Compressing the Human Memory File

… the amount of culture to be transmitted orally was beyond the capacity of a small group to achieve even in a long lifetime … Priests by progressive degrees of abstraction & symbolisation … were able to turn the written record into a device for preserving & transmitting ideas & feelings & emotions that had never taken any visible or material form … the development of symbolic methods of storage immensely increased the capacity of the city as container … this condensation & storage, for the purpose enlarging the boundaries of the community in time & space is one of the singular functions performed by the city … "The city" as Emerson observed, "lives by remembering" - Lewis Mumford: The City in History

Anthony Blunt was the worlds expert on Poussin. He carried the details of Poussin pictures in his head because the then available methods of reproduction were primitive - in particular there were few ways of making coloured copies. According to Brian Sewell, Blunt was devastated when, having managed to curate the worlds first exhibition of Poussin (at the Royal Academy?) he realised, on seeing two particular works together in the same room for the first time, that one of them could not be by Poussin - his memory checker was at fault

Training the memory was an important part of education in ancient times. Written sources were scarce or non-existent or hard to come by - memory was the only way of being able to check eg Bible quotations. Even in my own lifetime learning by heart - especially of poetry - was an important skill. Dorothy L Sayers - via Lord Peter Wimsey - made great play of this kind of quotation, & she was not the only one. When did The Times crossword stop regarding quotation as a legitimate form of clueing?

One of my university lecturers comforted me in my inability to remember a statistical formula by pointing out that I need only remember which page of the textbook it was on

My memory has in fact always worked like this, more than as a complete Book of Verse or whatever; I remember that there is a poem about Daffodils & it is on a right hand page somewhere in the middle of the book, which I then need to consult to remind myself of the details of the poem. Or I may remember that Wordsworth wrote a poem about daffodils & use appropriate reference works to track this down

With the arrival of the internet we now are all potential citizens of the virtual city & there are even more ways of checking memory at the click of a button

The computer analogy is useful. We may think that our memories have deteriorated because of our general inability to learn to remember chunks of text. But looked at the other way our capacity for memory has increased exponentially by using a form of compression - we need only remember the keyword to locate & therefore remember - or rather remind ourselves - of the poem

Implications for education? Eg doctors, reputed to learn more new words than an undergraduate learning Russian. Particularly difficult to learn this vocabulary in these days when they have not learned Latin & Greek at school & are therefore unable to make the etymological connections. But why do they need such a large & specialised verbal vocabulary? Now any doctor can have an easily available 'picture book' in which to look up the detailed anatomy of eg the groin to check the specific bit of muscle which may be causing the problem without ever giving it a name. Without such pictures precise recollection of the technical name for that muscle may be, literally, vital

What effect has been made on our brains/memories by the vast number of pictures we all now see - in colour - on a daily basis? (TV, film, magazines) Have they simply replaced our own 'film' of the world around us which we might otherwise be seeing, noting & remembering? Is there any difference arising from the fact that the pictures we see are in 2-dimensions, while the real world is in 3 dimensions? Is this just another form of compression? Do we store our 'real world' pictures in our own version of compression to 2 dimensions? Do we store copies of 2-dimensional photographs together with a code for converting them back to 3 dimensions? Or do we only ever 'see' 2 dimensions with our eyes? Which are somehow converted to 3 by our brain?

God, science & chickens

God doesnt really come into this, but when science is being promoted as the answer to everything, I have another question

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because his muscles twitched & propelled his legs forwards?

The thing is, times arrow travels in only one direction for science. And so Why tends to mean How & the answer is Because of what went before

So the chickens muscles twitched because ..... because ..., because ...

And ultimately, because a chicken laid an egg

Lighting Up The Brain

We firmly believe that the brain is the organ of thought. We know that because thats what it feels like

We used to know - or at least to think - that the heart is the seat of the emotions - because thats what it feels like: we have all had one of those Moon River moments when our lover comes near. It took science to show us that the heart is nothing more than a muscle & a pump which reacts to feelings only in a mechanical way

Science however supports our opinion about the brain, doesnt it? Through the miracles of modern technology, different bits can be shown to light up depending on what kinds of thoughts or thinking are going on

Wittgenstein once asked a friend why people used to think that the sun goes round the earth. Quick as a flash the friend replied Because thats what it looks like. Long pause, then So what would it have looked like if it looked like the earth goes round the sun ?

Is there another explanation for the way that the brain seems to light up on these scans?

Well, for analogy we can look to the old fashioned technology of the PABX telephone exchange. Bulbs lit up to signal incoming calls, but the bulb was not the call. It was simply a signal, a response to the person making the call which in turn summoned action by the telephonist to connect the line to the recipient. The whole system was there simply to facilitate communication between human beings, it was not responsible for, did not initiate, that communication.

Of course our newer technology does that too but at increasingly many removes. Not too many of us are now fooled into thinking that a voice talking to us necessarily implies the existence, at this very moment, of a real live human at the other end of the line, but we know that at some stage human agency created all those annoying messages

Anyone who has seen a new born baby knows that we come in to this world with certain qualities & characteristics, we are not blank sheets of paper on which our characters & personalities are to be written by upbringing & environment. Conversely, anyone who has seen a newly dead body knows that we are not simply the stuff of which we are made

We think that thought is central to existence - cogito ergo sum. But conversely, precisely because I dont think, all sorts of things go on, just as I expect. Not just those things such as breathing & digestion, but habits & routines such as driving, walking, playing the right notes on the piano. It was the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead who pointed out that our parents & teachers have it precisely the wrong way round when they exhort us to think about what we are doing at all times, to concentrate. Human life depends on our maximising the number of things that we can do without thinking, so that we can concentrate our thought on learning new things. When something disrupts or interrupts our routine, when we have to think, then we get confused. Exactly where am I? How did the car get here? Why am I lying on my back? Why isnt the coffee jar in its usual place? Why hasnt the kettle boiled even though I switched it on?

We can explain the workings of the telephone exchange in great detail - or of the internet, or of the African drums. We have not in any significant sense explained what is happening to the humans connected to the system. We can have detailed telephone directories to list, or to analyse, the people who are connected to the system (eg Yellow Pages classifies people by whether they are a plumber, a doctor, a library). But this does nothing to explain why Mrs Smith calls Mrs Jones to relay the latest gossip

Have I just ended up in a Kantian position?

But the point I am labouring towards is that, if the brain is not the organ of thought, what is?

The implication must be that somehow its the whole of the body, the whole of our senses (does Roger Penrose, with his Emperors New Mind , bear on this point? Is that what his quantum theory is all about?). So what are the implications eg for brain death? What is life, indeed

And if, in some sense, its the whole of us, all our parts linked together by the telephone exchange of the brain, might our existence (consciousness?) also not depend on our links to others & to our environment? Truly no man is an island but, in Donnes original sense, just a piece of the continent

And when we die our molecules disperse & reassemble (Ilkley Moor ); do they take anything such as knowledge, experience, with them? This seems like one of those daft questions, close to ouija etc. But ouija is a leap from the thought to a certainty of conclusion. How would a scientist approach this kind of question. Might a true 'theory of everything' lead one towards these questions?

Of course, in one sense, this is just an old Greek idea, that common sense is just what the other 5 senses have in common. These days many seem to think that common sense means everything you knew by the age of 16, or those things for which the university of life provides the best education

Wash & squash

Local radio this morning was enjoining us to wash & squash plastic bottles before depositing them in the new recycling facility

Have the waste recycling teams consulted the water industry about this? Arent we supposed to be saving as much water as possible? Not leaving the tap running while soaping our hands, brushing our teeth, or running it off if it has been standing in lead pipes overnight? Giving up power showers & putting the modern equivalent of a brick in the cistern?

Since I wash up the old fashioned way, I dont know if its feasible to put plastic bottles in the dishwasher. Along with all the glass & tins which we are also instructed to wash.

Why are we supposed to do this? To reduce the smell? Ironic, just when they have introduced fortnightly collection of our smelly, non-recyclable waste. Or to reduce contamination in the recycling process? Then Im sure centralised washing by the industry would make a more efficient use of water

Have Defra consulted the water industry? Oh yes, I forgot. They must have done because we have joined up government now

Clinical trials, asparagus & the placebo effect

For a hedgehog (who is really a fox) there is a particular joy in academic journals. It is so easy to be diverted by something which has nothing to do with the subject you are supposed to be researching - at least if you are doing it the old fashioned bound volume way, in a library

And so I once read, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (I think), of the scientific investigations carried out in London on the original Siamese Twins. As a way of testing whether they had independent digestive systems, investigators fed asparagus to one twin. Then smelt the urine of each. As far as I recall, only one urine sample displayed the characteristic odour which is imparted by the vegetable

On another occasion I read one of those end of term articles which the BMJ used to carry in July & August. A group of SHOs had investigated the prevalence of the asparagus phenomenon, whose very existence was in dispute. They found that some people were indeed affected in this way. But estimates of prevalence were confounded by the fact that the population can also be divided into those who can & those who cant detect the smell with their own olfactory organs

All this by way of another sideways approach to my subject

New research has just been reported - the placebo effect does exist! It has a real biological basis or precursor! Our old friends, endorphins, released when you think something will do you good. From what I read in the press, the question of how that belief is engendered was not addressed in this study

I have long thought that, if there is a placebo effect, there should also be a nocebo effect. If you believe it will do you harm, it will. Or even if you just dont expect it will do you any good, it wont. Presumably with biological bases too

And so, can the population also be divided according to which - placebo or nocebo - they are susceptible to? Optimists or pessimists? Those who believe it only does you good if it tastes nasty, il faut souffrire pour etre belle. And those who believe a spoonful of sugar is required. That comfortable feet do more for your inner beauty than painful killer heels?

The effect on the gold standard for clinical trials could be profound. As I understand it, part of the reason for taking the placebo-controlled, randomised, double blind trial as the gold standard was the observation of a hierarchy of size of effect. Observational trials reported the biggest effect, & so on down to the double blind. So this must be the undisputed effect of the drug, right?

Well, perhaps, But then along comes fully informed consent. Suddenly the patient knows he might be getting only a dummy. This can surely, only increase the size of or even induce the nocebo effect. An otherwise effective drug fails to work its magic

Bompa

Bompa was my baby name for my mothers father. Sometimes still used in later life though usually I called him G'pa

He worked as a cotton dyer & printer. When I was old enough to know about it he was the foreman. On my mothers marriage certificate he is down as a cotton labourer

It used to upset me that, whenever I had a new dress, he would say Come here, change his glasses & examine the skirt. This always included making a small crease on the bias, to examine the quality & do a quick thread count. Usually he would say Yes, a nice piece of cloth that. Sometimes it was hust Hmm

I wanted him to tell me it was pretty

*****

When he was 15 Bompa went off to fight the Kaiser. He never talked to me about his experiences, but he did like to refer - nostalgically & with a chuckle - to Wipers & Galley-Pole-Eye. The latter with a long, falling Derbyshire O in the middle

Ypres & Gallipoli, in other words. I checked with the regiments web site & found that they were at both, so its possible he was there

Parents & children

Until the arrival of the free bus pass I had not truly appreciated the astonishing numbers of people whose children are also entitled to one. And I dont mean student passes

Pensioner children of even more venerable parents

In quite a high proportion of these families the children are providing important elements of care for the parent, including daily visits, doing their shopping etc. So another economic effect of the bus pass has been quite a useful addition to discretionary expenditure in these families, or increased amounts of care, because delivering the care often involves bus trips. Thus relieving social services. Though, in the interests of considering minuses as well as pluses, they may also, by enabling parents to stay in their own home for longer, be contributing to the shortage of supply in the housing market

How to spend my taxes

I visited my GP yesterday. He gave me some advice. In my best interests

He wants me to change my life style.

In a way that will

• 
  
  increase my chances of getting dementia


• 
  
  ditto, cancer


• 
  
  cost the state - me & my fellow tax payers - a fortune

He wants me to stop smoking.

Well I look forward to the continuing pension payments, free travel & prescriptions, winter fuel payments etc etc

The pump

When Christian Barnard carried out the first heart transplant in South Africa there was a degree of alarm in the West Indies. We may have been freed from slavery, but watch out, now they want your organs.

The Mighty Sparrow added a new piece of musical advice to his repertoire. Disguise your heart. Call it a pump.

I left my pump in San Francisco. If I give my pump to you, will you handle it with care? I still have my copy of the LP though unfortunately, not anything to play it on now.

This is a bit of a sideways introduction to a small paean in praise of that unsung technological triumph of our age - the electric pump. Dont know much about the technology involved, to tell the truth, but they are now so small & quiet, yet so much more powerful.

The effect on our landscape - at least the urban one - has gone little remarked. No water towers now, nor huge water tanks on the top of high rise buildings. No loss of pressure when your downstairs neighbour runs a bath.

Have pumps also contributed to the disappearance of gas holders, or is that just the switch to natural gas?

And what a relief to have just small quiet pumps for the central heating in place of one of those alarming clangy things.

But how scary to think of the consequences if the electricity were to go off & we lost all that pumping power. The decay of European cities in C4 & C5 would be minor in comparison.

Link

The Best of the Mighty Sparrow

Great Aunt Adie

Pronounced Addy. She was my grandmothers sister, the only other member of the Irish side of the family I ever knew.

She lived in Glasgow- the widow of a sea captain. She came to visit from time to time.

She seemed extremely old & stately to me. Large, well-corseted, well-dressed, hair done up in some kind of bun. She was an expert knitter - her Christmas present to me was usually a twin-set. I particularly remember one in soft grey with a royal blue zig zag pattern round the necks. They used to arrive carefully wrapped in tissue paper in a cardboard box wrapped up in a brown paper parcel.

I remember her teaching me to play Pelmanism. This is a card game where all the cards are laid out face down. You take it in turns to pick up a pair; if they match you keep them, if not you lay them back down again & try to remember where they are. The one with the biggest pile at the end wins.

When Aunt Adie died - I was 9 - she left my mother a beautiful folding card table. To me she left a piano. Also beautiful - walnut? - with an inlaid pattern of birds & leaves & 2 brass candlesticks which folded back.

I tried hard. But I lacked the co-ordination of ear, hand & brain to be able to play pleasingly or well. So I gave up after Grade 3 or 4.

Well, I had to. We were moving to a smaller house, in the city, & my mother said the piano had to go - there was no room. It was lucky that someone was found to pay me a pound or two for it - by then one normally had to pay someone to take a paino off your hands.

Mind your language

Much fuss about the N-word again

My own absolute hate is for ethnic minority. If someone uses the N-word with malign intent you know they are beneath contempt. Even they usually know they give offence. Thats why they do it

But ethnic minority is racism under the guise of, ever so benign, liberalism. Puts 'them' in their place. Which 'we' demonstrate by acknowledging that 'they' have rights, even if they are in the minority. And, poor things, its not their fault they were born like that. We know white is superior in all sorts of ways - did you see that research about school readiness the other week?

Excuse me, but who really make up the worlds ethnic minority?

Avoid alcohol

If you get medicine on prescription, or even over the counter, the label may say avoid alcohol

Avoid has distinct overtones of try not to take; alternatively it means do not take alcohol under any circumstances while taking this drug

I once saw a poster in a hospital pharmacy explaining that undesirable consequences range from facial flushing to death. So there is a need to explain the strength of this injunction, especially to alcoholics, but even to social drinkers. Or even to consumers of sherry trifle, or salad which may be dressed with wine vinegar

Otherwise people may fail to take a drug which could do them good, even after a single glass of wine

In the 1970s it was popularly believed in some quarters that the combination of port or brandy + stilton could have fatal consequences for those on one type of heart medication

Unless you know why, you cant make a considered judgement about whether to risk - the plus of therapeutic effects against the negative of combination with alcohol

Especially as some drugs which are potentially very dangerous in conjunction with alcohol - perhaps over a longer, chronic time period - eg paracetamol & HRT - carry no warning

Leonard Cohen

People often say that Leonard Cohen is too gloomy & depressing - music to commit suicide by

But the odd thing is, if youre really down, those songs fit the mood &, actually, lift you up

I once tried to convert a friend round to my point of view. He said that, in his opinion, while Cohen might be said to be the poet of our generation, Dylan was its reporter*. And therefore superior


Favourite LP has to be New Skin for the Old Ceremony

*Leonard Cohen is the Samuel Beckett of pop - Stephen Dalton

How old are you?

Simple question - though a peculiarly sensitive one. Especially for ladies - allegedly. Is date of birth still shown on the British Drivers Licence? Such a fuss about it when they were introduced in the 1970s

Historical characters routinely have their age indicated only by their year of birth. Good enough for most purposes, though crucial bits of interpretation can be lost if, for example, you do not know the precise date on which they reached their majority

For those of us still alive, year of birth is good enough for most administrative purposes. Birthdays are of purely personal interest, & also, if we are lucky, important to friends & family

Sometimes, however, they matter in an official world. When, exactly, can you buy cigarettes? Leave school? Fight a war? Get a drivers licence? Or a bus pass

Have sex. Or be forced to retire from work? Sententious points, matters for wider political debate, dragging in issues of gender & sexual orientation as well as just age discrimination

The so-called millennium bug meant that it was not a simple matter to adopt, always & everywhere, the recording of everybodys full date of birth in a computer database. Much ingenuity went in to finding ways of coping with people who were born in 18 hundred & something, or would reach a significant milestone in 2000 & something, without having to use precious computer storage for all those redundant 19s

One of the worst aspects of all the domesday scenarios presented to us as the year 2000 approached was the calumny heaped on those of us who, allegedly, failed to realise that this would happen one day

But having enough computer space for 4-digit years does not solve all problems. I dont mean to be flippant, but there is the 9/11 problem. How strange that the London version should have happened 7/7, thus avoiding some confusion

Im not about to launch in to the realms of numerology. Just to remark that different conventions provide traps for the unwary, with potentially awful consequences when DD/MM is confused with MM/DD

Day of birth matters too. Mondays child etc. And time. Especially if youre a twin. But even as a singleton it somehow seems an essential part of my identity that I was born at 5.40pm on a Sunday

An astrologer would want to know not just exact time & date, but also place of birth

Maybe a judge would too. I cant remember whether the following tale represents an actual case or a purely theoretical legal conundrum

There were 2 cousins. One born December 31, 1905. The other born January 1, 1906

Both were grandsons of a deceased American millionaire. Under the terms of his will, the elder was the heir to a fortune

The problem: one was born in Sydney, Australia, the other in Los Angeles. On any unified, universal time system, such as GMT, the one born in 1906 was older than the one born in 1905

Not as simple to solve as one might think. The implication of using GMT to decide would be that we all might need to change our date of birth when travelling or migrating


The question of a persons age is not just of personal or individual interest. In the field of statistical analysis even more conundrums arise

To be continued

The British Library Catalogue

Since it contains just about every book published in England for at least 200 years, the British Library catalogue is a great way of tracking down a half-remembered title or author, or an incomplete reference. Or checking if there are any books on a particular subject

Some public libraries have only computerised their catalogues for acquisitions in the last 10 years or so. Their card catalogues for older stock are wonderful, but have obvious limitations in this world of search engines. The one in Manchester however has one advantage not afforded by a computer: whole drawerfuls of cards can be date-ranked at a glance, just by the depth of blackness of the dust on their top edges

The tyranny of the paycheck

My grandfather always handed over his unopened wage packet to my grandmother. She gave him his pocket money

My father was paid with 2 bankers drafts. One went straight to my mother who paid it into her Post Office Savings Bank account

As far as I know neither my mother nor my gran was ever required to account in any detail to her husband for how the money was spent

I have always had my own 'pay packet'. I cant really imagine what it must be like to depend on a husband, however generous & relaxed he might be about it

And I wonder how many fathers of daughters today would contemplate with any equanimity the prospect of their daughter being entirely dependent on another man?

And yet

In the 1970s I used to get into trouble with my feminist friends. Although I enjoyed my work, wouldnt have it any other way, most of my friends who were my age did not work. Many wished that they could. But I used to say Whoever thinks that Liberation means being tied to an office from 9 to 5 needs their head examined

Link

The Goat's Lunch Pail: Oddiversary

Pete Sampras

Pete Sampras actually bears a distinct resemblance to my father - even that slightly hang dog look with bottom lip sagging

I had largely lost my teenage love of tennis when he came on the scene. No longer made a point of watching Wimbledon. No more Virginia Wade - who did maths at Sussex University - to inspire me. So I did not see Sampras play all that much

One single shot really did it for me though. High back hand volley. Back to, & close to, the net, within inches of the tramlines. Jumping, arm fully stretched up. Ball landed inches over the net, right by the tramlines on the opposite side of the court

How did he do that?

Babies on buses

The second best thing about Buggy Buses is that they give you an opportunity to be a completely objective observer of babies. Babies with whom you have no emotional connection, who are not interacting with their mum either. Just lying there, on their own

The thing is - they are never, ever, still. Unless zonked out of course

Eyes, head, feet, legs, hands, fingers, toes. A constant interaction with, curiosity about, their world

Seemingly random movements - especially the constant reaching out, touching toes, nose, looking at hands, something that crosses their field of vision. Sometimes having a little conversation with themselves

I interpret this as intensive circuit building. Brain & body. Measuring the world, distinguishing self & non self. Building awareness. Consciousness

An ID that can never be captured by simple biometrics. Or any cultural/ethnic/community label which others may slap on them

It also may provide a partial explanation of why children who suffer serious neglect or abuse at an early age suffer (irreparable?) neurological damage

Eleven +

I passed mine. Mr Slack, our class teacher, gave out the results. I ran, too fast, all the way down the hill to tell my mother. Who took it very matter of factly

Of course I am grateful for all the opportunities it gave me. What on earth would life have been like if I had failed?

But I had friends who did, & didnt deserve to. And what if the tests had been in things I would never be really good at? Singing, ballet, drawing, ball games? No matter how hard I practised

*****

Iwas showered with gifts - which may well have doubled up as presents for my 11th birthday later that summer

My parents gave me a proper grown up office size desk. Bought at auction, polished up & repaired, with new brass handles

A great aunt gave me her ancient Raleigh Ladies Sports bicycle

My grandparents gave me a proper fountain pen, with a gold nib

Another great aunt gave me a ladies wrist watch - small, gold, with 9 diamonds

I felt rather guilty about all this spoiling

Nina Simone

Such a rewarding voice to listen to. Phrasing in the Sinatra class. With rhythm

I played Balm in Gilead over & over when I was having surgery & all those hospital visits. Over 20 years ago now

Baltimore also has a special place in my heart. But really, anything will do

She reminded me a bit of Mrs Gandhi, with those hooded eyes, basilisk stare & stillness. Totally self contained. Seemingly

I was twice present at official functions where Mrs G was guest of honour. Clearly not enjoying herself. I wasnt anywhere near her, nor, thank heavens, required to speak. Scary lady

I treasure the memory of an interview Nina Simone gave to Richard & Judy on their old morning show. She gave absolutely NOTHING, leaving the two of them flustered & flummoxed, casting frantic glances at each other

Mongrel

When I was at Junior school we all wanted to be able to call ourselves a true mongrel

Mongrels were highly desirable. Only effete snobs with more money than sense would want to spend money on a dog for a dog. Certainly not on one that was overbred, inbred & temperamental. Not when there were plenty of dependable, unpretentious, friendly mongrels looking for a good home

In terms of us children, a true mongrel was one who could claim English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish blood. I came close, but nobody in the family could think of any Welsh ancestors

Our family mongrel was called Scrap - a black & white terrier (mostly). For the second half of his life he had to run on only 3 legs because of an accident with a car the week we moved to the city

The speech of Aristophanes

My introduction to Platos Symposium came via a 1960s BBC tv programme with the Beyond The Fringe crew. A bit of a scandal at the time because -sotto voce - it justified homosexuality. Shock, horror.

The programme bored me. Silly, unattractive men dressed up in togas, spouting archly, getting drunk.

It was intriguing though to learn that that deeply serious, academic, intellectual event, the modern symposium, had its origin as a word for a drunken feast.

And I was impressed by the bit about the other half. Zeus chopping us in two for getting uppity. Condemning us to a lifelong search to make ourselves complete, in which some are lucky enough to succeed.

I finally got around to reading it & the speech of Aristophanes is one of those things I go back to again & again.

Its not a justification for either homo- or hetero- sexuality - rather the opposite. Love is just the same for all of us, it just depends on whether your 4-footed original was male, female or hermaphrodite.

Link

BFI Film & TV Database The DRINKING PARTY (1965)

Genetics is a social science

As students we used to spend a lot of time discussing whether social science is a science. Without the rigour, the controlled experiments, how could it ever be?



In my thirties I worked with scientists & medics & started to wonder - Is Science A Science?



In my 40s I started to grapple with trying to understand what the geneticists were up to. Read about the triumph of hard rigorous physics over fuzzy biologists



Then we got a bit of back tracking - of course we meant nature via nurture



Now they seem to have got a bit further, talking several genes interacting with environments



It will be correlation matrices, cluster analysis, Principal Components & hierarchical models next. Mosaic even

Link

Why Human Genetics is a Social Science

The Beatles

The Schotts Miscellany which recorded the Blair years for The Times was my introduction to this admirable mans work. So much must go into boiling down a mass of data so that it is both digestible & revealing

These thoughts prompted by the one on The Beatles in Saturdays Times

The Beatles seem to diffuse the whole of my Sixth Form years. Such excitement

Thing is, Pop Music was for Secondary Modern school children. Grammar school children should be above that, interested in classical. We certainly werent Teddy Boys, into Rock'n'Roll

The few Elvis fans were viewed with alarm. Skiffle was OK. Good, harmless fun. Even Church concerts were enlivened by a skiffle band - washboard, double bass made out of tea chest & broomstick

Trad jazz was also OK. A bit intellectual even. Liked by the younger male teachers. Reminded them of their duffel coated student years

But even prefects liked the Beatles. And it was OK - John & Paul had been to Grammar School!

There was an outbreak of boysspending their lunch hour in the woodwork shop, making guitars under the guidance of a teacher. We had sing songs in the prefects common room. Those who played in the County Youth Orchestra marvelled at the chord progressions

It had not penetrated, until I saw Schotts table, that all this was on the back of just 2 singles

Tip to fainthearted feminist wimps

If ever youre having to deal with 'difficult' men - Im thinking particularly of work - just try imagining them with their trousers down

I mean in the Whitehall farce, Brian Rix kind of way. Revealing ridiculous underpants

Works every time, especially with bombastic bullies. See - they are not so big & clever, or powerful, after all

But do try not to laugh

Title credit

Richard Dawkins IS God

I think Richard Dawkins secretly wishes he were God. Then his word would be Law & people would stop arguing with him

He has already acquired the status of a messiah, or perhaps just John the Baptist, judging by the number of devotional blog posts inspired by his trips to North America. Is it significant that they are overwhelmingly written by young men, of the kind much given to hero worship & causes?

Perhaps Marx would be a better comparator. Then we can look forward to late C21st Dawkinsist schools of history, sociology, economics, philosopohy ...

Kidney donors

Why should it be considered unethical to have a Big Brother type show to decide who should be the lucky recipient of one particular kidney?

OK, the original Big Brother is a tacky waste of time.

But somebody, somewhere, somehow, decides who gets each available kidney. Why is that process superior? How is that person (or committee) better placed to make the decision? Isnt it a Good Thing that ordinary people should have a real taste of what it is like, through their vote, to actually come down in favour of only one candidate?

Radio Vlaanderen

Last September there was a partial eclipse of the moon. Dont know if that affected the ionosphere, but Medium Wave went very funny. Another radio station dropped in where BBC Radio 5 Live should be. Very relaxed, mixed music & speech. Even mixed music & sports commentary - during changes of end at the US Open they played something laid back instead of letting the commentator witter on

From various internal clues, & with the help of Google & a Dutch (!) dictionary, I tracked it down

Now it is my constant companion (provided the headphones have not gone walkabout) as I sit at the computer

Radio Vlaanderen

Mr van der Velde

Everybody always said that Mr van der Velde was Dutch. When & how he came to England I have no idea. Could he have been a 1930s or wartime refugee? His accent seemed very English to me, though his pronunciation was very precise, a bit fussy

He was a small, neat man. White hair, white moustache. He wore round, wire rimmed glasses behind which he blinked owlishly

His wife was English. A large lady, well corseted, with a shelf-like bosom. Whenever you saw them together you got an impression of great devotion

Mr van der Velde was my Latin teacher

I cant imagine what it would be like now never to have learned Latin. But I regret that I did not work harder.

In fact I behaved very badly at times

Thing is, I hated all the declensions of nouns, past tenses of verbs. I also never got the hang of scansion. Why spoil a good poem by struggling to write u - -/ u u - above each line? Who cares about trochees or iambic pentameters anyway?

I loved the sonority, the etymology, the Latin tags. Dum docent discunt

Mr van der Velde always gave us treats in the last week of term. Read us stories. In the Country of the Blind, Saki. Once he dug out some aged philology textbooks from the storeroom. We had great fun learning that CINEMA ought really be pronounced KINEMA

Latin was the worst of my O level results. It was those damn scansions let me down I hadnt prepared whichever verse it was that they gave us. Mr van der Velde wrote noblesse oblige! on my final report, which devastated me because I knew I had let him down

Years later I met someone who reckoned she was the last person to be admitted to medical school without science A levels. She had done classics. She reckoned she had a head start on everybody else because she understood the vocabulary

And at least she would have known that a mere MB BS did not entitle her to the proud honorific Doctor

My idea of heaven

The library at Alexandria

Long, low, colonnaded, airy building

Perpetually sunny (though not too hot) outside

Waves gently lapping on the shore

Every book ever published & full internet/web access

Memory is a private library collected by experience

Ben Macintyre; The Times 6 July 2007

Humankinds desire to quantify information has a long history. Aristotle’s student Demetrius (367-c283 BC) was asked to organise the Library of Alexandria in order to quantify ‘how many thousand books are there’

Martin Hilbert Significance August 2012

Health police

How will the health police reconcile all those DOs & DONTs they bark at pregnant women with the (now scientifically proved) realisation that a womans anxiety has adverse effects on a foetus from an early stage

Living relatives

When I was born I had:

2 parents - not as obvious as it sounds. WWII was not over & my father was in Burma

3 grandparents - my paternal grandfather died from wounds received in WWI when my father was 7 years old

6 great grandparents (one a step). I never heard any stories about the 2 Irish ones, but I believe they were dead

1 great-great-grandmother - b1867, d1970

Numerous great aunts & uncles. The 3 sets of great grandparents had respectively 11,10 & 8 children. There were also at least 4 on the Irish side

But only 3 uncles - no aunts who were blood relatives. A 4th uncle - my mothers beloved brother who was only 1 year younger than she, died, aged 19, in the North Atlantic

My 3 uncles all (eventually) emigrated, to New Zealand, South Africa, Canada

I have 5 first cousins - 2 South Africans & 3 New Zealanders

My daughters father is from the West Indies. My 2 grandsons father is 3rd generation Japanese American

A microcosm of C19 & C20 demography

Minshull Street Courts

Im not a great fan of Victorian architecture - especially not the neo-Gothic. Partly because its just too much - the mind boggles at the thought of architects sitting down & actually drawing all those twiddly bits & curlicues. Nor do I like red brick, or - ugh - glazed terra cotta

But Minshull St is different. Solid, but nicely proportioned. Sensitively extended to accommodate the needs of modern security, but still with Victorian courts & public galleries for lesser, sadder cases, where you can be carried right back in your imagination to the late Victorian years

Its a pity that the new building at the bottom of the station approach - however magnificent - will close off the view of the Courts. Manchester is sadly lacking in vistas

Link

The Crown Court at Minshull Street Manchester (Gargoyle) on Flickr ...

Great grandfather the baker

Just recently I used Ancestry UK to check on this branch of the family

It came as a surprise to find that, in 1901, Great Grandfather was a master wheelwright. Bakery seems like a big change. I guess the bottom dropped out of the market for wooden wheels with the arrival of the new fangled motor cars. But people will always want bread. And cakes.

I cant remember a time when he was not confined to his bed or his chaise longue by the fire in the sitting room behind the shop. The business was in the hands of his wife & 5 of their surviving children. The men did the baking, 3 great aunts served in the shop, under the gimlet eye of great grandma.

I guess grandfather must have had a stroke. Besides the paralysis he dribbled a lot & had difficulty speaking. My father behaved very tenderly towards him. Father figure, I suppose, since his own father had died young. Dad often crouched by his side & they seemed to have little trouble conversing.

Great grandfather died 3 times. The first time the doctor came & pronounced him dead, but he sat up as the undertakers men were carrying him downstairs in his coffin. (Some exaggeration here, surely) . The second time he was discovered when the woman came to lay him out.

He died for the last time when I was 14. My mother & I did not go to the funeral, only my father, wearing an awesomely solemn black tie.

Grandfather was used to being taken out on ceremonial drives by his 2 spinster daughters - the original Sunday drivers. One of these trips was further than usual - they came to our house after I had passed the 11+. I was required to put on my as yet unworn school uniform.

Somewhere there is a photo of the pair of us in the garden, me standing proudly by his side. Him wearing what looks suspiciously like a chortle on his face.

Out of hours GP (3)

What % of GPs are now women?

How much is the reduction in GP 24 hour services a reflection of this? How much due to mothers wanting family friendly hours?

Or, more generally, women not wanting to be out on their own at all hours, heaven knows where?

Out of hours GP (2)

Things have changed an awful lot in 20 years. Then I just wanted the address of a GP surgery in Central Manchester to which I could go should I need antibiotics for a sinus infection. I was working there temporarily, did not need to register permanently

After a while it dawned on me that I had not noticed any surgeries as I walked around. Yellow Pages did not help. So I rang the Family Practitioner Committee. No, we cant give you that information. The place you are staying is outside Manchester proper. What if you needed a doctor in the middle of the night?

It seems unbelievable now that things such as practice leaflets & lists of local doctors were not routinely availabe to the public

[continued]

Toast

I have been a bridesmaid only once. When I was 3

My Nana explained to me about my duties & what to expect of the day

The most exciting prospect was the Wedding Breakfast: And there will be toasts

Well, I loved toast. Especially the way Nana made it for me. Thick slices drenched in Golden Syrup

All I got was measly ham salad with - ugh! - beetroot

Do people call them Wedding Breakfasts anymore?

Out of hours GP

This is not intended to be any kind of criticism of the lady who died despite 8 calls to a GP deputising service. I did not know her, have not read the official report, know only what was in the news headlines



But I am puzzled. Why 8 calls? I think that, after the second, I would either have decided just to wait till I got better, or got myself to A&E - by ambulance if necessary. The alternative seems like banging ones head against a brick wall



At the end of the day the use, or demands, one makes of any medical service depend on a complex interaction. Between your own assessment of your diagnosis. Even more so the prognosis. Your experience & expectations of the services available. And your willingness to make a fuss. The service provider can only, in a sense, react to those

[continued]

No sting

I must have been 2, going on 3, when I saw my first dead (human) body

It was my great grandfather. He was lying in his coffin on the kitchen table. There was a big vase of tulips in the room, so it must have been spring

I was lifted up to look at him. I felt uncomfortable & wriggled to get down, but more because I was too old to be picked up rather than any other kind of distress. He just looked like grandfather to me, in his best black suit

Oddly, in my memory, his skin looks kind of fawny, light tan. Not grey at all

And very peaceful

He had a peaceful death. Chapel in the morning. Sunday dinner over, he took his usual seat in the armchair by the fire. My (step) grandmother went to do the washing up. When she went back in, he was dead

Title credit

Great Uncle Jim

Great Uncle Jim went into hospital when I was about 12. He had had a stroke & was paralysed down one side. My grandfather ( his younger brother) went to visit him every Sunday afternoon, to give him his shave.

I loved Uncle Jim. He was a small, wiry man, always cheerful. He had been the village butcher & usually gave me a piece of suet from the kidneys when we went into his shop. A treat.

Come to think of it, he was the only one of my grandfathers seven siblings that I knew - the rest must have been scattered, dead, or not on speaking terms.

One Sunday after dinner, my Grandpa said to me Come on. Youre coming with me. Uncle Jim wants to see you.

I was terrified. Sat hunched in my seat in the train. They had had to amputate one leg below the knee. Only it hadnt worked properly & theyd had to chop another bit off. I imagined scenes straight out of Grimm.

But as we walked down the ward, seeing Uncle Jim sitting up in bed - in that moment I knew exactly what is meant by The will to live.

A happy memory, after all.

Breast feeding (2)

Back in the late 60s I read, in the course of duty, an FAO pamphlet about breast feeding. True to its time, it focussed on Less Developed Countries, where poor water supply, or incomes insufficient for the purchase of formula or evaporated milk, or outright famine, made bottle feeding an impossibility

One of the extraordinary - to me - sections dealt with the role of grandmothers. Apparently, suckling can re-establish the milk supply of any woman who has borne a child, no matter how many years ago

If this is true, it would offer one solution to the problem of how todays women can combine early return to work with the Governments advice on feeding

Media studies

The Times ran an obituary this week with the headline

Professor Philip Collins: Genial English scholar who helped to make the novels of Charles Dickens a respectable field of study

Bet theyre not being nearly as complimentary on their news & comment pages towards whovever it is today who is performing the same service for Coronation Street

Woe is me, man!

When I was about 9 years old I was to accompany my mother to a meeting in the local Town Hall. Cant remember what it was about now. Think it was probably organised by the Townswomens Guild

When she was telling me about it, my mother said And the Chairman will be Mrs _

But shes a lady said I

Chairman is just a name for someone in charge of a meeting, & theres no reason a woman cant do it just as well as a man

Perhaps that is why I have never had the least trouble with the word Chairman. Feel no woe about it

It is my talisman

Breast feeding

I am extremely glad that the breast feeding fascists are once again clamouring for the 'right' to breast feed in public



Because I cant imagine a better way to send women rushing for the bottle - of formula of course, tho, who knows, maybe the chardonnay too



The idea that one might be expected - even forced - to breast feed in public is guaranteed to turn most people off



Theres no law against it anyway. What they are asking for is a law against my right to object



I have seen many women feeding - with perfect discretion - & probably failed to even notice lots of others. If someone is being very obvious about it theyre just an exhibitionist



And anyway, just where is the evidence that breast is best? Still less that it is a good idea to do it exclusively for 6 months



It cannot possibly exist



It can only, at best, be based on the same sort of small, limited, short term studies which led many to conclude that HRT was good for all post menopausal women



Where are the large samples? The long term longitudinal studies proving that life long benefits are conferred. Suitably controlled for social class etc etc etc



Still less, where are the studies of the benefits conferred by all members of the family being able to join in the joyous experience of feeding a baby - yes, even from a bottle?

I could go on, but thats enough

HIPS

If HIPS are to be compulsory only for houses with 4+ bedrooms, are we going to see a sudden increase in the number of 3-bedroomed houses with study, sewing room, dressing room, play room, rumpus room, home office, box room ...............?

Well, if I plus 1 zillion others (including Iain Duncan-Smith) can spot that snag, how on earth can Government ministers put themselves in such an embarrassing position?

What really concerns me about all this is that, at least in this final stage, it is women ministers involved. And women who have been touted as New Labours brightest intellectual stars, mothers several times over, supreme examples of having it all. R4 could only find Polly Toynbee to come to their aid

Even if you think they have somehow been stitched up, hung out to dry, why were they apparently powerless to stop it?

I think I know where Im going with this, & I dont like it

*****

It is ironic that at the same time the press & airwaves are full of HOUSING CRISIS. Why dont we have enough social housing? Why were Right to Buy receipts not used to build more?

The answer - Housing Investment Programmes

Non-standard deviation

I am not a person who admits to mistakes. The word mistake is not in my vocabulary

No? Then what do you call it?

Deviation. Truth is constant, Chuck. It is only the observation of the truth which is variable. The magnitude of error depends on the difference between the underlying truth & the faithfulness of observation. And so error can only be defined as deviation, not mistake

B***s***, Chuck said, & the other men around the table laughed

Precisely, the deaf man said, laughing along with them. B***s***. Error is simply the amount of b***s*** attached to any true observation

Ed McBain: The Heckler

I love McDonalds

Well 'love' may be a bit strong for this - my heart does not lift when I see the golden arch. Though isnt it interesting that small children get excited by it?

This country is remarkably short of places where anyone can go & feel comfortable on their own. Not an object of curiosity or interest to other customers. Able to get something to eat & drink in clean, safe surroundings. A place to sit down for a bit, especially when its wet, cold or windy outside. From early morning to late at night

And no, its not just sad Billy No Mates. Its busy people, travelling away from home or office

Predictable. (Important when youre in a strange town)

And a very good cup of tea

Dylan at Budokan

Im not a Dylan devotee

But as a child of the Sixties, how could I not hold Like a Rolling Stone in a special place in my heart & memory?

I have been to only 2 pop concerts, or whatever term it is the young people use nowadays. The second was Picnic at Blackbush. A sad disappointment

And just to prove that Im not a purist, my favourite Dylan album is Budokan. I love those rock-y tracks

Favourite track of all - Is your love in vain

I'm going to have a baby?

A wise man once said to me that abortion & the Pill would change womens lives in a way which would be very difficult to cope with

Not because we could avoid unwanted pregnancy. Because we would have to decide when, or whether, to have a baby. Quite separately from deciding whether to have sex or get married

But then of course came a bigger shock for many. A generation brought up to believe that penetration comes with a very high risk of pregnancy, that such myths as not the first time or not if youre standing up were demonstrably untrue, had to grapple with the opposite. And when you started reading up on the causes of infertility, you started to wonder how any of us ever got here at all

You cant decide when to have a baby either - you can only decide when to make the attempt ( or take the risk)

We live in a quantum world. The reproductive process owes more to Einstein than to Newton

Farewell, Tony

I have been trying hard not to give in to the temptation to add another of my twopennorths to the Tony Blair legacy debate. I couldnt resist this little collage


He wanted to be the Prime Minister who reached for the stars - Ann Treneman Times 11 may 2007

He disassociates the unchecked conviction of his actions from their unintended consequences & blames others or circumstances for them

Keith Farman, splendid Letter to The Times 10 May 2007

.

No explanation of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its general excellence - [unknown] biographer of Philip II of Spain

.

Such men are dangerous

Feminism trumps equality

Oxbridge & other universities are coming under stick for supposed selection bias towards children from independent schools. Such schools educate only about 7% of children but account for a much larger proportion of university students

This argument would be particularly boring were it not for the allegation that things used to be better, in that a greater per centage of students in, say, the 1930s, 40s & 50s came from the lower social classes via grammar schools

The interesting point is that, judged in this way, Oxbridge has gone backwards. Does this mean that the elite middle classes have reasserted themselves, or that those who managed to heave themselves up through the class system are particularly unlikely to offer a helping hand to those behind them?

Well maybe. But I offer two thoughts which suggest that it is not so much the selection process as the route to Oxbridge that has changed

The first concerns sex discrimination. For example in the early 1970s concern was regularly expressed that the higher civil service was overwhelmingly male, white, public school & Oxbridge. But it seemed to be changing.

In the early/middle 80s however there were regular headlines which announced '1^st woman this' that or the other, particularly in the public services. This was obviously a Good Thing, but I was surprised when I realised that almost all the women promoted were public school/Oxbridge girls - as a grammar school girl myself I believed in the meritocracy & also supported the drive to rid the higher civil service of its earlier elite image. But the drive towards sexual equality hid this backwards slide, & whatever its merits, sexual equality hid the reduction in social class equality

The second important change was the removal of the special status of direct grant grammar schools. Was this a Labour or Conservative initiative? Whoever initiated it, it closed off an important meritocratic route. Manchester Grammar boys are now classified as 'public school' in political or media headlines or Oxbridge entrance statistics, & few, if any, go there without the support of parents who can pay the fees. People like my god-brother or Kenneth Clark (a scholarship boy at Nottingham High School) were deprived of this meritocratic route to advancement, or, if their families made sacrifices to pay the fees, moved from the 'state' to 'independent' category in the statistics of university admissions

Has anyone done an analysis of Oxbridge admissions over time which takes account of these 2 factors as well as the simplistic public school v comprehensive dichotomy?

Birth at night

My daughters birth was exceptional in that she was born at 12.30pm, bang in the middle of lunch. I too was born during daylight hours, at 5.40pm one July Sunday afternoon

Yet most mammalian births happen during the night. Why should this be so?

1. Birth is rather a nasty thing to watch, so potential spectators have to be shielded from it

2. The womb is a dark place. The baby cannot cope with the added trauma of being ejected into a world of bright light

3. Something to do with circadian rhythms which are known to affect hormones

4. Most babies are 'made' at night (the explanation offered by one of my attending midwives)

Could there be an evolutionary explanation for this? Is there a modern conflict between birth in brightly lit hospital rooms, so necessary to enable the medical attendants to see what is going on & to deal with any problems, & the welfare of the child?

A first or a fail?

Its a fail & it must be a fail if theres nothing on the paper or utter gibberish

If theres something on the paper paraphrasing & embroidering the words of the question, that is a clear pass

If they try to unpick the question to see what its after, thats a Lower Second

If they make a stab at answering it with a lot in it you can understand, thats an Upper Second

And if they make a stab at answering it at considerable length with a lot in it you cant understand, thats almost certainly a First

Professor Smellies briefing to new examiners, quoted by Bernard Crick in My LSE

Nowadays 52% of LSE graduates get a 1 or 2.1, or so I read in The Times. In the 1960s there were some years when no Firsts at all were awarded in some subjects

Exams 2: Ask a simple question

One strand of the arguments about standards & exams involves allegations that the questions are getting easier

You see much less discussion of the kind of answers that are required

One of the few jokes which I can remember is the one about the Oxford philosophy exam

The only question was - Why?

The only person to get a First was the one who answered - Because

Are exams getting easier?

Its that time of year again

A levels have been with us since the early 1950s

Suppose it had been decided at the beginning to forego the complicated system of exams for a much simpler test

All children would have their height measured on their 18th birthday. Those over 5'8" would 'pass'. This is a guess, but perhaps the 1950 pass rate would have been 5%

If we still used the same test in 2007 there would not be much room for carping about whether standards had slipped or not. Though there would be interesting scope for, & acres of newsprint on, the relative advantage of being measured early or late in the day, the elasticity of tape measures, how precisely to convert from metric .... And accusations of unfair use of growth hormones, hair thickening agents, or ways of increasing the thickness of skin under your childs heels

The children who passed would be those over 5'8" tall, just as in their parents or grandparents generation. Standards would indubitably have risen, because more children would be passing

But we would not be selecting only the tallest 5% of children. If we wanted to do that, we would have to raise the bar, perhaps to 6 feet

Would height be a more or a less arbitrary test than ability to pass exams?

Well this is only a thought experiment, so we dont need to discuss that

But its interesting to note that the biases in the 2 systems would be remarkably similar. The pass group would include relatively more of the following categories:

boys

higher income/social class

educated parents

southern England

All factors which are in turn correlated with private education

What do you want to be when you grow up?

For much of my early teens I harboured an ambition to be either a famous QC or a forensic pathologist. Ambitions inspired first by disccovering crime fiction & then by numerous biographies of people like Bernard Spilsbury or Marshall Hall

I quickly, though reluctantly, gave up the idea of the law. The prospects of finding anyone who would offer me a pupillage seemed slim, to put it mildly. But even if they did, there was no one who could pay my fees or support me until I actually started to earn money. It is one of the things that intrigues me about Cherie Blair, that only about a decade later she could seriously embark on a career in law. The world had changed a bit

Pathology seemed a real possibility however. Plenty of girls went to medical school. If I worked hard there was a chance I could pass the relevant exams & earn a place myself

There was still the problem that this would mean asking my parents to support me even beyond the 3 years needed for a single bachelor degree. I was lucky that they had instantly said yes when told by my teachers that I showed promise of being able to make it to university. Not all my class mates were so lucky. Boys as well as girls, though boys were not told that there was no point because theyd only get married anyway. I felt pretty confident that they would say yes, if that was what I really wanted, but not at all sure that I could feel comfortable about that kind of sacrifice

There was however one problem which proved insuperable when I really thought it through. I could contemplate, with equanimity the prospect of dissecting - in the interests of science & justice - a corpse. But medical training would rquire - for at least a brief period - having to apply a scalpel to living, albeit anaesthetised, flesh. And that I could not do


Postscript
When Eleanor Platt QC was called to the Bar 47 years ago there were some chambers that would not even contemplate taking on a woman. The members wives would not like it. She secured a place after a word in someones ear by her uncle, a non-practising barrister & a member of Grays Inn. He was in the golfing society & the Masons - The Times: Law 15 May 2007

Another million

This one just tickled my fancy

1 million seconds = 11 1/2 days

1 billion seconds = 32 years

1 trillion seconds = 32,000 years

Whats the point?

At grammar school I took to algebra like a duck to water. But I struggled with geometry for a couple of years

Not that I couldnt understand what we were supposed to be doing. But I wasted a lot of time waiting to find out what these, literally mundane, constructions with pencil, ruler, protractor & compass had to do with the magic-sounding world of true points

These, our teacher had mysteriously warned us at the beginning of lesson 1, had no dimension, they literally did not exist

Things got worse when we got to circles. A locus of points we learned. I thought locus meant place.

Now I had always thought of points as circular things, like the dot you make with your pencil. So it had seemed logical to think of a true, dimensionless point as a circular dot shrunk to the point of invisibility. A circle, therefore must be but a single point magnified up, a kind of uber point, a representation of infinity in the opposite direction, the direction of large

But a place of points?

Does that mean like the home of points? Or a collection of points? Say like one of those diagrams they use to test for colour blindness?

Why one should want to mess around with lines which touched only one of them was beyond me

Light dawned eventually round about theorem 63 when I realised that the circles we were dealing with were just the same sort of thing as the triangles & lines we drew. The proofs were just the same ploughing through if this equals this & that equals that, then one thing leads to another

Just another swizz, really

The magic had died

To see the world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour

William Blake

Practice makes perfect

In truth I often find that the best method of learning, for me, is repeated practice or study of a large number of examples. If I attempt to start from first principles, all too often I start to argue with, not from, the assumptions, spluttering But, but, but

When I was about 7 I somehow acquired a treasure. I think it may have come from my maternal G'ma & may have belonged to my grandfather

It was a fat book with a crumply green rexine-type of cover. Proudly stamped on the spine, in gold letters SCHOOL ARITHMETIC. It was published in 1903. So romantic

It contained page after page of sums or problems to be solved. Mostly these were all too recognisable from my 1950s schoolbooks. The method of multiplying by casting out 9s was new to me though. As was the method of finding square roots - we had tables for that. There was even a method for finding cube roots, though if I remember rightly, it was, at best, approximate

I loved that book

A lad of the brainier kind

Had erogenous zones in the mind

He loved the sensations

Of solving equations

(Of course in the end he went blind)

Hymie Sneak

Empty space

This is probably just a very silly question, but it is one that keeps bugging me

If I could put something solid - block of wood, lump of stone - inside a sealed vacuum, would it decay?

And if it did crumble eventually to a little pile of dust on the floor what would have happened to the space in which the particles which constitute its mass used to execute their dizzy dance while still being able to maintain the form of the wood or stone?

House prices again

Friends of mine are currently pondering what at first seems a surprising problem

Should they sell one of their properties, or hang on to it so they might be in a position to help their grandchildren on to the property ladder? Their eldest grandchild has only recently begun secondary school, so that problem is unlikely to arise for at least 10 years

A more unlikely pair of property developers you could not expect to meet. But by simply following a very ordinary path they now have assets of well into 7 figures

They had a suburban family home. While they were still very young marrieds they bought, very cheaply, a house in Wales, where they often went to walk in the mountains. It was a run down flint & stone farm house which the owners had left to move into a convenient modern house which had the advantage of mains electricity & no drafts. My friends spent all their family holidays there & gradually improved it

When their children were off their hands they decided that they would like the Welsh house to be their family home, the repository for their furniture & books & accumulated memorabilia. Big enough for the grandchildren to visit

However, dad was still working in the city & such a long commute was not feasible. But it was the very beginning of the fashion for converted flats in the inner city. Rather daringly, they decided to sell their suburban house & sink some money into what was then seen as a risky move

Well, you know the rest. Now dad is formally retired, but still very active in his field, they have reached the stage where they want to simplify their lives & would prefer to divest themselves of the responsibilities of dual home ownership, using hotels for their less frequent visits to the city

But there is really no alternative investment for the proceeds which could keep pace with the kind of house price rises we have come to expect as normal. So what seems like a fortune now might seem pathetically inadequate as a fund for helping grandchildren with house prices in 2020

So, hang on to flat, & (shudder) possibly consider the extra responsibility of becoming landlords as well?

On the other hand, if an almighty housing crash is on the cards for any time soon .....

It might seem like a nice problem to have. But when you get to our age you really do want to simplify things. Another friend recently gave up her car because she woke up one morning & thought I just dont want to be responsible for the damn thing anymore, making sure its taxed, insured, etc etc What was once seen as something which conveyed great freedom had just become a burden

Guernica

Ben Macintyre wrote a good piece about Guernica last week

It reminded of the real shock I felt when I first looked at a full colour reproduction. Just black & white? Thats not right

The point is that I first saw a black & white photo of it while I was still at school - I think in a BBC schools programme pamphlet. Of course full colour reproduction was rare in those days. We were used to interpreting a purely black & white world. Difficult to transport yourself back to that now, with so much colour all about us

But I was convinced, in my own mind, that there were at least 2 smallish blocks of bright red & yellow in Guernica. They had a powerful effect. Bit like the little girls raincoat in Spielbergs picture I suppose

Drugs

The other Saturday I was just sitting in the hallway of the library, making sure I had got everything packed in my bag before leaving, when a young lad came out to take a call on his mobile. He cant have been a day over 14. Really. This is not a policemen are getting younger moment

So I am minding my own business when I realise what he has just said. Yes, a friend of mine wants some weed, if I can get hold of some. Ive got a fiver. Then Great, Ill see you this evening then

Then yesterday, walking home about 7pm on a still gloriously sunny day, I pass a couple of twenty somethings sitting on a wall. The young man, who had one of those very carrying voices, was also talking on his mobile. Well I tried [2 local pubs] but neither of them will let me have a tab. Thing is I dont get paid till Monday

What is the world coming to, I ask myself

But then I realised he must have been talking debt, not drugs. To pay for his weekend booze binge, presumably

The thing is, when people know you were a student in the sixties, they know you must have been on drugs. But we werent. Sure, teenage drug taking was becoming a 'problem' - purple hearts, cannabis, LSD on the wilder fringes. But it was those who were in work, had a weekly wage packet, who could afford them. As far as I know, I was never even in the same room with drugs. Certainly nobody ever offered me any

I was once discussing this with someone with the same experience. She had just recently said as much at home

Whereupon daughters boyfriends hand went to his pocket. Oh - do you want some? he said

Borrow one

I dont have any particular memories of starting to learn arithmetic at school. Except for the rather grownup thing of having to put H T U & then Th H T U at the top of your sums to keep the columns straight

Except for the incomprehensible business of borrowing one in subtraction. It seems extraordinary now. But hey, it worked. Teacher ticked my answers.

I suppose it was the most efficient, if mysterious, method to use in a world mostly without calculators. Extraordinary too, now, to think of all those counting houses full of Bob Cratchits, or all those delicious tomes of mathematical tables produced by armies of human computers

And when were undergraduates first allowed to use calculators in finals? In my day we had to make do with log tables or slide rule

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Countable infinity

Do you remember the proud childhood boasts: I can count to 10 - Well I can count to 20? How you ached to be able to reach 100? And how proud parents would boast of your feat?

I actually enjoyed lying in my bed at night, silently rehearsing how far I could get. Doing it out loud would have earned a reprimand - You ought to be asleep by now - so Ive never had any faith in counting sheep as a cure for insomnia

Then came the breathtaking moment when I realised I could count as far as I liked. Even if you got to a MILLION all you had to do was start again, one million and ONE, one million and TWO ...

And if I got even further, & didnt know the name for the next number, I COULD JUST MAKE ONE UP

Wow!

Then the anticlimax. Was that what all the fuss was about?

What a swizz

Cant count

When I was pre-school age the official educational line was that parents should not attempt to teach their children the three Rs before they started school at 5 - the poor little things might be confused if the teacher used different methods

I did have a notebook & a pencil however in which I liked to do my 'writing' - imitating the weekly letter-writing rituals of the grown ups

One day my mother saw that there were recognisable numerals among the random scrawls. When she asked me who had taught me to do that, I replied that I had copied them from the clock

Or so she used to like to tell me

One of lifes mysteries

Does anybody know when & why we started to build railway stations with platforms? The first railway station, at Liverpool Rd, Manchester, did not have one

During one of the more recent bouts of Why are our railways so awful? debates I heard an expert explain that one problem was the lack of train stations in the right places to suit modern patterns of settlement & commuting

So - build some? Problem is, the inordinate expense of providing them with platforms

So, why do we have them? They never appear in those old westerns, do they? And I dont think they have them in Belgium - its certainly a long way to jump down

It remained just one of lifes minor mysteries until I unwisely mentioned it in class & was given it as that weeks assignment

No luck - though I did find a picture of the original Liverpool Rd station. No platform

And later came across a complaint about them in one of Edward Herfords diatribes. He thought they were unsafe, especially for the ladies, but did not explain why

There must be several thousands of books published about railways. And a fair number devoted specifically to railway stations. I have checked the index or riffled through a few, but have never been able to find the answer. I did find out which was purported to be the worlds longest platform, but Im afraid Ive forgotten its name

Bread & circuses Part 1

Strikes used to distress me because of the poverty of their aspirations. I am talking about 60s & 70s Britain when it seemed that a great deal of inconvenience, aggravation & even suffering could be caused for the sake of 6d. I always preferred the Italian idea, that bus drivers should strike by simply refusing to collect fares. And I never understood what a strike could do to 'save' jobs

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We study health

We study health and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building, and so our health is a long and regular work.

I was astonished when I first read those words. I had naievely thought that lifestyle was only a modern medical preoccupation

They come from Donnes Devotions. I had been looking for a copy since discovering in the late 60s that the 2 Donne quotes which everybody knows - the ones about tolling bells & islands, do not come from any of his poems. Not all that easy to find, without access to an academic library, until finally Penguin Classics came to the rescue

But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay undeserved if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant

I think it would be a very good idea if the wisdom he goes on to express, in such beautiful language, formed a compulsory part of the curriculum of every medical school. He has such insight into the fears of both doctors and patients

The end of the world as I knew it

When I was in my O level year I thought I had worked out how the end of the world would arrive

My attitude towards religion had, until then, been a thoroughly emotional one, based on a strong attachment to the language & rituals of Christianity, the music of the organ & the singing of hymns

This was beginning to change into something more questioning. Helped by a BBC schools programme which tackled the thornier issues, such as the problem of pain

It was also the time which Harold Wilson later characterised as the white hot heat of the technological revolution. The men in white coats were really on the verge of solving all the problems of the world

But that, I thought, would mean omniscience, & only God could be omniscient

I also knew that science proceeded step by tiny step, each experiment adding one more fragment to the sum total of human knowledge

So omniscience would arrive when a scientist somewhere in his lonely lab completed the experiment which added the final piece, & 'we' would finally know it all

And in that instant, before the scientist could even say eureka, we would just be subsumed into God. 'We' would no longer exist

The beauty of this idea is that we would be completely unaware of the end. I found that an oddly comforting conclusion

Now, I read in the tv listings, the Large Hadron Collider may be about to achieve just that end

Fortunately its a 50 million to 1 chance. I wonder if these scientists can also calculate the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow?

Same but different

Many white people find it startling, & difficult to accept, that in countries where people do not see many whites in their day to day lives, 'we' all look the same

But we do, we do

Though I admit to being surprised the first time it happened to me

Because she was short, dumpy & wore her fair hair up in a bun. I was a long haired brunette beanpole

I also felt seriously offended

Because she was 30 if she was a day, & I was only 21

Word search

When I was writing about mid-C20th women recently (Dont be a bluestocking) I wanted a word for love of marriage - the equivalent of philoprogenitive

There doesnt seem to be one

So I thought Id invent one. Toyed with the idea of philohymenal but it sounds a bit disgusting, certainly not euphonious. Philothalamic (homage to Donne) would be impossible

I like philogamous. It sounds quite cosy

Somebody beat me to it, though its not in the OED:


A PHILOGAMOUS FELLOW [Pseudonym] The pros and cons of the celibate system in the universities. Cambridge, Henry W. Wallis, 1871.

Sounds like a good read

Links

Amitmishra comment on another blog

Perfect Wives, Other Women By Georgina Dopico Black

The Arabian Epic By M. C. Lyons

Making eyes

You know how young(ish) mens eyes will always swivel towards a pretty girl walking along the street? How, if hes with a mate who might not have noticed, theres a surreptitious nudge with the elbow & a silent Cor! Look at that!

Provided its not accompanied by catcalls, wolf whistles or crude comments, I see no earthly point in objecting to such behaviour, still less berating them for it. Its rather sweet, really. And anyway, they grow out of it. Eventually

I have even more sympathy now. Since I reached a certain age I find that my eyes swivel too. Only in this case its towards babies & small children

With all the paranoia about paedophiles, I felt nervous in case people might notice. Tried to pass by with my eyes fixed firmly ahead

But its actually much nicer if you catch the parents eye, exchange a silent What a lovely child!

And its even nicer still if you smile

I expect the evolutionary psychologists have a plausible explanation of the survival advantages conveyed by these behaviours on our ancestral hunter gatherers as they roamed the plains

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