Flirting with chaos
This is the website of writer Tim Lenton. I have worked most of my life as a journalist, during the latter part of which I wrote commentary columns for the Eastern Daily Press, based in Norwich, England. I am also a poet, a walker, a chess player, a driver, a husband, a father, a grandparent, a guitar player, a reader, a TV watcher, a pensioner and a Christian, among other things. I like to look at things sideways and not go the same way everyone else is going. I love Norfolk, Scotland, the coast, mountains and almost everywhere I find myself. I like freedom and hate the nanny state.
Radical new education ideas
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Philosophy for children? They think, therefore they learn.
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Yes, even primary school children. Click here.
Worth a look
Poetry, prose and reviews, constantly fresh and updated
Mapping clarity
There are a number of good mapping sites on the Internet. But in the UK it’s hard to beat the Ordnance Survey for clarity.
Website of Lucy Care, force behind the Paston Heritage Society, historian, artist, poet, film-maker.
Other people’s weather Webcams around the world bring you views of the weather other people are having while it’s raining here (0r even if it isn’t).
Earth history – a new approach
Confused by the inconsistencies in the different views of how life began on Earth? Try this intelligent new approach, which contains some surprises.
Website of Norwich artist Sandra Rowney, with whom I collaborated for the groundbreaking Norwich Twenty Group exhibition, Voicing Visions.
Did you know that there are only three perfect numbers smaller than 1000, or that two is the only even prime? Much more than this about all kinds of numbers.
Time on your hands
Ever felt that time goes by too fast? Or even that it can, sometimes, drag? Get a completely new perspective on the passage of time at this brilliant website, where photography is used to expand perception.
So how far is that?
Want to know exactly how far it is from Kathmandu to Moscow, or Canberra to Fiji? This is the site for you. It also tells you the exact position of each place and includes a currency converter. Plus, handily, a short course in Indonesian. But don't worry, the site is in English.
Keeping track of flights, especially those over US air space but also many others. Includes information about the flights least likely to incur delays, which might be useful.
Clever use of Bible verses to get across God’s love for his children. In case you were wondering, you’re one of them.
Facts and figures about speed and accidents that may make you think twice about the usefulness of speed cameras.
A guide to walkers on the Lakeland Fells, together with some stunning photographs that make you want to get up there right now.
Another kind of Mawkin
An enthusiastic young band performs an eclectic selection of traditional music ranging from Celtic airs to the haunting sounds of klezmer, from foot stomping Irish reels to Shetland strathspeys. Have a listen.
Website of poet, liturgist and laid-back theatre owner Ian Fosten
Norwich Christian Meditation Centre
Quotes
The existence of even an infinite number of universes would not of itself guarantee that one of them had life-generating capacity, as if all possibilities would have to be present in that vast ensemble. After all there are an infinite number of even numbers, but none of them possesses the property of oddness.
John Polkinghorne – Science and Religion in Quest of Truth
We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.
Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending
Science yields well-motivated beliefs, but it does not deliver complete and absolute certainty about them.
John Polkinghorne - Science and Religion in Quest of Truth
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Ernest Benn
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand Russell
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
Carl Sagan
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
Robert Copeland
We are none of us infallible – not even the youngest of us.
W H Thompson
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
Michael Crichton
Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.
Steven Wright
If we were less arrogant we might see ourselves for what we are – children sent on an errand, who first forget our instructions and then realise we have forgotten the way home.
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Lindsay Clarke
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I was much too far out all my life.
And not waving but drowning.
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Stevie Smith
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“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, while we were underneath it?”
“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.
A A Milne
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
25 January 2012
“I accept chaos,” said Bob Dylan drily many, many years ago. “I’m not sure if it accepts me.”
Most of us are unhappy with chaos. When even the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can start a storm on the other side of the world, you have to be a little uneasy about contemplating any kind of disruption, particularly at much more obviously provocative levels.
So perhaps it is prudent not to get involved in uprisings of any kind, even the kind that seem to release us from tyrants.
The problem is that while we want to be free, we would also like to be safe – and the joy of freedom can quickly turn into the terror of chaos.
Is the freedom worth it? It depends who you are. Certain people have the innate tools to benefit from chaos, because they impose their will on it. They are the kinds of people who dominate meetings: quick-thinking and quick-talking. They do not necessarily have the best ideas, but they carry the day.
This is (again) another way of saying that the wrong people are in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong people.
That is why you get the French Revolution, why certain bankers ruined the economy and why the Arab Spring could easily turn back into a winter of fear.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”, as Pete Townshend so eloquently put it.
Yes, chaos is risky. It is a life-or-death environment. That is why most people see democracy as the perfect form of government, and the rule of law as vital.
In fact, the latter is more important than the former. Whoever is in power, if the law is bigger – and securely separate – then we can rest easy in our beds. Unfortunately, human nature is such that this can never be guaranteed, or even expected.
Belief in a God of love goes a long way to counteract the human tendency toward self-interest and self-justification, but belief in a God of vengeance has the opposite effect.
All you need really is love. It stills the storm, and brings freedom. Sadly, we don’t believe it any more. Perhaps we never did.
