"Ed Cryer" <ed@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:482df9cd$0$30633$834e42db@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "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
>
This episode can be seen here;
http://tinyurl.com/49bhvw
Ed
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