Aurel's laurels

2012-01-27T11:43:00.000-08:00

David

2012-01-22T07:34:00.000-08:00

Neuroticism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neuroticism is a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology. It is an enduring tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, guilt, and depressed mood.^[1] They respond more poorly to environmental stress, and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification. Neuroticism is a risk factor for "internalizing" mental disorders such as phobia, depression, panic disorder, and other anxiety disorders (traditionally called neuroses).^[2]^[3]^[4]

Emotional stability

On the opposite end of the spectrum, individuals who score low in neuroticism are more emotionally stable and less reactive to stress. They tend to be calm, even-tempered, and less likely to feel tense or rattled. Although they are low in negative emotion, they are not necessarily high on positive emotion. Being high on positive emotion is an element of the independent trait of extraversion. Neurotic extraverts, for example, would experience high levels of both positive and negative emotional states, a kind of "emotional roller coaster". Individuals who score low on neuroticism (particularly those who are also high on extraversion) generally report more happiness and satisfaction with their lives.^[5]

2012-01-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Architectural Digest

2012-01-18T16:03:00.000-08:00

Two years later in the summer of 2010 we returned to France for my niece's wedding. By then I had lost the tooth.

2012-01-18T15:57:00.000-08:00

In the spring of 2008 we went to France for my nephew's wedding. That's me before the tooth was removed, which made me look like a pirate for a while. The cemetery is, of course, Pere Lachaise, which we visited on the way back from the wedding, which had been in the mountains of Haute Savoi. It was in the mountains that my brothers gave me this laptop, which is still functioning well, although the Y needs a little bit of extra pressure on the keyboard. Then, there was no question, but that I would go on working for some time. It was only when I was 65, that I realised I could not recover from operations as easily as when I was younger and I retired a few days after my 66th birthday. The best part of being retired is being able to get up when I feel like it and being able to have a nap during the day if I get up early. Today I had two naps. I sleep much better without the old anxiety that I might not be getting enough sleep. Also, not having to get up in the dark and go out to a streetcar stop in the snow or rain is very relaxing. I'm loving the winter again as I used to when I was a teenager.

2012-01-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

When that I was a little tiny boy
     With a heigh-ho, the wind and the rain
A foolish thing was but a toy
     For the rain it raineth ev'ry day
But when I came to man's estate
     With a heigh-ho, the wind and the rain
'Gainst thieves and knaves men shut their gate,
     For the rain it raineth ev'ry day.
But when I came, alas!, to wive
     With a heigh-ho, the wind and the rain
By swaggering never could I thrive,
     For the rain it raineth ev'ry day.
A great while ago the world begun
     With a heigh-ho, the wind and the rain
But that's all one, our play is done
     And we'll strive to please you every day.

2011-12-17T07:39:00.000-08:00

Now Cathy and I are both retired at last.

2011-12-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

Just because it's pretty.

Click to embiggen.

2011-12-14T06:23:00.000-08:00

^
More from last summer in Sussex

2011-12-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

Now that I am retired,

this is where I spend most of my life,

sitting in that chair by the fireplace.

You can see this computer,

open on the floor next to the chair.

2011-12-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

Tall,

taller,

tallest

2011-12-12T13:53:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the chair,

I was pretending to be a typist in 1990

2011-11-30T09:53:00.001-08:00

2011-11-01T11:54:00.001-07:00

2011-11-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, when I was young and unemployed, I visited my friend in Oxford. He later became a history don and at that time was living with three other highly intelligent youths. They were in their last year at the university. My intellect was not up to their standard, I had indeed been sent down for not being able to keep up, but they welcomed me into their little house and we laughed a lot. During the day they went off to tutorials and lectures and I examined their record collection. I found some Beethoven string quartets that I had never heard before and was enchanted by just one track, which I played over and over again. Since then I have looked for that track by buying collections of quartets, but never found it until today when I simply listened to every recording of string quartets on You Tube. I was so familiar with it then, years ago, for just a couple of days, that I can tell that it is played differently, but oh, what a pleasure to find it at last!
It is the second movement of op. 59 no. 3.

2011-10-18T10:32:00.001-07:00

2011-10-12T07:42:00.001-07:00

2011-09-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Congressman Denis Kucinich, Michael Moore, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzale, Martin Luther King, Paul Robeson, Larry Adler, Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Joseph Bromberg, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Hanns Eisler, Carl Foreman, John Garfield, Howard Da Silva, Dashiell Hammett, E. Y. Harburg, Lillian Hellman, Burl Ives, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Philip Loeb, Joseph Losey, Anne Revere, Pete Seeger, Gale Sondergaard, Louis Untermeyer, Josh White, Clifford Odets, Michael Wilson, Paul Jarrico, Jeff Corey, John Randolph, Canada Lee, Orson Welles, Paul Green, Sidney Kingsley, Richard Wright, Abraham Polonsky.

2011-09-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

My friend James Davidson found me on Facebook and sent me these pictures. I had not seen him since I ran into him when I was twenty six and had not seen him for seven years before that. So these are either when I was twenty six or when I was eighteen. I have lost a lot of hair since then. As a teenager I hated my hair which was always growing in the wrong directions all over the place. I now realise that I was quite nice looking, but, at the time, because of acute acne and stiffness, I did not feel it at all.

2011-09-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

2011-09-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

Click on all to enlarge

2011-09-02T13:01:00.001-07:00

Click on this for movement

2011-08-25T03:08:00.000-07:00

Huge lightning storm over the city last night

2011-08-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

2011-08-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

When we were in Petworth House, I noticed the sensuous paintings by Peter Lely. There were only three on display. These are in Hampton Court. Petworth had a fine painting of Charles ll, who was his patron.

2011-08-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Click on all once or twice to enlarge

2011-08-18T04:13:00.000-07:00

Film of Cathy and Trish singing about old age:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzb-mSR4JT0

2011-08-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

Film of funny walking machines on the beach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY

2011-08-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

2011-08-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

Greatham bridge.

We found this and had lunch at the White Hart at Old Potham Bridge, which I cannot find a photo of on Google Images. Both bridges were from the twelfth century. I had found them on Google Earth. At Greatham, Gareth pointed out that we could see for miles without any farms or buildings. Perhaps there were sheep grazing on the distant hills. A wonderful day in summer sunshine.

2011-08-11T03:26:00.000-07:00

Were I a Christian, this is where I would like to worship.

Holidays

2011-08-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

We are staying on the outskirts of this small village in Sussex. The weather is ideal. Sunny, breezy, not too hot and not too cold. The greenery is amazing. So far I have seen a crane or heron in flight, a very calm, even nonchalant, fox and countless rabbits. My brother, whose house we are staying in, exhorts me to get out and do some weeding, but I am quite content to sit and look at the land as developed and as left to nature by others.

2011-07-22T06:58:00.001-07:00

Click on all to enlarge

2011-07-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

EUTAXY - Good or established order or arrangement.

2011-07-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

Roman-era Skopje Aqueduct near Skopje, Macedonia

Carthage

Segovia

Istanbul

2011-07-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

119th Street gatehouse, Manhattan

2011-07-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

Castle Gatehouse, Washington Aqueduct is a pumping station at the Georgetown Reservoir on the Washington Aqueduct in The Palisades neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and contributes to the Washington Aqueduct National Historic Landmark.
In 1852 the United States Congress authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to construct a water supply for the city of Washington, using the Potomac River at Great Falls as its source. Construction of a 12-mile pipeline began in 1853, and portions of the system began operation in 1859.
Construction of the gatehouse began in 1899. The design was intended to replicate the Army Corps insigna. Portland cement plaster was used to replicate stonework and give the gatehouse an authentic castle appearance.^[3]
The gatehouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 13, 1975. It is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District.

Almost uncopywrightable

2011-07-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

"Almost" is said to be the longest english word with the letters in aphabetical order and "uncopywrightable" is said to be the longest english word wherein no letter is repeated.

2011-07-10T13:25:00.001-07:00

China has a new bridge that is 26.4 miles long

2011-07-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a long time ago before I had children. I was in a play written by one of my teachers and we spent a late evening after rehearsal at an older actor's apartment. It was in the early eighties and, as was the fashion then, there was some cocaine at the party. Someone very close to me was addicted to cocaine at the time and after the party I wrote this for him.

From Kilimanjaro to Popocatepetl
Lies a thin passage in the air
A space inside a tube
Within a wire straight and long
The messages which flow there
Are without fear and strong
But they glitter through the night
And leave you ragged far from rest
While higher in the Himalayas
In some cave or quiet retreat
A yellow hat is sleeping
And when he wakes he thinks
Did I dream I was a butterfly
Or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man

2011-07-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

The Ribbleshead Viaduct in the Yorkshire Dales is an example of Victorian engineering at its very best.

At 1,320 feet long and 104 feet high, this spectacular viaduct spans the Ribble Valley and can be seen from miles around.

2011-07-03T15:35:00.001-07:00

(PANORAMIC LENSE)

All six can be enlarged a little by clicking on them. They are all real.

2011-07-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

A portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, the daughter in law of Giovanni Tornabuoni. She was a member of the Albizzi family, who were rivals of the Medici and Alberti families, and were at the centre of Florentine oligarchy starting from 1382 in the reaction that followed the Ciompi revolt. However, after Cosimo de' Medici returned from exile in 1434 (arranged by Rinaldo degli Albizzi) and regained power, he in turn exiled all but one of the Albizzis from Florentine. This painting was done around 1490, long after the Albizzis' fall from grace.
Artist: Domenico Ghirlandaio

2011-07-02T11:26:00.001-07:00

2011-07-01T12:06:00.001-07:00

2011-06-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

Years ago, before my twenty sixth birthday, I was on a small boat with an outboard motor passing down the west coast of Colombia. We passed an inlet and we were told that big whales came here every year. Now in this area I now find this picture on Google earth. I have lived those twenty six years one and a half times again, but I will never forget those four months in the jungle and the long trip getting there.

2011-06-05T10:24:00.001-07:00

Hereward, Gareth and Kim two years ago

My brother Gareth visited us for one afternoon last Tuesday. I thought I would write a bit about my older brother, my only sibling until I was eight.Sometimes he would make me cry with verbal attacks and often I would wish that I could catch up with him in his accomplishments and mental ability. He loved to argue and put his opponent down, making them feel stupid if possible,but he was also protective of me and my best friend. It seems he would often involve me in one of his schemes. We built an elaborate swing at the bottom of our garden. To launch myself, I would stand on a fence on top of a small hill and swing out over the garden. The swing itself was suspended from a rope strung between two trees. Gareth had designed all this, but, as I remember it, I was much more foolhardy in swinging high above the garden and eventually stopping myself again on top of the fence. Another time, Gareth dug a great hole in that same hill and we stole a huge slab of paving stone from the builders who were installing some garden steps for my mother. We transported the slab and laid it at the bottom of the hole. Then we built another wooden floor inside the hole and a roof over the top. We could just crawl into our little house with two floors. When I was quite young we had a house cat called Brum who was mainly attached to Ned, my brother's Irish god father who lived with us in the house. Ned had only one working lung, as he had been shot through the other one during the troubles, a my Irish mother called them. Ned used to go to the pub every night for one pint of beer and Brum, the cat, would wait for his return at the end of the driveway up to the house. One night Ned stood up to leave the pub and fell forward stone dead from a heart attack. Brum waited and waited for Ned to return and soon died himself. We buried him in the garden and my mother bought a wooden plaque and carving tools for Gareth and I to make a little marker for the grave. In time the grass where we had buried him sank down in a little dip and the wooden plaque hung around the garage, a testament to our lack of skill and willingness to teach ourselves to carve the wood. My father's youngest brother lived out in the country and, when we visited him, he made us long bows, supposedly just like the long bows used by the English army in the fourteenth century. I think we bought some arrows. Back in our garden in Hampstead, we fired the arrows straight up into the air and watched their trajectory carefully so that we would not be under them when they fell back into our garden. This game was cut short very quickly when an arrow I had fired landed in our neighbour's garden, where two little girls often played. Fortunately they were not in their garden and I had to climb over the fence, run into the centre of their lawn and retrieve the awfully incriminating arrow planted straight up in their grass. When I was eight, a new little brother came along. By then we were at school in Paris and Gareth and I grew apart, each with our own friends appropriate to our ages. I stayed on in France a little longer than Gareth and when I got back to England we were in different schools for a while. By the time I joined him at the same boarding school, he was a scholar in a different house from mine. At home he had turned to arguing with our mother and I was somewhat disturbed by them both appealing to me to be on one side or the other. Our father had left us by then and I came to think that all families were as unhappy as ours was. I never did catch up with Gareth.

2011-05-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Blisses have an argument: Judith : “You're far too smug... And pompous!”

David : “I hope you haven't been drinking, dear? I think it's rather tragic, at your time of life.”

About a year and a half ago and I just found this picture on Google images

2011-05-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

These were favourites from wikipedia pictures of the day from April 2010 to May 2011.

Animated when enlarged

These photos of gold, silver and titanium crystals was taken by Alchemist-hp. If you use one of my photos, an email (account needed) or a message or direct to: mailto:commons.alchemist-hp004@pniok.de would be greatly appreciated

2011-05-06T04:44:00.000-07:00

With the hunt for new ways of producing electricity growing ever more intense, and the recent tragedy in Japan raising doubts about nuclear power, the world's oceans may provide a viable clean-energy alternative.

And a Swedish company has been attracting plenty of attention with its award-winning “underwater kite” solution for generating power from beneath the ocean waves.

Minesto, based in Frölunda outside Gothenburg, has developed a form of underwater kite, which harnesses energy from ocean tides and currents at a far more efficient rate than wind turbines above the surface.

The technology, called Deep Green, looks like a child’s small kite with a turbine on its back.

It is tethered to the seabed and “flies” in a circular motion converting tidal currents into energy. As seawater is 800 times denser than air, the turbine can generate 800 times more energy than if it were in the sky.

The kite can travel 10 times faster than the flow of water it operates in, and because of the relationship between speed and energy, the faster the kite travels, the more efficiently it creates energy.

For example, if the kite moves as 10 times its normal speed, the increase in energy production will be 1,000-fold.

As sea currents and the flow of energy from this source are so stable and predictable, the company claims that it can generate 500 kilowatts of power even in calm conditions.

“We are confident once successful trials have been carried out for it to be commercially operative by 2013,” Minesto CEO Anders Jansson explains.

2011-05-05T08:15:00.001-07:00

The moon was all aglow and heaven was in your eyes

The night that you told me those little white lies.

The stars all seemed to know that you didn't mean all those sighs

The night that you told me those little white lies.

I try but there's no forgetting when evening appears,

I sigh but there's no regretting in spite of my tears.

The devil was in your heart but heaven was in your eyes

The night you told me those little white lies.

2011-05-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

I have a bad cold and spent most of the day yesterday searching Google Earth for railway viaducts in Southern England. I found the one we visited three years ago South of Balcombe and, of course, this one which now has houses and streets interspersed between the arches. It is actually in Brighton or Hove. I found a rather elegant broad arched one in Ealing, built by the young Brunel. I also looked at buildings by E. J. Lennox here in Toronto. The ones still standing are Victoria and Adelaide, College and University and, of course, Old City Hall. I was too ill to go to William's graduation show and party and watched True Romance with Matthew instead.

2011-05-03T05:42:00.000-07:00

I've been at home for a couple of weeks, first with a bad cold and then I had an operation for prostate resection, which has had a few unexpected complications. I am bored enough to take pictures of myself and write about my condition.

2011-03-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

^
Brickell, Florida

2011-03-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

I have been at home for two weeks and have finally got my weight below 210. I had wild toothache for a week followed immediately by the worst prostate infection I have ever had. I am not sure if my urologist will give me a letter to satisfy my employers that it was reasonable for me not to be at work.
At last, it seems that the winter is over, not that we have spring yet, but the snow is melting everywhere. The skies are grey, but if my winter coat falls open, I do not freeze and perhaps I shall not wear gloves again until next winter.
Damn. I've just understood how the new uploads work..... Here are pictures that inspire me. They depress most of the organisations that publish them, (and perhaps I'm not licenced to use them). They inspire me because of the enormous achievement that men and women are able to carry out in a wild and inaccessible part of my country.

2011-02-28T04:17:00.001-08:00

From the ever excellent A.Word.A.Day.

"To know how to say what other people only think is what makes men poets and sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers, or both". Elizabeth Rundle Charles, writer (1828-1896)

Perhaps this also applies to all the arts, after all, what is most satifying in architecture is what is recognisable. "I could live there", I say to myself, when I see what delights me.

2011-02-18T04:42:00.000-08:00

That's Nevi on the left. She is on holiday in Italy last year. I met her online in a pub run by the Irish tourist board six years ago when I was working nights. Recently I found her again on Facebook, where I got this picture. She has her own life far away in Australia, but I have this fatherly watchful eye feeling about her pictures and her posts. Her birthday is tomorrow. She was born long after me in 1978, when I was already older than she is now.

2011-02-17T18:04:00.000-08:00

Six of the seven most mysterious
archeological finds in the world

2011-02-11T08:10:00.001-08:00

2011-02-06T08:21:00.001-08:00

How glorious is the morning or evening sun on high mountains.....

Alpenglow

2011-02-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

2011-02-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

But even better is the reflction of this light. This is hard to find on Google Images, but may be here.

My wife is more frightenned of death than I am. I will keep this quote which I got from the always entertaining A.word.A.day and read it to her some day

2011-02-05T12:40:00.000-08:00

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when you were not: that gives us no concern. Why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? To die is only to be as we were before we were born. -William Hazlitt, essayist (1778-1830)

2011-02-05T02:23:00.000-08:00

I think it was Carl Sagan who calculated

that all humans would last less than three years

if all bees were obliterated first.

2011-02-01T14:38:00.000-08:00

It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski. 1997.

2011-02-01T14:15:00.000-08:00

Yo-Yo Ma playing part of the suite number 6 in D Major

2011-02-01T14:12:00.000-08:00

2011-02-01T01:39:00.000-08:00

Cocoon Nebula Cloaks a Colossal Star Destined to Become a Black Hole

/Supernova in the making.

2011-01-28T17:17:00.001-08:00

Something to look forward to

2011-01-28T03:42:00.000-08:00

1783

The Laki eruption in Iceland and colder climate of the Little Ice Age combined with France's failure to adopt the potato as a staple crop contributed to widespread famine and malnutrition.

the ball room

When the cupboard runs bare the state should open up granaries, not put further emphasis on the collection of tithes and rents. Similarly the military industrial complex should reduce their spending and transfer that tax money to foreign aid and education.
As one commentator put it about Afghanistan, "hearts and minds" lags too far behind the military strategy in the field.
I like Michell Obama and admired her on Oprah last night, but American deployments are too many and not always in the right places. You cannot go on bringing equality and democracy only to the places that have immense commercial value, while virtually ignoring the places that don't.
As someone else said, NATO involvement in many parts of the world has simply been a breeding ground for the very dedicated terrorists that we justifiably fear.
Major Islamic schools should be set up in America and post graduate studies in diplomacy strongly encouraged.
The last truly just war was WW2, but it set up too many models about how to defeat a determined enemy.
My father worked for NATO from the beginning until he retired. I think he would be dismayed at the military use of NATO within the last few years, even in Kosovo.
Going back to the French revolution. The rich and powerful will always be admired and envied and they have to strike a balance between those two feelings. It is not the middle class, which will help them achieve that balance. They must do it themselves.

2011-01-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

This beautiful office and warehouse has been abandoned for the ten year's I have worked on that street in downtown Toronto. Last week a film crew was using it for a location. The roof is in in good order and has been shielded where the tiles are absent. There is a long range plan to redevelop the street. I so much hope they will restore it.

My posts have been too serious of late. I do want wars to end and for diplomacy to prevail. It goes back to the way I was educated, although I was no hippy. I was very straight well into my twenties.
I had to drive Cathy's new Honda yesterday. Well, it is not as comfortable for a big man as the Intrepid was and with a coat I root around for the clasp for the seat belt. My son had been driving it and it starts off beeping at me furiously. I looked for the handbrake, but could not find it! I had to go back into the house and ask them where it was. It was, needless to say, hidden under my coat and I grumbled that an automatic never needs the handbrake on except on the steepest of hills or in certain rare situations. He disagreed. At twenty four he thinks he know everything about what he uses and he does use his mother's car too much. He wants me to front him seven hundred dollars so that he can repair his own car so that he can sell it. Not likely for a while and meanwhile his car is blocking up our one-car garage. Scallywag. We need the garage for a work-shop for our lovely last born who graduates in jewelry making this April.
I have three adult sons and they are still all unemployed in various ways. We can't back them up much longer. The trouble is we had children very late and their troubles would have been easier to help with if, say, we were still in our late thirties or early forties.

2011-01-18T15:01:00.000-08:00

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.

Albert Einstein

2011-01-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

Every American who cares about humanity should at least scan this long article
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande

2011-01-09T10:52:00.000-08:00

2011-01-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

I spent all of yesterday and today until eleven reading an account of Pepys's diary from 1660 until 1667/1668, which is when the site publishes his diary day by day in step with our own dates. Often I dipped into the actual diaries, into annotations by other readers, or notes on wikipedia.
Before Christmas I donated a small sum to wikipedia and they returned a note to me asking for a contribution month by month. Unfortunately this was made on my old credit card. During the holiday I discovered a payment on that card to what appeared to be a BP gas station in Fort Erie. I reported the suspected fraud to the credit card company, which promptly refunded the payment and cancelled my card. Yesterday I received my new card, but all pre-authorised payments are therefor cancelled too. I don't have a list of whom I have pre-authorised moneys to and have no way of re-contacting wikipedia, unless I make a new payment to them uninvited somehow.
Incidentally, it was not a fraud. I had had forgotten a payment to BP magazine for a year's subscription. I don't think of the magazine by its name as I regard it as "the bi-polar" magazine. So I needn't have cancelled my credit card in the first place. Grrr.
This blog is reverting to a personal diary. If I do still have any readers, I completely understand if you delete following me. It can only interest myself some time from now, and maybe not even do that.

2011-01-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

This is the night sky pointing at Polaris

from Mount Kilimanjaro.

Evidently at the equator

the poles are visible on the horizon.

2011-01-03T12:14:00.001-08:00

The best editor on youtube, that I have found, although a very male choice of films.

(Click twice and watch it on youtube).

2011-01-03T02:12:00.000-08:00

My son tells me that volcanic ash attracts its own lightning. We both think that this would be a great effect in a Hollywood movie. I am up well before the winter's dawn, again with my persistent toothache. It seems that something is always going wrong with my aging body. Doctors and dentists can usually take care of these ills and thank goodness for provincial health insurance, but it takes time to see the doctors and I must live with some discomfort until I am cured. It was not like this when I was younger, but, on the whole, I prefer the advantages having lived a long and very full life, although not a particularly useful one perhaps. I know this is "begging the question", but it is largely true. I live for myself and my own pleasure. We used to argue that Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale did too, but now I see the error of the argument, however young people should not be particularly exhorted to live a "useful life". Much better they should be encouraged to find a way to be happy and to promulgate "the greatest happiness of the greatest number".

2010-12-30T16:51:00.000-08:00

2010-12-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

2010-12-25T04:59:00.000-08:00

These cameos by various film actors are entertaining for the most part, but I particularly liked the one of Tilda Swinton.

2010-12-24T12:01:00.000-08:00

'Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the flat
Not a creature was stirring, not even a that.
A who and a which were lurking around.
A where and a whence were making some sound.
A but and a wherefore were nowhere in sight
And a since and a therefore were having a fight.
I asked my poor mother, "What, what shall I do?"
She yelled in my ear, "Just please eat your stew".

2010-12-21T17:14:00.000-08:00

This was actually last year, but we are all focused on our friends who are stuck in Europe. You lose your flight and then any subsequent flight that does take off is, of course, already booked out. To a Canadian it does seem strange that they simply don't have more snow plows. They are certainly have to get get them if they go on having winters like 2009 and 2010. They winge about temperatures below zero, while we live every winter like that. I rather like the cold, as long as I have a warm coat. Mine has recently lost its zip so it is a little on the cool side, but, as long as the Velcro tabs hold out, I'm OK. There was a man on TV tonight in a suit designed for minus sixty. That's what we call cold.

2010-12-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

I really must get some bridge work done

2010-12-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

Computerworld - Any attempt to criminally prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for the ongoing disclosure of classified State Department cables will pose huge challenges for the U.S. government, according to a newly updated report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
The 24-page report, released this week, examines the criminal statutes involved in the WikiLeaks case and how they might apply outside the U.S. The report concludes that at least some of the information released by WikiLeaks has national security implications and may indeed by covered under the Espionage Act and other criminal laws on the books.
Even so, actually prosecuting Assange for the disclosures would be unprecedented -- and challenging, the report said.

"We are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it," the report bluntly stated. Such an action would have First Amendment implications, and political ramifications "based on concerns about government censorship."

In addition, prosecuting a foreign national whose actions were conducted entirely overseas carries with it certain foreign policy implications and would raise questions related to extraterritorial jurisdiction, the CRS said in its report.

Details of the report were published Wednesday by Steven Aftergood on Secrecy News, a blog run by the FAS Project on Government Secrecy. The blog also posted a link to the CRS report

2010-11-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

Apparently I am now a terrorist, according to Sarah Palin, because I read and support wikileaks. I should be hunted down like Alaskan vermin or Osama Bin Laden. In fact I look forward to the next wikileaks batch, which will be about international banking. That should disturb the hornets nest.

2010-11-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

My niece posted this wonderful art photo on Facebook

Snow, first of the season on the ground in our garden. The two eldest sons and us, we are off to the family Christmas party. We were supposed to have left now. With some trepidation I have to return to work on December first. I still don't sleep well. I cannot lie on my left side and wake every time my body wants to roll off my back. Thus in the morning I tend to slumber on, trying to catch up on the night's lack of rest. I was telling Cathy that I think it will be at least another two months before I am back to normal. She said it would be good for me to work as I have become too inactive and this I see is true, but brrrr, I am not looking forward to being up at six in the dark and home at six also in the dark. It serves me right for choosing to live so far out in the suburbs.
I think we are leaving....

(Later) The party was fine, although the huge family was reduced to only about 40 attendees this year. I found that I have lost my nerve in the car, especially returning in the dark, my son driving quite fast, sometimes with wisps of snow blowing low across the road. The persistent thought that we might crash and that, of course, my chest would open up again, I found quite terrifying. I closed my eyes and recited protection mantras silently to myself. They did not help much.

Arrived home safe and sound and watched "Casino Royal" up to the bit that made me cry the first time. Eva Green is lovely and will be recognised as a great actress someday. This is the third film I have seen her in.

Woke several times in the night, but slept in till nine. I feel ancy today, perhaps because I have to go back to work.

2010-11-19T07:46:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I started this record of flagged visitors on the right. It is hard to understand why I get visitors from quite exotic places.

I am still at home recuperating slowly from an operation on my chest. I will have to return to work in just over one more week. I can't imagine what it will be like to get out of bed at five to six again and get through the day without the afternoon nap to which I have become accustomed.

I just got a call from an old old friend and when I mentioned that all the furniture in the Stieg Larsson book I am reading seems to be also from IKEA, she said that she had stopped reading him in horror. She said that there is a vogue for describing unspeakable violence towards women, while pretending to be feminist. We both watched Medium from the beginning and have noticed how the crimes on that show have become more violent and almost always involve violence against women. Her feminist roots rebel against this new excess of violence against women. I very much see what she means, but will go on with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo mainly because I enjoy the amateur quality of a book written for the entertainment of the author with no original intention of publishing it. His first title for the book was Men Who Hate Women and he wrote three books before approaching a publisher. He was dead at fifty. However gruesome some scenes are, I enjoy the read much as I enjoy blogs more than learned articles.

2010-11-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

First there was the problem. What was the problem? It had something to do with knowing. I could remember the dream, but I could not remember what the dream was about. There was an apartment very sparsely furnished, comfortably empty. We lived there and we were happy, but we had a problem and I can't remember what it was. As usual, I woke in discomfort, mildly cursing again that I could not be inured by sleep. Surely it had been long enough, I reflected, to find a comfortable position to lie down in, but it was not yet to be possible. I got up and swore off the pain killers in the drawer next to my bed. What had I just dreamed and what was the problem? I still don't know.

2010-11-08T09:54:00.000-08:00

My best friend has just challenged me, (and inspired me), to write something on my blog even though I don't feel that I have anything to write about.

Above is an old picture of me with my brothers. Quite a bit more of me than now protrudes from my belly. I found the picture, reading over the 2008 entries of this blog, an entertainment of the last few days, as I sit at home waiting for my lungs to settle comfortably back into my rib cage. I saw the surgeon on Tuesday and he told me that I was repairing well and that I might stay at home until the end of the month. Just as well, as I don't feel up to returning to work yet.

This same best friend does not work on Mondays and we spent a congenial four hours on the phone and Skype, chatting like the two old men we have both become. He is a good friend and has been since I first came to live in Canada in 1973.

My younger brother, the handsome one on the right, just called me from England. His amateur dramatic society is putting on the same play I was in late last year, Hay Fever. It would be such fun if he played the same part I played. At the time I kept quite careful notes on a private blog and now I have the opportunity to invite him alone to read it. Even more fun would be to be in a play with him one day. We both like small parts and, in an amateur way, I dare say that we can both be quite funny.

The brother in the middle is my genius older brother, never an actor, but a recently retired professor. Teaching, I suppose, has elements of acting to it. So there you have it: three very different brothers with very different careers. Very soon we will all just be old men sitting in rocking chairs remembering...

2010-11-03T07:01:00.001-07:00

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,

then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

2010-10-31T08:52:00.001-07:00

"Oh no. Do I need to attempt a succinct explanation of geomatics?" asks Professor David Parker of the University of Newcastle. "Well, I could say something long-winded based on the way we take measurements of the earth, but essentially we do SatNav and Google Earth – professionally. So whereas most people use Google Earth to visualise a drive along their high street, professionals can use imagery from land, air and space not only to visualise our urban infrastructure but to sense vegetation, moisture and heat loss."

Until recent times geomatics was a sort of adjunct to engineering. The Channel Tunnel, for example, wouldn't have happened without it. But as satellites have progressed, the profile of the geomatician has soared. "We can now sense the uplift around an active volcano or measure the rate of melt of the ice caps," says Parker. His science is the great hope for providing the blueprint (or greenprint) to enable us to have a truly sustainable lifestyle. Parker is loath to take any personal credit – geomatics is always a team effort – but he has brought geomaticians, engineers and geoscientists together to collaborate in a new way.

Ecologists point out that everything is interconnected, yet scientists often go about their business in a compartmentalised way. Parker and his team, however, merge data to create mind-bogglingly detailed maps that allow them to profile, for example, coastal erosion, or to treat Newcastle as an urban laboratory. Over the next two years, the School of Geomatics (ceg.ncl.ac.uk) will map all the details of the city's infrastructure. "When we've done that," says Parker, "we'll know how to change to live within our means. Enough for all, for ever – that's the aspiration."

2010-10-31T06:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we drove out through fall leaves and a little further North, where the fall was already over, to Stratford to look at houses for our retirement. We saw a house on Maple from the outside, Redford Crescent round its own park, where there was nothing suitable for sale and inside the two half built houses on College, which, sadly will be ready before we can move. We liked the agent a lot and he represents Stratford's biggest builder, so we might find something in the future. We loved the town, although it is an hour or two from Toronto.

I have always lived in big cities and I don't know how well I will adapt to a small one.

2010-10-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

I just made a little You tube film of photographs taken on my first cell phone. These are some of them.

2010-10-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

As you older, it becomes more and more important
not to get water in you shoes,
to buy a Harley sometime soon,
to play in that old farts band,
not to get up at three thinking it's six,

2010-10-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

2010-10-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

Stoned on Percocet and anti-histamine. I lay examining the word "coindre" Je coins, tu coins, il coin, Dans le temps nous coindrions, c'est a dire, nous nous mettions dans un coin. We painted ourselves into corners. I was coming back up to the surface slowly, irritated that even my watch strap was itching. The operation has been highly successful and a lot less painful than expected. I had a morphine pump for twenty for hours but used it less than I could have. I slept a lot. I came home today. I will have a pretty scar for some time to come. It was not my thymus at all. The remainder of my thyroid had descended behind the breast bone, hence the five inch vertical scar.

2010-10-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

2010-09-25T11:25:00.001-07:00

Neurophotonics and tremor control

2010-09-20T07:57:00.001-07:00

Editorial
The Guardian, Monday 20 September 2010
Article history
The solar wind is a violent burst of charged particles that creates magnetic storms in the Earth's upper atmosphere. But the sun's light, too, has pressure: Nasa scientists calculated 30 years ago that in the vacuum of space, the impact of sunlight on a gossamer-thin mirror would be enough to get it moving with an acceleration of a millimetre per second per second. This doesn't sound much, but within 24 hours a space sailing ship could be travelling at 100 metres a second, and still be accelerating. It could reach Mars in 400 days. The US Planetary Society has twice tried to launch a prototype space sailing ship; in May this year the Japanese space agency sent its experimental "kite" Ikaros floating towards Venus. And today the European Planetary Science Congress in Rome will hear the case for a fleet of "data-clippers" – robot windjammers laden with instruments, scudding out on the gentle breeze from the sun to Europa or Titan and then tacking back to Earth to download vast quantities of scientific data stored in flash memory. The biggest costs in space are rocket fuel and data transmission across epic distances. A fleet of automaton solar-wind-powered ships would greatly cut the costs and thereby multiply the returns. But beyond this ultimate economy drive, think of the beauty: of a fleet of silent windjammers, riding on radiation alone, literally making light work of charting the planets and their many satellites – all the way to the very last outposts of the empire of the sun.