"Johannes Patruus" <invalid@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:698bviF305utvU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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
I first came down to London when I was 14. I had a paper-round, and one
Christmas I collected my Christmas box from house to house, put all the
coins in my pocket, wore a shorty mac, pencilled a moustache on my upper
lip, went to the local station and bought a ticket down to London.
I arrived at St Pancras on Christmas Eve, walked through to Trafalgar
Square and joined in the midnight carol-singing. And when they all went
their ways I wandered back to St Pancras and spent the rest of the night
on a station bench.
Next day (Boxing Day) there were no trains running, so I knocked on the
door of the Station Police. They were excellent; took me in, gave me
some food and drink, treated me like a kind of mascot. One said to me
"Do you want to see Petticoat Lane?"; "Yes". I got in the back of a
Black Mariah, sirens blaring, through the streets of London, stopped at
a house, picked up some criminal; hand-cuffs into the car and back to
the station. I doubt it was a Cray Brother; not with the Railway Police.
And then next day back on a train heading north to Crewe and the unknown
regions beyond that.
Ed
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