2012 — 9 December: Sunday
Say what you will about my dashing-around even if not-quite-so-young sibling down in distant New Zealandland,1 you have to admit he comes up with some very pretty aircraft pix from time to time:
This is, of course, the same specimen that was pictured buzzing around a while back. Click the pic if you don't believe me.
Meanwhile, I can report that yesterday's Bartok download is magnificent. And my cup is oddly empty. It's 07:57 and a day of delicious idleness beckons.
Makes perfect sense!
From one of those usually silly Q&A features:
If we are always actively filtering out large parts of what we see and hear, it begs the question of what our sense of reality consists of?
It does, though I would also say that some of the kinds of hallucinations I describe in the book are more extreme than others. It is a normal brain function to filter out the noise of tinnitus, for
example, but if you see a three-foot goblin a few yards away at the end of your bed — as some people who hallucinate do — you are probably going to struggle to ignore it.
That's clearly what Fuseli saw.
Another tiny piece...
... of my huge store of ignorance has just been shattered. I had no idea Syd Barrett's "Golden Hair" was inspired by a James Joyce poem. Mind you, having failed miserably with a couple of futile attempts to tackle both "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" I'd never ventured any further into Mr Joyce's turgid oeuvre.
Despite the fact that Grayson Perry has irritated me by insisting on pronouncing2 the "s" at the end of Jacques Brel I can't be too cross with him. He played Bowie's 1966 song "The London Boys" a few minutes ago. Now, I know perfectly well I have that. In fact, it's on the Deram Anthology 1966-1968 I bought two years ago. Where else would such an early song be? But, sad to say, it was not to be found among my MP3s. Face it, David: yet another CD has somehow managed to evade my foolproof (hah!) and comprehensive (double hah!) "rip 'em as soon as they arrive" policy. I need a system.
I still recommend Mr Perry's "sort of" autobiography. Well, transcribed interviews.
I regret not...
... getting to know the late Mike Barratt (one-time librarian of IBM Hursley when they were still civilised enough to regard a library as a thing worth having) until I was transferred into the Communications department by the Lab Director in May 1993, just a month or so before Mike "took the money and ran". One of his departing gifts to me was a lovely bound volume of "Science Siftings — a chatty journal" from which I've just gently extracted this 15th April 1893 item on the Poet, the Politician, and the Coffee Pot:
My first, and last, little cup of over-sweet Turkish coffee, not far from the London Planetarium on a trip with Christa and Peter, ended in an undignified splutter as I didn't realise all the grounds were still in the cup. Time for a spot of lunch, methinks.
What a difference a nun makes!
Chortle.
I once bumped...
... into Patrick Moore in London as I was entering, and he was leaving, a bookshop. He was a very large man. Here's a tiny anecdote from the time he was involved in plans to broadcast the solar eclipse of February 1961 'live' from France, Italy and (what was then) Yugoslavia as the line of totality tracked across Europe:
He took me aside, and gave me some sage advice. 'Take these gentlemen out, and give them plenty to drink' ... When we returned in mid-afternoon, things were much better. Indeed, the Italian producer went so far as to suggest that the best way to time the eclipse was to let some lions loose in St. Peter's Square and see how many people they ate during totality.
I recall seeing a partial 'chunk' missing from the sun as we watched this event when I was in Junior School in Cheadle Hulme. I expect Big Bro remembers his attempts to photograph the event, too.