Solaris

I have finished reading the 1961 novel Solaris that I mentioned in my last post. I rank it as one of the better sci-fi books I have read because of its disturbing realism. None of these humanoid extra-terrestrials that are now so common - here all attempts to make satisfactory contact with the alien fail and yet it wreaks havoc. The characters, with all their inhibitions, distrust and confusion, are not straightforward. Many questions in their and the reader's minds are purposely left unanswered. Which all resonate with common experience.

The protagonist Kris Kelvin falls in love with an alien-created avatar of his long-deceased love Rheya and doggedly will not accept that she will probably cease to exist on leaving Solaris for Earth. Even after his colleagues force the issue by destroying the avatar, and some semblance of normality has returned, he ends up abandoning his original plan to return to Earth and the book ends "Must I go on living here the, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed... In the hope of her return? And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained... I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past".

Earlier in the book Kris observes: "We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris (the end of life but not of love), is a lie, useless and not even funny... Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox..."

I found all this disturbingly reminiscent of emotions that rattle around in my ego. I hold onto relationships and principles without fully understanding why I do so. I find it difficult enough to even quantise such feelings myself, let alone explain them in writing. Had I been born, for example, to Hindu parents in India I wonder how different my inner thought processes, expectations and beliefs would be? The comparison is of course void because, if I had, I would not be "me". So maybe I am destined to remain an unknown quantity to myself - I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps. 

Several films have been based on the book and there are numerous web sites on the subject. For example, if you want an in depth description of the manifestations of the alien "intelligence", try here.

Dreams

I'm reading Solaris, a 1961 science fiction novel. It is set in the distant future and has a good attempt to predict computer technology except they have to wait for the valves to warm up - and yet they still use tape recorders!

So, maybe because I went to sleep after reading about these weird humanoid manifestations, I dreamt that the door to my bedroom was opening (I was sleeping alone, Ali having been visiting her mum - which may be why my blog-posting has been above par recently). I instantly woke up, quite alert, and thankfully was able to verify that in fact the door was firmly closed.

Which says something about dream vs. reality time-lines. Experience confirms that long dreams can sometimes occupy very little real time space. And yet this one was synchronised to the second.

I can also verify that dreams can definitely be in vivid colour and that I can both hear and be heard and be understood. A recurrent dream-theme I have mentioned before is my ability to "fly". Odd perhaps but not unique although you get some pretty weird stuff if you Google it. In these dreams I sort of push inside (a little bit like the pushing one does to defecate only located much higher up) and if I push hard enough sometimes, but only sometimes, is it enough to raise me off terra-firma. Once levitated then I can soar more freely, though usually I am limited in height and duration. Whilst flying I remain approximately upright - never zooming horizontally like Superman. In that other realm, reality, I have often tried this pushing but sadly with no effect (yet).

The experience sometimes includes the ability to jump unusual distances. Typically I can be at the top of a high stairwell and jump down ridiculous numbers of steps and yet land gracefully. And in my dreams I try to be surreptitious as I get embarrassed about what other people must think of my antics.

I mention my flying ability here (how I wish I could do it for real) because of the amazing scenery in these dreams - I am awed by the rapid changes of perspective and panorama as I navigate. On a recent occasion I was impressed by the richness and complexity of the tapestry of landscapes - it seemed as if I was aware that I was in a dream and yet everything looked so real and the thought occurred to me - how could my paltry imagination come up with such splendour?

Sci-fi writers, and more recently Physicists, have played with the idea that what we think of as reality may be little more than a dream. One wonders who is doing the sleeping? The cornflakes I ate just now seemed pretty real and I can still feel them rummaging around inside me but soon, come a few hours, they will be little more than a memory. All our reality is but an instant in time that evaporates rapidly into ephemeral memory. And neither is our future secure: at best it is only hope: hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

Which is, I suppose, why man builds edifices, like the many standing stones here in the British Isles, many with ogham inscriptions. Whilst distance may lends enchantment and memories may dull with time, a stone pillar with obviously man-made markings is visible proof that folk really existed and lived their lives all those years ago. I wonder if, in my life, I have made any permanent marks...

A letter to Santa

Gay Byrne

Gay Byrne, veteran and much loved Irish TV and radio presenter, hosted a show on Lyric fm this afternoon in which he read A letter to Santa by Irish novelist John Sheridan. It presents a different take, and one I liked, on Santa than the more common commercial-push-over or the religious-I-don't-want-anything-to-do-with-it approaches. I couldn't find all the text but here is a sample from the above link:

Once-- and not so long ago-- Europe, at this blessed time of year, was a blaze of lighted church-windows, carols meant more than carousals, and red, symbolic candles shone out from a million sills to guide your landings. But the lights grow fewer every year, and a great darkness is spreading over the face of Christendom.

You were always a legend, Santa, but now they are trying to make you a lie; and you were never a lie. You were, rather, a logical necessity. You just had to be invented. You stand, not just for a parable, but for a whole medley of parables.

You represent, for instance, the belief that prayers are heard-- and answered; the belief that time and space do not exist in the spiritual dimension; the belief that there is a Bounty that is not embarrassed or diminished by the number of clients or the immensity of their needs.

...

That is why I am still prepared, in spite of the cost of living, to act as your local representative and depot superintendent until my Illustrious Virtues [his children] find both of us out; why I am prepared to perpetuate a legend that looks like a lie but is merely a cloak for the truth; why I can say, literally and with all reverence, that the tiny things I have wrapped in brown paper and hidden away against the Vigil of the Feast are part of the Deposit of Faith.

But sure, who am I telling it to?

How much is enough?

How much is enough? How far should I try to impose my will on someone: on my pupil, my employee, my spouse, my under-age son or daughter, my friend, or even my friend's dog?

I watch parents insisting that their offspring do this or that, things that sometimes seem unreasonable to me, and then either recapitulating or metering harsh punishment when the child does not or cannot comply and has got into such a tizzy. Not that I didn't make plenty of mistakes when I had young children.

I grant that, to maintain any semblance of order, there do need to be accepted lines of authority but none of us like to be forced to do something that is unreasonable.  In the Le Petit Prince the king's "rule was not only absolute: it was also universal."

"For what the king fundamentally insisted upon was that his authority should be respected. He tolerated no disobedience. He was an absolute monarch. But, because he was a very good man, he made his orders reasonable.

" 'If I ordered a general,' he would say, by way of example, 'if I ordered a general to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not obey me, that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my fault.' "

I find this hyperbole to be a useful premise in my dealings with other folk, although it does rather tend towards the lowest denominator. In contrast was our new music teacher at secondary school who galvanised me (and others) from musical indifference to singing in the school choir (once I even sang a solo in a school concert, can you imagine?) and playing flute in the school orchestra. For this I honour him, and others like him who can believe and instil the unbelievable in others. For the general to be able to fly like Jonathan Livingston Seagull would have been a wonderful thing.

The point I am trying to make (maybe not very well) is summed up in the term "human dignity". Martin Luther King declares it in his "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' ". That I should aim to honour and respect equally every person regardless of their age, station, nationality, health, cleanliness or creed.

I know that I should be impartial, that I should love those that hurt me. I would love to be the sort of teacher who imparts life and not just knowledge. One who lives by and upholds Godly standards. I have these things as my aim, but I am sorry to say that I have yet a ways to go.

Jack London

At school my English teacher would occasionally hand out a list of a zillion book titles that literate boys were meant to have read. Generally I could find two, maybe three, titles that I recognised. But two books that immediately appealed to me back then were Jack London's Call of the Wild and White Fang.  (Another was Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie). It is the power of description in the books that I loved.

And so it was with expectation that I recently picked up Martin Eden. In a lone battle struggling to become a writer whilst standing against convention Martin eventually finds financial success but the novel ends with him loosing purpose and committing suicide. I found the ending unexpected and utterly bleak.

As an atheist Jack London is quoted as saying:

"I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed".

Like Thomas, I have plenty of doubts and loose ends. But I find this statement untenable, just as I found the novel bleak. As I have mentioned in my page on faith I go along with Puddleglum's sentiments:

"We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it."

It has been said that man was made with a God shaped hole which only He can fill. It would seem that most people do not agree with this, but then most people believe that a diamond is a girl's best friend.

Polar Express

The Polar Express

Talking about wonder, a film I greatly enjoyed watching a few Christmas's back was The Polar Express. Why did I enjoy it so? Maybe because it was the first digital film I saw that was anywhere near lifelike. Or because it used the digital medium to such advantage in portraying the children - obviously synthesised and yet embodying real, lovable, hesitantly inquisitive humanity. Or because of the scene in which the train runs off track, a theme I have often dreamt about even before I saw this film. In such dreams I am riding a train careering along roads or even rough tracks across county, whilst I am pondering how the wheel flanges are making out... But then I am a siderodromomaniac.

And of course I liked the hit song I'm wishing on a star...

Towards the end Santa gives the boy a magic bell and the film ends with a twist: the boy, now grown up, says:

"At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it felt silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe."

Which moral could be taken in more ways than one. A number of internet sites suggest that the film might have an overtly Christian message, for example see here or here or here or here or here - and there is even the suggestion that the producers intended it.

I am left wondering... how insignificant can that which our faith hangs on be before we conclude that the object of our faith was but a dream? Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.

For me, this film is entertainment at its best. Mind you, not all the critics agreed, but then they wouldn't.

Fish pie, Rachmaninoff and Hamlet

Boys School, Smock Alley Theatre

Last evening I accompanied my wife and friend to a performance of Hamlet at the Smock Alley theatre, Dublin. The venue was interesting and the acting was good, I am sure, but Shakespeare isn't my scene even if it is his 450'th birthday. I find it too wordy, stilted, abrasive and foreign. Like - a morass of words (no doubt clever but the cleverness passes me by) hung on a thin skeleton of props and acting. I had done my homework so roughly knew the plot, but I couldn't follow all the speech partly because the actors spoke so quickly, or quietly, and partly because my hearing is not the best. Our friend said he had the same problem and he is only a teenager. And then the plot is not exactly uplifting. Most of the characters end up being murdered. About the only element of wonder I found was to consider whether Hamlet's motives were at all honourable. Whilst revenge is understandable it is hard to see why one should be entertained by it. So, all in all, I found it rather hard and unrewarding work. Sorry, for those of my readers who may think Shakespeare plays are the bee's knees: I will not stand in your way!

Anyway, to continue my argument - at one point in the play there was Ophelia, who was probably expressing her love for Hamlet at the time, when the first movement of Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto started playing in the background. My attention was immediately absorbed by the music and I wished it could have continued, that we could have dispensed with the rest of the play.

So why do I find music so much more engaging that talking? It is a bit like my vast preference of fish pie over a complicated dish such as an avant garde restaurant might serve. Fish pie is good all the way through. No surprises, just plain old reliable good. Especially with cheese on top and ketchup and peas. I can become immersed in the experience: it is sensual, pleasing, I am carried by and can identify with it. Granted, sheer pleasure is not the only reason for doing stuff - just possibly I have become educated and more erudite by attending Hamlet - but surely entertainment should be entertaining? Just occasionally a poem might light my fire but, generally, I don't do words well - words are functional and I can get frustrated with people who use more of them than I think necessary. Whereas - if music be the food of love, play on...

A long ago story

A tale of wonder... from the same little blue book (another one) that I mentioned in my post In a far country:

A long ago story

...The years fled away. And still the Great Tree stood among the mists, unharmed by time and the lightnings that felled so many of its proud neighbours. But still the years followed one another endlessly; and at last, old and withered, the Great Tree crashed and fell into the muddy waters of the swamp. Down to the bottom of the swamp it sank, crushed underfoot by the mighty reptiles that fought one another, bellowing and screaming and coughing through the short night hours ; or pushed and jostled, and rolled in the steamy ooze of the daytime, as they sought their prey. Deeper and deeper into the mud, at the bottom of the swamp, the tree was pressed, until at last it rotted and fell to pieces. But the ball of gum with the fly at its core was unharmed by the mud and the water. It was too small for the giant feet of the great reptiles to crush it, and so it lay there safely in the darkness of the thick slime. The years fled away in tens and in hundreds and in thousands. The sea broke over the land, and where the swamp had been, the little waves of a blue deep sea rippled from shore to distant shore.

Unnumbered and countless years flew by. Man appeared upon the earth, a little, helpless, naked creature, whose brain was to make him lord of all. And so, slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, man conquered the earth ; built upon it fair and wonderful cities ; and launched upon its seas his painted ships. And the great oozy swamps, the vast trees, and the crawling reptiles, were forgotten as if they had never been.

And then, but yesterday, a little boy walked along the beach, after a high spring tide had thrown the shells and seaweed a score of feet beyond the wonted tide mark. The sun shone, and the sand was warm and pleasant to his bare feet. Suddenly his bare toe touched something hard and round, and as large as a sparrow's egg. He picked it up, and gave a little cry of delight. It was amber. But it was rough and dull, and he did not dream of the treasure at its heart.

He took it up to the tiny shop upon the windy cliffs. And there the little old man, who spent his days polishing and cutting stones, set to work upon it. The little boy's fair hair and the old man's scanty gray were very close as the polishing proceeded rapidly. And then the little boy screamed out, and pointed to the piece of amber now as yellow as gold and as clear as glass. The little old gray man gasped. There in the very heart of the amber lay the body of a beautiful blue fly, with one glittering gauzy wing outstretched ; it was the fly that had died so suddenly in the young, young days of the old world.

Fly in amber

And now, set in gold, the fly-in-the-amber, that is older than the hills, rests in a case in a great building for all the world to see. And day by day folks passing by stop to stare at its wonderful beauty.

But the proud tree that boasted, in those far off ages, of its long, long life, was lost and forgotten before ever man came upon the earth ; little, naked, defenceless man, who was one day to be lord of all.

Stephen Southwold

My birthday?

Fish Pie à ma mater

Mine!

All for me!

Me having a real birthday? My birthday still?

Many thanks to all you who thought about me. And thanks for the Facebook wishes. And for the gifts. It's kind of nice to have a birthday even if one doesn't believe in them!

I had a magnificent dinner - fish pie as my mother made it - although I had to make it myself as Ali took the grandchildren out out to see Swan Lake.

I do not have an official recipe so the following is roughly what I did tonight and is based on what I can remember of how my mother's fish pie tasted. It worked - everyone who partook said they enjoyed it.

Take some fresh white fish (e.g. cod - in this instant it was hake), NOT smoked. Poach it for about 10 minutes in one pint of milk (one pint is good for 4 people). Drain and put to one side to cool. Retain the milk.

Peel and boil some potatoes. Drain and mash with butter, milk salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Using the same saucepan as you poached the fish it, melt 2 oz of butter, take off the heat and mix with 2 oz of plain flour to make a roux. Slowly add the hot milk mixing well all the time. Return to a gentle heat and bring to the boil stirring all the time thus making a thick white sauce. Do not use cornflour!

Grate about 4 oz of cheese, and add a little less than half to the white sauce.

Remove any skin from the fish and give to the cat. Flake the flesh and extract any bones.

Take a deep oven dish, grease with butter, and use about 1/3 of the mashed potato as a base layer. Pour half the white sauce over this layer. Now arrange the fish over the potato and cover with the remaining white sauce. Carefully spoon the remaining potato on top, level and fork, then cover with the remaining cheese.

Bake in an oven for about 30 minutes, if necessary grill to brown the cheese.

Serve with peas, tomato ketchup and white wine, and share with your best friend.

Vivian de Sola Pinto

I mentioned in a recent post the book of poems by Vivian de Sola Pinto some kind benefactor sent me. It came at a busy time so it has taken me a while to peruse the book and write this post. Some of these poems I enjoyed as a boy, and I still like them. You have to understand that this is extraordinary because, generally, poetry doesn't light my fire. I am rather illiterate in this respect.

There is a common theme in many of the poems - the juxtaposition of the mundane of humanity versus the glory of nature - to the point where it becomes somewhat predictable. But that is OK: this theme is worthy of repetition: for example, so often Spring, and the daffodils it brings, passes me by almost unnoticed, meanwhile I slave away in my office trying to earn money.

I like these poems because they resonate with emotions I feel. Emotions that I have sometimes thought no one else in the world shares, and which as a result I have sometimes tried to tamp down. Now, if I were a poet, and if I didn't have to earn my bread, I could...

Another recurrent theme is his love for his two boys Vivian and Oliver, and for this I respect him. Here are two of his poems taken from his book This is my England and other poems:

FOR OLIVER, AGED SIX 

Now you are like a squirrel 

  or a shy woodland bird : 

your brown eyes full of surprise 

  as though you'd never heard 

a human voice before 

  or seen a human face, 

so delicate-swift your motions 

  strange your wayward grace. 

You come from a country 

  where skies are brighter than ours : 

fierce blue summer laughs at you 

  burn yellow and scarlet flowers : 

louder shouts the wind there 

  clearer sing the birds : 

the country undimmed by grey talk, 

  the land of no words. 

We came from that country, 

  long ago we came. 

Scarcely we now can see 

  an image of its flame 

of colours, remember its fountain 

  of clear shining sound, 

here where the air is empty, 

  bare and cold the ground. 

You must bring them back,

  magic, colour, song, 

touch the bare black branches there 

  make leaves and blossoms throng 

a sky flooded with new glory, 

  bid the dead world live again, 

tell sun to shine and wind to shout 

  bring lightning, swords of rain. 

Beat down our silly houses, 

  silence our vain chatter : 

you are wise, and do not need our lies, 

  our learning's but a tatter 

of an old splendid banner 

  that moulder'd long ago : 

scorn painted rags and flaunting flags, 

  you've flowers, fire and snow. 

THE PHOENIX 

TO MY SON STANDING IN AN OPEN DOORWAY 

The phoenix shall be born 

out of a blazing nest :

 leaping flames are his outspread pinions, 

soft fire burns in his breast. 

The door stands open and I see 

a world ablaze : 

the lintel glows, but it is from the skies 

that the soft fire of heavenly love 

comes to amaze my eyes. 

Pink peachblossom laughs victorious and the grass 

is pure emerald flame, 

but glory is in those dazzling clouds, 

where angels in triumphant crowds 

praise an ineffable name. 

But there is burning here a stronger fire 

than bright grass, flower or shining cloud, 

a flame more clear, a strength more proud, a power 

of untamed spirit in the boy's grey eyes, 

white brow, wild gleaming hair : 

This is the heart of flame, 

where there is neither shame nor lies nor fear : 

the true burning world of which our drear

pale cinder's a mockery, a dull unmeaning game. 

Out of the flames, dear phoenix rise, 

let your proud wings be spread : 

that fire shall fail, those flames grow pale, 

but in far skies a fire burns clear, 

  that is your home not here, 

  not here among the dead. 

Vivian's father, who was of Portuguese-Jewish ancestry, was a cigar importer, and my research suggests that his sons may have taken up the same profession. Vivian himself was an academic at Oxford and later a professor of English at Nottingham university. During the first World War he fought alongside fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon who, naturally, I had never heard of - but here is a fitting sample of Siegfried's poetry which I like because it sums up the horror of that war so economically :

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go. 

SSS, babe and artifacts

Camille Saint-Saëns

SSS was my school-days secret code for Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 aka "the organ symphony". As for "Babe" - to my chagrin it was plagiarised as the main theme in that unhappy film. As for artifacts: I was listening to an MP3 recording of the symphony played by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra this evening. I am generally very pleased with this performance but there is very obvious dynamic compression in the Finalle. For example the sound stage kind of disappears on cymbal crashes. And there is evidence of what are probably MP3 artifacts in some quieter passages.

The symphony is on a grand scale: majestic themes and a large orchestra with organ and piano. I have mentioned elsewhere my infatuation with the organ which I suppose is contributory to my great love for this work. Wikipedia observes that "the lowest pedal notes of both the Poco Adagio and the Maestoso, played on the organ, are of almost inaudibly low frequency. When experienced live in a concert hall equipped with a large concert organ with 32-foot pedal stops (e.g. the Royal Albert Hall Organ) these notes are very dramatic and give a deeply impressive aural experience." As in my school days so now I would love to have the chance to hear the work live. No recording can do justice to this sort of sound. So much for "high-fidelity" - electronics may have advanced radically on so many fronts but sadly it has not yet done justice to audio reproduction. And people do not seem to care which I find very strange.

MP3, like JPG, is lossy data compression. Typically an MP3 data file is a mere 10% of the size of the original. Quality is arguably lost even when analog audio is digitised but it is certainly lost when it is compressed as MP3. And yet if it were not for MP3 we would not have the present day ease of access to music. Similarly the JPG format has spawned the present day proliferation of digital photography. Compression "artifacts" are the difference between the reconstituted and the original audio (or picture). Most of the time we (we being the average populace) are unaware of these artifacts. I used to be very purist about such things but now-a-days, even more so as my hearing is not as good as it was, I am just happy enough to be able to download and store the music that I want, thanks to MP3.

Windows 8.1

I decided up upgrade my work desktop. The old one was perfectly good, but was running XP. Which meant I was out of date and less able to help my customers who are more up to date. And Microsoft have been running a fear campaign to get people like me to switch. My work colleague, who knows more about computers than I do, advised going for Windows 8.1 so I agreed but only if he did the dirty work of transferring my files and making the upgrade process as painless as possible. He did a great job and installed the 3rd party software that brings back the Start menu which Microsoft carelessly lost when they crafted Windows 8.

In my work I am constantly installing or re-building software. I quickly faced the issue that Windows 8 doesn't allow you to do anything like this unless you sign in as administrator. To save having to do that every day I got my colleague to somehow fix it so I am always "administrator". Which somehow defeats the purpose.

It has now been several weeks since the changeover. After some experimentation and a good deal of frustration I can now do most of what came second nature under XP.

So, how do I like Windows 8? There are little niggles like the change of display style but I can just about cope with that. My main observations are:

(1) Windows 8 has not yet given me ANYTHING that XP did not have. I do not see any improvement whatsoever in features or speed, except that start-up is quicker but that is to be expected with a solid-state disk cache and fresh operating system. In fact my XP machine was lightening fast when I first bought it, and it didn't have such advanced hardware.

(2) Conversely the change to Windows 8 has cost my business several days of effort for both myself and my colleague just to constrain it to do what XP did effortlessly.

XP was a major improvement over Windows 98. So what is the point of Window 8, or 7, or Vista. Frankly I have no idea.  One wonders what Windows 10 will offer?

I liken this process to buying a new car. My old car was fine but it was just getting a bit old.  With the new one I have, after a while reading the manual, figured out how to unlock the door and am sitting down in the driver's seat. The dashboard looks quite pretty but is strangely unfamiliar. I find that I cannot actually start the car without authorization from the garage - and I need this authorization EVERY time I start the car. This, I am told, is a security feature to reduce the possibility of theft. Once started I notice the accelerator is where the handbrake used to be, and the brake has swapped places with the clutch. The dashboard now - instead of a speedometer there is a coloured rectangle which animates first with a sloth, then a tortoise followed by baby, a sheep, a dog, a lion, and a jaguar in that order as one accelerates. Very pretty. There are no levers on the steering column - instead the dashboard is touch-sensitive and you have to find the right button to operate the indicators - but the button is not always in the same place. Oh, and did I say? The steering wheel doesn't actually turn, but is touch sensitive. After a couple of days learning how to manage the differences I am finally out for my first drive. My old car managed 100mph on a fine day but this one cannot do more than about 60mph - another safety feature I am told.  And yet the engine is twice the size of that in my last car, so the mpg is not too good.

Apart from those small gripes I am really pleased with my new car!

By the way, the current statistics show that there are still more XP users than Win 8 and 8.1 combined!

Intoxication

So... whilst visiting a friend I picked up a book Sober Saints by Keith Malcomson and started reading. Basically the plot is that "wine" in the Bible, when condoned, was actually unfermented grape juice. This is not a new idea. I admit that I have not read the whole book - one reason being that, like so many sermons, there is a good deal of padding to make it "book-sized" and thus, I suppose, more saleable. What I did read makes sense and I do not disagree with some of his points - like that wine is a mocker - I know some people who have problems with alcohol and it is not nice.

But my hackles rose a bit when he has a go at C. S. Lewis - he refers to the scene in Prince Caspian where Bacchus and Silenus turns up and asserts that:

"Lewis denied many fundamental evangelical doctrines, smoked, drank, wrote books in bars and strongly promoted social drinking... I'm afraid Mr. Lewis was out of step with the written Scriptures, but strongly influenced by the ideas, ideologies and habits of Bacchus. Hidden beneath the veneer of this 'Christian Classic' and presented by the wise, sophisticated, intelligent and profoundly balanced pen of Lewis, is the practice of social drinking, supported by the fable of the one-wine theory..."

Personally I don't do social drinking, I don't smoke either, but I would not be adverse to a glass of wine or cider with a meal. But that's not my point. Based on my having met Keith briefly and knowing Lewis through his books, at this moment I would rather put my trust in Lewis because he comes across as a man with substance, someone I can identify with. A similar argument is expressed by the apostle James who noted that "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are" or Barnabas and Paul who explained that "We also are men of like passions with you" or Jesus who "was in all points tempted like as we are".

Not that I am condoning Lewis's stance or his lifestyle - I do not necessarily always agree with him, but that does not stop me receiving from and being blessed by him. To agree wholly with him I would have to become a high-church man, a veritable English scholar and a lot besides!

Jonathan Rogers is worth reading on the subject - of the Bacchus scene he observes that:

"Aslan is here, and all that wildness and freedom is an expression of the enlivening, joy-giving, creative energies of Aslan himself. What Lewis says of the God of the Bible is true of Aslan:

It is He who sends the rain into the furrows till the valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing. The trees of the wood rejoice before Him and His voice causes the wild deer to bring forth their young. His is the God of wheat and wine and oil. In that respect He is constantly doing all the things that Nature-Gods do: His is Bacchus, Venus, Ceres all rolled into one.

This is not polytheism that is breaking out in Narnia. The little nature gods of Narnia do not set themselves up as rivals to Aslan. They are his servants, just as Trufflehunter and the Pevensies, and now Trumpkin are his servants."

God makes the rules. It was He who forbade certain foods in the Old Testament but then presents Peter with these unclean foods and tells him "What God has made clean, you do not call common."

The catch is being able to discern whether it is God - of all people the Pharisees were well versed in the scriptures so knew all the prophecies pointing the the Messiah - but they couldn't see wood for trees when He appeared before their very eyes. I fear lest I might fall into a similar trap. Keith is right when he says alcohol is dangerous but I wonder if he has missed the point by concluding that we must necessarily be teetotal.

Bible pixellation

Pixellation example

Take any digital photograph and zoom in and there will come a point where you can see the individual pixels. Put another way, a digital photograph has a certain resolution - you cannot go on usefully magnifying it as one supposes one can with real life. Unlike the maps in Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader in which

"though the towns and mountains looked at first just as they would on an ordinary map, when the Magician lent them a magnifying glass you saw that they were perfect little pictures of the real things, so that you could see the very castle and slave market and streets in Narrowhaven, all very clear though very distant, like things seen through the wrong end of a telescope."

Example of film grain

It is much the same for an "analogue" photograph on film - only, instead of rectangular pixels, useful magnification is limited by the more random individual grains that make up the photographic emulsion.

Actually, even in real life it seems like you cannot go on magnifying. Light itself has dimensions and these limit the amount of optical magnification that is possible - but there are other ways of "seeing" things that are smaller than the wavelength of light. Eventually we get to elementary particles like quarks and these seem to answer to pixels in limiting how far you can keep zooming in.  In short that the world is quantised. Mike Adams sees this as evidence that reality is in fact a grand computer simulation, possibly created by God. A little bit like the arena in Hunger Games.

Some books and some videos have fairly obvious layers of meaning. Like the Matrix or Lewis's Narnia chronicles. We are used to this sort of thing but we do not expect hidden layers below layers and so on ad infinitum. After all the authors are mortal aren't they?

The same sort of analysis can be applied to the Bible. Most Christians would be happy enough that the Bible has layers of meaning - after all a parable is just that - a story with a hidden meaning. We might baulk at ideas like the Bible Code that purport that there are messages hidden in the fabric of the text of the Bible that, frankly, would have required a supernatural intelligence to plant there. But what about spiritualising the Bible? The idea here is that the obvious or literal meaning is rarely the real meaning and that the real meaning is tied up in types and shadows. The church I go to is heavily into this idea which I am not wholly against, just that sometimes it seems rather arbitrary whether or not one should spiritualise and, if one does, how to do it and to what extent to bother about the context of the particular phrase in question. Doubtless it is the Holy Spirit who reveals the truth to us, but some then add that for this to happen one has to cross certain t's and dot certain i's and blame a person's inability to discern such "truth" on their lack of purity. Which doubtless has some truth in it but I find curiously unhelpful.

Interestingly this site applies the idea of spatial quantisation (pixellation) and time quantisation (strobe lights) to Biblical prophecy - though I confess I got a bit lost in the detail.

Here's a passage from the Bible, by way of example:

And King David was old, going on in days. And they covered him with clothes, but he got no heat. And his servants said to him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin. And let her stand before the king, and let her nurse him, and let her lie in your bosom, so that my lord the king may get heat. And they sought out a beautiful girl throughout all the borders of Israel, and found Abishag, a Shunammite. And they brought her to the king. And the girl was very beautiful. And she nursed the king and served him. But the king did not know her.

Bearing in mind that the Bible is inspired by God, why was this passage included in the Holy writ? Was it just to give us a more complete account of the history of King David? Or does it also have some deeper significance? I'd go for the latter if, for no other reason, I see layers of meaning in everything that God has created. But what meaning? Frankly I haven't got a clue. Should I be bothered? Well, I want to be one of those who "diligently seek Him" and, in this particular case I am curious, but also I don't want to fall foul of forcing an interpretation that isn't valid. So I'd rather wait. Doubtless if God exists and if He is interested in me and if He wants to bring some truth home to me through this passage, doubtless He is able without me having to go through mental gymnastics.

For those of us who tend to analyse the Bible at ever increasing depths it seems to me to be of vital importance to know how valid this process is - can one keep magnifying ad infinitum and expect to see new vistas of meaning? Frankly I have heard enough whacky and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the Bible to make me rather wary of this approach.

Lewis sums up the idea well in his Till we have faces where the narrator Orual is asking the priest Arnom exactly who the god Ungit is and observes:

"If that's all they mean, why do they wrap it up in so strange a fashion?" 

"Doubtless," said Arnom (and I could tell that he was yawning inside the mask, being worn out with his vigil), "doubtless to hide it from the vulgar." 

I would torment him no more, but I said to myself, "It's very strange that our fathers should first think it worth telling us that rain falls out of the sky, and then, for fear such a notable secret should get out (why not hold their tongues?) wrap it up in a filthy tale so that no one could understand the telling." 

What brought all this to the surface was a recent sermon in which the preacher was saying some things that didn't sound right and, afterwards, this was explained away by saying that he didn't actually mean what he said. My comment was similar to Orual's - if this was the case then why on earth did he not say what he meant instead of something that, frankly, was very different?

Convention

Convention: (n) a meeting or assembly of people who share a common interest.

Every year we have one of these and invite guests for the duration and have guest speakers to preach. This is hardly the place to discuss what they talk about but suffice it to say that our usual numbers swell. People = noise.  More people = considerably more noise (it is not a linear progression) and my ears do not cope well with excessive noise. On Tuesdays at lunch time I habitually take the dog for a run, but yesterday I was feeling a bit cold-y so thought I might skip the run - until I saw and heard the masses clamouring around the lunch table. I don't do small talk well. I have little patience for queuing. I have to admit that something in me broke and I literally ran away. With the dog. Barefoot (both of us). So peaceful. Time to think. I do not think that time was wasted.

I came back, of course, but by that time the clamour had died down to manageable proportions.

Blessed benefactor!

Frontispiece

This morning an interesting looking packet arrived in the post. Inside, carefully wrapped in brown paper, was a copy of This is my England and other poems by Vivian de Sola Pinto that I had mentioned in a previous post, together with some pamphlets by the same author who was evidently a friend of the original owner.

To some this will no doubt be dismissed as romantic slush, but I am a bit of a romantic at heart and anyway this book, even just the outer cover, reminds me so much of my childhood. And my childhood, though distant and not so well remembered as I would like, is still a treasure to me and I don't mind what preacher would teach otherwise about forgetting the past, etc.

That he would dedicate the anthology to his sons says something about the man that I might elaborate on in a future post.

Here are the first two poems. I don't have time just now to post any more so, suffice it to say, many thanks to whoever sent me this gift.

Unresolved

I'm a practical guy. I like things to get resolved. I find something broke - I like to fix it and tick it off the list. No matter the size, I like to complete a project and be done with it. So what happens when circumstances in my life do not resolve. Like relationships that sour. Or health that deteriorates? Or expectations that are not fulfilled? Or a faith in God that still lingers in the "help Thou my unbelief"? Or, simply, a life that is getting older with more aches and pains and increasing numbers of issues to deal with.

Sometimes I wonder if I am experiencing the male equivalent of "the change of life" - sometimes feeling almost overpowering floods of what I suppose is emotion (not being a particularly emotional guy) and that for no particular reason apart from a general feeling of not being in control and a lack of resolution.  Like bobbing along powerless in a vast expanse of sea with no land in sight.

I could go into preaching mode quoting Hebrews 11 "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off...  And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." These (patriarchs) experienced unrequited faith, so shouldn't I be able to? And Jesus' words "And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though He bear long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?" Shall he indeed? It is this expectation on the part of God (or, if God is a myth, on the part of those people who fabricated all these cunningly devised fables) that we should hang on, keep believing, when there is nothing of substance given in return whereby we can be sure that our trust is well founded. Although, for those who are stubborn enough, "neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead" whereas the centurion's faith was enough to heal his beloved servant, from which I conclude that evidence one person regards as substantial another may find ephemeral.

It seems like we should not expect every matter to be resolved, at least not in this life. In "The Healing of Harms" - not the Christian pop album but the last chapter in The Silver Chair - Lewis expresses the sentiment that everything will turn out right in the end. Or mother Julian's "All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well." Or Disney's "and they all lived happily ever after". All very well from a God perspective or when I am able to look back, but not easy to believe before it happens!

That last quote was a bit below-the-belt and probably cannot be attributed to Disney either. But it sums up my molly grubby feelings. But hang on a mo... compared with possibly the vast majority of mortals on this planet Earth I am so very blessed. I have good health for my age, I have a loving wife, four wonderful children who actually care for me, a home to live in, work which I enjoy on the whole and for which I actually get paid (mostly), and friends. So why the molly grubs? Am I alone in feeling as I do?

Because...

I want to break through,
I want to break through;
To know as I'm known, to know You alone,
I want to break through.
To where no sin may stand in the way,
Let me enter in with boldness, I pray,
Show me Thy glory, show me Thy way,
I want to break through.

©1984 Dan Ricciardelli

Piano or Forte?

The piano, or more properly "pianoforte" which translates as "soft-loud", was the first keyboard instrument whose intensity could be controlled by touch over a large range. This variation is called the dynamic range and by it the musician can evoke emotion. You will probably never experience the awe inspiring 70dB dynamic range of an orchestra unless you attend a live concert. Sadly, when recorded the dynamic range is artificially compressed to make it easier to listen to in today's noisy environments. Popular music is generally designed to have inherently limited dynamic range for the same reason. Such is the demise of hi-fi.

The young woman who usually plays piano in our church - let's call her Rachel - took lessons when younger but more recently has been self-taught. With our style of worship playing by ear and improvisation are necessary skills and the piano is often the lead instrument. Rachel reads music well but knowing what harmony to play has not come naturally to her. And yet she has persevered and as a result her ability in this respect has improved remarkably over the years.

The piano is classed as a percussion instrument and Rachel makes good use of it in this way which suits our worship - our voices provide the melodic line. One thing that Rachel does particularly well is to use the full dynamic range of the piano - she can sensitively accompany the quietest nervous soloist or make the piano roar during high praise. So much so that I have often stopped singing myself to listen in awe to the sound she produces. And for this I bless her!

Noise

Music ought to be but not always is the epitome of wanted sound. In contrast, according to Wikipedia, noise is any unwanted sound. But that cannot always be true.

In most cases noise is not only unwanted but it is also impossible to eradicate. In electronics, noise it is that "hiss" you hear from the speaker even when no music is playing. It is most likely thermal noise and is caused by the random fluctuations of electrons. Every resistor (and an electronics circuit has many) must exhibit thermal noise. The analog in hearing is the hiss that young ears can just about hear due to Brownian motion of air molecules hitting the ear-drum. The only way to eradicate either example of noise is to reduce the temperature to absolute zero but for most of us this is impractical. Much effort is devoted in electronics to minimizing noise or to extracting the wanted "signal" from the inevitable noise "floor". Because it is unwanted, "noise" by definition carries no information. Whereas "signal" by definition most decidedly does carry information. As an electronics engineer I suppose that a good part of my life is spent fighting noise in order to extract signal.

Because we are not used it, total silence can be unnerving. Personally I like it to be quiet. That is one reason why I like living in the country and to do stuff like climbing mountains. Although I dislike man-made noise I love to hear the wind, rain or sea. Some people like to imitate such sounds to help them sleep.

My son and his family have recently moved from the USA to live in Ireland. His girls apparently are so used to noise that they cannot sleep without a noise machine and so they brought one with them. Having suffered the inevitable from plugging it into 230V mains I had opportunity to open it up and discovered with surprise that it consisted simply of an electric fan (so I replaced the motor).  Surprise, because the same thing could have been achieved with some simple electronics and I reckon the manufacturing cost might be and certainly the running cost would be less. To think that they are paying good money for electricity to generate noise which the majority of us are trying to eradicate!

Television Centre

Back in the days of analogue TV the video electrical signal was distributed via coaxial cable. Simplistically, the blood, sweat and tears of a TV production was sent to the transmitter and thence to its millions of viewers via such a cable. In a tea-time discussion when I was working for the BBC the philosophical question was raised - what if the transmitter were replaced by a 75-ohm resistor? Television Centre with its coaxial cable output would be none the wiser. In this way the highly ordered signal that conveyed and thus was the essence of this production would be all "used up" or dissipated in that resistor. Which is kind of the inverse of a resistor generating thermal noise.

Coconut oil and bare-foot care

I am learning - so anything I have said in previous posts, and anything I now say on the subject of foot care, must be taken with a pinch of salt. Whilst I remain a firm advocate of running barefoot, one downside is that I suffer from cracks. I know this is endemic but the least I can do for the barefoot running community is to share what I have learnt so far. If you are not part of this community you have probably stopped reading already...

I used to recommend Silcocks Base. But then I read the ingredients and found it contains sodium laurel sulphate which as you probably know is the "soapy" detergent ingredient in just about every liquid soap, shampoo, body wash product. Whilst on this subject a work colleague of many years back maintained that all these products, and washing-up liquid included, were are variations on a theme. He therefore used washing-up liquid as shampoo as it is cheaper. I have done the same with no apparent ill-effect. But generally I prefer to use soap. It is cheaper, more efficient and I think may be better for you. As with "running shoes" there is a whole load of advertising hype that convinces most of us that we need separate shampoo, body wash, hand-wash and washing-up liquid. It is therefore likely that most of what we are told is untrue.

Since it seemed to me that detergent was the very opposite of what my feet wanted, I turned to my wife's latest-craze good-for-every-ailment coconut oil. I cannot be certain my change to coconut oil is responsible for a marked improvement in the condition of my feet but it seemed likely. It is at least a natural product which bodes well.  If I remember I apply it every night. It is also good for the cracks I get on my hands.

What one is trying to achieve is to keep the skin moist and supple. Running in wet conditions does the same - also a nice long hot bath although in both cases the effect is only temporary.  Running on clay or dusty surfaces has the opposite effect and tends to dry out the skin. Dare I say, wearing shoes also keeps the feet moist (sweaty) which is why, I suppose, shoe wearers do not suffer so much from cracks. They suffer from hot and smelly feet instead.

Cracks are caused when thick, hard and brittle skin is forced to bend. Therefore a second line of defence to to keep those areas exfoliated where skin gets unnecessarily thick or has to crease or bend. The best tool that I have found for this is a small rotary sanding band in an electric drill (e.g. Dremel).  The one I use is about 15mm diameter and probably has grit P80 abrasive.  Apply gently to avoid burning - your nerves will tell you when to stop. Particular areas are the sides of my big toes and the crease under the toes. In neither of these places is thick skin required as they are not "load bearing" whilst running.

Generally cracks do not appear on the "load bearing" surfaces namely the ball of the foot and the heel. If they did it might be a show stopper. The fact that they don't must be a clue to their cause. I suppose that the abrasion caused between the surface of the ground and those areas must exfoliate them and encourage natural regeneration so that the skin is relatively new and thus more supple.

I have a choice of two treatments when cracks appear despite the above precautions (and they still do). In places where the skin is not having to bend (for example the sides of the big toes, or the back of the heels) I apply super-glue. Super-glue has been used by the medical profession so must be relatively safe although some sites say it is toxic. I therefore cannot recommend it even though I use it myself.

In areas subject to stress and bending such as the crease under the toes super-glue makes things worse because it is brittle when dry. The best thing is pink Germolene - the pink version may now be difficult to find. I apply it to the crack then apply fabric Elastoplast which I secure at the edges with superglue as otherwise it will come off too easily. Such a dressing will survive a 5 mile run on roads, although may not survive a cross country run.