As I began (anew) this blog in December 2018 (after having done a travel blog based on a trip to Burma back in 2014), I settled on the name “Dreaming Platypus” based on a science story I wrote a number of years ago for an association newspaper. The platypus is one of nature’s strangest and most intriguing creatures—it surely looks like it was put together by a committee.
The aim of this blog is to look at all the oddities of life, with much discussion about politics, culture and anything else that strikes me as likely to interest readers.
Interesting Times
The earliest confirmed assertion that “may you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse came from the March 1936 Yorkshire Post of West Yorkshire, England, quoting British statesman Sir Austen Chamberlain. Quote Investigator cites the newspaper:
“It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, ‘May you live in interesting times,'” said Chamberlain. “There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us. We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.”
Esteemed members of the punditry write daily about the surreal behavior of the current occupant of the White House. There are too many astonishing actions about which to comment, and it is, I am certain, unhealthy to spend too much time attempting to make sense of it all. Yet attempting to make sense of it all is what we hairless apes do. No doubt other animals also attempt to make sense of it all—but without abstractions, philosophies and ideologies. So as I move forward, I will write from experience as much as reflection and in a way that, does, perhaps help make some sense of it all.
Dreaming Platypus 