It isn't every day that you finish something you started 20 years before.
But this week, hopefully just in time for Christmas, I have finished my first novel.
They say that everyone has a novel in them.
But I suspect whilst this may well be the case, not everybody will be able to have the luxury of the time it takes to write their novel.Or the obsession.
It was for me when I was around 30 years of age, single and without commitments, and therefore I was able to be selfish enough to devote the best part of a year of my life to writing the great majority of my first novel.
I never did quite complete it, although this week I have completed it. At least I think I have.
I have a friend that is doing me the honour of reading it and correcting it where necessary, and of course advising on where the sense of sentences can be improved.
I am rather well known for using 20 words when two will do, and often longer words than may be strictly necessary.
These are all of the kinds of things that are essential to enable someone to have the will to read a story that in my case has slight to about 110,000 words.
Perhaps a few less, unless of course my practised reader has any suggestions about additional chapters that might be necessary to complete this work.
And how the world has changed in those 20 years.
20 years ago computers were primitive to say the least, and mobile phones virtually non-existent.
My story does not need me to change the period in which it has been told in my manuscript, and does not require or would not benefit from the inclusion of an occasional mobile telephone.
And so it is preserved in its time capsule, written when I could devote two hours every morning to writing before I went to work full-time, and then spending an hour every evening correcting and often rewriting what I had written that morning.
And this six days a week for almost a year.
Before this project and certainly since I have written numerous short stories, and some not so short stories.
One particular story of mine I have written a 3000 word version of as one is the original which extends to nearly 15,000 words. Hardly a short story.
But completing my novel is certainly something that I feel is a significant event. Of course, it is a first novel, and I did not write it with the expectation of finding a publisher.
And indeed the entire world of publishing has transformed in the time that it has taken me to complete this work.
Now it is so much more straightforward to self publish, and there is so much less stigma associated with it. It is no longer considered to be simply vanity publishing.
And this year, I have almost christened the year of the Kindle, a totally new means by which books can be both published and consumed.
I have already published five volumes on my Kindle bookshelf, and I am hoping that if my editor/reader thinks it is worthwhile, I shall publish this one in the same way. With all proceeds heading for my chosen charity, the Queen Alexandra Hospital just across the road from where I lived in Worthing.
I don't think my next novel will take quite so long, I have an effect already started it, and in some respects this is the most difficult task of all, having a subject and then starting to write it.
This one, Bela, has been based on the PhD thesis of a friend from 20 years ago, who was studying as a mature student for a PhD in Art history.
It was a gift of an idea, and although I travelled substantially ostensibly to undertake research for it, a great deal has simply been invented as a context in which I can tell substantially the story of my friend's thesis.
A couple of times over the last 20 years I have considered that my story is a little worn out by the fact that so many other authors have written something similar, on an art history theme, but the great thing about the novel as a means of telling a story is that so much of it lies in the way in which the story emerges in the context of the individuals that are participants in the story.
And perhaps in some respects it is a different person, myself at just over 50 rather than just over 30, that is so much more able to understand important aspects of my characters and their motivations.
There it is, finally completed. And hopefully soon to be available on every computer with an Internet connection.
So please do consider checking out my Kindle bookshelf, and perhaps taking advantage of the fact that you can borrow it for 90 days free of charge from Amazon before considering purchasing it.
Amazon are offering something like the public lending right so that anyone whose book is borrowed from their Kindle library will get a share of a substantial sum that has been put aside for this purpose.
And you never know, perhaps proper publishers are keeping an eye on what is being published, so that they might see opportunities for new writing talent.
How the world has changed in just 20 years.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_2?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Stephen%20Page&search-alias=digital-text
Sunday, 16 December 2012
Friday, 7 December 2012
It's a long way before we get to Manhattan....
Quite extraordinary really that just yesterday £64 million of a potential lottery win went unclaimed and will now be spent on charitable causes.
How far we have come, although of course the government has been raising funds through a lottery since the 18th century.
One of my carers mused as to how she would have spent the money if it had been in her own bank account, and because of some of the discussions we have had recently in our Shower Chronicles, she confided that one of her dreams [just a dream] would be to build a particle accelerator.
This is clearly not a sensible proposal. When pressed, Charlie was much more likely to invest significant sums in social housing, the kind of housing for which there is a chronic shortage, certainly in this country and likely in every developed country.
But this interest in particle physics demonstrates the impact that our discussions whilst I have been having a shower have had.
Beginning to discuss the standard model for the structure of the nucleus of the atom seems naturally to lead to a discussion of nuclear fission.
I have always had a great fascination for the history of how this knowledge came about, and it has surfaced for me in my creative writing.
The final piece of a complex puzzle arrived in the form of one of Alastair Cooke’s Letters From America.
I had already discovered a great deal about the personalities that had been involved in contributing in some way to the discovery of the potential for splitting the atom.
America’s development of the first usable nuclear device, which so dramatically brought the second world war to a conclusion, goes back well before the commencement of the war, and is linked inextricably with the exodus from Europe of so many Jewish intellectuals.
Hungary in particular seems to have been central to so many of the personalities that have been directly involved as physicists in determining the structure of the atom, and then later the potential for fission.
Einstein himself had originally fled from Hungary in the wake of persecution. Initially to London, and then eventually to the United States.
The community of physicists engaged in this particular field of work probably all knew each other and of each other’s work.
Another Hungarian refugee called Leo Szilard had found his way to London in the early 1930s, and it is to him that the credit must be given for imagining the possibilities for the release of energy that would lead inexorably to the detonation of the first atomic device over Hiroshima in 1945.
It is recorded that he came to the conclusion of the potential for splitting the atom and releasing vast amounts of energy as he was walking along The Kingsway, a street in central London, and he was aware of the potential dangers if such knowledge were to be pursued, as it almost inevitably would, by scientists working for the Nazis.
Leo shared his thoughts with a colleague, also a refugee in London, and they both agreed that they must consult with the Old Man, which is how they referred to Einstein. They knew that coming from them, warnings about such potential horrors would mean nothing. They were, after all, simply refugees in England, and although working on research in physics with some of the finest minds at the time in England like Ernest Rutherford, they knew that what they perceived as a possibility must be expressed by someone of Einstein’s stature.
Leo was aware that although uranium is found in many places around the world, the only place in Europe where it was found in significant quantities was in Czechoslovakia.
Germany’s expansionist preoccupations focused on first Austria, and Czechoslovakia would soon follow.
Leo and his colleague knew that Einstein spent his summers in a holiday retreat in the states, and although they knew roughly where it was, they did not want simply to write to him, but to put their ideas and their concerns directly to him, and to see what he thought.
and so in 1938, they both traveled to the states to find the old man and lay their ideas before him in person.
They couldn’t find exactly where he was staying that first trip, but they returned the next year, early in 1939, and this time they did find him.
In his isolated summer retreat, Einstein agreed that what his countrymen and colleagues had to say was important, important enough for Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt. Which he did.
The consequence of that letter, signed also by Leo, was the setting up of what became known as the Manhattan Project, the scientists in which together developed those first devices that were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
It was perhaps the fact that the Germans had stopped all exports of uranium after they had invaded Czechoslovakia that most concerned scientists that understood something of the potential for such elements.
There was no doubt that the Germans had many scientists capable of stumbling upon on what had already been discovered almost accidentally by one scientist, and if one person had spotted the potential for unleashing such prodigious amounts of energy, then sooner or later someone else would do so. That is the nature of science.
How far we have come, although of course the government has been raising funds through a lottery since the 18th century.
One of my carers mused as to how she would have spent the money if it had been in her own bank account, and because of some of the discussions we have had recently in our Shower Chronicles, she confided that one of her dreams [just a dream] would be to build a particle accelerator.
This is clearly not a sensible proposal. When pressed, Charlie was much more likely to invest significant sums in social housing, the kind of housing for which there is a chronic shortage, certainly in this country and likely in every developed country.
But this interest in particle physics demonstrates the impact that our discussions whilst I have been having a shower have had.
Beginning to discuss the standard model for the structure of the nucleus of the atom seems naturally to lead to a discussion of nuclear fission.
I have always had a great fascination for the history of how this knowledge came about, and it has surfaced for me in my creative writing.
The final piece of a complex puzzle arrived in the form of one of Alastair Cooke’s Letters From America.
I had already discovered a great deal about the personalities that had been involved in contributing in some way to the discovery of the potential for splitting the atom.
America’s development of the first usable nuclear device, which so dramatically brought the second world war to a conclusion, goes back well before the commencement of the war, and is linked inextricably with the exodus from Europe of so many Jewish intellectuals.
Hungary in particular seems to have been central to so many of the personalities that have been directly involved as physicists in determining the structure of the atom, and then later the potential for fission.
Einstein himself had originally fled from Hungary in the wake of persecution. Initially to London, and then eventually to the United States.
The community of physicists engaged in this particular field of work probably all knew each other and of each other’s work.
Another Hungarian refugee called Leo Szilard had found his way to London in the early 1930s, and it is to him that the credit must be given for imagining the possibilities for the release of energy that would lead inexorably to the detonation of the first atomic device over Hiroshima in 1945.
It is recorded that he came to the conclusion of the potential for splitting the atom and releasing vast amounts of energy as he was walking along The Kingsway, a street in central London, and he was aware of the potential dangers if such knowledge were to be pursued, as it almost inevitably would, by scientists working for the Nazis.
Leo shared his thoughts with a colleague, also a refugee in London, and they both agreed that they must consult with the Old Man, which is how they referred to Einstein. They knew that coming from them, warnings about such potential horrors would mean nothing. They were, after all, simply refugees in England, and although working on research in physics with some of the finest minds at the time in England like Ernest Rutherford, they knew that what they perceived as a possibility must be expressed by someone of Einstein’s stature.
Leo was aware that although uranium is found in many places around the world, the only place in Europe where it was found in significant quantities was in Czechoslovakia.
Germany’s expansionist preoccupations focused on first Austria, and Czechoslovakia would soon follow.
Leo and his colleague knew that Einstein spent his summers in a holiday retreat in the states, and although they knew roughly where it was, they did not want simply to write to him, but to put their ideas and their concerns directly to him, and to see what he thought.
and so in 1938, they both traveled to the states to find the old man and lay their ideas before him in person.
They couldn’t find exactly where he was staying that first trip, but they returned the next year, early in 1939, and this time they did find him.
In his isolated summer retreat, Einstein agreed that what his countrymen and colleagues had to say was important, important enough for Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt. Which he did.
The consequence of that letter, signed also by Leo, was the setting up of what became known as the Manhattan Project, the scientists in which together developed those first devices that were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
It was perhaps the fact that the Germans had stopped all exports of uranium after they had invaded Czechoslovakia that most concerned scientists that understood something of the potential for such elements.
There was no doubt that the Germans had many scientists capable of stumbling upon on what had already been discovered almost accidentally by one scientist, and if one person had spotted the potential for unleashing such prodigious amounts of energy, then sooner or later someone else would do so. That is the nature of science.
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
The Shower Chronicles
Over the past few weeks, an idea has been germinating in my mind, stimulated by the conversations that have taken place when I had been showered each day by one particular carer.
Most of you, certainly in the UK, will be familiar with an American television series entitled The Big Bang Theory.
This has probably done more to improve the general understanding among the population of some esoteric theories, particularly concerning particle physics and so on.
Although I am by no means familiar with many such theories, my training has been to have obtained a degree in philosophy, which has in itself introduced me to some extraordinary ideas.
Recently, this particular carer has expressed some interest in some of the ideas that she has been introduced to through The Big Bang Theory.
We have therefore begun a series of conscious discussions which we have entitled The Shower Chronicles, which I have decided to begin to write down an account of before I forget about them.
It is a sad fact of human discourse that it tends to be forgotten quite quickly unless it is written down.
There have been some memorable discussions already, and I enjoy hearing about the way in which the family responds to this new-found knowledge expressed in conversations after work.
This morning was an interesting case in point.
Whilst I was otherwise occupied, I suggested that my carer look up on the Internet the philosophers song from the Monty Python team.
This has provided much opportunity for discussion, and other subjects for research.
Such as the work of the philosopher Wittgenstein, whose name is one of those mentioned in the Monty Python sketch.
I am finding it interesting to revisit some of my studies from 30 years ago, and interesting conversations have resulted.
So for example Wittgenstein only published one book in his lifetime, from which I can only remember one item, when the philosopher states simply that when we come across something about which we cannot speak with certainty, we must remain silent.
This is an unusual case of somebody admitting boundaries to knowledge. And definitely something to store away for Smalltalk at dinner time.
We have also discussed some of the writings of Plato, who records conversations with his tutor Socrates. About whom nothing would be known if Plato had not recorded his Dialogues with Socrates, and thus given the reputation that Socrates has of being one of the worlds greatest ever philosophers.
I sometimes feel as if I am like Professor Higgins from the musical version of the play in which he places a bet with a friend that he can make a Duchess from a flower seller, with extraordinary consequences.
It is wonderful for me to have a reminder of my distant academic past, and an excuse to brush up on so many of the things I have already forgotten from those days.
It is never too late for self improvement, and a reminder of previous education achievements is never a bad thing.
As The Shower Chronicles progress, who knows that they might not make for an interesting series of essays about interesting subjects, explored under exceptional circumstances perhaps, whilst I am simply undertaking my morning ablutions.
It is perhaps yet another example that I have too much time to spend on nothing of consequence, but it certainly makes for a more interesting time in the shower.
And I await with interest the stories of how these extraordinary moments of conversation are received, often with surprising results.
Nothing like keeping one's family on their toes.
Most of you, certainly in the UK, will be familiar with an American television series entitled The Big Bang Theory.
This has probably done more to improve the general understanding among the population of some esoteric theories, particularly concerning particle physics and so on.
Although I am by no means familiar with many such theories, my training has been to have obtained a degree in philosophy, which has in itself introduced me to some extraordinary ideas.
Recently, this particular carer has expressed some interest in some of the ideas that she has been introduced to through The Big Bang Theory.
We have therefore begun a series of conscious discussions which we have entitled The Shower Chronicles, which I have decided to begin to write down an account of before I forget about them.
It is a sad fact of human discourse that it tends to be forgotten quite quickly unless it is written down.
There have been some memorable discussions already, and I enjoy hearing about the way in which the family responds to this new-found knowledge expressed in conversations after work.
This morning was an interesting case in point.
Whilst I was otherwise occupied, I suggested that my carer look up on the Internet the philosophers song from the Monty Python team.
This has provided much opportunity for discussion, and other subjects for research.
Such as the work of the philosopher Wittgenstein, whose name is one of those mentioned in the Monty Python sketch.
I am finding it interesting to revisit some of my studies from 30 years ago, and interesting conversations have resulted.
So for example Wittgenstein only published one book in his lifetime, from which I can only remember one item, when the philosopher states simply that when we come across something about which we cannot speak with certainty, we must remain silent.
This is an unusual case of somebody admitting boundaries to knowledge. And definitely something to store away for Smalltalk at dinner time.
We have also discussed some of the writings of Plato, who records conversations with his tutor Socrates. About whom nothing would be known if Plato had not recorded his Dialogues with Socrates, and thus given the reputation that Socrates has of being one of the worlds greatest ever philosophers.
I sometimes feel as if I am like Professor Higgins from the musical version of the play in which he places a bet with a friend that he can make a Duchess from a flower seller, with extraordinary consequences.
It is wonderful for me to have a reminder of my distant academic past, and an excuse to brush up on so many of the things I have already forgotten from those days.
It is never too late for self improvement, and a reminder of previous education achievements is never a bad thing.
As The Shower Chronicles progress, who knows that they might not make for an interesting series of essays about interesting subjects, explored under exceptional circumstances perhaps, whilst I am simply undertaking my morning ablutions.
It is perhaps yet another example that I have too much time to spend on nothing of consequence, but it certainly makes for a more interesting time in the shower.
And I await with interest the stories of how these extraordinary moments of conversation are received, often with surprising results.
Nothing like keeping one's family on their toes.
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Sixty Years Studying The Natural World
There has been a very interesting series of documentaries celebrating the many years David Attenborough has spent exploring the Natural World.
In the time that he has been seen as a fixture in our understanding of Nature, much has changed in the perceptions we have of the Natural World.
In one of the programs, he talked about the work of a young student in Chicago, Stanley Miller, who in 1953 spent six months looking at a practical experiment that was designed to discover if the conditions supposed to have existed during the early years of the primitive Earth might have generated Life.
Suffice to say he created in the test tube many of the organic compounds considered necessary as the building blocks for Life itself.
Laser analysis in 1995 of his test results established that even more complex organic chemicals had been created in the circumstances of his experiment, and in more recent times, it has been shown that deep under the sea there are places where living organisms survive around the heat of volcanic vents which generate entire ecosystems, deep beneath the sea, that challenge our preconceptions of the way in which life can be established.
these experiments in no way provide any sense of certainty over the creation of life on Earth, and do not lessen the sense of wonder at the variety and complexity of it.
There are so many questions to answer about how fragile the conditions within which the Earth finds itself to have found a suitable crucible in which to fashion life, that a sense of wonder is still undiminished.
That the sun is clearly essential for life seems to be equally balanced with the fact that the solar winds might have stripped our atmosphere, if it was not for the magnetic fields generated because of the core.
We have much to be grateful for, and much still to discover. And no doubt much that must remain unknown to us.
In the time that he has been seen as a fixture in our understanding of Nature, much has changed in the perceptions we have of the Natural World.
In one of the programs, he talked about the work of a young student in Chicago, Stanley Miller, who in 1953 spent six months looking at a practical experiment that was designed to discover if the conditions supposed to have existed during the early years of the primitive Earth might have generated Life.
Suffice to say he created in the test tube many of the organic compounds considered necessary as the building blocks for Life itself.
Laser analysis in 1995 of his test results established that even more complex organic chemicals had been created in the circumstances of his experiment, and in more recent times, it has been shown that deep under the sea there are places where living organisms survive around the heat of volcanic vents which generate entire ecosystems, deep beneath the sea, that challenge our preconceptions of the way in which life can be established.
these experiments in no way provide any sense of certainty over the creation of life on Earth, and do not lessen the sense of wonder at the variety and complexity of it.
There are so many questions to answer about how fragile the conditions within which the Earth finds itself to have found a suitable crucible in which to fashion life, that a sense of wonder is still undiminished.
That the sun is clearly essential for life seems to be equally balanced with the fact that the solar winds might have stripped our atmosphere, if it was not for the magnetic fields generated because of the core.
We have much to be grateful for, and much still to discover. And no doubt much that must remain unknown to us.
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
A New Kind Of Publishing
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.
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.
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.
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