This morning at about 8 AM I finally succeeded in publishing my first Kindle book.
It was quite straightforward in the end, although the process was convoluted, perhaps because it was my first time. There were a number of things new to me that I had to find out, such as the unique identifiers to enable income to me to be paid directly into my bank accounts.
My objective in this publishing venture is to be able to raise funds not for myself, but for the Queen Alexandra Hospital just across the road from where I live in Worthing.
What I have published is the collected blogs for the whole of this year, 2012, which has been such a significant year for myself and for the Nation as a whole.
Since my personal blog reflects my personal interests, and is as much as anything stimulated by what I see and hear in the media, the 75 blogs that I have written since January 2012 have in effect provided my own perspective, as a disabled person, on this extraordinary year.
It is much closer to autobiographical writing than a critique of the year as a whole, and anyone reading this blog will already have access free of charge to the archive of my blog activity over the course of this, my first year of blogging.
Of course, anyone that so wishes can obtain access to all of the blogs included in this Kindle free of charge, but I am banking on the fact that for some people, access to my collected blogs for this year in Kindle format may in fact be useful, and the fact that it is priced competitively at around six dollars [ US ] with all proceeds after Amazon commission going directly to this wonderful purpose may make some purchases from my general blog readership.
And what a readership I have obtained over the course of this year.
Then have been over 1200 page views genuinely worldwide, with some astonishing reading [from my point of view] from countries that I have not expected to be part of my readership.
As can be seen from some of my blog entries, the statistics of the origin of my readership has struck me sometimes as if it were a medal table from the Olympics, so much so that I have begun to lay plans for a virtual Olympics based on where purchases of my first volume of poetry are purchased, copies of which are available for sale directly from the hospital itself (QAHH).
Publishing this volume of my collected blogs as a Kindle at this time of year is very much a toe in the water for myself, since as a lover of books, it is something beyond my experience, although I am seriously considering getting one of these new machines in order to see if it will enable me to read once again, as my disability, multiple sclerosis, prevents me from holding a book and turning the pages.
And so it may in fact be something that will become an assistive device for me, as indeed is already my computer.
Although I am registered blind because of my condition, my eyesight is variable, and in some respects a computer screen, especially one in which the size of print can be altered, is easier for me to be able to read from.
And of course I have discovered spoken books, which can be an extraordinary means of accessing literature.
And so I suppose this is an appeal to my worldwide audience to consider purchasing this electronic book, as a tool for themselves, or as a gift at Christmas for someone who already possesses one of these new machines.
It may well be a revelation to me, opening the door once again to reading, which has been a lifelong companion to me.
And as anyone that has read my blog must be aware, the Queen Alexandra. Hospital is an extraordinary place, providing an exceptional service to those that have served often in extraordinary circumstances in our armed forces.
It has an extraordinary history that goes back to 1915 when it was first founded as the George V Hospital in London, and was the first point to which soldiers returning injured from the trenches of the first world war and were provided with rehabilitation and continuing care.
That work has never ceased, though it carries on unseen by the general public.
This is an opportunity to help this important work continue, and I hope that the success of my worldwide readership for my blog may be translated into sales in this new electronic medium.
Wednesday 28 November 2012
Friday 23 November 2012
The Mysteries Of Life
Now that we are getting closer to Winter, I do not get out and about as much as I am used to during the Summer months.
This is perhaps a natural consequence of the fact that as a disabled person I have to be a little more careful about preserving my body heat as the weather gets colder.
Whether or not this changes the way in which I listen to what my carers have to say to me is an interesting point, as I suppose I do pay more attention to what they have to tell me about what is happening in the world.
This morning, what sticks in my mind from my conversation with my carer is something that she must have picked up from some television program recently, that we share more of our DNA with mushrooms than with any other form of vegetable matter.
On the surface, this is perhaps a rather startling revelation. But thinking about this, perhaps it is not so surprising, since it appears that we share much of our genetic makeup with the plant kingdom in any case.
Perhaps we would benefit from a greater awareness of the extent to which life in all its forms on this planet has much in common and much more than mere surface resemblance might reveal.
Perhaps life itself is entirely interrelated and we are all simply manifestations of the same strange chemical accidents that have led to our sense of consciousness.
That we appear to have self-consciousness may in itself simply be a factor of the complexity to which we have evolved over millions of years, and it is an extraordinarily interesting subject to contemplate.
Perhaps it is only by taking a broadly philosophical approach to our existence that we can draw any conclusions at all from this strange fact, if indeed it is a fact at all.
I have nothing to make me doubt the reality of this information, and it sort of makes sense as a broadly general proposition. that all of life on this planet should share something in common seems to make sense, although perhaps through this fact alone it may be revealing that I am not someone that has a position of faith from which my world view is derived.
To a great extent I have admiration for people that can have a faith position from which to construct their moral perspectives on the world, but I do not. And in some respects, perhaps this is a more challenging position to take than accepting a faith position.
Perhaps it is my education that is the determining factor in my story here, in that I was trained for three years at University College London, the Godless College in Gower Street, where I studied for a degree in philosophy.
Interestingly, UCL was the first institution in the United Kingdom that admitted women, and also people of faiths other than Christian.
It is perhaps something that is not remembered these days, but the Oxford and Cambridge universities were only open to practicing Christians, and whilst Christianity has been an important developmental factor in our cultural and social history, it has also placed limitations on whole sections of our multifaceted population.
This is perhaps a natural consequence of the fact that as a disabled person I have to be a little more careful about preserving my body heat as the weather gets colder.
Whether or not this changes the way in which I listen to what my carers have to say to me is an interesting point, as I suppose I do pay more attention to what they have to tell me about what is happening in the world.
This morning, what sticks in my mind from my conversation with my carer is something that she must have picked up from some television program recently, that we share more of our DNA with mushrooms than with any other form of vegetable matter.
On the surface, this is perhaps a rather startling revelation. But thinking about this, perhaps it is not so surprising, since it appears that we share much of our genetic makeup with the plant kingdom in any case.
Perhaps we would benefit from a greater awareness of the extent to which life in all its forms on this planet has much in common and much more than mere surface resemblance might reveal.
Perhaps life itself is entirely interrelated and we are all simply manifestations of the same strange chemical accidents that have led to our sense of consciousness.
That we appear to have self-consciousness may in itself simply be a factor of the complexity to which we have evolved over millions of years, and it is an extraordinarily interesting subject to contemplate.
Perhaps it is only by taking a broadly philosophical approach to our existence that we can draw any conclusions at all from this strange fact, if indeed it is a fact at all.
I have nothing to make me doubt the reality of this information, and it sort of makes sense as a broadly general proposition. that all of life on this planet should share something in common seems to make sense, although perhaps through this fact alone it may be revealing that I am not someone that has a position of faith from which my world view is derived.
To a great extent I have admiration for people that can have a faith position from which to construct their moral perspectives on the world, but I do not. And in some respects, perhaps this is a more challenging position to take than accepting a faith position.
Perhaps it is my education that is the determining factor in my story here, in that I was trained for three years at University College London, the Godless College in Gower Street, where I studied for a degree in philosophy.
Interestingly, UCL was the first institution in the United Kingdom that admitted women, and also people of faiths other than Christian.
It is perhaps something that is not remembered these days, but the Oxford and Cambridge universities were only open to practicing Christians, and whilst Christianity has been an important developmental factor in our cultural and social history, it has also placed limitations on whole sections of our multifaceted population.
Monday 19 November 2012
Footprints On The Beach The Tide Won't Remove
I am very fortunate that one of my carers enjoys reading to me, and I am beginning to catch up with some of the reading that I missed when I was a child.
I suppose my problem was partly that I had quite an advanced reading age, and although I was always reading, sometimes even when I was walking around school, I missed out on so many of the children's classics, and opted instead to go straight to more advanced reading.
It is only in later life, past the age of 50, and unable to pick up and hold a book thanks to my disability, that I regret this, but am unable to do anything about it. Until now.
I read much of the typical canon of literature for boys, such as Treasure Island, and recently I was reminded of that scene where Robinson Crusoe discovers a footprint on the beach, and later discovers and meets with Man Friday.
Of all things, it was a comedy programme that made me think of it. One of those very funny programmes that was ostensibly about science, but in the course of it you discover interesting things about what we have done to the planet that succours us.
If in millions of years and advanced alien race were to discover this planet and examine it carefully, they might discover traces of the uranium atom decayed into the isotopes of lead that would enable the date of our first discovery of the possibilities of nuclear fission.
On this same programme, it was fascinating that a specialist Professor in the study of meteorites had brought with her two meteorites one of which she introduced as approximately 4.77 billion years old, and the other about 1.3 billion years old, and having originated from Mars.
In other words, much was to be gained from the study of what has already arrived here on earth from elsewhere in the solar system, rather than take the time and expense of sending mankind into space.
It was particularly interesting that these meteorites could be dated so specifically, and on questioning, the professor explained that this was possible because of the amount of the isotopes of uranium that exist within them, that can be analysed quite specifically by the use of a mass spectrometer.
As uranium has such a long half life, its presence in the form of the lead isotopes that it will eventually decay to is a good indicator of the age of ancient rocks.
This reminded me of a story I was told many years ago when my job involved my spending several weeks each year on the Orkney island of Hoy, the largest of the Orkney islands, separated from mainland Orkney by the body of water called Scapa Flow, that has been the home port for the British Navy for most of the 20th century. It is deep water, and protected from the vicious currents that are to be found in the water just North of Scotland.
It was in Scapa Flow that the entire German fleet was kept during the first part of the Great War, until it was scuttled in 1916. Without a shot ever being fired at sea.
Thus a great deal of valuable scrap existed in the deep waters of this extraordinary naval base, and the story I was told when I was hosted on the island by a farming family that lived at the eastern end of the island I have always remembered.
Of course because the fleet was simply scuttled to prevent its use during the war, none of the sunken vessels were considered to be war graves.
Thus the local young men for decades after the second world war, a debt at the use of boats and no doubt at diving, would salvage the valuable chromium plate which formed the major part of the scuttled fleet, which was of exceptional value after the war mainly because it had spent more than 50 years underwater, at a time when the first atom bombs had been used in Japan. Plus all those tests that had taken place in the American desert, and later on Bikini Atoll in the South Seas for the hydrogen bomb.
It seems that this chromium was of exceptional value partly because it had never been exposed to radioactivity of any kind, and this made it especially useful in the manufacture of scientific instruments.
Thus for decades the young men of Hoy would plunder the sunken ships beneath the waters of Scapa Flow, to supplement their meagre earnings from agriculture or whatever supported them on the islands.
Islands which have of course been inhabited for between 5000 and 7000 years, leaving the island rich in Neolithic relics.
The farm location at which I was hosted was described as the Bu of Hoy, meaning that it had first been established at least 1000 years before as a Viking farmstead, and the view from my bedroom window perhaps explained why it was so useful to the Vikings.
From my window, I could see a gently sloping sandy beach that ran straight in to Scapa Flow, ideal for hauling up a Viking longship onto the beach.
And perfectly suited as a point of stocking up on food and water for those long journeys of exploration undertaken by the Vikings certainly to Greenland and to Nova Scotia, and possibly further down the east coast of the United States themselves.
It is quite a sobering thought that it was the discovery of atomic fission that had given such value to the metal concealed beneath those waters, and brings me back to the title of this posting, those footprints in the sand that cannot be removed by the cleansing tide.
I suppose my problem was partly that I had quite an advanced reading age, and although I was always reading, sometimes even when I was walking around school, I missed out on so many of the children's classics, and opted instead to go straight to more advanced reading.
It is only in later life, past the age of 50, and unable to pick up and hold a book thanks to my disability, that I regret this, but am unable to do anything about it. Until now.
I read much of the typical canon of literature for boys, such as Treasure Island, and recently I was reminded of that scene where Robinson Crusoe discovers a footprint on the beach, and later discovers and meets with Man Friday.
Of all things, it was a comedy programme that made me think of it. One of those very funny programmes that was ostensibly about science, but in the course of it you discover interesting things about what we have done to the planet that succours us.
If in millions of years and advanced alien race were to discover this planet and examine it carefully, they might discover traces of the uranium atom decayed into the isotopes of lead that would enable the date of our first discovery of the possibilities of nuclear fission.
On this same programme, it was fascinating that a specialist Professor in the study of meteorites had brought with her two meteorites one of which she introduced as approximately 4.77 billion years old, and the other about 1.3 billion years old, and having originated from Mars.
In other words, much was to be gained from the study of what has already arrived here on earth from elsewhere in the solar system, rather than take the time and expense of sending mankind into space.
It was particularly interesting that these meteorites could be dated so specifically, and on questioning, the professor explained that this was possible because of the amount of the isotopes of uranium that exist within them, that can be analysed quite specifically by the use of a mass spectrometer.
As uranium has such a long half life, its presence in the form of the lead isotopes that it will eventually decay to is a good indicator of the age of ancient rocks.
This reminded me of a story I was told many years ago when my job involved my spending several weeks each year on the Orkney island of Hoy, the largest of the Orkney islands, separated from mainland Orkney by the body of water called Scapa Flow, that has been the home port for the British Navy for most of the 20th century. It is deep water, and protected from the vicious currents that are to be found in the water just North of Scotland.
It was in Scapa Flow that the entire German fleet was kept during the first part of the Great War, until it was scuttled in 1916. Without a shot ever being fired at sea.
Thus a great deal of valuable scrap existed in the deep waters of this extraordinary naval base, and the story I was told when I was hosted on the island by a farming family that lived at the eastern end of the island I have always remembered.
Of course because the fleet was simply scuttled to prevent its use during the war, none of the sunken vessels were considered to be war graves.
Thus the local young men for decades after the second world war, a debt at the use of boats and no doubt at diving, would salvage the valuable chromium plate which formed the major part of the scuttled fleet, which was of exceptional value after the war mainly because it had spent more than 50 years underwater, at a time when the first atom bombs had been used in Japan. Plus all those tests that had taken place in the American desert, and later on Bikini Atoll in the South Seas for the hydrogen bomb.
It seems that this chromium was of exceptional value partly because it had never been exposed to radioactivity of any kind, and this made it especially useful in the manufacture of scientific instruments.
Thus for decades the young men of Hoy would plunder the sunken ships beneath the waters of Scapa Flow, to supplement their meagre earnings from agriculture or whatever supported them on the islands.
Islands which have of course been inhabited for between 5000 and 7000 years, leaving the island rich in Neolithic relics.
The farm location at which I was hosted was described as the Bu of Hoy, meaning that it had first been established at least 1000 years before as a Viking farmstead, and the view from my bedroom window perhaps explained why it was so useful to the Vikings.
From my window, I could see a gently sloping sandy beach that ran straight in to Scapa Flow, ideal for hauling up a Viking longship onto the beach.
And perfectly suited as a point of stocking up on food and water for those long journeys of exploration undertaken by the Vikings certainly to Greenland and to Nova Scotia, and possibly further down the east coast of the United States themselves.
It is quite a sobering thought that it was the discovery of atomic fission that had given such value to the metal concealed beneath those waters, and brings me back to the title of this posting, those footprints in the sand that cannot be removed by the cleansing tide.
Sunday 18 November 2012
My Triptych Becomes A Quadrilogy
I had never expected to become a filmmaker. It is one of those things totally outside of even my most secret ambitions, of course I admire the people that make professional films, but strangely, recently, I believe I have earned the right to describe myself as a filmmaker.
The films I have made have in all honesty been home-made short films, just over 10 minutes in duration. and although I learned about filmmaking partly through employing professional filmmakers in my role as the Director of an Arts Trust, and made films with members of the local community as a means of developing skills in that community, what I have learned is what can be learned by any one these days, certainly anyone with a Macintosh computer that comes bundled with a film-editing piece of software that is remarkably easy to use.
And of course good quality digital film cameras have become much more affordable over the past few years.
In technical terms, what can be filmed and edited at home these days is of near-broadcast quality, and in fact many Directors employ the use of smaller handheld cameras when they want to give a sense of reality to a moment in film.
Strangely enough my first film made entirely on my own initiative was made very shortly after I had stopped work completely because of disability.
It came about almost accidentally because I had the opportunity to have a week of respite, staying in a care home in Ipswich, and I took with me my Macintosh laptop and my JVC DV camera.
It so happened that the grounds of the home in which I was a resident for a week were most beautiful, and the house itself had been originally built as a Chantry Chapel in the 16th century, and later developed as a country home.
It was said to have had plasterwork created in the 18th century by a famous architect of that period, and it certainly was most beautiful in places.
The grounds had been beautifully laid out as a formal garden, and this was surrounded by acres of what had become civic parkland when the estate came into the ownership of the local borough council in about 1945.
My stay in 2004 coincided with a scheme to make the gardens for the first time accessible to the residents, because the pathways had always been gravel pathways, and of course gravel is not terribly friendly to wheelchair users.
It so happened that a banker from the City of London had had an accident that involved a spinal injury, and the last years of that banker were spent in at this home, and as a legacy thanking the home for the quality of the care that she had received in those final years before sadly dying, the pathways were given the funding to be able to be laid with Tarmac. To this point, the gardens had been visible from important common areas in the home, but they had not been easily accessible by wheelchair.
It so happened that my not for profit film project had discovered the importance of a wheelchair as part of the equipping of our studio.
There is nothing better than to push someone holding a handheld camera in a wheelchair to get an inexpensive long tracking shot, if one cannot afford the cost of a professional steady-cam. Which is about £30,000.
And so it transpired that I arranged to have a push by a carer around the grounds of this newly accessible set of pathways, only completed weeks before my stay, and I took with me my digital video camera.
In this phase I took 20 minutes filming, from which I edited 10 minutes of usable material, to which I added just a couple of minutes of additional footage shot within the house itself.
Once again, with the help of creative software that comes bundled with a Macintosh computer, I composed a soundtrack for my short film, and wrote a couple of poems during my stay one of which was directly inspired by the history of the estate, and by my discovery in my filmmaking trip of a small cluster of gravestones, where family pets had been buried at the turn of the 20th century.
In the end what I created became an homage to the quality of the care that I received in my week's stay, and although I was careful to ensure that the dignity of residents was retained, so that no one was filmed in person, the film made it evident what the purpose of this fabulous building was used for.
This was back in 2004, and earlier this year, in February 2012, this film was selected for exhibition at the International Festival of Disability Film held annually in Calgary, Canada.
One thing leads to another, and at that Festival were two of the organizers of the Moscow International Festival of Disability Film, and they saw my film and were interested in incorporating it into their Festival, which was held just last week in Moscow.
Unfortunately, they have a rule that films must have been made after 2007, and so this film was not eligible.
Fortunately, in about 2009, I had been commissioned to make a short film by my County Council in West Sussex, because word of my creative tendencies had reached some of the senior social workers within the authority.
And so I had been given a small grant to enable me to employ a cameraman, and to cover the costs of tapes and so forth, and out of that project came A Short Film About Independence.
This film has been used extensively for the training of social workers within the County and also further afield, so that for example I have travelled several times to Camden in London where social workers have been wanting to find out more about the way in which I have benefited from Self-Directed Support, whereby I am able to employ my own carers directly because my care budget is paid directly to me.
This film was acceptable to the Moscow organizers, and it was shown last week in Moscow.
When I first made the film, I had imagined that I would make a trilogy of films, what I have latterly, to call my Triptych, the first being the one described, the second a short film about interdependence, and the third a short film about dependence.
Hopefully the titles speak for themselves, so that in a progressive condition like multiple sclerosis it is perhaps inevitable that dependence might supersede independence.
However, just this week I received something from the multiple sclerosis Society that might encourage me to make an additional film, entitled a short film about hope.
At present, although I technically am diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, my condition remains fairly stable.
But these new drug trials holds out the hope of a new treatment that will stop the progression and deterioration that can be an ever present part of this chronic condition.
Like any hope in the context of a currently incurable condition, it must be treated with a degree of caution, and it may well be 10 years before trials of this drug satisfy appropriate medical authorities as to its efficacy.
The positive element in all of this is that the two drugs in question are both already approved from a safety point of view, in that they are already in use for patients with high blood pressure.
Anyway, it is quite interesting for me to feel that there is hope that my condition might continue to be stable, in which case the critical thing for me is to maintain a sense of perspective that is I believe already the reason why my short film about independence has been of interest.
Because I feel a strong sense of commitment to not only providing an insight into my dealing with this disabling condition, but perhaps at the same time providing some sense of insight into attitudes which perfectly healthy people may well find helpful in dealing with the pressures of daily life in the modern world.
I suppose put simply, I still have the power of speech, and as a consequence, new technology enables me to be able to continue to write. And potentially with the aid of a cameraman, to be able to write a film script that I can create a spoken sound track to, and edit.
Long may this continue. Who knows where it may lead me, and I suppose I must be grateful for the fact that in Britain today, we have the benefit of the kind of support for people in my situation so that I am able to have carers that enable me to remain positive and well cared for, and of course to quote my first film, I do have the consequential benefit of time. That most valuable of commodities.
My time is pretty much my own to decide how I should spend it, rather than chasing my tail to keep up my expensive mortgage. Because it would certainly be more expensive if I were to be part of the rat race.
The films I have made have in all honesty been home-made short films, just over 10 minutes in duration. and although I learned about filmmaking partly through employing professional filmmakers in my role as the Director of an Arts Trust, and made films with members of the local community as a means of developing skills in that community, what I have learned is what can be learned by any one these days, certainly anyone with a Macintosh computer that comes bundled with a film-editing piece of software that is remarkably easy to use.
And of course good quality digital film cameras have become much more affordable over the past few years.
In technical terms, what can be filmed and edited at home these days is of near-broadcast quality, and in fact many Directors employ the use of smaller handheld cameras when they want to give a sense of reality to a moment in film.
Strangely enough my first film made entirely on my own initiative was made very shortly after I had stopped work completely because of disability.
It came about almost accidentally because I had the opportunity to have a week of respite, staying in a care home in Ipswich, and I took with me my Macintosh laptop and my JVC DV camera.
It so happened that the grounds of the home in which I was a resident for a week were most beautiful, and the house itself had been originally built as a Chantry Chapel in the 16th century, and later developed as a country home.
It was said to have had plasterwork created in the 18th century by a famous architect of that period, and it certainly was most beautiful in places.
The grounds had been beautifully laid out as a formal garden, and this was surrounded by acres of what had become civic parkland when the estate came into the ownership of the local borough council in about 1945.
My stay in 2004 coincided with a scheme to make the gardens for the first time accessible to the residents, because the pathways had always been gravel pathways, and of course gravel is not terribly friendly to wheelchair users.
It so happened that a banker from the City of London had had an accident that involved a spinal injury, and the last years of that banker were spent in at this home, and as a legacy thanking the home for the quality of the care that she had received in those final years before sadly dying, the pathways were given the funding to be able to be laid with Tarmac. To this point, the gardens had been visible from important common areas in the home, but they had not been easily accessible by wheelchair.
It so happened that my not for profit film project had discovered the importance of a wheelchair as part of the equipping of our studio.
There is nothing better than to push someone holding a handheld camera in a wheelchair to get an inexpensive long tracking shot, if one cannot afford the cost of a professional steady-cam. Which is about £30,000.
And so it transpired that I arranged to have a push by a carer around the grounds of this newly accessible set of pathways, only completed weeks before my stay, and I took with me my digital video camera.
In this phase I took 20 minutes filming, from which I edited 10 minutes of usable material, to which I added just a couple of minutes of additional footage shot within the house itself.
Once again, with the help of creative software that comes bundled with a Macintosh computer, I composed a soundtrack for my short film, and wrote a couple of poems during my stay one of which was directly inspired by the history of the estate, and by my discovery in my filmmaking trip of a small cluster of gravestones, where family pets had been buried at the turn of the 20th century.
In the end what I created became an homage to the quality of the care that I received in my week's stay, and although I was careful to ensure that the dignity of residents was retained, so that no one was filmed in person, the film made it evident what the purpose of this fabulous building was used for.
This was back in 2004, and earlier this year, in February 2012, this film was selected for exhibition at the International Festival of Disability Film held annually in Calgary, Canada.
One thing leads to another, and at that Festival were two of the organizers of the Moscow International Festival of Disability Film, and they saw my film and were interested in incorporating it into their Festival, which was held just last week in Moscow.
Unfortunately, they have a rule that films must have been made after 2007, and so this film was not eligible.
Fortunately, in about 2009, I had been commissioned to make a short film by my County Council in West Sussex, because word of my creative tendencies had reached some of the senior social workers within the authority.
And so I had been given a small grant to enable me to employ a cameraman, and to cover the costs of tapes and so forth, and out of that project came A Short Film About Independence.
This film has been used extensively for the training of social workers within the County and also further afield, so that for example I have travelled several times to Camden in London where social workers have been wanting to find out more about the way in which I have benefited from Self-Directed Support, whereby I am able to employ my own carers directly because my care budget is paid directly to me.
This film was acceptable to the Moscow organizers, and it was shown last week in Moscow.
When I first made the film, I had imagined that I would make a trilogy of films, what I have latterly, to call my Triptych, the first being the one described, the second a short film about interdependence, and the third a short film about dependence.
Hopefully the titles speak for themselves, so that in a progressive condition like multiple sclerosis it is perhaps inevitable that dependence might supersede independence.
However, just this week I received something from the multiple sclerosis Society that might encourage me to make an additional film, entitled a short film about hope.
At present, although I technically am diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, my condition remains fairly stable.
But these new drug trials holds out the hope of a new treatment that will stop the progression and deterioration that can be an ever present part of this chronic condition.
Like any hope in the context of a currently incurable condition, it must be treated with a degree of caution, and it may well be 10 years before trials of this drug satisfy appropriate medical authorities as to its efficacy.
The positive element in all of this is that the two drugs in question are both already approved from a safety point of view, in that they are already in use for patients with high blood pressure.
Anyway, it is quite interesting for me to feel that there is hope that my condition might continue to be stable, in which case the critical thing for me is to maintain a sense of perspective that is I believe already the reason why my short film about independence has been of interest.
Because I feel a strong sense of commitment to not only providing an insight into my dealing with this disabling condition, but perhaps at the same time providing some sense of insight into attitudes which perfectly healthy people may well find helpful in dealing with the pressures of daily life in the modern world.
I suppose put simply, I still have the power of speech, and as a consequence, new technology enables me to be able to continue to write. And potentially with the aid of a cameraman, to be able to write a film script that I can create a spoken sound track to, and edit.
Long may this continue. Who knows where it may lead me, and I suppose I must be grateful for the fact that in Britain today, we have the benefit of the kind of support for people in my situation so that I am able to have carers that enable me to remain positive and well cared for, and of course to quote my first film, I do have the consequential benefit of time. That most valuable of commodities.
My time is pretty much my own to decide how I should spend it, rather than chasing my tail to keep up my expensive mortgage. Because it would certainly be more expensive if I were to be part of the rat race.
Thursday 15 November 2012
Canine Intelligence?
I have a lovely dog called Oscar, who happens to be a girl dog, but this blog post is not about why my dog has a boys name. Something quite different.
Suffice to say we have been together a long time, and many people remark how healthy she is considering her age, which is about 14 or 15. I really can't be certain, simply because she was a rescue dog, and although she was still young when we first met her, her exact birth date is unknown.
That would make her in human terms about 100 years of age.
She is of mixed breeding, which for a dog is probably a good thing, in that she is healthier than many pedigree dogs that have been overbred for the sake of their pedigree.
She is also, in my estimation, a very intelligent dog. Thanks to her having once no doubt gone hungry, from a very early age she could be taught all kinds of simple tricks for the sake of a treat.
One of my favorite films is Contact, starring Jodie Foster and with a script based on a book written by Carl Sagan.
It is about the idea of first contact between humankind and extra-terrestrial intelligence.
When that first contact is made, it is detected by dogged listening to radio transmissions, targeting large areas of the heavens.
When that first contact comes, it is determined that it must be intelligent contact, because what is detected cannot possibly be a natural phenomenon.
It is a series of pulses which register every prime number between 1 and 100 from the smallest through to 100. In order.
Prime numbers are those numbers which are divisible only by themselves and one, and although there are circumstances in which for example the number of petals of a flower can be found to be arranged so that if counted they are a prime number, prime numbers do not occur otherwise in nature.
This in the film leads to the conclusion that it must be contact in the language of mathematics, and the product therefore of intelligence.
Whatever the likelihood or otherwise of the film scenario, it is certainly an intelligently scripted film, and Carl Sagan was a highly respected scientist, with a particular interest in asking questions of the kind that the film raises.
His work did much to popularize scientific thinking among the general public, and there is no doubt that the basis of the film is well thought through, and quite believable, however unlikely it might be that we should live to see such contact take place. Or in this way.
What I have been particularly struck by recently is the way in which my dog seems to bark in prime numbers.
Every time she is let into my small back garden, she will bark, and I cannot help but make a mental note of the number of times that she barks.
This is hardly a scientific study, and in fact it is probably something that is subject to that strange capacity that the brain has for making sense of things where there is no sense. Something that is described in the film The Da Vinci Code as scotoma.
In the context of that film, this is implied to be the capacity that the brain has to fill a vacuum with what it expects to perceive.
When I have checked for a dictionary definition of this, I have only been able to find it described as a condition where sight is partial in part of the eye, and I am reminded from my science education at school of how we all have a blind spot at the back of each eye where the optic nerve enters the back of the eye.
We do not perceive this generally as a blank spot in vision, and this is because the brain is able to make sense of the missing area of vision, filling in the gaps of our otherwise imperfect sight so that we see perfectly, or at least, think that we do.
Anyway, one two and three are all prime numbers, as is five, and so I suppose it may well be the case that there is nothing unusual in what I have perceived to be the case, and my dog is not performing some exceptional feat of mathematical exposition. It is just coincidence combined with my tendency to perceive occasional longer barks as if they are a combination of say any of those small numbers.
However, it does make me wonder the extent to which in nature prime numbers may occur as some accidental factor in such things as how many times a dog might bark.
This is probably something to do with the fact that I don't have enough to keep me active, and as a disabled person, I spend too much time staying around the house, and listening on the occasions when my dog hurls herself into the garden and behaves territorially.
But it is curious that I should continue to notice a tendency towards prime numbers in the frequency of my dogs’ bark frequency, and I would be interested to hear of any other circumstances in which anyone reading this might report similar occurrences.
I would not go so far as to imagine that this is an indication of some greater intelligence at play, more likely simply my tendency to rationalize something that doesn't require rationalization.
Suffice to say we have been together a long time, and many people remark how healthy she is considering her age, which is about 14 or 15. I really can't be certain, simply because she was a rescue dog, and although she was still young when we first met her, her exact birth date is unknown.
That would make her in human terms about 100 years of age.
She is of mixed breeding, which for a dog is probably a good thing, in that she is healthier than many pedigree dogs that have been overbred for the sake of their pedigree.
She is also, in my estimation, a very intelligent dog. Thanks to her having once no doubt gone hungry, from a very early age she could be taught all kinds of simple tricks for the sake of a treat.
One of my favorite films is Contact, starring Jodie Foster and with a script based on a book written by Carl Sagan.
It is about the idea of first contact between humankind and extra-terrestrial intelligence.
When that first contact is made, it is detected by dogged listening to radio transmissions, targeting large areas of the heavens.
When that first contact comes, it is determined that it must be intelligent contact, because what is detected cannot possibly be a natural phenomenon.
It is a series of pulses which register every prime number between 1 and 100 from the smallest through to 100. In order.
Prime numbers are those numbers which are divisible only by themselves and one, and although there are circumstances in which for example the number of petals of a flower can be found to be arranged so that if counted they are a prime number, prime numbers do not occur otherwise in nature.
This in the film leads to the conclusion that it must be contact in the language of mathematics, and the product therefore of intelligence.
Whatever the likelihood or otherwise of the film scenario, it is certainly an intelligently scripted film, and Carl Sagan was a highly respected scientist, with a particular interest in asking questions of the kind that the film raises.
His work did much to popularize scientific thinking among the general public, and there is no doubt that the basis of the film is well thought through, and quite believable, however unlikely it might be that we should live to see such contact take place. Or in this way.
What I have been particularly struck by recently is the way in which my dog seems to bark in prime numbers.
Every time she is let into my small back garden, she will bark, and I cannot help but make a mental note of the number of times that she barks.
This is hardly a scientific study, and in fact it is probably something that is subject to that strange capacity that the brain has for making sense of things where there is no sense. Something that is described in the film The Da Vinci Code as scotoma.
In the context of that film, this is implied to be the capacity that the brain has to fill a vacuum with what it expects to perceive.
When I have checked for a dictionary definition of this, I have only been able to find it described as a condition where sight is partial in part of the eye, and I am reminded from my science education at school of how we all have a blind spot at the back of each eye where the optic nerve enters the back of the eye.
We do not perceive this generally as a blank spot in vision, and this is because the brain is able to make sense of the missing area of vision, filling in the gaps of our otherwise imperfect sight so that we see perfectly, or at least, think that we do.
Anyway, one two and three are all prime numbers, as is five, and so I suppose it may well be the case that there is nothing unusual in what I have perceived to be the case, and my dog is not performing some exceptional feat of mathematical exposition. It is just coincidence combined with my tendency to perceive occasional longer barks as if they are a combination of say any of those small numbers.
However, it does make me wonder the extent to which in nature prime numbers may occur as some accidental factor in such things as how many times a dog might bark.
This is probably something to do with the fact that I don't have enough to keep me active, and as a disabled person, I spend too much time staying around the house, and listening on the occasions when my dog hurls herself into the garden and behaves territorially.
But it is curious that I should continue to notice a tendency towards prime numbers in the frequency of my dogs’ bark frequency, and I would be interested to hear of any other circumstances in which anyone reading this might report similar occurrences.
I would not go so far as to imagine that this is an indication of some greater intelligence at play, more likely simply my tendency to rationalize something that doesn't require rationalization.
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