Ed Cryer wrote:
>
> "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
But did you catch the one with Brian Blessed in the chair? Total riot!!
Patruus
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