Swaminarayan
“Pleasure from the senses seems like nectar at first, but it is bitter as poison in the end.”-Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
“The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.”–Swami Vivekananda
“Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing.”–Ramakrishna, Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna
“The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightening and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.”–Swami Prabhavananda, The Upanishads: Breath from the Eternal
“The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.”–Swami Vivekananda
“Any religion can be compared to the attic of an old home. Unless the attic is regularly cleaned, it gathers dust and cobwebs and eventually becomes unusable. Similarly, if a religion cannot be updated or cleaned from time to time, it loses its usefulness and cannot relate anymore to changed times and people.”–Bhaskarananda, The Essentials of Hinduism: A Comprehensive Overview of the World’s Oldest Religion
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I got an invite to St James’ once. That’s where I met the Duke of Edinburgh. I was disappointed I didn’t get to go to Buck House.
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I’d like to do some bicycle touring.
Years ago, I was riding my motorcycle on a central desert run. I was on the Stuart Highway, near a place called Wycliffe Well. Wycliffe advertises itself as “the UFO capital of Australia”, but what’s actually there is a single fuel pump and half a dozen nutters, in the middle of hardcore killing country, a thousand kilometres from civilisation in any direction.
Up in the Territory, when the fires start, they don’t even try to put them out. They just pull a defensive ring around the towns and let the grass burn.
A few weeks before I passed Wycliffe, a fire had gone through. For about 200km north and south of the pump, the land was uninterrupted ash from the road to the horizon (which, given the perfect flatness of the terrain, was quite distant). It looked like country that had been recently nuked.
I’d been on the road alone for a few weeks by this time. And then, right in the middle of this apparently infinite blasted hellscape, I passed a pair of early-twenties Dutch women on bicycles wearing lycra.
It took me a couple of minutes to assure myself that I wasn’t hallucinating.
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Srsly? I know they are all German imposters, but that would still be awesome.
Over his sixty years as royal consort, Philip has become famous for making remarks that were often construed as being offensive or stereotypical in nature.[95][96] Some of them were immediately interpreted as gaffes; but other awkward observations were construed by apologists as merely odd, off-colour, and often funny.[97][98][99] In his own words, comments attributed to Prince Philip have contributed to the perception that he is “a cantankerous old sod”
I assume you mean philip, right?
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Yeah. Was for my Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award.
Disappointingly, he wasn’t racist. Although he did make a comment about Patagonians speaking Welsh (to someone else who’d done their final expedition down there). I’m not sure he’s really racist anyway. I think he just likes being deliberately offensive.
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Wow, that’s fantastic. But he is quite funny when he is being off the cuff racist.
I’m with Louis Ck on this one, when you get to that age you should be allowed to murder someone without consequences 
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That is seriously hurting my brain.
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To do with emigrating miners, I think.
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…and that makes sense now. All of my knowledge of Patagonia comes from the highlands. Thanks for the historical reference.
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It’s really lovely, the goldeneyes and tufted ducks are awesome (and the moorhens/grey herons/common pochard/red crested pochards/and the passerines too), and it’s also just pretty in general. We didn’t see the pelicans in the brief visit, though we saw the signs.
The daffodils were coming in while we were there, which were really lovely:
Since this is the religion thread, let’s look at churches I saw on vacation:
St. John the Evangelist Church in Bath is a Catholic church, nice edifice
Inside St. John the Evangelist Church it’s quite lovely as well. Always worth wandering into the nicer Catholic churches.
Bath was lovely in part since it’s a lot quieter than London, though the architecture is just fantastic throughout the city (and great food/nice pubs/interesting history/a cool glass blowing studio/and the countryside around Bath is stunning), but Bath Abbey stood in the center as a magnificent landmark:
Bath was a traditional place in Britain for the sick to visit as the springs were considered therapeutic. As a result a whole lot of people died there, and Bath Abbey is only second to Westminster for the number of bodies in the crypts (now sealed), so there were memorials throughout which we tried very hard to not desecrate with puppets (with limited success.)
nice vaulted ceilings
the pipe organ
Bath City Church is an Anglican church, nice edifice, we talked to some lovely people in the church for a bit, and admired the interior, very lovely space.
The Roman baths in Bath were also magnificent. I think I posted this already, but I’m posting it again because of it’s religious significance. The baths were called Aquae Sulis and were dedicated to the local pagan deity Sulis (the Romans regarded her as Minerva), Poseidon (water things), and Asclepius (healing). Many religious objects, prayer scrolls, and especially interesting curse scrolls have been recovered with nice display at the baths.
Pulteney Bridge bridge is a gorgeous bridge in Bath lined with shops, stunning views all around. We wandered around it a long time. There was a coin shop on the bridge where we got an Elizabeth I groat from the 1570s.
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We need to have a slide projector party.
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A Ghanaian friend saw him while he was representing his UK university. He briefly explained the research he was working on and Prince Philip asked if he’d be going home soon.
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Jebus Christ!
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