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Mysteries of the World Are Exciting & Thought-Provoking!
This webpage is about "mysteries of the world" or "world mysteries" ... but first let's touch on about the use of the
word "mysteries" in the usual popular sense.
"Detective/Crime Mysteries"
The word "mysteries" ordinarily would refer to "detective mysteries", "detective stories" or "crime stories" -- that
is, fictional stories involving some form of mystery that would eventually involve the police or the law, and sometimes,
private detectives ("private eye", or PI -- private investigator) for the solution of the mystery.
It is in these detective mysteries that I find myself enjoying what may be called the "logic of detection" -- the
chain of evidence used to proceed from the crime (and crime scene) to the criminal/culprit.
Anyway, as far back as I can remember -- probably no earlier than at the pre-teen stage, i.e., 10 years old or so
-- I had been interested in such detective or crime mysteries. At that young age, the mysteries books I was reading included,
naturally enough, Enid Blyton's books, especially the Mystery (Five Find-Outers) series, the Famous Five
series and the Secret Seven series.
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Enid Blyton
(The Biography)
"Enid Blyton is known throughout the world for her imaginative children's books and her enduring characters
such as Noddy and the Famous Five. She is one of the most borrowed authors from British libraries and still holds a fascination
for readers old and young alike. Yet until 1974, when Barbara Stoney first published her official biography, little was known
about this most private author, even by members of her own family. The woman who emerged from Barbara Stoney's remarkable
research was hardworking, complex, often difficult and, in many ways, childlike. Now this widely praised classic biography
has been fully updated for the twenty-first century and, with the addition of new colour illustrations and a comprehensive
list of Enid Blyton's writings, documents the growing appeal of this extraordinary woman throughout the world. The fascinating
story of one of the world's most famous authors will intrigue and delight all those with an interest in her timeless books."
-- Amazon website of the book, Enid Blyton: The Biography, by Barbara Stoney
Enid Mary Blyton
(1897-1968)
"British writer who published over 600 children's or juvenile books during her 40-year career. Blyton's most famous series
was The Famous Five. Its central characters were Julian, Dick, Anne, George, and the dog Timmy. Her works celebrated
good food, spirit of comradeship, and honesty. By the 1980s, Blyton's books had sold some 60 million copies and had been translated
into nearly seventy languages." -- http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/eblyton.htm
Wikipedia says of Blyton, as follows
Enid Mary Blyton (August 11, 1897 – November 28, 1968) was a popular and prolific British children's
writer. She was one of the most successful children's storytellers of the twentieth century.
She is noted for numerous series of books based on recurring characters and designed for different age
groups. Her books have enjoyed popular success in many parts of the world, and have sold over 400 million copies. By one measure,
Blyton is the sixth most popular author worldwide: over 3400 translations of her books are available in 2007 according to
UNESCO's Index Translationum; she is behind Lenin and almost equal to Shakespeare. One of her most widely known characters
is Noddy, intended for beginning readers. However, her main forte is the young readers' novels, where children ride out their
own adventures with minimal adult help. In this genre, particularly popular series include the Famous Five (consisting of
21 novels, 1942 – 1963, based on four children and their dog), the Five Find-Outers and Dog, (15 novels, 1943-1961,
where five children regularly outwit the local police) as well as the Secret Seven (15 novels, 1949 – 1963, a society
of seven children who solve various mysteries).
Her work involves children's adventure stories, and fantasy, sometimes involving magic. Her books were and
still are enormously popular in Britain, Malta, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Australia, and as translations,
in former Yugoslavia, Japan, and across most of the globe. Her work has been translated into nearly 90 languages.
By my teenage years, I had graduated to the more hard-boiled mysteries, but I don't recall any of them.
There was, however, another series of fictional mysteries that I distinctly remember -- and can still enjoy even today
as an adult ... this series was, of course, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, in the form of short stories and novels, written
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Holmes was the world's first and finest CSI -- crime scene investigator -- and his logic surpassed, in my humble opinion,
even that of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin.
(We won't mention G. K. Chesterton's "Father Brown", who used a more EQ -- emotion quotient -- approach with hardly any
forensic science whatsoever ... this was probably due to Father Brown's understanding, as a priest, of the
human heart and, perhaps, of the human soul as well).
| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied to be a doctor at the University of Edinburgh and set up a small practice at Southsea in Hampshire
during his 20s. While the practice proved largely unsuccessful, the lack of patients provided him with the opportunity to
create possibly the most popular character ever introduced in the history of fiction, Sherlock Holmes.
While at University, Conan Doyle had been greatly
influenced by John Bell, one of his professors. Bell was an expert in the use of deductive reasoning to diagnose disease.
Conan Doyle was so impressed that he used these same principles when creating his famous detective.
Sherlock Holmes was introduced in A Study in Scarlet
(1887), followed by A Sign of Four in 1890, but didn't really take hold of the public's imagination until Strand
magazine, newly founded in 1890, published a series of short stories called "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." From that
point on the public couldn't get enough of Holmes and his always reliable confidant, John H. Watson, a retired military doctor.
Residing in London at 221B Baker Street, Holmes's
character and personality set him apart from all others. "Holmes, with his keen sense of observation, his lean face and hooked
nose, his long legs, his deerstalker hat, his magnifying glass, and his ever-present pipe. This personality is what caught
the reader's imagination." (The Literature of Crime and Detection)
-- http://www.mysterynet.com/holmes/
| Sherlock Holmes, Private Consulting Detective |
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| "The Valley of Fear" |
"Sherlock Holmes, the amateur detective, chemist, violin player, boxer, and swordsman (among other talents),
first appeared in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet in the Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887."
-- http://221bakerstreet.org/
"221b Baker Street. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and his colleague John H. Watson, M.D., spent many years at this
address in London, England, under the rent of Mrs. Hudson. Characters of every type have frequented the rooms of this place,
calling on Mr. Holmes for help and assistance on mysteries only the finest criminal detective could unravel."
--
http://221bakerstreet.org/
Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared
in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish-born author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based
detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skilful use of "deductive reasoning" while
using abductive reasoning (inference to the best explanation) and astute observation to solve difficult cases.
Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories that featured Holmes. All but four stories are narrated by Holmes'
friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson; two are narrated by Sherlock Holmes himself, and two others are written in the
third person. The first two stories, short novels, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and Lippincott's
Monthly Magazine in 1890. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short
stories in The Strand Magazine in 1891; further series of short stories and two serialised novels appeared almost
right up to Conan Doyle's death in 1930. The stories cover a period from around 1878 up to 1903, with a final case in 1914.
-- Wikipedia
Professor Challenger
Of course, Sir Doyle also wrote a few stories involving another character, the infamous, fierce, cantankerous, and fearless
Professor George Challenger.
Challenger was a different breed of scientific investigator altogether.
The "mysteries" that Prof. Challenger dealt with did not involved crimes committed by anyone.
Rather, Challenger was involved in solving the mysteries of evolution, extinct dinosaurs and, otherwise, lost worlds
...
Along the way, he also got involved in poison gas belt that overwhelmed our planet and the rest of our solar system,
as well as in proving the Gaia-like idea that Mother Earth was actually a living, breathing entity or organism in her own
right.
Wow!
Now ... that's what I call "mysteries" (but not of the detective or crime-solving kind).
George Edward Challenger, better known as Professor Challenger, is a fictional character in a series of science
fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike Conan Doyle's laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor
Challenger is an aggressive, dominating figure.
Edward Malone, the narrator of The Lost World, the novel in which Challenger first appeared, described
his first meeting with the character:
His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality
as this. It was his size, which took one's breath away-his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest
I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top hat, had I ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely
and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard, which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter
so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered
down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-grey under great black tufts, very clear,
very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which
appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling
voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.
He [Challenger] was also a pretentious and self-righteous scientific jack-of-all-trades. Although considered
by Malone's editor, Mr McArdle, to be "just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science", his ingenuity could be counted
upon to solve any problem or get out of any unsavoury situation, and be sure to offend and insult several other people in
the process. Challenger was, in many ways, rude, crude, and without social conscience or inhibition. Yet he was a man capable
of great loyalty and his love of his French wife was all encompassing.
Like Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger was based on a real person — in this case, a Professor Rutherford,
who had lectured at Conan Doyle's medical school.
According to The Lost World, the character was born in Largs, a village in Strathclyde, Scotland,
in 1863. He studied at Edinburgh University, where he studied Medicine, Zoology and Anthropology.
-- Wikipedia
The Challenger character was a science-fictional character rather than a police detective or crime-solving character.
Challenger was also more than grounded in science -- which Sherlock Holmes was, of course, except that Challenger
was a professional scientist and not an amateur scientist that Holmes (as the world's first forensic investigator) was
-- while most crime solvers, unless they are also forensic-minded or forensic-trained, are less grounded in science
(most crime solvers know less science than the average American high-school dropout).
And, thirdly, Challenger was into solving scientific mysteries rather than into solving crimes -- which
brings us to the second use of the term "mysteries", different from the use of "mysteries" in the popular sense
of "detective mysteries" or "crime mysteries".
And, here I am referring to the use of "mysteries" to mean "mysteries of the world" or "world mysteries" -- or, if you
like, scientific mysteries.
Mysteries of the World
(World Mysteries)
(Scientific Mysteries)
Mysteries ... Mysteries ... Mysteries!!!
Mysteries ... that's what I thought about when I woke up some two months or so ago (end-February 2008) ...
I had bought into the Site Build It! (SBI) process-and-tools package for building and hosting a website ...
The purchase had cost me US$299, which at the time, works out to a little over 420 Singapore Dollars.
Anyway, although I am familiar with the specifics and the technologies of building what I call hobbyist-type of websites
and weblogs, this is my first foray into building a "small-small" (i.e., less than 10 persons) business website
...
And, thus, faithfully, I delved into the thick and thin of things during "Day 1" and "Day 2" of the 10-Day SBI process
...
Note, in SBI, a "Day" is a metaphor and need not correspond to a calendar day.
For the first two SBI Days, I unlearned what I already know about the Internet and the World Wide Web, learned about
e-commerce and keywords, learned even more about "site concepts" (i.e., themes of the -- potential -- business website
that I am considering and building) and the keyword-focused content pages (or KFCPs) that I am going to write for
the business website ...
And then, I got into thinking -- guided by the SBI process and online SBI and other, non-SBI, tools -- about
what REALLY, REALLY interests me ...
What I am passionate about enough to want to work at building a business website, with GREAT content, possibly with more
than 200 webpages!
Wow!
And so, after considering a reasonably long list of topics, I finally decided that what I was most interested in
was ... mysteries!!! Scientific mysteries ... world mysteries ... mysteries of the world.
Actually, this whole SBI process was simultaneously thrilling AND exasperating ... Days 1 and 2 of the SBI
process not only got me connected with my passion, it got me to prioritize the many things that I am interested
in ... and deciding which of your interests was potentially profitable and had a potentially large enough market, which had
theme "sexiness", which had already too much competition or competing websites, which I really had personal knowledge
and experience and/or could do the necessary study and research to augment the personal knowledge and experience, and so on
and so forth ...
And at the end of these two SBI Days, I decided that what I used to be excited about during my younger days
was important enough to me, to want to build my business website around it! (Ceteris paribus, i.e., all
the other factors -- such as marketability, competition, theme "sexiness", etc. -- being, more or less, equal.)
In other words, I actually got to answer the question: "Was I still really excited about the mysteries of the
world?"
This may sound like superfluous question to ask ...
But, you see, when I was much younger, and right up to my early 20's, I actually did get really excited --
and even stay up half the night reading -- about Stonehenge, Easter Island, the Mayans and Incas, Egyptian pyramids and the
Sphinx, and what-have-you ...
Heck ... I even bought and read up four or five of Erich von Daniken's books, although I -- as a "science stream"
student in high school and during junior college (or pre-univeristy) days -- was filled with much skepticism even as
I was being excited.
And, of course, I had often wonder -- and am still wondering, even today -- about all those stuff within the
pages of the Bible, especially that bit about the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night ...
There were days -- and sometimes even weeks -- on end, when I would go about wondering, "What does all those world mysteries
really mean?"
Then, along the highways and byways of life, I got caught up with ... you guess it ... going to the university,
then getting a job, buying a house, mortgage payments, car payments, marriage, raising a family, and all that ...
Somehow, these life matters veered me away from all those mysteries of the world ...
Not that I am complaining about my life, family and so forth. They were important ... and remain so.
But now, more than 30 years have passed, and I am sort-of semi-retired, I still help out at Sunday School, my wife and
I are still an item (as the Generation Y or M, or the "Zippies" Generation -- as opposed to the Yuppies -- would say), my
only begotten son is now a working adult, I have downshifted or downscaled my life to simplify my life, I have even read
up on Zen and found it stimulating and humbling ... and so on and so forth.
And ... I am wondering, "Whateve happen to all those wonders of the world?"
I mean, are they still THERE?
Thus, using the Site Build It! (SBI) process-and-tools package (which I purchased into near the end of February 2008,
as alluded to -- above), I have thought, planned, and brainstormed ... then, thought, planned and brainstormed some more ...
for more than 2 months ... and I have finally come up with a "site concept" -- that is, the "theme" for the new website that
I am constructing and hosting with the help of SBI:
And, it was not a surprise to me, that I came to the conclusion that the world is indeed still full of the good and
exciting stuff ... (Thanks to SBI for this as well!)
Revelations of, and about, the world still can excite me, I realize ...
Life itself is, indeed, a mystery -- or a mysterious journey -- which is fraught with much uncertainties in one sense
...
And life -- or Existence (with a big-E) -- may also be regarded as a sort-of foregone conclusion in several other ways
... (some inklings of which appear in several ancient texts, including and especially the Book of Revelations,
i.e., the last book of the Holy Bible, or the "New Testament").
While some wild conjectures and fringe theories are still floating around -- especially those from popular authors such
von Daniken, Sitchin, Alford, Marrs, etc. -- there are indeed many questions in and about this world that still remain
largely unanswered or unexplained or unsolved.
Or, at least, these mysteries of the world -- or world mysteries -- not answered, explained or solved in a really satisfactory
manner.
Still, an investigation of these world mysteries should continue unabated ... if only in recognition of the fact
that, despite our scientific and technological progress so far, we still know so little and are still in ignorance of much.
The humility would do us much good!
Cheers ... and God Bless!
Amen!
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