Classification
Since I was at school I have been fascinated by the classification of animals and plants, but it was not until 2003 that I produced a comprehensive table showing all the groups that are familiar to me. It can’t be uploaded as it is because that would change the width of the text and make the whole thing incomprehensible. The only way I can show it is to print it, scan the pages of the print-out and then upload the scans. Most of the changes that have taken place since 2003 are not shown.
Click thumbnail for larger image:
The Saint
I remember that one of the rules I learned when I was in the Scouts was that a Scout smiles and whistles in all difficulties. I don’t think that this should be taken too literally, but I do think that people should remain cheerful in all circumstances, and nobody brings this off more than Roger Moore in the character of Simon Templar in the television series ‘The Saint’. This was produced in the 1960s and is still shown regularly on ITV 4. There must be many people who are too young to remember it and simply don’t know how good it is. Every actor in it is exactly right for the part.
Radix malorum est Cupiditas
One of the things that people are always complaining about is that people sometimes do things that are harmful to others, but they are forgetting that this is negligible compared with the good that people do. If you think about it, nearly everything you possess was produced by other people for your benefit. In fact, most of the people who go out to work do things for the benefit of other people. There is an old saying ‘Radix malorum est cupiditas‘, which means ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’, but I think that the love of money is the source of much of the good in the world because it encourages people to do things for other people.
Memory
As I get older my memory gets worse and worse, but this can be an advantage because it means that I can read a book a second time and enjoy it just as much as I did the first time.