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 |   A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| The Eternal Hunt I would join in the hunt for the TV controller but people say I get this remote look in my eye... |
| Tiny Snowflakes Interesting weather we're having. You may have read that the northeast is having a bit of a snowstorm today. But that's not what I wanted to talk about. It's just that it reminded me of a snowfall we had several years ago that was rather special. It was a fearfully cold day when the snow started to fall. The flakes were so small and cold that they fell more like rain. At first we were uncertain whether we were watching snow, freezing rain or weird hail. Anyway, Andrea happened to be wearing a black coat that showed the flakes really well and I noticed that these tiny flakes were all shaped like six-pointed stars. Except for those that had clubbed together for the descent; those were more like globs of snow or ice. Now, I know some bright spark is going to tell me that all snowflakes are shaped as six-point stars (and that they're all different in detail). But usually it takes a microscope to see them. And our tiny snowflakes were quite visibly star-shaped and, apparently, identical to each other. So my conclusion is that we received abnormally large snowflakes as individuals, instead of the clumps of snowflakes that we normally see. It is still the only time that I've been able to see snowflakes as the scientists tell us they are. I must presume that it was something to do with the intense cold that made them large enough to see with the naked eye. Word count: 252 |
| Geriatric Metrics You know you're old when your nightly pee-time bumps into your wake-up hour. And that makes more sense than you realise. It's not that you managed to last through the night - that's so unlikely as to be out of the equation. What's happening is you're going to bed late! |
| Opinions As the man with a wooden leg said, it's a matter of opinion. And I've been thinking about opinions. It's true what they say: everyone has an opinion. What is less often noticed, however, is that some people have more opinions than others. I have known people who have an opinion on everything; you mention a subject, any subject, and they will be able to grace you with their opinion on it. Such people are rich in the currency of opinion and are always very generous in sharing their wealth. Others, however, seem to have been at the end of the line when opinions were handed out; they have few and compound the fact by hoarding those that remain to them. Which brings to mind the parable of the talents, although I am not convinced that it applies in this instance. Both money and talents have a value, after all, whereas opinions are so common that they have become almost worthless. A penny for your thoughts, say you? Hah, a hundred years ago that might have been the going rate; these days you can't give them away. I know there are a few who manage to squeeze a living out of their opinions; newspaper editors and television talking heads, for instance. But these are not really selling their opinions. To a large extent they are preaching to the converted, sharing their opinion amongst those who already have that opinion anyway. There is little real trading that goes on, just mutual bolstering and encouragement. So we tend to collect in groups, sharing our opinions with those of like mind and applauding one another as we do so. If someone from another group intrudes, the immediate result is a fight, with opinions thrown in anger and scorn exchanged in copious quantities. The problem is that we all think our opinions are based on the facts and must be correct, therefore. It does not seem to occur to us that facts are so numerous that we must pick and choose which ones to take and which to leave. Being human, we will accept those facts that we like and ignore those that make us uncomfortable. Then off we go with our chosen collection of facts and we construct our opinions around them. Small wonder that we emerge with so many different opinions. The ideal would be to wait until we have all the facts before forming our opinions. Like most ideals, however, this is impossible, so great is the weight of facts with which we are confronted. Some people, a very few, will reserve judgment, knowing that they do not have all the facts. The great majority of us will shrug and enter the fray with whatever we have managed to glean. It is tempting to see those who are slow to form opinions as the wise amongst us. And, if that is so, surely the man who has no opinion at all is the wisest. Since he is staying silent while he adds to the facts at his command, he must be gaining a far wider view of things than those who go out to battle with only a selection of their favored facts at hand. I wonder whether it is possible to have no opinion on anything. Being a dreamer, I ponder on this and try to imagine how an opinion-less person would function. How would such a person be received in society? A philosopher and thinker of the past, Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536), said this: "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." It seems a good saying until one thinks hard about it. To refute it, H.G. Wells wrote a short story entitled The Country of the Blind, in which he shows that the blind would regard someone with sight as a madman. In point of fact, Mr Wells need not have bothered with his story for we already have a perfect example of what he wanted to say. Jesus Christ had better vision than any of us and remember what we did to Him. Which all leads me to think (yes, it's my opinion) that our hypothetical opinion-less person would receive rough treatment in our world. In fact, I suspect that we have already prepared our ammunition against such a phenomenon. We have all heard the saying that it is better to remain silent and be thought stupid, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt… Word count: 743 |
| Geography (or How I tried to remain sane and failed) Through a fairly straightforward journey of the mind, I found myself thinking of my old geography teacher today. His name was Mr Cock and this occasioned even more amusement among his young students than we can imagine since it was so easy to confuse him with the school’s Afrikaans teacher, a Miss de Kock. Having opted for French rather than Afrikaans at the relevant moment, this was not a problem for me and I rarely had occasion to mention the no-doubt-saintly young lady in question. I was, however (and I may have mentioned this in other posts), of a geographical mind and so was quite willingly subjected to the ministrations of the aforementioned Mr Cock as a result. This meant that I was present at the breathtaking and unexpected transformation of Mr Cock from a feared and fierce taskmaster into a man of mystery. The event was occasioned by something quite ordinary. Some hapless offender was receiving a fearsome explanation of the terrible punishments prepared for him were he ever to repeat his offence (I forget now what it was). To the class’ horror, the poor miscreant burst into tears. We were young teenagers at the time and properly trained in the British stiff upper lip; such a display of weakness was embarrassing and shocking in the extreme. What we did not realise was that the sudden collapse of his victim had as strong an effect on Mr Cock as it did on us. The legendary tyrant of the geography class ceased his tirade immediately and turned to other things. We discovered the next day just how deep a change had been wrought in Mr Cock by the incident. Class commenced as usual until some poor fool committed an accidental offence. The class hushed in expectation of the usual terrible response from our teacher. He allowed the silence to reign for a while and then spoke. “I have decided that discipline in this class will be maintained by a rather different method from my previous preference. From now on order will be enforced by the application of psychology. You have been warned.” He paused then and allowed us some time to absorb this news. Then, without further explanation, he returned to the subject of geography. We were hushed in wonder for the rest of the lesson and, if truth be told, for all geographical lessons thereafter. Mr Cock had us confused and fearful of what exactly he could mean by “psychology”. Knowing him so well, we were sure that it was some awful form of mental torture and none of us chose to discover his intent. Of course, I know now that the “psychology” had needed only one application to achieve its goal. The simplicity of the scheme was impossible for our young minds to grasp, so used to dealing with devious and complex forms of punishment (the ghastly refinement of torture by Pinky Palgrave, for instance) were we. How could we guess that the first explanation of the new system was all that was required? In later years I came to know Mr Cock much better as he allowed us the occasional relief from school by a field trip to gaze at rock strata in a road cutting or quarry. He taught me much that has remained in my head for more than sixty years and changed my view of the world to encompass air currents, physical features and weather patterns. But I did not formulate an understanding of his “psychology” until long after I left school. I think, maybe, that I preferred him as a man of mystery wielding an invisible and phantom weapon that was never used. Word count: 610 |
| Computer? Computer! Way back in the nineties, I decided that it was time I learned about this newfangled thing called the computer. I had actually had some contact with it in the sixties as a friend of mine was employed in the business, but he had scared me off by showing me their inhouse computer. It filled a large room with rows of cabinets containing tape discs and flashing lights and dials. That was enough to scare me off the things for the next thirty years. By the nineties, however, it was quite clear that computer experience was needed if you were going to get anywhere in most jobs. I signed up for a six-week training course. Perhaps it was ironic that I should take to the thing like a duck to water. For the first time I understood that the thing was a tool and an incredibly versatile one at that. I dived into it and learned everything the instructor had to teach in the first three weeks. The rest of the time I spent finding out just what the machine was capable of in the areas that interested me most - writing and graphics. The point is, during those thirty years of my estrangement from the computer world, two inventions had transformed the thing and made it usable by the layman. The first was the invention of the graphic interface, so that we were in a world similar to the real one, instead of lines and lines of incomprehensible code. And the second was the mouse, the device that allowed us to interact with what was on the monitor. Somehow I had entered the new world at precisely the moment it had become open to me. Word processors had changed from complex programs that required the knowledge of all sorts of secret key combinations to function, into buttons and keys that I could press with the cursor. It still helped to know a bit of DOS code but it wasn’t essential if you were happy enough with what Bill Gates had prepared for you. Arriving at that moment, I learned from both worlds. The old knowledge was still useful as it was never done away with. If you wanted to change the look and way the machine functioned, it was possible to do a bit of simple coding in DOS and make your computer personal to you. And useful little programs from the early days lived on and were still available, if you knew where to look. Just today, I had occasion to tell someone about Charmap, a program that helps you enter unusual and accented characters into your text. And that is something from the very prehistory of the computer. The upshot of all this is that there are always more ways than one to get things done in Windows. Want to paste something into a document but there is no Paste option or button in the menu or toolbar? Just hit Control and V on the keyboard. To copy something, use Ctrl and C. That’s really archaeological in origin and, hopefully, it’ll never go away. It really is a wonderful machine, as long as we remember that it’s a tool. When we start trying to make it into a companion or servant with its own thoughts and feelings, that is when things get a bit dodgy. If you’re lonely, find another human, don’t try to make one. Come to think of it, isn’t that the lesson of Pygmalion? Word count: 579 |
| A Shattered Image Sometimes I think it’s a mistake to know too much about people on the internet. I find that I build pictures of web acquaintances purely from what they say and how they behave. It can be a terrible shock to have constructed such a picture and then see a photo of the real person. Suddenly the illusion is shattered and it becomes necessary to create an entirely new assessment of the person you thought you knew. Or does it? Surely it can’t be good to make judgments of people because of their looks. Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say, and there’s truth in that, I’m sure. Even if it’s something that I do quite often with books. Certainly we allow ourselves to form impressions of people in real life from the way they look. And it’s true that aspects of their personality are given expression by such things as tattoos, hairstyles and clothes. But very often assumptions drawn from such appearances prove to be wrong once we get to know the person. So the assessments of character we make on the internet may not be that bad after all. We are actually making a judgment based not on looks but on what the person says and does. Yes, some people lie and some are very good at it. But, generally speaking, we are all reasonably good at discerning the truth when we hear it and knowing a lie as well. In all likelihood, we are making quite reasonable assessments of the people we know only digitally. And I think it’s a nicer world in some way, this ephemeral universe that we can switch off or on at the touch of a button. For one thing, the weather’s always good on the net and there’s no possibility of being drenched by an unexpected rainstorm. Plus, if you’re in my head purely thanks to the net, be assured that my picture of you is far better looking than the reality. It just seems the way I am built, that I always think the best of people until they prove otherwise. No need to send me a photo therefore.  Word count: 359 |
| Secrets of the Universe: Part 1 Could a collective farm be called a communist plot? |
| Winter My wife has a saying that, where winter is concerned, the big one to get through is January. Which is true, of course - we all know it’s the coldest month. But then she adds that, once into February, you’ve as good as made it. Why? Because it’s a short month. Blink and you’ll miss it. Well, it’s not a bad way to look at things, so I go along with it. But this year, I’ve just learned, is completely different. February is much, much worse this year. And the reason is that it’s longer. 2024 is a leap year. I know what you’re thinking - that it’s only a day. And that’s what I said. But no, apparently that’s no excuse. February betrays us every fourth year and there can be no forgiveness for such treachery. It doesn’t matter how long it lasts - any extension of winter is unfair and to be decried. It seems I live and learn. Word count: 157 |
| Hopper Music seems to be much in the Newsfeed of late - it’s one half of the prompt for Journey through Genres this month and Jeff has started up The Soundtrack of Your Life, sparking a flurry of blog posts from Dave Ryan. And I admit to having done a few myself in the last few weeks. But what about the visual arts? Where are all the posts on the great artists and pictures in our lives? Maths and Music are supposed to go together (and often do), but painting is much like poetry and other forms of writing. Only today I was reminded of the wonderful work of Edward Hopper and spent an enjoyable hour with a video about him on YouTube. So I have no hesitancy of reminding you of who he is by referring to this picture:  It’s called Nighthawks Diner and you must have seen it before. It’s typical of his work in its stark contrasts between light and dark, and its isolated atmosphere. Powerful stuff. Word count: 169 |
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I've always remembered that episode and thought that was a fun idea.
Quite good is quite a good compliment 
As someone who just reviewed an item in your port, I can't help but wonder, Did I pick an item that you'd throw out? 
