Playing with food

This Furlong is playing with food.

Horse beating

This blog is called “The Last Furlong” after a painting by Marjorie Owens which appears in the heading. Marjorie Owens was a tiny woman who trained horses and painted them too. The Furlongs have several of her originals. She was also a Rupert Bear illustrator.

Cliff jumpers and 16 year old voters

In the UK, they are suggesting children vote at age sixteen. Of course that’s a political move, and not sane.

Fashion at the Grammy Awards 2018 – today’s meditation

Here is today’s meditation….

A murmuration of seagulls

At the back of our flat, there is a field. This is strange in itself as we are in the middle of a town. Evidently all the people who live around it bought it so that it could never be built on. 

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

I didn’t realise how VERY bad the drought in the Cape, South Africa is, until a reader of this blog alerted me to it.

They spent time this morning, collecting their water.

In Cape Town itself the situation is becoming dire.

“Four million citizens will be expected to collect 25 litres per person from one of 200 collection points,” he said. “A true nightmare scenario is developing before our very eyes.” Link

Will Cape Town be the first city to run out of water?

“The technology to connect people to a water supply has been around since ancient Egypt. It’s not a technical problem,” he says.

Well, bloody hell? Really? You could have fooled me!

The best we can do at the moment is a Graphene-based sieve. that turns seawater into drinking water….in TINY quantities.

We can insert stents into hearts in a day clinic, we can photograph Mars, we can drone-attack a single person, we can run a car on water, we can dive miles down into the ocean trench, we can feed millions of people in huge cities with efficient food-supplying systems but we can’t get water for our consumption from the sea!

Link

 

Tai Chi differs from Qi gong

These Furlongs are learning Tai Chi and Qi Gong.

They are not the same.

QiGong is a practice that has its focus on cultivating, circulating and harmonizing Qi. The idea is to first balance the body itself as a whole, and then balance the body within the backdrop of one’s environment. The health benefits are obvious as well as mind-blowing.

Tai Chi, although related, is fundamentally a martial art. Some forms of QiGong do promote physical characteristics useful for martial arts, but in comparison, QiGong lacks the attack and defense principles contained in the Tai Chi postures. Link

Evidently the soft, gentle Tai Chi we do, is watered down ‘martial art’.

Qi Gong is for The Furlong’s internal organs and physical health.

Tai Chi is to give us coping skills for life around us,

Last session we both managed the hour routine – previously, I had had to sit down forty-five minutes into it. I was well pleased.

Here is a master doing the martial art…

Like White

Mr furlong and I watched a program called ‘The Cosmetic Capital of the World’  – no – it might have been called ‘The Plastic Surgery Capital of the world’ – South Korea.

The irrationality of Christianity

This Furlong went to a Catholic Boarding School in Africa.

I loved it!

Snowdrops – hot topic – how do they keep warm?

Our snowdrops are out.