Explanation

This is a diary comprised of coincidences which happened to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Plaskett
I am posting a selection of those that I regarded as either particularly unlikely, or just funny.

I began noting coincidences which I met with circa 1984, although the first 3 examples here predate that.
The only facts you may glean about me will be via the coincidences; a form of pointilliste self portrait.
Or, if you like, snapshots.

Some already feature in my book, Coincidences (2000, Tamworth Press, ISBN 0 9509441 6 5), although even some of those examples have been substantially amended before representation in this Blog.

A fuller apologia and complete indexing may be found at Entry 243.

"It is impossible to review this enormous book as a whole, but it is worth considering some recurring themes. One is the way in which people have been motivated by a quest for spiritual understanding. In many different ways we see how psychical research and parapsychology have sprung from a belief in dualism, a search for the afterlife, or an honest desire to make a science of man´s spiritual nature. In all these quests parapsychology has sadly failed, and this book clearly shows how.
But Alcock is almost alone in respecting the quest, even while criticizing its results so far.

One day we may well have a spiritual science and come far closer to understanding human nature than we are today, and skeptics could lead the way rather than scoffing at the ideal!"

Susan Blackmore, reviewing A Skeptic´s Handbook of Parapsychology in the Fall 1986 issue of The Skeptical Inquirer.

"It is appropriate that this survey of man´s ideas about the universe should end with Newton for... our vision of the world is by and large still Newtonian... Until a new maestro emerges... the blueprint of the universe remains essentially the one that Newton drew for us, in spite of all disturbing rumours about the curvature of space, the relativity of time and the runaway nebulae. There, after the long voyage from the Babylonian star gods, the Greek crystal spheres, the medieval walled universe, our imagination has come to rest."

The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler

"Today we regard his alchemical and theological speculations as aberrations of genius - like Kepler´s Harmony of the World. But it is worth making the imaginative effort to grasp that both Newton and Kepler regarded these works as the crowning achievements of a lifetime devoted to ´justifying the ways of God to man´. Both of them would have been shocked by the modern view that science is merely an attempt to understand the physical universe."

Starseekers by Colin Wilson.

When Henri Becquerel spotted that photographic plates became fogged if kept in a drawer next to uranium salts, the discovery of radioactivity was immediate. By contrast, other scientific findings – global warming, for instance – take place incrementally, the result of gradually accumulating evidence. Last week, scientists announced a small but potentially significant step in our slowly evolving understanding of what the universe is made of.

Paul Davies writing on dark matter, December 23rd 2009

"As long as the need exists to find meaning in life beyond that which is forthcoming from a materialistic philosophy, the search for the paranormal will go on."

James E. Alcock in A Skeptic´s Handbook of Parapsychology

Blind

The Spring blew trumpets of color;
Her Green sang in my brain --
I heard a blind man groping
"Tap -- tap" with his cane;

I pitied him in his blindness;
But can I boast, "I see"?
Perhaps there walks a spirit
Close by, who pities me, --

A spirit who hears me tapping
The five-sensed cane of mind
Amid such unguessed glories --
That I am worse than blind.

Harry Kemp 1883-1960