"Johannes Patruus" <invalid@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:6962e8F2vbmlkU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Ed Cryer wrote:
>>
>> "Johannes Patruus" <invalid@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>> news:695vn3F31h966U1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> Ed Cryer wrote:
>>>>
>>>> "Johannes Patruus" <invalid@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>>> news:693mbuF2s3s40U1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>>> Johannes Patruus wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://tinyurl.com/4wgpxr
>>>>>
>>>>> But would we really need a billion-pixels version of that? -
>>>>> http://tinyurl.com/3tefrg
>>>>>
>>>>> Patruus
>>>>>
>>>> A hundred and fifty years ago the German scientist Hermann von
>>>> Helmholtz studied the human eye and declared how inefficient it
>>>> was. He said that a good camera of the time was better.
>>>> Ah, so now we have this up-and-coming super-high-definition
>>>> thingamabob which will make the eye even more passé. Take pictures
>>>> with it, look at them and ask "Where the devil did that bit there
>>>> come from? I didn't see that".
>>>
>>> "The eye is often described as like a camera, but it is the quite
>>> uncamera-like features of perception which are most interesting. How
>>> is information from the eyes coded in neural terms, into the
>>> language of the brain, and reconstituted into experience of
>>> surrounding objects? . . . There is a temptation, which must be
>>> avoided, to say that the eyes produce pictures in the brain. A
>>> picture in the brain suggests the need of some kind of internal eye
>>> to see it - but this would need a further eye to see *its* picture .
>>> . . and so on in an endless regress of eyes and pictures."
>>> (R L Gregory, "Eye and Brain", London, 1966)
>>>
>>> Patruus
>>
>> Ah yes, the human brain; the most complex organism in nature. But how
>> the devil does it produce mind? It baffles me, it's baffled the
>> greatest minds of scientists and philosophers through the ages; and
>> it baffles Dr. Jonathan Miller.
>> You live in London; I live in a grotty northern town. Melvyn Bragg
>> comes from Newcastle and seems to be living the intellectual
>> high-life that I feel should be mine. I subscribe to his weekly
>> newsletter and podcast for the Thursday morning R4 In Our Time
>> broadcasts. He does them from BBC House at 9-30am, strolls through
>> the parks of the capital to the House of Lords, attends there, party
>> or reception in the evening.
>>
>> Here's an extract from a recent newsletter.
>>
>> "After the party we piled down to a nearby restaurant where
>> conversation was
>> free and easy until the last hour, when Jonathan Miller held forth in
>> his
>> inimitably brilliant manner about materialism and his view that
>> consciousness
>> would never be cracked. There was no way it was sufficiently
>> observable
>> for us to understand what it was and yet he declared himself a total
>> materialist. And so the day ended as it had begun."
>>
>> A modern-day Cicero; but from a much humbler background. And, come to
>> think of it, much humbler in personality.
>
> I am uplifted to learn of Miller's agnosticism, but downcast at the
> thought that our Melvyn, although a heavy hitter in the present age of
> darkness, might be considered relative lightweight by the standards of
> as little as fifty years ago.
>
> Patruus
I will come down to London, make a splash among the intelligentsia
there, answer Jonathan Miller's agnostic doubts, and befriend Kirsty
Young.
Wow! What a woman! My ideal. The *** would be fantastic; the
togetherness beyond imagining; and a complete change-around from the
women I'm used to up here. A real soul-mate. She'd be at home in any
London museum; any theatre. And she might even lead, so that I'd feel to
be playing catch-up instead of the usual
lead-and-try-not-to-scream-too-loudly-at-the-dullness that's the norm
with the women up here.
And my imagination could take flight and be backed up with some
following. Like Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village in the early sixties.
That feeling that it's all on the cards, and anything there for the
winning.
I saw Kirsty tonight on TV; Have I Got News For You, with Ian Hislop and
Paul Merton. And she kind of soared above them, like some guardian
angel, something larger than this petty age we live in, something to
pull you through it.
Are there many like her in London? She is fantastic.
Ed
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