Last Day
Not here of course. Just on this site. Tomorrow I enjoy the delights of South Lancs – should I wear a red rose? – Alan Beswick should be told. When I was first in Liverpool - a pale and very un-interesting youth, I would listen to Mr Beswick on his late-night phone in. He would take issue with everyone, argue from both sides of the point and put the phone down in the middle of conversations; I hated him which is why I listened. Then one day he saved someone from suicide (may not have been quite that dramatic but that's how I remember it). Many thoughts at that point. Instant admiration. The evening was then spoiled by the sad pre-teen who rang up just to shout the word 'KLINGON' at the top of his voice. Alan never swore but you could hear the cusses bouncing round in his head at that point - a professional broadcaster of the highest order. He crops up on the local news show occasionally though I cannot quite remember whether it is the superior Aunty version with Gordon ‘Krypton-Factor’ Burns or the hip and happening commercial version with Tony ‘forgive-him-anything-because-without-him-there-would-have-been-no-Joy-Division’ Wilson. (Deep Breath). I have not watched either for some time so Tony Wilson may be off somewhere being an idiot. I so wanted to use a cuss word there but this is a respectable blog. I deduce from his show on BBC GMR that Mr Beswick probably appears on the BBC show.
Nineteen years I’ve been here. Be nice to see somewhere different. I know Lancashire quite well. Before I was married I used to drive around the county as it was the first bit of green you hit when leaving Liverpool to the North. South Lancashire is very flat! Travel reports next week!
Listening to Thieves Like Us – New Order
Not many thieves like me but then I don’t like many thieves so that’s alright. There is balance in the world. The sun is shining so I suppose we are OK. See you at Lunch – probably.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Strolling Round With My Very Best Friend
Long and boring bit – mostly for me.
The gulls outside are squawking in time to the music (clue above) and driving home yesterday I saw someone struggling with a disability shuffling exactly in time to Zazu. These things make you think that the machinery of the world is linked and that something has got inside the works. We know that these sort of things do not really happen; it's just that they appear to do so. Faith is very much a belief in the linking of things through one consciousness though I am not sure that most modern religious leaders believe in the total control over all things by one entity - the things which happen in the world which warrant us questioning the goodness of the creator have removed the idea of omnipotence as a genuine belief. It is far easier to think of the complexity of things, right up to my ability to write this (sounds pompous I know but you don't need to look at whizzy philosophers or mathematicians to see some complexity that has simply evolved) as simple products of the bringing together of simple components.
My wife and I had one of our periodical discussions about a scientific matter when I started about the idea that every living human can be traced back to one early human (and further to one single shrew or one of any other of the myriad species between us and the slime moulds). I didn’t understand it when the discussion started (as I said here a few days ago) but I soon did as I had to clear the ideas in my own head before being able to get them across. The bottom line is that a mutation that leads to a new trait and hence eventually to new species (though the boundaries between species are always blurred) happens in one single individual (either a parent or a child). The individual with the new trait, if it does not kill them as so many mutations do, will breed with other individuals of the species and that new trait stands any offspring in a better position to survive so the new trait will tend to propagate through the entire species. You can actually ignore all this guff because it is obvious that the trait has to be passed down through the various generations. It may not be clear when written down but it is certainly clear in my head.
As part of this, I tried some analogies regarding the mutation. My wife (I suspect playing devil’s advocate) questioned why the mutation happened in just one individual; why can the same mutation not happen in more than one? At this point I suddenly saw how the mutations are distinct from the traits they produce. It is tempting to think of cause and effect here, the mutations cause the new trait – well they do but it is the passage of time after the mutation that allows the trait to propagate because it gives an advantage to the mutated individuals. You can pick my analogy apart if you like but I likened DNA to all the pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica laid out on the ground while every year a plane flew over it and loosed a single drop of ink over it from high altitude. A useful mutation would correspond to that single drop of ink making a meaningful and useful alteration to the text of the book. Most drops would either miss entirely or cause gibberish. Sometimes they could fatally change the meaning giving a completely wrong view of a large part of human knowledge. Rarely they would cause a change in meaning that would increase or enhance that knowledge.
Having said all this, the mutations do reoccur. We have convergent evolution where the same traits are brought about in completely different species. I seem to remember that the eye has evolved many times throughout evolution, though of course, the eyes of all vertebrates have arisen from the same original structure. The mutations are not the same genes but they cause the same trait to be propagated.
As you can tell, I am deep in The Ancestor’s Tale. Richard Dawkins has suggested that mathematically challenged readers skip the pages I am on at the moment and I have to say that I am tempted. It sent me to sleep last night and nearly did so again this morning. Roll on page 118!
Long and boring bit – mostly for me.
The gulls outside are squawking in time to the music (clue above) and driving home yesterday I saw someone struggling with a disability shuffling exactly in time to Zazu. These things make you think that the machinery of the world is linked and that something has got inside the works. We know that these sort of things do not really happen; it's just that they appear to do so. Faith is very much a belief in the linking of things through one consciousness though I am not sure that most modern religious leaders believe in the total control over all things by one entity - the things which happen in the world which warrant us questioning the goodness of the creator have removed the idea of omnipotence as a genuine belief. It is far easier to think of the complexity of things, right up to my ability to write this (sounds pompous I know but you don't need to look at whizzy philosophers or mathematicians to see some complexity that has simply evolved) as simple products of the bringing together of simple components.
My wife and I had one of our periodical discussions about a scientific matter when I started about the idea that every living human can be traced back to one early human (and further to one single shrew or one of any other of the myriad species between us and the slime moulds). I didn’t understand it when the discussion started (as I said here a few days ago) but I soon did as I had to clear the ideas in my own head before being able to get them across. The bottom line is that a mutation that leads to a new trait and hence eventually to new species (though the boundaries between species are always blurred) happens in one single individual (either a parent or a child). The individual with the new trait, if it does not kill them as so many mutations do, will breed with other individuals of the species and that new trait stands any offspring in a better position to survive so the new trait will tend to propagate through the entire species. You can actually ignore all this guff because it is obvious that the trait has to be passed down through the various generations. It may not be clear when written down but it is certainly clear in my head.
As part of this, I tried some analogies regarding the mutation. My wife (I suspect playing devil’s advocate) questioned why the mutation happened in just one individual; why can the same mutation not happen in more than one? At this point I suddenly saw how the mutations are distinct from the traits they produce. It is tempting to think of cause and effect here, the mutations cause the new trait – well they do but it is the passage of time after the mutation that allows the trait to propagate because it gives an advantage to the mutated individuals. You can pick my analogy apart if you like but I likened DNA to all the pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica laid out on the ground while every year a plane flew over it and loosed a single drop of ink over it from high altitude. A useful mutation would correspond to that single drop of ink making a meaningful and useful alteration to the text of the book. Most drops would either miss entirely or cause gibberish. Sometimes they could fatally change the meaning giving a completely wrong view of a large part of human knowledge. Rarely they would cause a change in meaning that would increase or enhance that knowledge.
Having said all this, the mutations do reoccur. We have convergent evolution where the same traits are brought about in completely different species. I seem to remember that the eye has evolved many times throughout evolution, though of course, the eyes of all vertebrates have arisen from the same original structure. The mutations are not the same genes but they cause the same trait to be propagated.
As you can tell, I am deep in The Ancestor’s Tale. Richard Dawkins has suggested that mathematically challenged readers skip the pages I am on at the moment and I have to say that I am tempted. It sent me to sleep last night and nearly did so again this morning. Roll on page 118!
The Last Of The Numchuk Oligarchy
.... and the air is still thick with water, a humidity that brings sickness with the insects attracted here by the warmer winters. We brush them away but they persist, making us sick in ways we could not believe. But still no one starves these days. We may get sick but we do not get hungry, not yet; not until the desert marches North and has us all in Africa. What will the world do then poor thing? Here is the president curled up, fingers in his ears just like yesterday.
The green marines are your ambassadors, white boys from the rolling prairies, the forest states, the prisons, so used to cultures like this, taking bullets and coming back to festering resentment of the tasks set before them. This one rallied those under him, shouting through the dust storms and dropped off the building so unfamiliar to him. They are all so nervous, twitchy and thirsty in the dry heat. The air con is down again, like the graphs.
I am back and young again, stalking the city valleys, the dark and snowy underpasses and the doomed youth stand thin and expressionless for the photographs, at least one of them thinking he will change the world. No one answers the questions, worrying (correctly) that they have nothing to say. What are they in it for? 'Kicks' thinks the thinnest one, wanting to score something soon to keep him sharp and wordy. And years later his mate will live comfortably on some anti-depressant - writing rubbish and making money. And that band was me and my friends, so unoriginal but thinking we were the only ones. The world is so small that I must be the only one. Was that how they got their name. Just read around you; see the trails of gibberish and expectation scrolling up your screen. Or maybe down. We track back through history, knowing of past and future in one big line, never sure which direction we are travelling in. And time goes nowhere.
She is here in the field with me, lithe and long and wordy. I think that no one else can see her; they walk through her not hearing so I start repeating what she says; I suppose she is in my head but I see here standing next to me, right here. I point but I only say this to you, also in my head. Something has changed to bring this back in different ways. She is blue, not dressed for this day, more like for a party or some simple day of making things in clean houses, cool English summer light, no sun but grey diffusions. And still she is here, hands as punctuation and expression, lit and faded like turning the contrast down. For us it starts to rain, until we are all dripping, struggling into the crinkly, crushed waterproofs we carry at our belts. But she stands, still talking, making wars go away, being irrational on top of being not really here. I am bent double, in pain, and wet, a curtain of water falling from my hood, into my face. I strain to hear her now. The mud is taking over, earth over poetry and public speaking.
We get paid more to pick now. They want the stuff off the ground and out of the rot so we get paid an hourly rate, one which makes us feel better when we reach home, muddy and aching, waiting for a thin evening of reading and listening to the crops growing outside, reaching up as only man can make it, waving in the wind like yellow inland seas. For a moment I have forgotten her in this deluge, but looking up I can still see her, not working and not existing, still talking to the women around her all those years ago. The strawberries are just mush now, no sugar, no red, just black and rot. She fades.
.... and the air is still thick with water, a humidity that brings sickness with the insects attracted here by the warmer winters. We brush them away but they persist, making us sick in ways we could not believe. But still no one starves these days. We may get sick but we do not get hungry, not yet; not until the desert marches North and has us all in Africa. What will the world do then poor thing? Here is the president curled up, fingers in his ears just like yesterday.
The green marines are your ambassadors, white boys from the rolling prairies, the forest states, the prisons, so used to cultures like this, taking bullets and coming back to festering resentment of the tasks set before them. This one rallied those under him, shouting through the dust storms and dropped off the building so unfamiliar to him. They are all so nervous, twitchy and thirsty in the dry heat. The air con is down again, like the graphs.
I am back and young again, stalking the city valleys, the dark and snowy underpasses and the doomed youth stand thin and expressionless for the photographs, at least one of them thinking he will change the world. No one answers the questions, worrying (correctly) that they have nothing to say. What are they in it for? 'Kicks' thinks the thinnest one, wanting to score something soon to keep him sharp and wordy. And years later his mate will live comfortably on some anti-depressant - writing rubbish and making money. And that band was me and my friends, so unoriginal but thinking we were the only ones. The world is so small that I must be the only one. Was that how they got their name. Just read around you; see the trails of gibberish and expectation scrolling up your screen. Or maybe down. We track back through history, knowing of past and future in one big line, never sure which direction we are travelling in. And time goes nowhere.
She is here in the field with me, lithe and long and wordy. I think that no one else can see her; they walk through her not hearing so I start repeating what she says; I suppose she is in my head but I see here standing next to me, right here. I point but I only say this to you, also in my head. Something has changed to bring this back in different ways. She is blue, not dressed for this day, more like for a party or some simple day of making things in clean houses, cool English summer light, no sun but grey diffusions. And still she is here, hands as punctuation and expression, lit and faded like turning the contrast down. For us it starts to rain, until we are all dripping, struggling into the crinkly, crushed waterproofs we carry at our belts. But she stands, still talking, making wars go away, being irrational on top of being not really here. I am bent double, in pain, and wet, a curtain of water falling from my hood, into my face. I strain to hear her now. The mud is taking over, earth over poetry and public speaking.
We get paid more to pick now. They want the stuff off the ground and out of the rot so we get paid an hourly rate, one which makes us feel better when we reach home, muddy and aching, waiting for a thin evening of reading and listening to the crops growing outside, reaching up as only man can make it, waving in the wind like yellow inland seas. For a moment I have forgotten her in this deluge, but looking up I can still see her, not working and not existing, still talking to the women around her all those years ago. The strawberries are just mush now, no sugar, no red, just black and rot. She fades.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Irrationality
Listening to - The Last Broadcast - Doves
I'm going to carry on making my mind up about people in seconds. Why do we decide on whether we like someone within seconds of the first time they open their mouth or even just see them? Sometimes it is entirely possible to dislike someone just from a photograph. I suppose it doesn't happen that often. It must be strong personality that does this to a person's body-language/smug face. I cannot think of many high-ups who you might know who do this. Most politicians have to speak before it becomes clear how dislikeable (or likeable) they actually are. Geoff Hoon is probably the exception. It irks me that someone with intelligence and education way beyond mine gives an instant impression of uselessness. That is my problem I suppose. Should have listend in school and I could have become that annoying - self assured instead of the gauche thicky that I am.
".. and because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury."
Problems? What Problems?
Listening to - The Last Broadcast - Doves
I'm going to carry on making my mind up about people in seconds. Why do we decide on whether we like someone within seconds of the first time they open their mouth or even just see them? Sometimes it is entirely possible to dislike someone just from a photograph. I suppose it doesn't happen that often. It must be strong personality that does this to a person's body-language/smug face. I cannot think of many high-ups who you might know who do this. Most politicians have to speak before it becomes clear how dislikeable (or likeable) they actually are. Geoff Hoon is probably the exception. It irks me that someone with intelligence and education way beyond mine gives an instant impression of uselessness. That is my problem I suppose. Should have listend in school and I could have become that annoying - self assured instead of the gauche thicky that I am.
".. and because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury."
Problems? What Problems?
Monday, June 27, 2005
Iceland Theme Night
Wish my teacher looked like this.
(now Listening to - Valley Of The Dolls)
Resolution for the week is to stop using Exclamation Marks! Damn! And Again!
Anyone see The Girl In The Cafe? Did it have you crying? It should. It got me thinking about how it is not possible to address the issues this tried to address without being told that one is naive and that the issues are complex. Well they are not that complex. At every turn in these things, the vested interests of the people involved come out, either overtly or covertly. Yes we do need to address the corruption that diverts so much aid into the hands of various undeserving partners - Still got the limo I hear them say. Who'd have thought that that particular monster would still be in charge twenty years down the line. But the most pressing matters are not matters of supply; they relate to simple delivery of medicine that provides relief that we get down in Tescos. Stuff that is just convenient to us stops people dying and costs the same.
Well done Brazil for threatening to break the patent on Aids drugs. Call me simplistic again but epidemics of such scale should be the preserve of Governments or publicly funded institutions with no commercial axe to grind. It worked with the Human genome project. Here's a thing for you. There were two rival attempts to map the human Genome, one commercial and one academic. The academic one was eventually the definitive answer to the problem partly because a well-funded and well-directed Charity - The Wellcome Foundation - poured money in to the project. From the site I link to, all the data is available, no password, no subscription - the genetic equivalent of Freeview. I have only just discovered this and it is mind-blowing; the tracks of the two projects are described in The Backroom Boys. Richard Dawkins adds something to this in The Ancestor's Tale when he relates how the public project involved a generic 'person' - an average collection of Genes collated over various racial groups so as to provide a more representative base from which to work. The rival commercial project - run in part by J. Craig Venter used the DNA from one person - namely one J. Craig Venter! He then went on to map the DNA or his own poodle. A poodle is a very apt animal.
I wish I could concentrate on one thing. It may seem wrong to trail into thoughts about Glastonbury from such important stuff but Sir Bob was there, being shouty so the link is valid. Actually, the excitement of the music which I saw seems not really viable as a post today. I am one of the sad TV watchers who, while dry and free of Trench Foot, was not part of the atmosphere and never has been. A colleague here has tickets to Live8 and is very happy about it, though she has said that some of the new music as heard at Glastonbury would be better that Madonna and her other Stadium-bound friends. I will say that it was strange to see the reincarnation of Joy Division that is Interpol just before New Order. NO were bad enough for me not to feel cheated when we had to turn over for The Girl In The Cafe. We were taping a Picture Of Britain for my daughter and so Glastonbury is spared being dumped onto a tape which I will never watch. Reykjavik 101 was also on at the same time so the BBC has finally come out with a full house of shows I wanted to watch at the same time. The beauty of BBC3 and BBC4 is that they will be on again sometime. On that theme, I am waiting for the PJ Harvey set to shown again.
If you don't think about this, or even just dismiss the naivity of the people who think the solution is simple, then you are part of the complexity. The main players are like those annoying people who take the micky - or don't but claim they are when they upset someone. It is impossible to decide on how they really think. Some things in Black and White would be useful now. Compromise for the sake of the Status Quo is what really happens. Or for the sake of a quiet life or not being really bothered. The £408 Million raised for the Tsunami in this country alone, except for a few cases, has not put any of the donors in serious hardship. They could do the same every month and probably not notice it. Formalise this giving inside the Tax system and we'd never be really bothered, just as people who complain of "What's in it for me?" at every budget just get on with it when it all pans out. I know I am generalising and simplifying but all I can hear is that three-second finger click. What do I have to do? Someone tell me? My head hurts.
Last paragraph with no spellcheck!
Rats!
Wish my teacher looked like this.
(now Listening to - Valley Of The Dolls)
Resolution for the week is to stop using Exclamation Marks! Damn! And Again!
Anyone see The Girl In The Cafe? Did it have you crying? It should. It got me thinking about how it is not possible to address the issues this tried to address without being told that one is naive and that the issues are complex. Well they are not that complex. At every turn in these things, the vested interests of the people involved come out, either overtly or covertly. Yes we do need to address the corruption that diverts so much aid into the hands of various undeserving partners - Still got the limo I hear them say. Who'd have thought that that particular monster would still be in charge twenty years down the line. But the most pressing matters are not matters of supply; they relate to simple delivery of medicine that provides relief that we get down in Tescos. Stuff that is just convenient to us stops people dying and costs the same.
Well done Brazil for threatening to break the patent on Aids drugs. Call me simplistic again but epidemics of such scale should be the preserve of Governments or publicly funded institutions with no commercial axe to grind. It worked with the Human genome project. Here's a thing for you. There were two rival attempts to map the human Genome, one commercial and one academic. The academic one was eventually the definitive answer to the problem partly because a well-funded and well-directed Charity - The Wellcome Foundation - poured money in to the project. From the site I link to, all the data is available, no password, no subscription - the genetic equivalent of Freeview. I have only just discovered this and it is mind-blowing; the tracks of the two projects are described in The Backroom Boys. Richard Dawkins adds something to this in The Ancestor's Tale when he relates how the public project involved a generic 'person' - an average collection of Genes collated over various racial groups so as to provide a more representative base from which to work. The rival commercial project - run in part by J. Craig Venter used the DNA from one person - namely one J. Craig Venter! He then went on to map the DNA or his own poodle. A poodle is a very apt animal.
I wish I could concentrate on one thing. It may seem wrong to trail into thoughts about Glastonbury from such important stuff but Sir Bob was there, being shouty so the link is valid. Actually, the excitement of the music which I saw seems not really viable as a post today. I am one of the sad TV watchers who, while dry and free of Trench Foot, was not part of the atmosphere and never has been. A colleague here has tickets to Live8 and is very happy about it, though she has said that some of the new music as heard at Glastonbury would be better that Madonna and her other Stadium-bound friends. I will say that it was strange to see the reincarnation of Joy Division that is Interpol just before New Order. NO were bad enough for me not to feel cheated when we had to turn over for The Girl In The Cafe. We were taping a Picture Of Britain for my daughter and so Glastonbury is spared being dumped onto a tape which I will never watch. Reykjavik 101 was also on at the same time so the BBC has finally come out with a full house of shows I wanted to watch at the same time. The beauty of BBC3 and BBC4 is that they will be on again sometime. On that theme, I am waiting for the PJ Harvey set to shown again.
If you don't think about this, or even just dismiss the naivity of the people who think the solution is simple, then you are part of the complexity. The main players are like those annoying people who take the micky - or don't but claim they are when they upset someone. It is impossible to decide on how they really think. Some things in Black and White would be useful now. Compromise for the sake of the Status Quo is what really happens. Or for the sake of a quiet life or not being really bothered. The £408 Million raised for the Tsunami in this country alone, except for a few cases, has not put any of the donors in serious hardship. They could do the same every month and probably not notice it. Formalise this giving inside the Tax system and we'd never be really bothered, just as people who complain of "What's in it for me?" at every budget just get on with it when it all pans out. I know I am generalising and simplifying but all I can hear is that three-second finger click. What do I have to do? Someone tell me? My head hurts.
Last paragraph with no spellcheck!
Rats!
Move Over Magnum
Listening to - My Perfect Cousin
Couldn't decide which was better so you get both of these.
And finally, this is me ...
I am now sufficiently different from this photo for me to feel that you will not be able to recognise me. Guess what type of camera I was using. Actually I had two and a video camera and they were heavy, though not as heavy as some things that people have to carry.
The monkey is just about to steal the pen in my top pocket. It could have been the roll of exposed film that was in there as well but I was lucky.
Others taken at the same time.
Photography surfeit has been prompted by my daughter and me visiting the house of E. Chambre Hardman at 59 Rodney Street in Liverpool. I was expecting it to be a pokey, little place and instead found an airy, three-floor town house which has been well looked after and restored. Hardman and his wife Margaret made their living from portrait photographs of everyone ranging from actors at the playhouse (they were 'recommended' to go to him) to the many people in uniform who passed through the city. However, their real passion was landscape photography. He took the famous picture of the Ark Royal just after its undercoat was completed. Every weekend, the couple would travel into Wales to take photographs; the owener of the chip shop would remember them coming in late on Sunday evening to get their supper until one day he turned up on his own his wife having died the previous week. They famously never threw anything away and the National Trust were met with tins exploding in the pantry cupboard.
I have to say that my daughter was extremely well behaved and interested throughout what was an hour plus tour. Worth a visit if you are ever up here. She got all the quiz questions (though I had to ask a few questions for clarification).
Big news is that I won't have to travel into Liverpool very much any more. The team in which I have worked for nearly twenty years is being scattered across the North West meaning that I no longer have to travel to this historic site. I am not going to be on my own at my new site as some of the crew are also going there but it will be a wrench.
So many things to mention and none of them have stayed in the place in my head they should have done. I am whistling through On Seeing And Noticing by Alain De Botton (who after all is Swiss) while itching to get back to the Ancestor's tale. OSAN being philosophy prompts many thoughts and as usual I cannot put them down here with any eloquence.
Listening to - My Perfect Cousin
Couldn't decide which was better so you get both of these.
And finally, this is me ...
I am now sufficiently different from this photo for me to feel that you will not be able to recognise me. Guess what type of camera I was using. Actually I had two and a video camera and they were heavy, though not as heavy as some things that people have to carry.
The monkey is just about to steal the pen in my top pocket. It could have been the roll of exposed film that was in there as well but I was lucky.
Others taken at the same time.
Photography surfeit has been prompted by my daughter and me visiting the house of E. Chambre Hardman at 59 Rodney Street in Liverpool. I was expecting it to be a pokey, little place and instead found an airy, three-floor town house which has been well looked after and restored. Hardman and his wife Margaret made their living from portrait photographs of everyone ranging from actors at the playhouse (they were 'recommended' to go to him) to the many people in uniform who passed through the city. However, their real passion was landscape photography. He took the famous picture of the Ark Royal just after its undercoat was completed. Every weekend, the couple would travel into Wales to take photographs; the owener of the chip shop would remember them coming in late on Sunday evening to get their supper until one day he turned up on his own his wife having died the previous week. They famously never threw anything away and the National Trust were met with tins exploding in the pantry cupboard.
I have to say that my daughter was extremely well behaved and interested throughout what was an hour plus tour. Worth a visit if you are ever up here. She got all the quiz questions (though I had to ask a few questions for clarification).
Big news is that I won't have to travel into Liverpool very much any more. The team in which I have worked for nearly twenty years is being scattered across the North West meaning that I no longer have to travel to this historic site. I am not going to be on my own at my new site as some of the crew are also going there but it will be a wrench.
So many things to mention and none of them have stayed in the place in my head they should have done. I am whistling through On Seeing And Noticing by Alain De Botton (who after all is Swiss) while itching to get back to the Ancestor's tale. OSAN being philosophy prompts many thoughts and as usual I cannot put them down here with any eloquence.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Random Friday 356
And we're back. Sometime around 1980 I think all that was. The thundery sky of today has made me think of it again, all that water in the air without it actually raining, like walking through a shower all the time without getting wet. There were two older kids on the field with us, singing Geno and wearing dungarees though happily not like Dexy's, only the dungarees. They would throw strawberries through the air like frisbees with the aim of catching them in their mouths. I don't think they stopped once to think of me even exisiting; too much attention was paid to the girls among us, Sylvia out of time, with all those poems in her head was there, talking to the immigrants about the war and how it was wrong and that they had relatives old enough to go. This poem was in my head even then, before I first read it, a quantum uncertainty waiting to be made definitive by my slow realisation of what had happened to my own mother. And dungarees again. Always the same things, like the Bad Wolf down through history. And think of all the times it made it into the world and meant nothing to anyone, all those irrelavant references to it. Rose scattered it so far through history that for years we will have muddy-booted archeologists puzzling about this common thread, through wars and love affairs and personal assistants made VPs through death and inaction. Wipe the memory and the clues will remain, like ripe strawberries in these low bushes.
I eat a few but they get boring after 20 pence worth. We are not paid enough to keep this up, backs bent all day, scoring sugar rushes and going home sticky and muddy
And we're back. Sometime around 1980 I think all that was. The thundery sky of today has made me think of it again, all that water in the air without it actually raining, like walking through a shower all the time without getting wet. There were two older kids on the field with us, singing Geno and wearing dungarees though happily not like Dexy's, only the dungarees. They would throw strawberries through the air like frisbees with the aim of catching them in their mouths. I don't think they stopped once to think of me even exisiting; too much attention was paid to the girls among us, Sylvia out of time, with all those poems in her head was there, talking to the immigrants about the war and how it was wrong and that they had relatives old enough to go. This poem was in my head even then, before I first read it, a quantum uncertainty waiting to be made definitive by my slow realisation of what had happened to my own mother. And dungarees again. Always the same things, like the Bad Wolf down through history. And think of all the times it made it into the world and meant nothing to anyone, all those irrelavant references to it. Rose scattered it so far through history that for years we will have muddy-booted archeologists puzzling about this common thread, through wars and love affairs and personal assistants made VPs through death and inaction. Wipe the memory and the clues will remain, like ripe strawberries in these low bushes.
I eat a few but they get boring after 20 pence worth. We are not paid enough to keep this up, backs bent all day, scoring sugar rushes and going home sticky and muddy
Beware - Cultural Institutions!
An email prompted me to 'get my finger out' and put the pictures up. There are many more - digital photography and a 'large card' lends themselves to 'happy snapping'. (This was not a concious effort to sound like Finbar Saunders - snarf - snarf.)
An email prompted me to 'get my finger out' and put the pictures up. There are many more - digital photography and a 'large card' lends themselves to 'happy snapping'. (This was not a concious effort to sound like Finbar Saunders - snarf - snarf.)
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Just Time to ....
Listening to - something By Terje Rypdal
I just stumbled across this while looking for some Antony Gormley stuff. It's worth a read if you are bored. What prompted me to look was the installation of Another Place at the beach just down the road from where we live. We went there on Saturday when about half of the 100 casts of Mr. Gormley himself had been stuck into the sand. I did take loads of photos and they will get put up here eventually, sometime before the sun dies. What was creepy were the 50 or so sculptures still remaining inside the fenced-off builder's area. They lay on their low trestles looking for all the world like some regimented atrocity. My wife was horrified by the photos I took. Reminds me of when the evil janitor in Scrubs waxed the floor (and everything else). Doctor Kelso went Base-over-tip before the slippery floor sign went down, ending up in the exact pose on the sign. "Uncanny" says the Janitor. Anyway photos at eleven or whenever.
No Spell Check! Do you hate me?
Listening to - something By Terje Rypdal
I just stumbled across this while looking for some Antony Gormley stuff. It's worth a read if you are bored. What prompted me to look was the installation of Another Place at the beach just down the road from where we live. We went there on Saturday when about half of the 100 casts of Mr. Gormley himself had been stuck into the sand. I did take loads of photos and they will get put up here eventually, sometime before the sun dies. What was creepy were the 50 or so sculptures still remaining inside the fenced-off builder's area. They lay on their low trestles looking for all the world like some regimented atrocity. My wife was horrified by the photos I took. Reminds me of when the evil janitor in Scrubs waxed the floor (and everything else). Doctor Kelso went Base-over-tip before the slippery floor sign went down, ending up in the exact pose on the sign. "Uncanny" says the Janitor. Anyway photos at eleven or whenever.
No Spell Check! Do you hate me?
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Back And Forth
I think I may have read this about time travel before. Thinking about this in too much detail reminds me of the section I read in The Ancestor's Tale yesterday. I got it at Christmas but was slightly put off by the depth and length but having started reading it at last, it is interesting and very well written - just enough humour to not be irritating. The Tasmanian's Tale is a recounting of the mathematical and biological investigations which are necessary to estimate the time at which we find a common ancestor to all living human beings - the point at which it is possible to follow through the descendants of this ancestor and reach any living person. Mind blowing - No? What was even more difficult to believe if not to understand was that it would be possible to go back to some shrew-like ancestor and find that it was the ancestor of all living human beings while another animal of the same species could be the ancestor of all living aardvarks. Without the text it is difficult to recount the details but I seem to remember that certainties came into it - that we must find two members of the same species which led to two totally different living branches of animals. Not something to go over late at night to make sure you have understood correctly.
Actually, thinking about it, the idea of Quantum conditions being applied to prevent backwards time travel affecting the future is easier to understand that the stuff about ancestors. Smug look on the face of this reporter. Just don't ask me to explain it. I stupidly once mentioned the twins paradox at work and was told that it was rubbish. The world is stranger than we can imagine but try and convince people of that fact. The lives of human beings would be strange in the extreme to some of the possible life forms. I once read an article in Omni magazine (sadly defunct though it was rubbish in the later years - don't search for it on the web - you will get Penthouse Magazine) about the possibility of life forms living on the surface of Super-Dense Neuron stars. I think the article was by Ben Bova and described blobs of jelly flattened against the unimaginable gravity, living their lives at high speed relative to ours because of the increased speed of chemical reactions prevalent in a world without electrons. Not sure of the exact physics as it was 25 years ago that I read it but I think that was the upshot. The creatures lived in low, roofless houses with thick inward leaning walls braced against the gravity which reminds me of Flatland. Anyway, the point of this ramble is that these Neutron Star creatures would be able to travel to us using small black holes to maintain the gravity that kept them alive but as their lives would rush by in seconds, they would not be able to see us as anything other than static beings; in short we would be as weird to them as they would be to us.
In another connection worth of the great James Burke, this reminds me in turn of a short story regarding a gang of bank robbers who used a machine to speed up time for themselves but no one else and so were able to walk into a vault literally in front of the bank staff, even leaving the ill-gotten gains on the sidewalk (an American Story I guess) while they went back for more. If anyone knows of it then I would like to know the details. And "A Sepulchre of Songs" by Orson Scott Card as well. It was in Omni when Omni was good but I don't have the relevant issue any more. It seems like it should be in a sci-fi story collection. I was at college when I first read it and it made me cry then. It's not exactly true science-fiction - more a story about science fiction. The last sentence is a doozy.
Some weeks ago I may have blogged that I wanted to set aside a certain amount of time each day for such things as poetry and the resolution came back to me this morning. It then struck me that setting aside time for poetry is not exactly poetic. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes fell into a routine but they were professional and I never will be. It all smacks of the poetry text book used in the class in Dead Poets Society where appreciation of verse was reduced to a convenient graph. Should "Dead Poets" be possessive? Lynn Truss where are you?
Remember that the phrase 'Intelligent Design' is an attempt to put a pseudo-scientific spin on what is just Creationism. Remove the religious-sounding titles for the theories and you get something which might just suck in some rational college freshmen. Sub-consciously I want to believe in ID but it comes back to the same thing - there is something outside what we see and it has made the Universe fit for us to live in rather than we have made ourselves fit to live in the Universe we exist in. The bottom line of all this is who created the creator? We are bootstrapped and it must be so if you want to avoid all the rubbish of cause and effect. I think a phrase which I have used before is relevant here - GOD Over Djinn where GOD is an abbreviation for .... er .... GOD Over Djinn. Thanks to Douglas R. Hofstadter and Godel, Escher, Bach for that. I don't remember GOD Over Djinn being a debunking of Creationism but it fits so maybe it was - I will have to read the book again. Really! This is the end.
I think I may have read this about time travel before. Thinking about this in too much detail reminds me of the section I read in The Ancestor's Tale yesterday. I got it at Christmas but was slightly put off by the depth and length but having started reading it at last, it is interesting and very well written - just enough humour to not be irritating. The Tasmanian's Tale is a recounting of the mathematical and biological investigations which are necessary to estimate the time at which we find a common ancestor to all living human beings - the point at which it is possible to follow through the descendants of this ancestor and reach any living person. Mind blowing - No? What was even more difficult to believe if not to understand was that it would be possible to go back to some shrew-like ancestor and find that it was the ancestor of all living human beings while another animal of the same species could be the ancestor of all living aardvarks. Without the text it is difficult to recount the details but I seem to remember that certainties came into it - that we must find two members of the same species which led to two totally different living branches of animals. Not something to go over late at night to make sure you have understood correctly.
Actually, thinking about it, the idea of Quantum conditions being applied to prevent backwards time travel affecting the future is easier to understand that the stuff about ancestors. Smug look on the face of this reporter. Just don't ask me to explain it. I stupidly once mentioned the twins paradox at work and was told that it was rubbish. The world is stranger than we can imagine but try and convince people of that fact. The lives of human beings would be strange in the extreme to some of the possible life forms. I once read an article in Omni magazine (sadly defunct though it was rubbish in the later years - don't search for it on the web - you will get Penthouse Magazine) about the possibility of life forms living on the surface of Super-Dense Neuron stars. I think the article was by Ben Bova and described blobs of jelly flattened against the unimaginable gravity, living their lives at high speed relative to ours because of the increased speed of chemical reactions prevalent in a world without electrons. Not sure of the exact physics as it was 25 years ago that I read it but I think that was the upshot. The creatures lived in low, roofless houses with thick inward leaning walls braced against the gravity which reminds me of Flatland. Anyway, the point of this ramble is that these Neutron Star creatures would be able to travel to us using small black holes to maintain the gravity that kept them alive but as their lives would rush by in seconds, they would not be able to see us as anything other than static beings; in short we would be as weird to them as they would be to us.
In another connection worth of the great James Burke, this reminds me in turn of a short story regarding a gang of bank robbers who used a machine to speed up time for themselves but no one else and so were able to walk into a vault literally in front of the bank staff, even leaving the ill-gotten gains on the sidewalk (an American Story I guess) while they went back for more. If anyone knows of it then I would like to know the details. And "A Sepulchre of Songs" by Orson Scott Card as well. It was in Omni when Omni was good but I don't have the relevant issue any more. It seems like it should be in a sci-fi story collection. I was at college when I first read it and it made me cry then. It's not exactly true science-fiction - more a story about science fiction. The last sentence is a doozy.
Some weeks ago I may have blogged that I wanted to set aside a certain amount of time each day for such things as poetry and the resolution came back to me this morning. It then struck me that setting aside time for poetry is not exactly poetic. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes fell into a routine but they were professional and I never will be. It all smacks of the poetry text book used in the class in Dead Poets Society where appreciation of verse was reduced to a convenient graph. Should "Dead Poets" be possessive? Lynn Truss where are you?
Remember that the phrase 'Intelligent Design' is an attempt to put a pseudo-scientific spin on what is just Creationism. Remove the religious-sounding titles for the theories and you get something which might just suck in some rational college freshmen. Sub-consciously I want to believe in ID but it comes back to the same thing - there is something outside what we see and it has made the Universe fit for us to live in rather than we have made ourselves fit to live in the Universe we exist in. The bottom line of all this is who created the creator? We are bootstrapped and it must be so if you want to avoid all the rubbish of cause and effect. I think a phrase which I have used before is relevant here - GOD Over Djinn where GOD is an abbreviation for .... er .... GOD Over Djinn. Thanks to Douglas R. Hofstadter and Godel, Escher, Bach for that. I don't remember GOD Over Djinn being a debunking of Creationism but it fits so maybe it was - I will have to read the book again. Really! This is the end.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Up In The Air And In The Rain
Out in the strawberry fields, the air is thick and sweet. The red berries we squash send scent up high, over our heads into the woods all around. There is no music, just the low babble of the occasional couple mumbling low stories to each other so that the rest of us do not hear. These days I would be thinking of a war or wars or how sad the world is, but at this time I fill with weird and disjointed thoughts, mostly unremembered and unremarkable.
I get to this place by going through one of the passes between the hills, travelling from one world to another by way of rough tarmac roads that have only just covered the mud of the cattle tracks. This is history to my children though for me it seems like just last week. My hands are sticky from the berries and my back bends to an arc of ache that demands hours in the bath. Somewhere in the woods, smoke rises vertically, the summer fire of some remote house whose inhabitants have never left the county. They consider people from over the hill strangers. I imagine them late on this summer night, doors and windows open, no lights, listening to the myriad sounds of their wood, the foxes and their unearthly low screams, the rustle of a thousand unknown critters building their own tracks through the bushes, and the no-sound of the Owls in their missile-glide to ground. And we have no mechanics save the creak of wooden things, turning when needed to support this country life. Here is a wheel mended and another to mend. Here is the wood for the fire stacked up by the chips of previously chopped logs, the fixings for the house, the mended door ready for painting. And here the shadow of the dog asleep but smelling the night to pick out the enemies of man coming for his grafted-for gleanings from the countryside. He smells me as I pass in this dream, a friend requiring no more than a second's eye-opening to check out and then back to black and quiet sleep.
Out in the strawberry fields, the air is thick and sweet. The red berries we squash send scent up high, over our heads into the woods all around. There is no music, just the low babble of the occasional couple mumbling low stories to each other so that the rest of us do not hear. These days I would be thinking of a war or wars or how sad the world is, but at this time I fill with weird and disjointed thoughts, mostly unremembered and unremarkable.
I get to this place by going through one of the passes between the hills, travelling from one world to another by way of rough tarmac roads that have only just covered the mud of the cattle tracks. This is history to my children though for me it seems like just last week. My hands are sticky from the berries and my back bends to an arc of ache that demands hours in the bath. Somewhere in the woods, smoke rises vertically, the summer fire of some remote house whose inhabitants have never left the county. They consider people from over the hill strangers. I imagine them late on this summer night, doors and windows open, no lights, listening to the myriad sounds of their wood, the foxes and their unearthly low screams, the rustle of a thousand unknown critters building their own tracks through the bushes, and the no-sound of the Owls in their missile-glide to ground. And we have no mechanics save the creak of wooden things, turning when needed to support this country life. Here is a wheel mended and another to mend. Here is the wood for the fire stacked up by the chips of previously chopped logs, the fixings for the house, the mended door ready for painting. And here the shadow of the dog asleep but smelling the night to pick out the enemies of man coming for his grafted-for gleanings from the countryside. He smells me as I pass in this dream, a friend requiring no more than a second's eye-opening to check out and then back to black and quiet sleep.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Got Anything For Zither Plucker's Thumb?
Warning! Like a late 1970's Ford Cortina - This blog has a spoiler?
It is over! My daughter survived Doctor Who right up until the final episode. While she cried buckets when the single Dalek committed Hara Kiri earlier in the series, she said that thousands of Daleks were just tooooooo scary. We taped it so that we could show her the regeneration of the Doctor. Number One Son was fast asleep and so had no temptation to switch the TV off.
So Rose was Bad Wolf.
Warning! Like a late 1970's Ford Cortina - This blog has a spoiler?
It is over! My daughter survived Doctor Who right up until the final episode. While she cried buckets when the single Dalek committed Hara Kiri earlier in the series, she said that thousands of Daleks were just tooooooo scary. We taped it so that we could show her the regeneration of the Doctor. Number One Son was fast asleep and so had no temptation to switch the TV off.
So Rose was Bad Wolf.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Shamed!
Nice to see Ed back. Hello Ed! Hope the ankle's better.
I will be moving out of this office for the first time in 19 years sometime in the next few weeks. I will still be doing the same thing (though I have changed roles over the years here) but it will be a bit of a wrench. When I started here, this site included a large factory floor making electronic equipment. As part of the induction, I was taken down to the shop-floor and set to work overseeing label machines, just to get me - a Southern Jessy - used to to the Scouse wit and Irony. When I started my proper job after a few weeks I found it involved the data-capture systems on the shop floor and so I spent loads of time down among the machines and noise. I wandered past the shop-floor building the other day and peered in through one of the windows to see acres of empty space. Very sad! The building is sealed with no prospect of being used for anything at the moment.
Developments in telecoms mean that I can work for anyone without having to travel too far now. My last work involved systems in use at the other end of the country on a site I never visted. There is now the prospect of being able to work from home though Daughter and Son may make that difficult. We shall see.
Daughter goes up to the Juniors in the autumn. My wife can remember some of the teachers our daughter will have from when she was at the school some thirty years ago. This amazes her as she cannot remember those teachers as anything other than old. It is perfectly possible for a teacher in the Juniors to be only ten years older than the kids but all adults look 'old' to youngsters
Nice to see Ed back. Hello Ed! Hope the ankle's better.
I will be moving out of this office for the first time in 19 years sometime in the next few weeks. I will still be doing the same thing (though I have changed roles over the years here) but it will be a bit of a wrench. When I started here, this site included a large factory floor making electronic equipment. As part of the induction, I was taken down to the shop-floor and set to work overseeing label machines, just to get me - a Southern Jessy - used to to the Scouse wit and Irony. When I started my proper job after a few weeks I found it involved the data-capture systems on the shop floor and so I spent loads of time down among the machines and noise. I wandered past the shop-floor building the other day and peered in through one of the windows to see acres of empty space. Very sad! The building is sealed with no prospect of being used for anything at the moment.
Developments in telecoms mean that I can work for anyone without having to travel too far now. My last work involved systems in use at the other end of the country on a site I never visted. There is now the prospect of being able to work from home though Daughter and Son may make that difficult. We shall see.
Daughter goes up to the Juniors in the autumn. My wife can remember some of the teachers our daughter will have from when she was at the school some thirty years ago. This amazes her as she cannot remember those teachers as anything other than old. It is perfectly possible for a teacher in the Juniors to be only ten years older than the kids but all adults look 'old' to youngsters
Thursday, June 09, 2005
What Were They Thinking?
I must have been drinking/dreaming/hallucinating the other day. I caught what I thought was the end of one of those adverts for Bounty kitchen roll, the ones with two beardy blokes dressed up as women. Well in this one they seemed to be cleaning the inside of windows which on outwards zoom were revealed to be those big picture windows from the Red Light district in Amsterdam. See - told you I must have been dreaming.
After a few seconds of searching, I have found reference to this so it must be true. I say again - what were they thinking?
I was in Cumbria this week with work. I did think I was having to stay away but there and back in a day was possible. I had prepared myself for a night at the cinema and a good meal but no luck there. Star Wars III will have to wait. My daughter wants to see it but it is 12A and she is just 6 (A). She hasn't had any problem with Doctor Who yet and that is 12 (no A) so she should be OK. Can't wait for the Anne Robinson one.
I must have been drinking/dreaming/hallucinating the other day. I caught what I thought was the end of one of those adverts for Bounty kitchen roll, the ones with two beardy blokes dressed up as women. Well in this one they seemed to be cleaning the inside of windows which on outwards zoom were revealed to be those big picture windows from the Red Light district in Amsterdam. See - told you I must have been dreaming.
After a few seconds of searching, I have found reference to this so it must be true. I say again - what were they thinking?
I was in Cumbria this week with work. I did think I was having to stay away but there and back in a day was possible. I had prepared myself for a night at the cinema and a good meal but no luck there. Star Wars III will have to wait. My daughter wants to see it but it is 12A and she is just 6 (A). She hasn't had any problem with Doctor Who yet and that is 12 (no A) so she should be OK. Can't wait for the Anne Robinson one.
Friday, June 03, 2005
Poetry - Various
Sparked by a question on University Challenge the other week, I have just skimmed 'The Hollow Men' by TS. Eliot (1925), which I know I must have read before, it being in the TS Eliot collected poems. That skimming, along with the final lines of 'This is how the world ends, Not with a bang but with a whimper' gave me the immediate impression that this was indeed a view of Mass Destruction before the means to carry it out existed. I have also just whistled through 'The Wasteland' again which has the same themes in a less focused form. All this reminds me of the Machine Gun chatter in the Mars section of 'The Planets'. Holst had some window on the future with that - see the trenches and the gas that wont exist for years.
And so on to Prufrock as well. The beginning of that gives me images of close-ups on bits of winter urban landscape, in the rain, or ice; no people, just things in the cold and fog. I of course miss the true meaning of this poem, despite being the right age to appreciate its longing. The world is just too different a place. Why should I worry about Trenches and Gas? I've never had to experience them and never will. If this world ends before I do, then it will be with a Bang and a bang so quick as to not register with me or anyone. Maybe mind will be separated from body, flying on through the blackness of space at speeds high enough to make the Universe small through relativity. We will become that single photon than is all the photons we ever see. Sometimes oblivion like this would be welcome, just to end the jumping heart, the anxious dark and the pain. Philip Larkin said 'no one actually starves' and that is right in this country but living a downsized life takes confidence.
Sparked by a question on University Challenge the other week, I have just skimmed 'The Hollow Men' by TS. Eliot (1925), which I know I must have read before, it being in the TS Eliot collected poems. That skimming, along with the final lines of 'This is how the world ends, Not with a bang but with a whimper' gave me the immediate impression that this was indeed a view of Mass Destruction before the means to carry it out existed. I have also just whistled through 'The Wasteland' again which has the same themes in a less focused form. All this reminds me of the Machine Gun chatter in the Mars section of 'The Planets'. Holst had some window on the future with that - see the trenches and the gas that wont exist for years.
And so on to Prufrock as well. The beginning of that gives me images of close-ups on bits of winter urban landscape, in the rain, or ice; no people, just things in the cold and fog. I of course miss the true meaning of this poem, despite being the right age to appreciate its longing. The world is just too different a place. Why should I worry about Trenches and Gas? I've never had to experience them and never will. If this world ends before I do, then it will be with a Bang and a bang so quick as to not register with me or anyone. Maybe mind will be separated from body, flying on through the blackness of space at speeds high enough to make the Universe small through relativity. We will become that single photon than is all the photons we ever see. Sometimes oblivion like this would be welcome, just to end the jumping heart, the anxious dark and the pain. Philip Larkin said 'no one actually starves' and that is right in this country but living a downsized life takes confidence.
