Sweet Little Angel

Rare footage with Willie Dixon here.

Highway 49

Another Man Done Gone

Low Down Dirty Shame

This is not the hardest puzzle in Raymond Smullyan’s “The Lady or The Tiger” but I still found it very tricky and could not get it right even though it’s the second time I’ve attempted it.

First some background.

Inspector Craig of Scotland Yard was called over to France to investigate eleven insane asylums where it was suspected that something was wrong. In each of these asylums, the only inhabitants were patients and doctors – the doctors constituted the entire staff. Each inhabitant of each asylum, patient or doctor, was either sane or insane. Moreover, the sane ones were totally sane and a hundred percent accurate in all their beliefs; all true propositions they knew to be true and all false propositions they knew to be false. The insane ones were totally inaccurate in their beliefs; all true propositions they believed to be false and all false propositions they believed to be true. It is to be assumed also that all the inhabitants were always honest – whatever they said, they really believed.

Now the puzzle of the fifth asylum.

Craig asked one of the inhabitants, “Are you a patient?” He replied, “I believe so.”

Is there anything necessarily wrong with this asylum?

[Note from recordmymind: i.e. given the reply by the inhabitant of the asylum, can you conclude that there are sane patients or insane doctors in the asylum?]

From Chapter 3 of Raymond Smullyan’s “The Lady or the Tiger”.

Answers will be provided in the comments section if requested.

(The Man With The) Green Thumb

For Strat-O-Blogster and Aart Hilal, who very kindly left comments on my blog.

I belatedly note that Andrew Hill, Paul Cohen and Mstislav Rostropovich have recently passed away. I found out about Cohen’s death from YY.

Rest in peace.

Paul Cohen

Andrew Hill

Mstislav Rostpropovich

I’m glad to report that I’ve finished reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime & Punishment! Yes, all 656 pages! Read snatches while on the way to work, in the toilet, before I slept and finally on 29 Apr 07, Sunday afternoon, just two days I ago, I completed all of it. I bought the book last year (see this post) but only started reading it…er…neither me nor my wife can recall when I started…but I suppose it must have been a few months ago.

Anyway, I’ll post something from the book when I have time.

While reading Crime and Punishment, I also managed to finish The Empty Mirror by Janwillem van de Wetering, a memoir of a Dutch guy who spent a year and a half in a Zen monastery, in Kyoto, the spiritual capital of Japan. I read this book as a distraction cos Crime and Punishment was too heavy going. The Empty Mirror was well written, engaging and thin enough for me to finish in a couple of days. I must say, I much preferred Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity by Soko Morinaga for books recounting an author’s experience in a Zen monastery, which I’ve incidentally borrowed again and which I’ve quoted from before in this post. But I must say that The Empty Mirror renewed my interest in meditation. In case any of you wonder why I like reading Zen stories, books or memoirs, one main reason is I enjoy the humour.

Here are some passages for my records. The first funny one:

“A new pain began to bother me, a pain which increased in intensity and which attacked me espeically when I visited the lavatory; a burning swollen feeling. By careful groping I found a swelling, about the size of a pigeon’s egg. Gerald wasn’t in the monastery that day and I didn’t have sufficienet command of Japanese to explain to the head monk what ailed me. I asked permission to use the telephone, an old-fashioned set which was hung on a dark wall in the porch of the temple. Peter was at home, and I told him about my painful discovery.

“A pigeon’s egg?” Peter asked.

I gave more details and he began to laugh.

“A pigeon’s egg, ha ha. What an extraordinary association. That’s a hemorrhoid; they caused by meditation and going to the toilet in a hurry because you don’t like flies and stench. The veins near your anus are bleeding and may be inflamed.”

“Yes,” I said irritably. “And what does one do about it?”

“Nothing,” said Peter. “Wait till I come. I’ll bring you some pills and ointment and if it doesn’t disappear you’ll have to see the doctor. Perhaps you need an operation, which would be painful, but probably it won’t be necessary. Nearly all the monks suffer from hemorrhoids and nobody has ever been to hospital. A pigeon’s egg! Ha ha. The idea!”

Peter thought my idea so funny that he told everybody about it. The monks grinned when they saw me and held, without ever getting tired of the joke, an imaginary pigeon’s egg between the thumb and index finger. The head monk slapped me on the back and roared with pleasure, and the master smiled cheerfully at me when he saw me busy in the garden. I went to see the wooden statue of the Zen master in the main temple and presented my complaint.

“Why should I get idiotic, distasteful diseases when I start looking for the truth? Why don’t you help me instead of allowing me being plagued by sagging veins? I am seeking final mystery, the most beautiful and glorious goal a man can aim at, so why should I be rewarded with hemorrhoids?”

...At least the statute hadn’t laughed.”

Here’s another passage, which is prone to misinterpretation, I would suppose:

“Bobo-roshi is a Zen master, but different…They say he has spent years in a Zen monastery, in the southern part of Kyoto. It’s a severe monastery, the rules are applied very strictly, more strictly than here. For instance, I believe they get up at 2 a.m. every day. He is supposed to have been a very diligent monk, rather overdoing things even, making extra rules for himself and all that. But he didn’t understand his koan and the master was hard on him; whenever he wanted to say something the master would pick up his bell and ring him out of the room. He was treated that way for years on end. He was doing extra meditation, sleeping in the lost position, try everything he could think of, but the koan remained as mysterious as ever. I don’t know how long this situation lasted, six years, ten years maybe, but then he had enough. I don’t think he even said goodbye, he just left, in ordinary clothes, with a little money he had saved, or which had been sent to him from home….He wandered about the city and found himself in the willow quarter, perhaps within an hour of leaving the monastery gate…One of the women called him, but he was so innocent that he didn’t know what she wanted. He went to her and asked politely what he could do for her. She took him by the hand and led him into her little house…She helped him undress- he must have understood then what was going on. She must have asked him for money and he must have given it to her. Then she took him to her bath, that’s the custom here. Your shoulders are massaged and you are dried with a clean towel and they talk to you. Slowly you become very excited and when she feels you are ready she takes you to the bedroom. He must have been quite excited after so many years of abstaining. At the moment he entered into her he solved his koan. He had an enormous satori, one of these very rare satoris which are described in our books, not a little understanding which can be deepened later but the lot at once, and explosion which tears you to pieces and you think the world has come to an end, that you can fill the emptiness of the universe in every possible sphere. When he left the woman he was a master…Bobo-roshi may have fetched his satori from the whores’ quarter but he had been through a long training before he went there. Water suddenly boils, but the kettle must have been on the fire for some time. There’s always a preparation.”

Maybe more passages another day.

After Crime and Punishment, I’ve started on Coelho’s Like the Flowing River.

Air, Love & Vitamins

With Vienna Art Orchestra