From January 28, 2012 on my Facebook:
1. A friend posted a photo with a Bertrand Russell quote, which I liked and shared:
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
2. I subscribe to posts from the movie Blade Runner, and they had posted:
Maybe you’re fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down and see a tortoise, Leon. It’s crawling toward you…
I remembered that something else had come to be a day or two earlier about a tortoise and thus it caught my attention. My memory was fuzzy but I thought what I’d read was about a Greek myth that the world is on the back of a giant tortoise. I searched and did not find it under Greek myths, however I found instead this little anecdote, from Wikipedia:
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
3. Next I saw a photo another friend posted, of a frog lying on its back on a lilypad. A flat plate, with an animal’s back to it, I am reminded of the tortoise… but now this image is provocatively upside down! I wonder, is it instead:
Frogs all the way up?