Doing the daily picture has been a nice experiment. Sometimes I take a lot of pictures, and then try to select just one out of the many. And then there are days when it is already late evening and I haven't taken a single picture, so I have to dig into my imagination to invent an idea for a picture. And sometimes the project just gives me inspiration to do funny or silly things in the middle of serious work - which is always nice =)

Yeah, I think I'll do the whole year of daily pictures.

I remember once reading that most (if not all) of the philosophers in the Ancient Greece lived in a different polis than where they were born. The language and the culture is generally speaking the same, but still each polis had their own habits. So, someone from another polis could easily feel being a slightly outsider - not having blood ties to the rest of the society, not being raised up to all the habits which were self-evident for the most of the population. That kind of social background could then contribute the philosophical reflection; questioning things, asking "why", and generally speaking trying to make sense out of the world, instead of simply going with the tradition.

I think this aspect is pretty strong in Diogenes; it seems that he didn't identify himself as a citizen of a spesific City-State, but more as a Human. I've been lately thinking quite often about group-identity and how it affects human thinking. Funnily, this seems to be related to the modern theme of conservatism / liberalism. Conservatism sees behaving according to the tradition as a value in itself, and therefore puts a lot of weight to social rank and status - as everybody is evaluating the others according to the common tradition of the group, it is valuable to aim for a good reputation. But Diogenes didn't. Maybe he was one of the first liberals, refusing to follow tradition just for the sake of tradition, doing things the natural way regardless of what others think =)