There are books so alive that you are always afraid that while you weren't reading the book has changed, has shifted like a river, while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone step twice into the same book ? Marina Tsvetaeva.
Our life is a pilgrims progress - that we are strangers in the earth, our life is a long walk or journey from earth to heaven. Vincent Van Gogh
Reading is one of the most rewarding endeavour, with a book our mind can travel to places you have never been to, or feel sentiments that you have never experienced before. At around October I reflect on the books that have given me joy during the year.
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Yes it's true, isn't it, that a great book repays being read several times, and as we get older so we see different things in them that we hadn't seen before. The book itself might have been written at a time when the author was comparatively young, but somehow these writers know things in an almost unconscious way.
Yes. When we are young its just as though we are a different person from our older version of us so the book acquires another meaning that was not apparent on the first reading. Having said that, some books I admired when I was young didn't seem all that great when I grew older but the classic books are the type that you are referring to. The more you re-read them the better they get.
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms said Muriel Rukeyser. The best stories I have ever read when I was a child were fairy tales by the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen these are magical I also loved adventure stories of children playing to be detectives and finding clues to mysteries, now I like to read about art thefts and forgeries. Which are your favourite books?
When I was young, I used to read Enid Blyton's Famous Five books. Four children and a dog would go off on their holidays together and they would normally stumble upon smugglers or some other kind of ne'er-do-wells. I also read a fair number of Billy Bunter stories, which also have the merit of being written for children but in grown-up language, e.g. you get words like "opprobrious" and "postprandial."
If you still have some of your original Enid Blyton's Famous Five books they are worth a mint now.
Oxfam used to sell books for a pound but now they have an expert to check on the valuable books that may turn up like for example: A first edition of Alice In Wonderland which will go in a special glass book-case with the real collector's price tag. So there is no hope of finding an extremely valuable book for a pound now.
I heard that the Ladybird books with covers and no children's scribble are supposed to be valuable.
I suppose some of the first adult books I read were the Sherlock Holmes. It's great if you can lose yourself in a book. I remember sitting down in the school hall one lunchtime and losing myself in White Fang. Then I noticed that things seemed to be getting rather noisy and crowded. Eventually I looked up to see about 600 boys gathered in the hall for afternoon line-ups. Lunchtime was over.
I missed eating lunch too.
It looks like the White Fang ate your lunch Robert. I know that this is a story about a wolf in the artic.
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
Well, they say that travel broadens the mind, and reading is a kind of travel. If the book is well written, it can make you aware of other ways of seeing things. Britain has been on the whole a fairly tolerant society (relative to others) and I think that one reason for that is Britain's trading background. Trade depends on communication, trust and mutual understanding.
It isn't just books. I maintain that anyone who spends some time contemplating great paintings or listening to Mozart or Beethoven will be in some indefinable sense a better person - not that they will necessarily be kinder or more rational, just that they will have grown in some way.
Its interesting that you should say that as Leonardo da Vinci said in one of his codices painting is superior to the other liberal arts. Specially the written word. Paintings depict, by means of the senses faithfully and truthfully the works of nature, something that cannot be done with words alone. He says that painting has a more dignified objective than poetry as it gives shape to the natural world with more truth than a poet. The natural world is more dignified than mere words. Words are man-made and there is no comparision between the natural world and man-made words, the same way that you cannot compare the work of man with that of God. It is more dignified to imitate nature that is more similar to the real world than than to try to imitate with words the human gestures. He says that a poet who tries to imitate nature with words will always end up defeated by the extreme superiority of the painter.
But what is the real world, Maria? The scientists tell us that grass isn't really green and the sky isn't really blue. And you, me and Leonardo are collections of atoms, and within these atoms tiny electrons are orbiting the nuclei at certain distances from the nuclei, and then suddenly jump and orbit the nuclei at a greater or shorter distance than before, without passing through the space in between.
What is the real world you ask. What we perceive with our own eyes Its simple. You don't see particles, you see a chair or whatever you have in front of you. In his books Leonardo wrote: "that the blue of the sky is composed of light and shadows. Light comes from the luminous air on the humid particles suspended in the atmosphere. The shadows come from the air that is pure, and that is not divided by atoms or particles of humidity, over which the solar rays fall on. We have an example in the air situated between us and a far away hill with the shadow of numerous trees that cover the hill, a shadow exists there, where there are no sun rays. The air is blue, but not in its luminous part nor where the clouds cover the sky." Well.. the scientists can tell us that the sky is not blue or that its not black at night either or that the grass isn't green, but to me, it is green and the sky can be blue, gray, black or orange depending on the weather conditions and the time of day. I won't allow myself to be confused by a scientist Robert. Its optics this is how we perceive things.
It's true of course that there is a perfectly correct ordinary language sense in which it's true to say that the sky is blue and grass is green, and no one's saying that we should stop using these expressions. But colour is a function of light wavelength, the state of one's eyes and the state of one's brain. Or take the sense of touch : we never truly touch anything. An electrical repulsion between the electrons in our fingers and the electrons in the object prevents this. The important thing is, colours etc are not arbitrary and we rarely get surprises, since physical laws govern these things.
The state of ones eyes, the state of ones brain. I thought for a moment that perhaps you were on LSD Robert, seeing psychodelic colours and not being able to touch anything tangible of course when one gets electrocuted..maybe the senses do get a big shock!
Seriously, everything is relative. The grass will not appear green at night since it looks more blue than green and the sky can have more than just a blue colour if its seen at dusk. The clouds will not be white nor gray but possibly red, orange or gold when the sun sets in the horizon. This temperature, makes it easy to read at what time of day, the picture was painted.
Yes, everything is relative, but scientists can give the reasons why clouds seem orange at one time and white at another, so that's fine. Similarly they can explain why someone who is moving at fantastic speeds will measure time differently from someone who is stationery, and the whole thing comes out precisely correct.
We tend to ascribe colours to things because everything is always some colour or other and because light travels virtually instantaneously. But with, say, smells, it's not so clear. If we put rotten eggs at one end of a room, it may be a minute or two before someone at the other end of the room begins pulling a face. We can say that the smell is in the eggs if we want, but it's more accurate to say that it's in someone's nose or in his brain.
I've never tried LSD. With my luck I'd probably see Lucy in the Sky with Rotten Eggs.
Well, in painting we do not ascribe a particular colour to anything because we have to mix several different colours to make it real. The painting below has a lot of blues in the shadows although seen as a whole it doesn't look like blue. There is a phenomenom that happens once you put one colour next to others, the first colour changes! it either becomes more vivid or appears duller even though you have not done anything to it, its influenced by the colours surrounding it. Its very strange.
Yes, this thing about speed is also fun. When you travel far away even in our planet is weird to know that whilst we are on Wednesday in Australia is already Thursday, so you are basically talking with someone in the future. So you can go back three hours if you travel to St. Petersburg in Russia or be an hour ahead if you go to the Continent. If you telephone them they are an hour ahead of us.
Hi Maria
Which painting has the blues?
Yes, perception is interesting. Apparently the human eye responds to change, and if you look at something for too long, the eye switches off.
The time travel on earth business is more a matter of convention than anything. What is really weird is that if you set off in a speceship, go close to the speed of light and then turn round and came back, you might have only aged 5 years or whatever, but Hector would be 90 something.
The painting of Pomona and the nature god has a lot of blues on the trees and the skin but all together the grass looks a deeper green, take a look at it and you will be able to pick-up the blues.
Well, the sun only illuminates one side of the earth so if its day time here, it will be night-time at the other side of the world. No one has travelled at the speed of light yet so apart from remaining young there might be some nasty side effects, I imagine.
Hi Maria
Yes I see what you mean about the blue.
You wouldn't be staying young. Your years would pass at the same rate that they do now. You wouldn't get any extra years. If your journey lasted 30 years than you'd come home 30 years older. But everyone you knew would be dead long ago.
Well, that is a scary thought Robert to come back home to find everyone I know is dead. Mind you, old people in their eightees and ninetees have lost a lot of their friends and family without having gone away from earth in a light years journey. I think if I had to choose, I would stay right here on earth, better ship than this one, I'm not likely to get in terms of comfort to travel in space, its so gentle, we forget that the earth is moving at an incredible speed every day. Travelling in a man made ship would be akin to changing the Queen Mary for a dingy!
Yes, they won't get me on a spaceship. I mean, it's not as if it's all that easy to go outside for a smoke.
You coudn't easily step out for a smoke only perhaps if they put you on a kite and then what would happen when you ran out ciguies?
Watched a programme today about trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials. Suppose they come and enslave the whole human race? At least for now we are just invading other countries and not having to worry about being invaded by E.T.s
They were talking about travelling to other planets with anti-matter fuel. I hope they never find the formula for that. Enough damage has been done with inventing the nuclear bomb or the hydrogen bomb. As it has only worked at destryoying our own species. It seems like if we haven't got enough with natural disasters but we have to make some of our own man-made holocausts. Its so stupid.
On the other hand, Maria, any species clever enoiugh to cross the vast distances from an inhabited planet, and visit us, must have passed through its own nuclear age a long, long time ago and could not have destroyed itself - or else it couldn't visit us. So it might be grounds for optimism that we can survive our nuclear age too.
I'm not convinced Robert. The nuclear weapons were not exactly a pandora box as they knew exactly what would happen if they released one of these nuclear bombs but they still went ahead and did it anyway. Why? Power. Its a matter of ego, to be a super-power and above everyone else. Nowadays the nuclear countries use it as a means to intimidate other countries that do not have nuclear weapons. You only have to see the Cuban missile crises. If Nickita Kruchev hadn't had the basis in Cuba, the Americans would have invaded the island a long time ago but because there was another super-power pointing missilles at them, Kennedy had to promise that he would not invade Cuba in exchange for the Russians pulling out their missiles from Cuba and so it came to be. We are now in the 21st century but we are still the very same warrior race, just as we were more than 4 thousand years ago. Nothing has changed. Our nature remains exactly the same. Although there have been enormous technological advances, the human race is as barbarous in nature as it was many centuries ago. It is as though the rabid child never grew up. We are not prepared to encounter extraterrestrials as we cannot even tolerate other skin colours or different religions different to our own. How can racists tolerate other beings from another planet? The answer is clear, they can't.
On the other hand.. there may have been other beings from outer space who destroyed their planet and themselves with atomic bombs and this is why they never came to visit us.
In a way, I wouldn't want a much more advanced society to visit the earth, because I'd like to see us acquire all those secrets ourselves using our own intelligence. Getting the knowledge from aliens would be a lucky shortcut.
Well, there are some people, like Von Daniken who think that the wonderful buildings in the Nazca Valley in South America were the work of extra-terrestrials because the stones in the buildings are so tight that you cannot even put in the thin blade of a knife in between the the stones! He cannot believe the fact that these people from this lost civilization had perfected a method of building, were today we haven't got the faintest idea how these building were made, even with all our technology, let alone how the stones were cut and assembled so accurately. Von Daniken has the same strange theory for all the Maya pre-Columbian temples. Just because we don't know how these buildings were made, it doesn't follow that maybe extra-terrestrials built them. That is taking merit away from the human race. Obviously, the know-how has been lost as well as the civilization who built them.
Well these are very eccentric extra-terrestrials, aren't they? I mean, they come all that way and instead of offering us a cure for cancer they show us a tight fit for stones.
I might as well say that extra-terrestrials are responsible for Strictly Come Dancing because I'm sure I can't imagine how it ever got on TV.
I think one of the most magical inventions is: Television and soon it will be in three dimension without having to wear the funny glasses. Probably in about two years time. If Leonardo had known this..
Well, a lot of TV is rubbish, but of course there are some gems too. I think Leonardo would have taken to computers, because they are a much more active medium than TV, which tends to render the viewer rather passive.
Robert you would have liked a T.V. programme called Horizon last night about perception. Some scientists had a large Kubrik cloth cube illuminated by a yellow light where they would take a patch of brown from one side and put it on top of the cube just like magic, suddenly the brown turned into blue under this light but in reality the patch that appeared brown on the side of the cube and blue on the top, was really GREY in colour. The scientists are interested in magic tricks associated with what the eye can perceive and its deceived! It has to do with our brain.. when ever something is missing of the equation our brain invents the rest! Its quite interesting. For example when a magician throws a coin up in the air a few times but on one ocassion he doesn't throw it, he just pretends he threw it up in the air and naturally it doesn't come back down, its because our brain got used to seeing the coin being tossed up all the time, so the brain continued to think that he had thrown it up; when in reality he hadn't. Then we gasp when the coin appears to have vanished into thin air. I loved the explanation of that. It was what you were saying earlier about repetition.. I imagine the brain got tired and just assumes the coin went up when in fact didn't.
Hi Maria
Yes, it's very interesting. Some time ago they had a man whose brain had sustained damage, yet he baffled scientists by being able to walk around. When they got him in the laboaratory, they found that his brain had re-routed the activity and that the part of his brain that he was now using to help him walk, was used by jugglers!
Eric Morecambe had a trick with a paper bag. He would put his hand into it, and then apparently take something out and throw it in the air. A few seconds later the object would land plop in the bag. We heard the noise and saw the bag move as something heavy fell into it. Then Eric would wait longer and longer before catching the object, so it seemed to be in the air for ages. Sometimes he would catch it behind his back. Of course, there was no object. Eric was simply flicking the bag from behind with his finger and thumb to make it seem that something had just landed in it.
Yes, I did see that one where the man had to have half of his brain taken off because of permanent seizures that didn't let him have a normal life and he was warned that he would not be able to walk again but amazingly he did! so they had a look at his brain and this is when they discovered that the left side of the brain had taken over the duties of what the other half of the brain normally does.
Yes, that bag trick is because the brain assumes things when the information is coming through sound or even sight like colours.. They made an experiment where lemon juice was painted blue and the people who were tested were saying it was mint! or saying that strawberry juice was orange juice because they gave it an orange colour so we also tend to associate colours with flavours. I suppose you can be given a cat instead of a hare!
Maria, I guess that's why older people tend to be more conservative in their views and their likes and dislikes than younger people. They start off like everybody, knowing nothing, and then as they go through childhood they learn from their family and from their own exoeriences. But gradually as they get older each new experience is interpreted to fit the pattern they've alredy built up for themselves. So they gradually become set in their ways. And then there are also the extremists who interpret anything and everything as supporting evidence for their views. So if a Communist economy is doing well (which it never is) the leaders say it proves that the system works. But if it's doing badly, it's proof that counter-revolutionary traitors are at work. Such people have altogether stopped being able to learn from experience.
Well, as we can see from recent experience Capitalism isn't the panacea it is supposed to be either. We are now in a situation where the goverment has given to the banks (a private entity) tax payers money (public funds) the sum of £460 Billion pounds! Now the goverment is planning on recouping the money it gave to the banks by raising the taxes even higher, in order to recoup the cash it gave to the banks and also, included in the plans.. is to raise the age of retirement which is already at 65; (higher than any other European country, plus also slash public spending on services and cut jobs in the public sector too. If you ask me, neither system work if its run by corrupt, inept people. Give more money to the rich whilst extracting more from the tax-payers. Soon it won't be long before we find ourselves rioting in the streets just like its happening in Greece, where everything is chaos !
Hi Maria
You bring out a good point, that no system will work if it's run by idiots. And this is the importance of personalities. Politicians aren't just peple who implement a set of policies - they also have various character traits, e.g. industriousness or laziness, intelligence or stupidity, and so on. Tony Benn always used to say "Forget personalities, let's talk about the issues" but personalities are terribly important. We elect too many idiots.
Oh you should see one of our members of Parliament one Mike Bates who is now in the front pages of the newspapers because he assaulted a nurse whilst she was trying to cure a wound to his head. The man was drunk he certainly is an imbecil. I hope he is thrown out of the Liberal Party soon.
Allegedly, Maria. And it's still sub judice so we'd better keep off that subject.
It's interesting when you think about it, that parliamentary candidates are employed by the voters, but when they put in their job application forms - in other words, their campaign literature - you get hardly anything about their educational qualifications, previous experience, hobbies, etc. In other words, it's not like applying for a real job at all.
Yes, that's true and usually they are totally ignorant on the ministry they are supposed to over-see. Parliament reminds me of the musical chairs game. One moment someone is minister of defense and on a re-chuffle that same minister suddenly becomes the minister for health, not knowing a jot of either subjects. There should be an expertice, before they apply. Can you imagine in the real world applying for a job as a surgeon in a hospital without having any medical qualifications? It would be unthinkable wouldn't it? So why so many ignorant politicians are being given the permission to squander the wealth of a country. Its a lunatic system which needs to be changed.
Well, I suppose one can't expect that every Minister of Defence should have served in the armed forces for 25 years, or every Helath Minister be a brain surgeon. And at the end of the day, however many experts they consult, they must make their own decision because they're responsible for other things too like public finances and civil liberties. But it would be nice if they at least knew SOMETHING about the subject they're in charge of. And, just as importantly, that they have the intelligence to know how to apply their knowledge.
I still think the system has to be changed as things are not simple it is important to have knowledgeable people in every subject like economics but having said that I like what I read in the newspapers this weekend about Mr. Cameron that he was horrified how much money had been squandered with the war airplanes, where apparently it was cheaper to have two airplanes built than scrapping the order to built them because of how the contracts were worded. So there needs to be an expertice at every level, with good attorneys to look at the contracts before these are signed and re-draw the contracts when something like this happens. It is now beginning to be clear how enormous the debt the previous government has left us with where David Cameron and Nick Clegg now have to bring these austerity measures so that the country is not in debt and of course, there is no accountability the previous goverment has gone and what do we have? Blair making money with his personal ventures. No accountability.
Well, MPs don't scrutinise things properly because it isn't their own money that's at stake. You can see the MPs suddenly sitting bolt upright and working harder when their own money is concerned. Look how much time and energy they lavished on their expenses - first in devising ingenious ways of claiming money from the taxpayer ; next in trying to stop the scandal coming out ;next in finding excuses for what they'd done ; and finally in trying to obstruct the introduction of an honest expenses system.
Well, this is what am saying, if corrupt people run the government there is no hope of making a successof it, no matter what system we have. Look at what happened to Greece and in Argentina, the banks closed their doors there where no one could withdraw a penny out of their own bank accounts, people had to re- learn the art of bartering to exchange goods for services or vice-versa. I'm so glad Gordon Brown and Blair have now left but they should be made accountable for the mess they left the country in, instead of allowing them to capitalise in other personal ventures and make themselves millionaires. Not to mention the war crimes.
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