Personal Blogs

On my calendar

Three boats, 24 houses and 22 ducks.

Why doesn't it hang straight? (It doesn't)

I'm endlessly fascinated by the relationship between brain function and our sense of self.

Many people who survive a stroke experience apathy. This is usually associated with depression, common amongst stroke survivors. But a minority may have suffered front brain damage that has affected emotional response. The loss may be severe.

In its most profound form, what would this apathy be like? Would it be loss of energy, motivation and interest in everyday life? Would it mean insensitivity to pleasure or pain? The word apathy was made up in the 18th century from the Greek for suffering and meant at first "without suffering", rather than lethargy, which is the way the word is often interpreted today.

It could be closer to the original 18th century sense. Perhaps it is far more than demotivation or joylessness.

Maybe you'd know about emotions intellectually, and even display them, but you'd be acting. Inside there would no emotional experience at all. Not even a gap; just nothing.

Birdsong makes us happy. Why?

What can carry a house up a mountain?

A camera is like a human eye.

The basic plan

light from world --> focus --> image falls on sensors

But photography can work without any focusing. If we put refractors -- glass, resin, minerals and so on -- directly on film and expose it briefly to light, something will be recorded. In that case refractors have replaced the lens and it's them we are photographing.

So, literally, the medium is the message.

This can produce striking results. Visit the website of Alan Jaras for example.

This reminds me of an experiment I tried many years ago. Photographic plates preceded the film which came before digital cameras.

If you are not familiar with plates, they are just like film but on glass not plastic. Plates were the staple of photography until films came along and spoiled it.

Just as (and rightly) some still prefer film to digital, back then plates were still around, because some people preferred them.

What was the experiment? We put a couple of plates up on the roof, in a a plastic bag, and left them there a couple of months. Later, when we remembered, we fetched them down and developed them. In hope of what?

Cosmic rays. Some energetic particle that may have set off from a supernova billions of light years away and billions of years ago, could have arrived on our roof and created a record on our plates.

And one had.

No lens needed. The universe is on your rooftop.

From its rock a cormorant

Watched the fishermen.

Thieves, thieves.

So have you seen

Bullet marks on a wall?

And did it make you flinch?

Not a poem, or even a riddle.

What came first, the brain or the senses?

Raindrops in the stream.

I'm with my father again

Trying to see a fish.

In this gale!

Who's that crawling across the road?

A plastic bag.

It's warm in my house.

A butterfly woke up.

How to save it?

The rooster doesn't want

To wake you. He's just singing

With the other birds.

What a daily grind!

Getting the sun out of bed.

All together birds.