Atonement

Time to return to 'Atonement', just about two months after the purchase noticed at reference 1.

My first step was to ask google for something suitable by way of illustration, to find that the top results for a search for 'atonement' were dominated by the film of that name. But it seemed to me more appropriate to go back to something earlier, as I imagine McEwan did at some point during the writing of the book, or at least at the time he was choosing the title. He may not have dug deeper than the OED, but I offer the second half of Chapter 16 of Leviticus, lifted from reference 4, the original atonement, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, in a translation which is perhaps a little earlier than that of 2004 from Robert Alter, the most recent on my shelf. But in a form more convenient to snip.

All of which has led me to ponder about the value of the ritual atonement there enjoined on us, with that of Briony Tallis, not the only person in the story with something to atone for, but the one in which the book takes the most interest, taking a rather different form.

Once again the book has no contents page. But it is arranged in three parts plus a short coda. Part 1, the deed, starting page 3. Scenes of country life with people of the better sort. Part 2, what becomes of the victim of the deed, starting page 191. Scenes from the retreat leading up to the Dunkirk evacuation. We leave the victim damaged but alive (while in the film I think he dies at this point). Part 3, the atonement, starting page 269. Scenes of nurse training and hospital life in the early days of the war. The coming together again of  the three main characters, leaving them alive and well. Coda, starting page 353. A coda in which the perpetrator of the deed, by now an old, established and successful writer, is sentenced to death by vascular dementia. With the writing all getting a bit tied up in knots at this point, with speculations about what sort of a book the perpetrator can or should write by way of atonement. With the body of the present book being a stab at what she might have written. A process sometimes described as disappearing up one's own orifice.

The army parts of part 2 and the hospital parts of part 3 look to have been lovingly researched and crafted, with the period colour in large part, at least for me, eclipsing what is supposed to be the main story line. Something of the same fascination with matters medical as we had in 'Saturday' (see reference 2). A rather morbid fascination to my mind, a fascination which makes one feel rather uncomfortable, in rather the same way that the similarly morbid fascination that Hirst exhibits with his cutting up of bodies does. More healthy, or at least more interesting to me, is the 'Lord of the Flies' angle, the interest in how order in a very orderly institution like a modern army, can break down at the limit. An angle which crops up in a very similar context in another book which I happened to be reading at about the same time, Rambaud's 'Il neigeait' (see reference 5), on which I shall report still further in due course.

But I remain impressed by the last part of part 1, where McEwan tries to breathe some life into the deed. Why would Briony have cooked up this terrible accusation, why would she have persisted through the subsequent trial and how did she come to be believed? Pages which should perhaps be required reading for those involved in questioning young people making accusations about crimes of sex or violence.

Impressed despite the fact that the real perpetrator of the assault in question is more or less lost from view, and ends up marrying his victim in what seems a rather contrived twist of the plot. What had he been thinking about all those years when Briony's victim was in prison, the subject of a miscarriage of justice? I associate to the way that we so often these days seem to be more interested in the police, blaming the police more than the perpetrators of the crimes they investigate.

I close with the thought that father confessors, therapists and social workers have an important role in cases such as these, where someone wants to atone for something really bad, some time after the something happened. Intervention from people of that sort might have produced a better outcome than that Briony managed on a DIY basis.

I associate now to the 'amende honorable', deployed by the French certainly up to the end of the 17th century, a sort of public humiliation & sacred expiation, often enacted/inflicted immediately before temporal punishment. See for example, Madame de Sévigné on the subject of Madame de Brinvilliers, in her letter to her daughter of 17th July, 1676, a letter which is supplemented by a substantial note, at least in the Pléiade edition. An account which differs a little from that in wikipedia and which includes the thought that the decapitated body having been burnt and the ashes having been thrown to the winds, that they were all now breathing in essence of Brinvilliers. Sorting out the two versions is left as an exercise to the keener reader.

Oddly, having finished the book a couple of weeks or so now, I am having great difficulty reading any more of it now, whereas usually I quite happy to skim through a book once again, after I have read it. Or read the first few chapters again. Perhaps my interest has been zapped by the tiresome twist in the coda.

Reference 1: Atonement: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/it-is-forbidden-to-blow.html.

Reference 2: Saturday: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/a-tale-of-london-life.html.

Reference 3: McEwan: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/thoughts-of-and-prompted-by-mcewan.html.

Reference 4: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/twittering.html.

A diversion

Yesterday to an excellent lecture, given by a rather flamboyant French mathematician, in honour of John Nash, the chap about whom they made a film, with Russell Crowe (of all people) impersonating the US mathematician. Cédric Villani being the French mathematician, on this occasion wearing a different insect brooch from that illustrated. I shall return to the lecture in due course, but for the present I notice fractional derivation of a function, something of which I had not previously heard. The extension of derivation as a function of positive integers to derivation as a function of the complex plane.

From where wikipedia takes me to the gamma function, a function of which I have heard in connection with statistics, but I don't think that I ever knew that the gamma function was the extension of the well-known factorial function to the complex plane, the second such extension of the day. This one being quite a reasonable extension, only breaking down, in a reasonably controlled way, at the negative integers. And so earns the title of a meromorphic function, reserved for functions which are not quite well behaved enough to be called regular. Also the Mellin transform of the negative exponential function - a transform named for a Finnish nationalist who backed the wrong horse in the relativity debate back at the beginning of the 20th century. Which all goes to show that the Finns have more to their credit than Sibelius and birch wine. See reference 2.

I wonder if it is possible to prove that the gamma function is the only such extension?

A reminder of how joined-up mathematics is, with all sorts of strange connections all over the shop.

Reference 1: http://cedricvillani.org/.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/twittering.html.

A new diagram

It is around nine months, three quarters of a year, since I had a decent diagram of the brain (see reference 1), so today I am moved to create another.

The large rectangle is a sheet of blue cortex containing pink processes, with most of the process structure being expressed two dimensionally, but with the possibility of overlap and overlay.

Some of these processes will only exist in the sheet and make no connections either in or out. But, other things being equal, processes taking input from the senses will have more power than those that do not. Nothing like a bit of real input to get the brain going.

But processes will have exclusive access to neither input nor output. We might have, for example, several processes trying to connect to the motor systems for the left leg and we will need some kind of conflict resolution machinery. Perhaps something as simple as winner take all. And perhaps something else to make sure that the same process gets control of both legs – at least nearly all of the time. There will be at least some of the control machinery deployed in relational databases such as Oracle – but it seems very unlikely that things will be as cut and dried as they are there. Two-phase commit protocol not (see reference 2).

These processes will have a life of their own and they will have a life cycle. They might replicate. They might be spawned from some stored template. They might wax and wane, they might expand and contract. Powerful processes might take space (and resources) from neighbouring but weaker processes. Processes will also be subject to outside influences: the host environment might, for example, be able to simply switch one off, in the way of Task Manager on a Windows PC. Or perhaps not. Perhaps processes in brains, like processes on computers, will be able to run out of control.

Processes will have power, a positive real number which expresses, in some way, how much is going on – although I am not yet clear whether this is an input or an output – or perhaps a bit of both? Perhaps processes will have power at a point, with the power of the process as a whole being the integral over the area of the process. We might say that the area of the process rectangle is 1 and the maximum value of point power is 1, giving a maximum possible process power of 1, only reached by a single process taking all the available resources. We might also measure power in from sensory areas and power out to motor areas.

Some of these processes will be conscious and I need to think a bit more about how the threads, the several processes – maybe one for touch, one for hearing, one for one’s sense of breathing and several for sight – making up any particular conscious experience need to be related, need to be joined together. Does one need to align them next to each other, rather in the way that the long strands of complex proteins get lined up for the purposes of productive interaction? Does one lie one on top of the other? Or do we just need sufficient overlap, for example of processes B and C above? Or is the simple geometry suggested by the diagram not helpful at all?

Conscious processes will have significant power, although the relationship between power and consciousness is more complicated than just saying that the process is conscious if it has enough power, if power is greater than some constant or other. But there might be a necessary but not sufficient condition of that sort.

I also need to think about how the processes talk to the global workspace, which I see as a place where processes can talk to each other, where data can be stored for a while. But my thought is that it is quite a small space, used for sharing data about at the level of the word. So there might be a bit of global workspace saying that a certain horse is the present object of attention. And perhaps the space as a whole can be thought of as a character string, formatted as a bracketed, labelled list, rather in the way of html. For example: ‘workspace(1=horse(brown tail=long) 2=six colour=red tone=bad pain=severe)’.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/its-dogs-life.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-phase_commit_protocol.

Enough

Both the London Tate galleries are well presented places containing a lot of good stuff - not least the attractive members facilities at £94 a year.

However, having now been members for several years, our use of both places is falling off. Furthermore, there has been a lot of coverage in the national press in recent weeks of what I regard as Tate Junk. Stuff into which the art establishment has been conned into putting public money. Both having the stuff and making a lot of pomp & circumstance about it is a double whammy - so my bit of private money has today been withdrawn.

If I feel the need for junk there is usually some to be found online at Hiram Butler (see references 1 and 2). No need to trek into town at all.

Reference 1: http://hirambutler.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hiram.

Behind the shed

Readers of the 'Thomas the Tank Engine' books will remember that there were two sorts of disaster that could befall a tank engine. First, falling foul of the Fat Controller and second, being sent behind the shed.

As it happened, one of the people we visited during our week in Ashburton was very keen on Land Rovers, never missing an opportunity to point one out, either in a car park or on the road. We did not get around to taking him to see what was on show at the dealer in Marsh Barton (see reference 1), but we decided that he would probably not want to see all the Land Rovers behind this shed at Ashburton, in what used to be the goods yard there. A town where some at least of the customers used them for real, rather than for showing off in suburban housing estates.

Reference 1: http://www.matford.exeter.landrover.co.uk/.

Cold frame

A serious cold frame, complete with wheels to help with getting the lids on and off. A feature I have never come across before, but one which one of the party claimed was the regular & proper way to do it.

Group search key: stb.

Espalier not

A new to me way of pruning a fruit tree. A sort of rotary espalier without the wall to tie it to.

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Cedar

A shot of one of the trees thought to be a western cedar at Stourhead. In big, it does give something of the idea of the thing.

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Bark

A not very striking shot of the rather striking bark of a dead oak tree at Stourhead. Plenty of habitat for endangered species and a fit subject for a photographer more arty than I. Perhaps black and white.

Quite a lot of old trees on the estate, but there were plenty of signs of succession planning.

Group search key: stb.

Pew

The entrance to the royal box in the parish church at Stourhead. A living presumably very much in the gift of the royals in question, the Hoares (the people who provide discrete baking services for the very rich). The sides of the box were high enough so that the proles in the body of the church could not see what the toffs were up to. Or not up to, being asleep in front of their fire.

Rather splendid, but a little dowdy & country compared with that at Esher. See reference 1 for the occasion, although there is no relevant illustration there.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/project-proust-1.html.

Group search key: stb.

Stourhead

Having passed the brown sign to Stourhead (off the A303, a little to the west of Stonehenge) what must be getting on for a hundred times, we finally made it there last Saturday.

A house, just to the left of the blue oak leaf & house icons middle right on the illustration left, with a famous landscaped garden with lakes stretching from there to the left. Complete with a fine range of classical follies, follies which are not at all like the sort of thing that the heir to the throne has in his Gloucestershire garden. These last being things which an 18th century Whig would have been appalled by.

The garden had been contrived in the bottom of the valleys which contain the head waters of the River Stour - hence the name of the house - waters which flow south, eventually making their way to Christchurch and joining the River Avon just before they get to Christchurch harbour, just behind the Hengistbury Head on which I used to climb during the course of family holidays in and around Bournemouth. And which now seems very much smaller than it did when I was a child.

A garden arranged, as it were with rings. Beech woods on the crests of the hills above the valleys, lakes on the bottoms, arranged on various levels, and gardens in between. The gardens being mainly notable for the rhododendrons in the spring and the exotic pines all year round. There were some western cedars which were particularly striking, a bit like outsize inverted umbrellas. At least I remember them being called such, but google talks about western red cedars as large, single trunked forest trees, whereas these had half a dozen or so subsidiary trunks springing from the roots of the main trunk, this last not always being present.

A house with a lot of fancy plaster & paintwork and a lot of not very good pictures. One rather amusing room containing, inter alia, a number of semi-naked girls on the walls, all very fluffy and tasteful, with someone clearly having had a taste for this sort of thing, nicely complemented by a photograph on the desk of one of the daughters of the house, done up St. Trinian's style with a rather short skirt.

A newish café, a simple pitched roof affair, not like the fancy glass affair at Anglesey Abbey at all.

Lunch at the 'Spread Eagle' pub (see reference 1) which seems to be part of the estate, along with the quite old parish church and some estate cottages. A decent tomato soup followed by a substantial ham sandwich. Ham adequate rather than good and I failed to get them to dispense with all the trimmings. Good service, although we got into a great old muddle when it turned out that someone had paid our bill rather than his own - a rather careless someone as our bill was half as much again as his.

A well stocked second hand book shop (far superior to that at Polesden Lacey), where I was glad to pick up two volumes of the memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne, something to do with an Irish adventurer in the French service, reporting from the second half of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th. So far lots of pleasant anecdotes about the silly goings on in the dying days of the ancien régime. No wonder they got chucked out. Sturdy, properly bound paperback from Mercure de France. I think what they call broché, not something we do over here.

Unusually for a National Trust place, unusual at least in my experience, not very keen on dogs, which are only allowed at certain times and then only on short leads. We could only think that the garden experience being essentially a fairly narrow path around the lakes, dogs would be a pain for the people who did not own them.

Reference 1: http://www.spreadeagleinn.com/.

Group search key: stb.

Ancient and modern

Bristles were starting to come adrift from my Epsom toothbrush (as opposed to my less used travelling toothbrush), so clearly time for a makeover.

First attempt went to BH, who came home from an Ashburton chemist with the brush left. On closer inspection, this turned out to be a vibrating, disposable brush, powered by a battery somehow embedded in the handle. The brush also seemed to involve several different kinds of bristles, actually plastic prongs of various shapes and sizes. Not my sort of thing at all.

So the second attempt went to me at the Tavistock branch of Boots. I eventually found the rack of toothbrushes, but they all seemed to take the appearance of children's toys; not the sort of thing I wanted first thing in the morning at all. So off to ask the young man at the till, who explained, very unctuously, that he understood exactly how I felt and carried me back to the rack for a closer inspection. After a while he found something which was more or less a replica of what I had already: the bristles may not have come from a pig, but they were all bristle like and they were all the same shape and size, even if they were two tone. Sold. And very satisfactory it has proved too.

While BH is very happy with what has become her new toy.

With thanks to Filenet, now a more or less invisible division of IBM and once the inventor of a product called Panagon, for the blue tooth mug, rather heavy for its size. With the word 'Panagon' having started life as what the Californian marketing people called an empty vessel; a word which can be easily said and which is memorable - but which had no prior meaning. Just a vaguely mathematical association, entirely suitable for the purpose, from the 'agon' bit at the end.

Cloth and its foldings

From time to time I mention, bang on even, about painters who are fascinated by cloth and its foldings.

So I was pleased to find today that Leonardo's fascination from southern Europe, noticed at reference 1, was complemented by Dürer's contemporary fascination from northern Europe.

So, 'Six Studies of Pillows', 1493. A picture which turned up in Bostridge's recent book about the 'Winterreise' - for reasons which I have yet to read about.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/abstract-expressionism.html.

Spirit world

The handsome commemoration tablet attached to the Paington Spiritualist Church, presumably built after the first world war, when contact with the spirit world thrived. A substantial but dull single storey building, but much improved by a handsome front garden, a bit of which can be seen left.

A garden which looked well opposite an otherwise rather run-down parade of shops.

Group search key: pcb.

Memorial

The Singer memorial.

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Tower

The tower of St. Paul's church. Most unusual; must have been one of the very last church towers built in the United Kingdom.

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Chipper

The Paington chipper, with thanks to google for the image.

Group search key: pcb.

Two follies

About a week ago now, a day involving two Devon follies, not to say folies de grandeur.

The first was the castle at Berry Pomeroy, tastefully presented by English Heritage. Originally built as a base from which to fight the Yorkist corner in the Devon episodes of the Wars of the Roses, subsequently bought by the Protector Somerset who got the chop after leading the wrong faction in the time of Edward VI and with the grand rebuilding, the ruins of which are what one sees now, falling to his son.

The grandest bit was the north wing, the pillars of which can be seen in the illustration above, including a large hall and a very long exercise & flirting gallery above. The place fell into disuse not that long after the unfinished rebuilding campaign, and lots of materials - like beams, lead and glass - found their way to another house in Wiltshire, better located for access to the all-important London.

One wonders at the stability of the remaining pillars, originally separating the windows, but one assumes that the heritage people know their stuff. Maybe the are even still a few craft trained veterans from the days of the Ministry of Works, the people who used to stick little blue plaques to the entrances of places such as this.

There were lots of birds - swallows, martens and crows - and at least one bees' nest. There was talk of bats - but the object described as a dead bat with great solemnity and clicking of big camera by a fellow senior turned out, after he had departed, to be nothing more interesting than a dead swallow.

Nice views from the north wing across the valley to the woods opposite. Unconfirmed sighting of buzzard.

Good place for walks if one was inclined, which were not, preferring to push onto Paignton. Where at the southern end of the beach we had some very fair fish and chips from the Pelican Cafe - with old style seaside caff proprietors, not into accents on e's or anything pretentious like that, although an energetic salesman from one of their wholesalers was trying to get them to upgrade their menu a bit.

Stolled back to the northern end, where we tried to get into the imposing red brick church of St. Paul at Preston, The foundation stone was laid in January 1939, in the presence of the then Bishop of Exeter, presumably at a time when the Church of England was in better shape that it is now. Sadly we could not get through to the church, despite their being a seniors' thé dansant in the church hall.

But quite by chance, we did come across the second folie, a handsome, if rather heavy, late Victorian mansion called Oldway Mansion, built for a leading member of the Singer family, the people who invented the sewing machine. Complete with very fine gardens, a park, a triumphal arch and a round red brick pavilion for horseback exercise in inclement weather. Of especial interest to BH as her mother had played with a couple of Singer twins at the time when her family used to take summer holidays in Paington, complete with maid. But the dates do not quite work: the Singers did not use the Mansion for very long and the twins must have been based somewhere else.

The mansion is now in the hands of the Council, who now have no use for it and discussions, legal and otherwise, have been going on with a hotel developer for some time. I imagine that they are squabbling about what the developers are allowed to do to the building and how much of the park and gardens they are allowed to appropriate to hotel and car park use - just like at our rather more modest Nonsuch Mansion here at Epsom. In the meantime it stands empty, presumably slowly rotting away.

And thinking of Nonsuch Mansion, the handsome new cafeteria built at Chiswick House is just the sort of thing that they should build when they dump the hotel developers and knock the mansion down. Keep Nonsuch Park for the residents not for the hotels! See reference 2.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldway_Mansion.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/tricky-heritage.html.

Group search key: pcb.

New word

From time to time over the years I have wondered what pier glasses were. And guessed that they were the high mirrors, maybe three or four times as high as they were wide, that you had in tailors. Set in a stand which allowed them to swivel horizontally. In the shape of a pier or pillar.

Until this morning, when I was moved to consult OED which listed 'pier glass' among the compounds which could be made with 'pier', but which did not offer any clues as to its shape.

Reduced to wikipedia, which has a short entry, including this splendid picture, which explains that pier glasses were mirrors fixed to the piers between the windows which used to line the outside walls of fancy rooms in fancy houses in the 18th century, with these particular ones coming from the Amalienburg Pavilion, Schloss Nymphenburg, a few yards to the east of gmaps 48.1561191, 11.498211. My only complaint of wikipedia being the slight misspelling of 'Amalienburg', as gmaps could not find 'Amalenburg'. Slightly puzzling as google is generally quite good at misspellings.

Perhaps having all these windows, which were handy for letting in light but which were not so handy for letting in a great deal of cold (as can be attested by the trusties in our own stately homes), was as much an assertion of wealth as anything else.

Also reminded of the Petit Trianon, also built as a present for a bored wife. First thought was that the Bavarians had copied the French, as they did in so much, to the point of better class Bavarians speaking French rather than German, but it turns out that the Petit Trianon came second and was built in what was then the latest Grecian fashion. Rococo old hat in France by 1760.

In any event, the episode confirms that I had confused mirrors which look like pillars with mirrors which are fixed on pillars. Not the same thing at all.

Reference 1: http://www.schloss-nymphenburg.de/englisch/p-palaces/amalien.htm.

Progress report

The families noticed at reference 1 did not stay at the chapel for long, if indeed that is where they went, as they have now taken up residence in Longmead Road, at the top of Roy Richmond Way, just up from what was Roy's Epsom Coaches. At least two caravans, one sulky, several chickens (fighting cocks or otherwise) and the horse. One circle of grass eaten & trodden down to the mud so far, second circle in progress.

Perhaps they know the people in the caravan which has been parked in Blenheim Road for some months now. See reference 2. Or those in the suspiciously parked camper van near Screwfix.

Presumably the commercial tenants down Blenheim Road are not bothered enough to get one of the 28 day orders mentioned at reference 1. They presumably don't care that, what with a fair bit of rubbish leaking out of the tip operation, the whole road is getting to look a bit squalid.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/residue.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/a-new-sort-of-rubbish-1.html.

Ella Artisan Baker

A lady baker of Ashburton who does not have her own website - clearly far too busy baking to bother with that sort of thing - so I thought she deserved a puff.

In the course of a week I probably took half a dozen or more small white tin loaves off her. Good, ordinary white bread, of a sort which is hard to buy anywhere near Epsom. Just bread: no onions, olives, pumpkin seeds or anything else.

One wholemeal loaf, good but a bit heavy for everyday consumption as I like to do some volume when I eat. Maybe involving some rye, but again, just flour and no pumpkin or any other kinds of seeds or lumps.

Two Eccles cakes. Fruity & juicy.

Two pear slices. A sort of spongy tart with pear in the sponge and pastry underneath. Maybe some confectioners' custard or something of that sort involved as well.

Two cinnamon swirls. A variation on the Chelsea bun theme - but without all the sugary goo. Cinnamon dusted on rather than added to the flour, so the bun was still white inside rather than brown.

A variety of fancy bread which we did not try on this occasion. But you do need to be careful about your day as there is a timetable.

An excellent addition to the Ashburton scene. Long may she reign!

PS: she also collected the best baker award from DevonLife in 2013 (see reference 1). Which is not quite as grand as it sounds as DevonLife have lots of categories, so everyone is a winner. Bit like village vegetable shows these days.

Reference 1: http://www.devonlife.co.uk/home.

The real agatha

The Oxfam shop in Tavistock being a mere shadow of its former vinyl stocked glory, last week we switched to the nearby St. Luke's Hospice shop, another very worthwhile charity.

Now, as it happens, I do most of my Agatha reading in the decent but dull (and incomplete) Heron edition bought on ebay and noticed at reference 1. So I was pleased to come across a more authentic edition of the well known Poirot story 'After the Funeral', sushade for television in 2005. Originally published in 1954 at what was then the significant sum of 10/6 but sold in this Book Club Selection edition for 3/6. And subsequently sold to me for what I thought was the slightly strong price of £2.50, nearly ten times the Book Club price. Just as well that it was for a good cause.

And apart from that, I also thought that the cover was worth it. The real fifties flavour for a trashy novel, this one struggling to engage with the new tone set for sex & violence by Ian Fleming in 'Casino Royale' the year before. A sort of bridge between the thirties and the sixties.

And while Agatha is attempting, not altogether successfully, to update her formula, we were left wondering whether she read any Fleming herself? Do writers read the opposition or do they rely on their publishers to tell them what they need to know?

There was, of course, no way that she could have foreseen how she would be picked up by the heritage branch of the television industry, much more interested in steam locomotion and the domestic arrangements in the small country houses of that time than in sex & violence.

PS: adding the book to the collection, I collected a bonus point as this particular yarn was hitherto missing.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/agatha.html.

Tweeting in the provinces

Time to complement the report at reference 1 about larger birds.

There have been more buzzards, but no more owls, the tethered owl at reference 2 not counting as a tweet. One heron.

There were lots of small birds, particularly in the hedgerows and at visitor attractions (which often include bird feeding stations), but they have been frustrating in that I was often close enough to see them clearly, but without being able to identify them. My small bird lore has clearly withered away, what with weakening memory and Epsom not running to much more than robins and great tits.

That said, there were confirmed sightings of quite a lot of chaffinches and some more or less confirmed sightings of greenfinches - where I say more or less because the birds in question seemed a lot smaller and a lot less green than the greenfinches which I remember from Hambledon, at the back of the principal seat of the Hampshire Butlers, butlers who once aided & abetted the escape of the prince who went on to become the grateful Charles II. Our temporary home while on detached duty at nearby Titchfield.

Some skylarks, some low, some high. Heard but not seen and not at all like those at reference 3. Some starlings. Some great tits. Some sparrows - something only rarely seen at Epsom. Unconfirmed sightings of some coal tits and some goldfinches. One thrush. One possible wren, glimpsed nipping behind a tree.

A reasonable haul.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/twittering.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/a-different-kind-of-heritage-operation.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/back-to-st-lukes.html.

Buckfast

Yesterday, one of our regular, biannual visits to Buckfast Abbey, the newish build Benedictine monastery on the banks of the Dart.

For once, not very impressed. Perhaps there was something wrong with the dull afternoon light. Entering by the door at the northwestern end of the nave, one was struck by the heaviness of the ceiling of the nave, with its heavy white stone arches, rather too flat, with red brick panels in between. Not inspiring at all.

Generally, a great deal of white stone, rather plain, although we liked the way that the masons had been given some license in the matter of the capitals to the pilasters of the arcading in the aisles, with no two seeming to be quite the same - although the license may not have amounted to more than being allowed to choose from one of the twenty patterns available.

But there were some handsome vistas, for example, looking down the aisles to the small stained glass windows at the ends. Catholics do know how to make use of light. And there were some handsome, isolated ornaments, for example, the Barbarossa corona, the high altar, the painting of the tower ceiling and the font.

The lady chapel was almost impressive, but rather spoiled by what was for me the ugly stained glass, particular the large east window with its large head of Christ. So while it is admirable that churches should commission work from contemporary artists, it is a pity that so much of the resulting work should ugly in much the same way and I have yet to work out a plausible story about why this should be. With one exception springing to mind being Eric Gill's stations of the cross in Westminster Cathedral - fine sculpture from a chap whose private life was as exotic of those of his Renaissance predecessors. Not exactly a model child of the church.

But despite all this, and despite the occasional intrusion of noisy children, a good place for quiet and reflection - so the Benedictines have scored there. Providing quiet space is not something modern builders have much interest in, despite the noisiness of the world in general. A good thing we have plenty of churches left.

And perhaps we shall do better on the next occasion. Perhaps we should try attending a service, see the building at work, as it were. Eight of them every week day and more on other days. Only one - none - being closed to the public. I did not find any reason for this at reference 1, so I shall have to ask someone with inside knowledge of these matters.

Outside, we went to visit the pond in the southern hedged garden, to find that there were not as many tadpoles as we had remembered. Although it was hard to be sure as most of them were more or less buried in the silt or sand covering the bottom of this rectilinear, concrete lined pond. The tails sticking out were the give-away.

PS: the illustration gives quite a good idea of the construction of the place, but does not capture the feel, the essence at all. But knowing the place, it will serve me as a reminder.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_(liturgy).

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=buckfast.

Whistley Hill Power Station

Just to the south of Whistley Hill there is a large field full of solar panels.

Maybe 10 acres, say 50,000 square metres, 5,000 square metres of solar panel if we reckon one to every ten square metres of field, this allowing for space between the rows and the perimeter band, presumably needed to give access for vehicles and machinery needed for maintenance.

Google tells me that I might get 200 watts to the square metre, so this field, on a sunny day, should be generating of the order of 1,000 kilowatts. It also tells me that a kilowatt hour would cost me around 10p, so if we allow 5 hours a day our field is generating £500 a day. It was not clear where all the power went as I did not spot an overhead power line. Perhaps it gets fed onto the grid via the supply to some farm in the vicinity.

In any event, a good bit of cash, I would have thought a lot more that you would get from running sheep on the same land. As it happens I did spot the odd sheep in the field but I could not tell whether they were inside or outside of the six foot sheep & deer proof fence erected around the panels, visible in the illustration above - my understanding being that you ran sheep underneath both to keep the grass down and for their value in wool & meat.

The fence also came with CCTV cameras at vantage points, so what with them, the fence and the MBSS warning notice, one can only suppose that panel rustling is a better earner than sheep rustling.

PS: google also tells me that an average household might do 20,000 kilowatt hours a year, getting on for a 100 a day which seems rather a lot. Five one bar electric fires on all day every day? Perhaps someone out there can offer a spreadsheet about all this stuff.

Reference 1: http://www.mbssuk.com/. Intelligence led security: '... with this growing demand, more and more companies are offering security for Solar farms but here at MBSS, we offer a one stop solution for all your security needs. When embarking on building a Solar farm you will very quickly recognise that the list of suppliers gets bigger and bigger. Security itself could have three or four different suppliers...'.

A different kind of heritage operation

Yesterday we passed on our usual diet of stately homes and tried something different, a heritage railway rather than a heritage house.

A railway which runs the short distance from Buckfastleigh to Totnes, with restaurant, butterfly and otter attractions at one end, snack bar and rare breeds at the other. Plus the railway itself came with lots of collateral. Nicely pitched as a holiday destination with more than enough to occupy a day out.

The restaurant had something of the flavour of the canteen about it, which perhaps fitted with a proportion of the customers being railway volunteers, nostalgic about their British Rail canteens of olden days. But it also gave us a very decent cottage pie, served with vegetables, one of which had, probably, actually been prepared on the spot. The best cottage pie I remember having out - and excellent value.

The accompanying shop had the usual range of railway flavoured souvenirs - I bought a book with pictures about I. K. Brunel - but also catered for the serious enthusiast with appropriate magazines, models and modeling equipment for sale. There was also a large layout which was turned on for anyone interested. The book turned out to be rather good and so far I have learned that Brunel's father was actually a Frenchman, not an Englishman at all and that the famous atmospheric railway of Devon was preceded by one in Ireland, to be precise at Dalkey, the Dalkey mentioned in the post at reference 2. See also reference 3.

The butterflies were in a rather hot glass house (one wondered about their gas bills) which reminded us of the glass house at Ventnor Botanic Garden (see reference 4), a rather different operation to that at Wisley; homely rather than spick, span and scientific. Probably arrived as air-freighted chrysalises from Central America, in just the same way as those at Wisley. There was a lot of lantana, pretty and in better condition than the outdoor stuff at Hampton Court and the film of which we have watched a number of times. A lot of other more or less tropical plants. Some ponds containing koi carp and which were made a bit murky by rather a large number of terrapins, probably rather more than there should have been from a go-ahead eco-zoo point of view.

A variety of otters outside, looked after by a chap who seemed to be full of otter lore and who was keen on going to Skye to see the sea otters there. We learned that otters in captivity were relatively inactive and only ate around 10% of their body weight each day - which seemed a great deal relative to my body weight, even when one allows that the 10% probably included most of their water intake.

Then there was a full size fiddle yard containing a variety of locomotives and a shed containing a variety of dismantled boilers - a shed which looked capable of fairly serious repairs. We learned that diesel-electric locomotives which are not being used need to be covered up in the rain so that water does not get in through the exhaust vents in the roof and rot the insides.

We did not do the rare breeds, although we were able to see them as the train pulled into Totnes - mainly unusual farm animals, both two and four legged. One entirely black pheasant which seemed to have escaped. And the operation was integrated enough that an owl handler paraded up and down the platform as our train pulled in, showing off a young owl to all and sundry. A taster for what was to be had just off-platform. Perhaps next time.

Lots of railway enthusiasts on the books, not all ex-railwaymen as the one that we talked to was an ex-military policewoman, married to a chap who had done 20 years in the army and then 20 years as a Beefeater. We learned that Beefeaters can, or perhaps have to live at the Tower, which we thought afterwards might be a rather an odd place to live, even more odd now than when Osbert Sitwell lived there as a Grenadier Guard before the First World War. Not much like a regular urban - or suburban - neighbourhood. See reference 5. We thought that there was probably some tension between the paid employees of the railway and the rather more numerous enthusiasts & volunteers, just in the way that there is at National Trust operations.

All in all a good day out, just the ticket for this particular occasion. Lots to see and do within a small compass, not involving much walking about. Plenty of facilities. A success which perhaps motivates the trend for presently more staid places to try and muscle into the family market. So Hampton Court has built a very expensive history themed playground to supplement the state rooms. Wisley is rather keen on children-flavoured outdoor sculptures and treasure trails when it is not doing butterflies. Anything to get footfall, to increase market share. But is the heritage market saturated and all these places are playing an expensive zero-sum game?

However, for myself, for regular diet, I prefer staid.

Reference 1: http://www.southdevonrailway.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-paperkeepers-tale.html.

Reference 3: http://www.dalkeyhomepage.ie/atmosphericrailway1843.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/botanic-1.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=sitwell&max-results=20&by-date=true.

Good connections

Wanting to find out something about Eugene Onegin (aka Onyegin according to Magarshack), I did the usual thing and asked google. And what should I get back but the image included here. The second time the Library of Alexandria has turned up this year (see reference 1).

So the question is, why should a publisher whose main claim to fame seems to be lurid covers for respectable books be so well known to google? Why does this publisher who does not even seem to run to a proper website have to do to get him or herself so far up the google rankings?

PS: 'The Sea and the Jungle' remains close to hand, but I have not get very far with rereading what seems to be a rather good book. So easily diverted these days.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/dust-jacket.html.

Litvinenko

Litvinenko being the name of the Russian murdered in London in 2006 by Polonium poisoning. Right or wrong, I have hitherto taken the view that he was something do with Russian spying, murdered for some spying flavoured reason by former colleagues. A chap in a dirty business hoist by his own petard. Being a firm believer that spying is a dirty business, it was not a murder that I was going to get too excited about.

However, it seems that our government had taken this chap's murder so seriously that we had a former judge write a report of some 329 pages (in its web optimised version, see reference 1) and on the occasion of its publication, the NYRB has seen fit to publish an article.

Skimming the NYRB article it seems that my view was wrong and what really happened is rather depressing. The story is that there is a great deal of organised crime in the countries which once made up the Soviet Union (the country which we were so pleased to have smashed up) and that this organised crime has all kinds of links with those now governing those countries. And that Litvinenko's death was a rather botched affair resulting from a falling out of thieves, a squabbling over the spoils. Litvinenko had been a member of a Russian security outfit, a fit chap who, unlike most of his celluloid avatars, neither drank nor smoked, but the falling out does not seem to have had anything very security or intelligence about it, rather a straightforward gangland execution, precipitated by his having become rather sanctimonious & noisy about the activities of his former employers. A bit tiresome that the deed should have been perpetrated here, but given our need to keep on reasonably good terms with our gas company, we are unlikely to do anything much about it.

I dare say the report is an admirable rendering of a complicated story, a rendering down to only just over 300 pages. A fine example of the work of a first class legal mind. However, I doubt whether I shall read it - and I wonder how many people will.

PS: it seems that most Russians regard the murderers as heroes, if not, these days, heroes of the Soviet Union.

Reference 1: https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/.

Back to St. Luke's

Back to St. Luke's last week, starting off by nearly being run down by a chap on a scooter, for the second time that week. The first time I was in the tunnel at the West Hill rail bridge when a young man whizzed through the tunnel without dismounting. All very dangerous. The second time, this time, I could not really complain as I was on the road, on the Meadway roundabout. But I did wonder where these fast moving scooters were supposed to go: on the roads they were not very safe from cars and on the sidewalks pedestrians were not very safe from them. Maybe the answer is sidewalks, but with speed limits when there were pedestrians about. But are scooter riders a more considerate class of traveler than all the inconsiderate cyclists about these days?

Pulled my first Bullingdon off the ramp at Waterloo to come across several inconsiderate cyclists, one of whom narrowly missed bashing me as he whizzed passed me, stationary at a red light. Stamford Street completely blocked up eastbound once again, not clear why. Farringdon Street better, despite the continuing works on the northbound cycle way. Remain puzzled how cyclists are supposed to use these things in both directions, which I think is the idea. Fine when you are travelling north but not so fine when you are travelling south. In which last case, it is hard to see why having the cycle way is an improvement. But it has provided a lot of work for migrants of various shapes, sizes, creeds and colours. The first three stands around St. Luke's were full so I ended up going on to Old Street, where the stand was half full, as it should be by late morning on a working day. Luckily I still had enough time to get back to Whitecross Street for my bacon sandwich - to find that the sandwich was fine, but that the waitresses had been replaced by waiters, one of whom told me that they had gone to work in offices. Which he found rather puzzling.

Sat down in the more or less full St. Luke's at the back of the front block of seats to be joined by two large ladies, possibly Dutch or German, with the one nearest me so large that she could not decide whether it was more comfortable to sit on one seat or two. I don't think either arrangement proved very satisfactory.

We had the scarily young Jennifer Pike (see reference 2) on the violin, assisted by Peter Limonov (see reference 3) on the piano do Elgar (Violin sonata, Sospiri) and Vaughan Williams (The Lark Ascending). None of which knowingly heard by me before. Sonata good, but I felt that it lost its way a bit in the last movement. Lark very good, if only very vaguely like the skylarks that I have come across - usually, to be fair, ascended rather than ascending. Sospiri so short that I did not have time to adjust to it. Plus a short encore, the name of which I did not catch. Plus irritating flannel from the lady from Radio 3. I do wish that she wouldn't.

Limonov ably assisted by a page turner, but appearing to have his music in a folder made up of plastic envelopes, the sort of A4 plastic envelopes widely used in offices. A plus being that one's loose sheets were not going to get into a muddle, a minus being that you would get crinkly plastic between you and the music. But between the two of them they seemed to manage OK.

Just about worth while pulling a second Bullingdon from the Finsbury Leisure Centre for the short hop back to the tube at Old Street. And so to the Polish shop and Mixed Blessings in Mitcham Road. The girl in the Polish shop seemed to have great difficulty understanding me, but I eventually got out with some rather good kabanos, without any of their rather nice looking, but rather large and gooey cakes. I did not think that these last would make it home in decent condition. To think that it is nearly six months since my last visit. How time flies. See reference 1. The lady in Mixed Blessings was very cheerful but I passed on her huge supply of sour dough white - which she assured me would soon be flying off the shelves - taking instead a spicy fruit loaf and some gingerbread (bulla) instead. All of which turned out very well, with the gingerbread being finished off here in Ashburton. A gingerbread which was much more like bread than the German stuff, more like a biscuit. Also more robust than the Polish cakes would have been. Appropriate in that I had just been reading Agatha's 'A Caribbean Mystery'.

A quick pick-me-up in Wetherspoons, where I learned that the man himself did occasionally visit. I had been prompted to ask by reading that he spent so many days a month visiting his pubs - although given that he how had more than 500 of them, it must take him a while to get around them all. This one perhaps made it to his visiting list because it made up in seniority what it lacked in grandeur, having been opened up near thirty years ago, well before he moved onto high class conversions of bank, churches and such like. Before he moved into the heritage world. I wondered whether he traveled with an entourage of fawning flunkies in the way of a Soros or an opera singer.

The barmaid asked came from Italy, rather than parts further east, from somewhere near Venice. Here, she told me, to get her English up to scratch, at which she must have set herself a high standard, as it was not bad already - and this despite the fact that she did not give me impression of being a studious girl. Although that might of been her nose and lip rings rather than her brain.

No record of matters aeroplane or moon from Earlsfield, so I can only assume that I just caught a train to Epsom and so had no time for such frivolities.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/removal-day.html.

Reference 2: http://www.jenniferpike.com/.

Reference 3: http://peterlimonov.com/.

A dream in three parts

The first dream which I have remembered for a few days. A dream in three parts, one part vaguely associated to a house in which we used to live and one part probably partly triggered by the narrow, deep shops that seem to be common hereabouts. A dream which did not involve anyone that I consciously know and which seems now to have been vivid enough, but in monochrome. In grey scale rather than colour. In tone generally rather grey, old & shabby. Some speech.

In part 1, I want to send some parcels and for some reason I go to a print shop to get this done, something which they do not seem to think is odd. The sort of print shop which does letterpress with moveable type, not big white boxes labeled Xerox and Kodak. Old and shabby. I get rather concerned about whether they are going to get it right and very concerned about whether they are going to include slips telling the recipients from whom the parcels have come. Only towards the end of the part do I start to think that it might have been easier to wrap the parcels up myself and take them to the post office. I do have supplies of brown paper.

In part 2, I have some builders in the house replacing the outside tap on the outside wall of the kitchen which overlooks the large back garden. Lots of builders in old blue overalls & such like and with much grunting & swearing. Lots of rather large and unusual - not to say fantastic - tools. Eventually they get the tap off the wall, a tap which has now got a piece of curved sheet steel attached to it. Old and battered. Everyone stands around nattering.

In part 3, I am having some work done in a shop which I want to open in a small town somewhere, perhaps to sell second hand books. A shop with a complicated double sided glass front, with the door set back between the two fronts, rather like those old fashioned drapers who wanted to show off as much as possible in their front windows. A shop which is very deep. Very old & shabby. Some of it draped with battered old carpets. Some of it shut off with scaffold boards. Various fantastic catering contraptions about the place, bubbling away, a contrast to everything else in that they are new. All very unsafe. Lots of builders hanging about, in particular the project manager. The shop is sort of furnished but otherwise bare and I start to worry about how I am going to stock the place up. I lock the front door, with the builders still inside and with some difficulty as the lock seems to be deeply embedded in the wood of the door.

Wake up.

Twittering

Being out in the country, in Ashburton to be precise, it seems appropriate to do a bit of twittering - so far with mixed results. Plenty of twittering in the trees and bushes, but little in the way of confirmed sightings, beyond several robins and one blackbird.

But there have been buzzards. One low over the woods fringing the Dart, upstream of New Bridge. Sufficiently low to be rather impressive, with the wings looking a lot shorter and fatter than they do when the birds are soaring high. Perhaps they are stretched out more for such a purpose. None of the buzzards' distinctive mewing though. Two more flying over Dartmoor yesterday and a fourth flying a glass case in the lounge of the Two Bridges Hotel. A place which also runs to real fires, a comfortable bar and a comfortable lounge. See reference 1.

And this morning there was the dawn chorus. First up was an owl, hooting away in the distance. Second, a cockerel, much closer. And then the chorus proper with all and sundry joining in, but with nothing else being identified.

Two other discoveries worth the mention.

Firstly an explanation of the mess in Afghanistan in the NYRB. Their story is that the problem is that we are trying to foist western style state structures on a country which is too poor to be able to afford them without a steady & substantial diet of foreign aid - or flow of cash from the sale of heroin. The Taliban, despite its unpleasant fundamentalism, understands this and pitches its activities at a more sustainable level.

And secondly, thanks to M. Patrick Rambaud, I now know about an artisanal wine called 'vin de bouleau', birch sap wine to its cognoscenti, cognoscenti who are to be found in places like Russia, Sweden and Canada. Places where they really need the sugar and alcohol mentioned in the last post. And to think that we could have bought and tried some of the stuff when we were in Ottawa 18 months ago. Whereas now we just have to drool from afar at reference 2. There is also a chap, who likes to make the stuff but is not so keen on drinking it, describing the flavour as 'light, dry and fruity, with a faint piquancy of wet paper bag'.

With thanks to wikipedia for its illustration of the raw materials - coming up, as it often does, with the best, high resolution image on the block. It also teaches me that birch trees share half a name - pendula - with the carex pendula which I mention from time to time. Its name being betula pendula. I leave identifying its close relation betula pubescens to the reader. See reference 3 for the carex version.

PS: I now find that birch sap wine can be bought from the better country products shops in this country. I shall investigate - there are quite a lot of such places in the touristy parts of Devon - and report back in due course.

Reference 1: https://www.twobridges.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.sapworld.ca/products.htm.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=carex.

Not chenin blanc

Last week, having finally made it to Majestic Wine, went back to Sauvignon Blanc from the cheapo Chenin Blanc mentioned at reference 1. The occasion being spotting some bottles from a place called Cloudy Bay in New Zealand, with lots of packaging and collateral proclaiming it to be the very best that New Zealand can offer. A world class tipple at the budget price of a little more than £20 a bottle, that is to say rather more than I usually pay.

We tried it last night. First sip was rather odd, leading me to wonder at the wisdom of paying what for me is quite a lot without tasting. Maybe buying just one bottle to start with, rather than the six I actually bought.

Second sip was rather better and by the time that I had drunk my permitted glass I had decided that it was actually rather good.

All of which led me to wonder this morning at the process by which one comes to decide that this or that wine is rather good. One has to learn to discriminate, with discrimination being a pleasure in its own right, never mind what it is that one is discriminating about. Maybe one wants complexity, something for the brain to busy itself on, something to bang on about, with common or garden alcoholic sweetness being a bit crude for such a purpose, despite alcohol and sugar being the ingredients which matter. Might just as well do wacky backy - which at least has the virtue of being cheap. Then one wants to think that one's money has been well spent, so the brain will do some fancy footwork to make it so. Or one wants to be able to agree with the important wine buff on telly - or, contrariwise, one wants to think that one knows better than the next chap, that one has pulled off a stroke in the wine world. Stolen a march on all those other plonkers. No doubt I shall dream up some more angles as the day goes forward.

So should one buy a couple of hours with a shrink to get all this tied down, tied down and committed to a spreadsheet for future reference?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/posts.html.

First Go, now cars

A little while ago, Google cracked the Go problem (see reference 1), a hard problem but a closed problem in that once you know the very small number of simple rules you are on the road, so as to speak. They are still working on the much more open car driving problem – open in that all kinds of much more fuzzy considerations come into play – and a problem which prompts the question: ‘what is the difference between the seeing that a computer does and the seeing that a person does’. So we use the computer that drives Google’s driverless cars (see reference 2) as an example, from which we derive the rather disorganised jottings which follow.

Jottings which will maybe tell us something about what consciousness is for, something which people have struggled with for some time now. What human function or activity can we identify that an unconscious computer is going to struggle with?

Data

Google have put in a lot of time into building up a database about the areas in which their cars are to drive, say, for example, Mountain View in California – Google’s home town and an area which, if the illustration above is a fair sample, is not very complicated compared with, say, central London.

A database which, I assume, combines map flavoured data with street furniture and street scene flavoured data. Some of this may well go further than the raw geometry of that world, taking in the image data from Street View. Certainly in principle, one could extract pictures of things from Street View – for example a road side letter box – and paste them into one’s more geometrically flavoured database. One could extract data from the pictures from the cameras on the driverless cars themselves. All of this adding up to a comprehensive database about Mountain View, a database which is being continuously updated and which is continuously available to all the driverless cars. A rather communistic arrangement, a rather different arrangement to that of humans, whereby each human has to take responsibility for his or her own data and updates.

The driverless car is then driving about in Mountain View. I suppose that each such car maintains its own real time database about where it is, combining data from the central database built up over time with data arriving in real time from its own half a dozen or so roof mounted cameras.

Which will include data about possibly temporary changes to road layout and road furniture and, more importantly, about other road and sidewalk users. Pedestrians, cyclists, ice-cream carts, cars, vans and lorries. The odd duck wandering across the road.

The software in the driverless car is clever enough to be able to identify such things and to know something about how each sort of such thing is likely to behave. Having, for example, noticed a cyclist, the driverless car will make a point of tracking that cyclist until he or she is out of harm’s way.

There will also be half a dozen or so roof mounted range finders, capable of measuring the distance to designated points in sub-second time to millimetre accuracy. A capability which humans do not have: they have to make do with what they can get by moving their head about and stereoscopic vision.

Functions

The software will also need to be able to do most of the stuff which follows.

Strip out weather. So that, for example, the rain on the camera lenses does not get into the camera images. What with eyelids and brains, humans are quite good at this.

Strip out unusual lighting. So that images are adjusted to reflect normal, even lighting conditions. Strip out shadows. This should, inter alia, help with comparing one image with another, either from another place or from another time, looking for changes.

There is also the business of the night, when less visual information is going to be available. Perhaps much less colour – although I don’t know whether the colour vision of cameras degrades in the dark in the same way as that of humans. Perhaps the Google cars are not yet allowed out after dark.

Steady the image. Maybe convert the lots of frames to the second of the cameras to an average frame of one to the second. This should, inter alia, cut out a local of insignificant change at the level of pixels, leaving change that is more worth checking out. It would probably also smooth out, for example, a butterfly flying across a building - but not a goshawk. Perhaps about the right balance for this sort of application, although something that a human is perhaps better at, perhaps applying more context sensitivity to the smoothing out process than the computer can manage – so far.

Snap the features of the real-time image onto those of the stored image, in or implicit in the on-board database. A tidying up process. Rather in the way that Powerpoint can snap objects in its image to its grid.

Camera and range-finder control. While it may be that a lot of the time these devices can just be left to quietly scan the world under their own steam, there will be times when the computer needs some information quickly and it will need to be able to direct one of these devices to get it. An activity analogous in some ways to the brain controlled saccades of the human eye. Sometimes conscious, sometimes not.

Know where the car is, to millimetre accuracy, that is to say a lot better than satnav can manage, what direction it is pointing in and at what speed it is travelling. Plus all kinds of engine and car management stuff.

A moving object identification and orientation system. Once the computer has detected an object moving on or near the road it was on, it would be good if was able to tell what sort of object it was and which way it was pointing. Am I following the bus or is it coming straight at me? The visual cues from the front of the bus would thus complement & confirm those coming from the range finders. More redundancy in such matters equals more safety.

A white line tracking system. An important, labour-saving device in that white lines substantially reduce the amount of effort & work needed to drive on open roads, such as motorways. But what about interpreting the various white line conventions? The dash as opposed to the dotted as opposed to the continuous? How to be sure that the old white lines which have been carelessly taken up really have been taken up? Does the tracking system go so far as to read the odd signs, symbols and messages which might be written down in white line? As indeed they have been in the illustration above, including what appear to be decoys.

A street furniture tracking system. Which keeps an eye on the street furniture, in particular the direction signs, which can be used to confirm that the car is where the computer thinks it is. Does the system go so far as to read the words on the signs and to use that information to confirm where the car is going?

Humans

So given all this stuff that the Google computer is probably doing, what might a person, perhaps a driver of a regular car, be doing in the same sort of situation with a lot of the same sort of data?

In round terms, a person needs to be conscious to drive a car. We leave aside such phenomena as arriving at one’s destination, quite safely, but without any idea of how one got there, the conscious mind having been thinking about something else altogether. On the other hand, no-one is suggesting that the Google on-board computer is conscious, or even that the one back at the Googleplex is. So what is different about what the person is doing?

Let us suppose that the person is well practised in mind control and is not thinking about anything else, other than processing the visual scene and driving the car. But even this processing will, at least in most people, go well beyond what is strictly necessary to drive the car. Most people take an interest in their surroundings, and even if they are not consciously articulating any thoughts on the matter, there will be plenty going on subconsciously, goings on which will, inter alia, give emotional colour to the scene. In this, people are much less disciplined than a computer, with an upside being that they might well take on board all kinds of information which might just prove useful in the future – say that there is an upcoming clearance sale at a local furniture shop. The first generation of Google cars are not going to do this, never mind emotional colour; they will have their work cut out just to drive the car.

Nor will they be much good at spotting the helicopter gunship coming down out of the sun to strafe the street. Humans are quite good at dealing with the unexpected, without crashing their cars, while the Google car driving computer will have been instructed to stick to exactly that.

Getting more anatomical, there are well documented links between the seeing process and the vestibular processes which go on behind the ears, the processes which detect movement and the orientation of the head with respect to vertical – at least in normal earth bound conditions. The computer probably does not bother with much of this, being content to judge its own position and movement by reference to its surroundings.

There are well documented links between the seeing process which goes on inside the brain and the motor processes which control the movements of the head and of the eyes. The computer will be doing something of this sort, albeit in a rather different way, reflecting its rather different way of doing things.

We leave aside all the signals the brain is getting from the body, apart from those to do with vision. For example, the feel of the hands on the steering wheel, of the feet on the pedals and of the sun on the face. The sounds of passing vehicles and chattering passengers. All the stuff which contributes to the conscious and more or less continuous sense of self. Which may, occasionally result in the withdrawal of resources from the vision system, possibly with untoward results and certainly something which the Google car has been instructed not to do, probably cannot do, short of breaking down altogether.

Slightly different is the fact that the eyes of a human are in the head of a vertebrate animal sitting inside the car, while the cameras of the Google car are sitting on top of the roof of the car. And while there is a computer that is not quite the same as a free-standing – or rather sitting – animal. Then the eyes will take in all kinds of stuff which the cameras on the roof do not. For example, the arms on the steering wheel, the occasional glimpse of the nose. Stuff which can be linked with other stuff about these bits of body, all the other stuff coming in on the other channels of the nervous system mentioned above. The instruments in the instrument panel. The position of the gear stick. The eyes and the brain are tracking what is going on according to at least two frames of reference, one corresponding to the interior of the car and the other to the car moving about in the outside world.

Absence of conclusions

So there are all kinds of differences. But as yet nothing which seems to go to the essence of the matter, the essence of the difference between the car and the human. We can’t say much more than that the brain is massively parallel and much more weakly – or perhaps leakily – structured than the computer. That said, one does suspect that a lot of what the brain does is done with a small number of general purpose processes, quite possibly rather statistical in a Bayesian sort of way, rather than with a whole catalogue of specialised and deterministic functions in the computer, with their equally deterministic interactions. Part of the thinking here being that we have not been down from the trees all that long, in evolutionary terms, and we have not had time to evolve a lot of fancy new equipment. It is not as if we were prize pigs being bred up on purpose for our handsome chops; evolution is not at all purposeful and much, much slower.

And we don’t seem to have made any progress at all with the question of what consciousness is for. What is our subjective experience of the world good for? What can it do for us that Google can’t do?

But I do offer one closing thought. That is that the computer will usually be running a number of processes at any one time, processes of roughly equal standing, peer processes. Processes which can get on with their own affairs without bothering over much about what the other processes are up to. While a human is only paying attention to one thing at a time. My conscious attention is, perhaps, taken by a sweet wrapper which has, irritatingly, fallen to the floor of the car. A significant withdrawal of resources from the business of driving the car, perhaps for the odd second, perhaps, far more dangerously, for a number of seconds. An ability which has its pluses and its minuses.

Work in progress!

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/high-finance_9.html.

Reference 2: https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/.

Pinafore

Last week also saw us at a performance of G&S's 'HMS Pinafore' given by the Epsom Light Opera Company (ELOC). I had thought that we had seen them in 'Gypsy' back in 2006 (see reference 1), a time early in blog life, when I was not as thorough as I am now. Must have been all the quality time still then going into the allotment. But closer inspection reveals that that performance was actually put on by the Mid Surrey Theatre Company, an outfit who do not appear to run to a website, unlike ELOC, who can be found at reference 2.

Started off the proceedings in Acorn 30, a pub which used to be called the Magpie, which used to cater to thirtysomething lagers and which now bills itself as a sophisticated night spot selling sophisticated drinks. On this day it appeared to be catering to the younger, just legal drinker and one of the drinks on offer appeared to be a Ribena take on cider. The barman, probably also the proprietor, explained that the market in cider was very competitive and the people making the stuff were all into strange wheezes with which to squeeze a bit more market share. He also told us all about the large tree which had fallen onto his smoking den in the middle of the night, narrowly missing the cook and his wife who were tucked up upstairs. Which, given the electricity sub-station next to the smoking den, explained all the National Power vans which I had seen parked up there that very morning.

Onto the pinafore, with a reasonable house for this opening night where we were successful in claiming a second hand connection on the distaff side to ELOC. And a second connection through our naval uncle, FIL's brother, the uncle and his wife having been, in their day, long serving members of the Gosport Amateur Operatic Society, who used to do lots of G&S. The music was provided by music students from one of the London Music Colleges, which seemed an entirely reasonable way for us to get our music and for them to cut their teeth in the world of work. The opera itself struck me as a little dated, despite having been a smash hit in its day and despite the insertion of various topical bits and bobs into the script - one of which was an entertaining little song inviting us to turn off our mobile phones. It was perhaps a sign of the times that the young sailor lead was played by an ELOC veteran, rather than somebody of approximately the right age. I imagine that the supply of suitable male singers is not what it was. Furthermore, this particular male singer was wearing a discrete microphone but I did not get to find out what that was about. His lady love was played by someone described as a 'lyric-coloratura soprano', Honey Rouhani, a lady whose training showed through. A lady with pedigree, even if her web presence is a little ragged. But see reference 3.

Out to a cool and, for Epsom, a clear night, with about half the sky star-lit. I still failed to find either bear or the Pole Star, but I did manage Cassiopeia and the moon was still behaving itself with horns left.

PS: according to wikipedia: 'H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation'. Wikpedia knows all about lyric-coloratura sopranos too.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=gypsy+trespasser.

Reference 2: https://www.eloc.org.uk/.

Reference 3: http://www.parvazensemble.co.uk/honeyrouhani.html.

Reference 4: for Gosport see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sr26Bfft6I. The usual small prize to anyone who can identify the uncle or aunt.