Puzzled of Epsom

One of the most well known sentences in Tolstoy's oeuvre is the first sentence of 'Anna Karenina': 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' - after which we get stuck into the unhappy mess resulting from Stiva's messing with the lady who used to be his children's governess.

A sentence which sounds rather clever. One is impressed and moves on. But yesterday, reading it again for the first time for a while, I decided that I did not know what Tolstoy was driving at, with the only help he gives us being an example of an unhappy family, or at least a family going through an unhappy patch. Or perhaps did not have a clue would be more accurate.

Today my assertion is that I see no reason why there should not be just as many ways as being happy as being unhappy. With the famous quote sounding just as clever if one reverses the sense of it; it reads just as well backwards as forwards. Perhaps there is more sense to be had from the original Russian.

Perhaps, in the absence of any Russian, my next step is to look up in my Troyat how happy Tolstoy's various families were - with the suspicion being that the sentence is driven by a man in an unhappy family. See reference 1.

PS: just had yet another senior moment. Wanting to make the reference below into a link in blog speak, I move the mouse up to the underline icon (in the post edit window) and click on that, rather than on the link icon a couple of inches to its right. The brain knew that clicking on the link underline would, in due course, result in underline, so clearly thought it would be quicker just to click on underline in the first place. Which all goes to show that the unconscious can be very unreliable.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=troyat+tolstoy+finished.

A very late entry

A fine specimen from Longmead Road, snapped yesterday. Also the property of the council, so they may try to withdraw the inferior offering at reference 1 - the rules allowing only one entry per entrance.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/this-years-entry.html.

More McDonald's

This looks a bit more like the image used by McDonalds, mentioned at reference 1, than that offered there. From the fine art department.

Hopefully the reader can detect the penguin which I was able to detect at 25 yards in East Street, despite the image being described as a toucan.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/mcdonalds.html.

Facebook

I mentioned my limited Facebook skills in my last post. This one to draw attention to birthday greeting customs there.

I can't be sure, but I suspect the deal is that there is some feature in Facebook which, when enabled, sends suitable messages to all your Facebook friends on their birthdays. An updated version of getting your secretary (not that I ever had one) to send one's partner cards, flowers et cetera on suitable occasions. You get some credit for remembering in general terms that people like to be thought of in this way - but none at all for the particulars.

I associate to the old story about Russian spooks who thought that it would save a lot of bother if they got their computers to read all those boring emails which US spooks send to each other. They could then stay down the pub for much longer, rather than reading all this dreadful stuff themselves. But not thinking that all the emails in question were actually generated by computers too. With the US spooks doing much the same thing in reverse. So instead of intelligence, we have a lot of spooks down the pub and a lot of computers talking to each other. These days, of course, one ought to work the Chinese into the story. And all those hackers out in Somethingistan.

Good Canary

Offered by Mihara Donegan productions at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, earlier this week. With Mihara Donegan appearing to be the sort of operation which runs to an elaborate Facebook presence, but not a freer-standing web presence. See reference 1.

At least that was the story at google. But even my very modest Facebook skills managed to fight through to reference 2 where I learn that Mihara is a product of the NHK School of Actors' Seminar in Tokyo while Donegan is a product of the Ballet Rambert, the people with the fine new headquarters building behind the National Theatre. See reference 3.

In sum, a show which was a triumph of production over content. That is to say that the play was a rather slight thing from California - but given to us in a very slick production, only a little too long. A tale of creative people in New York involving a lot of drugs, amphetamines to be precise, drugs which I now know to have been dished out at the time when I was little in much in the same way tranquilizers and antibiotics are dished out now. The men for all seasons of their day.

There had been a few warning signs at the time I booked - prompted, I expect, by an email - but we got a much stronger warning at entrance about strong language etc. As it turned out the strength amounted to a great deal of the F-word, a lot of talk about drugs and some rather gross talk about sex, this last mainly confined to one scene. This last fitting in with my limited experience of Californians, whom I found to be very nice and polite when sober, but who can be gross in their cups. I forget whether smoking rights were exercised, but probably a bit.

Very clever set, with a limited amount of furniture gliding about at the front and with flats at the back lit up with all kinds of interesting - and moving - some stunning - pictures. I was told afterwards that this was accomplished by back projection. But it meant that you could change venue with very little fuss.

Very arty music, I think from the original production in Paris, in French, ten years or so ago, from the chap at reference 4. Rather good.

Standard of acting good, but the show, apart from the production, was stolen by the lead lady, Freya Mavor, never before heard of by me, but born into an eminent and respected theatrical family in Glasgow, plus a touch of the Irish. Spectacular scene involving cleaning the windows when tanked up on aforementioned amphetamines. Backed up by a very creditable performance by her drug dealer.

All of which served to confirm that while we can no longer do words in the theatre, we can do dancing, music and staging. The National Theatre in microcosm - and a good deal easier to get to, as we were home not long after 2200, in time for cocoa.

Slight contretemps with the Rose car park where we had difficulty telling the machine what we wanted to do, difficulty which resulted in access-denied when we tried to leave, which had me skooting back to said machine for a further, this time, successful parley. Also a triumph of new eyes, with BH's new lenses and new glasses combining to give us a fine performance on the ramps of the darkened car park.

PS 1: I think I have now mastered the mystery of the numbering of the rows in the Rose Theatre. From the back D through to A, with A on the rail with very limited leg room, then AA through to DD, with DD at the very front, more or less down among the cushions. Once again, surprised by the age of some of the cushions, something I would not dream of doing. If we could not afford proper seats we would not go.

PS 2: Hogsmill fish still present outside, but I was not able to see many of them in the gloom of the dusk.

Reference 1: https://www.facebook.com/MiharaDoneganProductions/.

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

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

Reference 4: http://nicolaserrera.com/work/good-canary/.

McDonald's

I passed rather a striking image in a bus shelter in East Street this morning, an image which appeared to involve the head of a penguin - or at least some kind of bird - and a cup and which was advertising coffee from McDonald's.

Further investigation did not turn up the advertisement itself, but did turn up the probability that what I saw was actually a human hand, not the head of a penguin, painted up by or in the workshop of one Guido Daniele, in Milan. An outfit which seems to do quite a lot of work for advertising agencies, quite a lot of them in Russia.

Did Sig. Daniele, a gentleman of just about the same age as myself, drop out of the Milan equivalent of the Hornsey Art College to go onto greater things? Or is he actually an accountant? Or a practitioner of Dungeons & Dragons? Or all three?

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

Kindle

Yesterday evening we watched the penultimate episode of the elderly BBC version of 'Anna Karenina', a version which we have been watching in a rather dilatory fashion for some time now, despite its many qualities. See reference 1.

A fault, to my mind, is the sense of tragedy which hangs over the whole thing. Virtually from the off, we know that it is all going to end in tears.

Then this morning, thinking that the book was not really like this - that the tragedy there was slower growing, slower moving, slower to move even - I was moved to turn up the Kindle version (translated by Constance Garnett), the first time that I have turned the Kindle on for some weeks, despite having charged it up for our visit to Bognor. In which version, I am struck anew by the structure of the plot with its three marriages: those of Anna, Dolly and Kitty. Dolly settles for second best, but trundles along, sometimes happily enough. Anna goes for broke, for the grand passion, and ends up dead. Whereas Kitty, as far as I can recall, after the odd hiccup, lives happily ever afterwards. With all this being written by a man who was himself something of a libertine, taking plenty of liberties with, I think I once read, the peasant girls on his own estate. Inter alia. Or perhaps it should be inter alias.

Point of correction: Anna does not go for the grand passion, although I believe that there are people who do do that. Who seek such a thing out, something to give some colour to their otherwise drab lives. But this grand passion goes for Anna, rather than the other way around.

Point of wonder: I say struck anew, but I wonder how anew it is. How did I react to all this when I first read the book, probably when I was fifteen or so, a time when I suspect I knew what the words meant, what they added up to, what was right and wrong - but a time when I had little or no personal knowledge of any such feelings? I remember writing an essay about Lawrence's 'Women in Love' at about that time, for a school magazine, where again I might have done the words but could not have done the feelings. Would it be illuminating or embarrassing to read it now? Or both?

How did I react when I read it again, as I almost certainly did, as a young adult? No idea now - and it seems unlikely that I will recover one.

PS: as I type this, we have the young Burman cat from next door in a stand off with a rather grey looking and much larger fox on the back lawn. Sometimes he goes into full stalking mode, ventre à terre, for which see reference 2. Fox just wanders off. A few minutes later, they have both gone off, more or less together, and one of the two black cats which visit our garden now holds the field.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/frou-frou.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/margins.html.

Consciousness of choice

At reference 1, I speculated about what consciousness might be for. Here I offer a sketch, a model of a computer program which might implement the sort of conscious choice that I talked about there.

The concept of process used here is a bit softer than that in a conventional computer program, the sort of thing one might write in Visual Basic or Fortran. But while, to coin a phrase, the sands are always shifting, the place known as Dogger Bank is always there. So the population of neurons implementing some process might come and go over time. But it always occupies pretty much the same space in the brain, involves much the same networks and does much the same things – even though the details might change a bit.

I think it reasonable to talk about processes and data in the terms which follow.

I believe that modularity is good and that it is unlikely that the brain would achieve what it does without it, at least in some form or another.

I allow parallel processing. Processes can co-exist and sometimes communicate with each other. In some contexts, this is called multi-threading – with some systems – such as those supporting the use of bank cards – allowing for very large numbers of threads. We suppose that, in the case of the brain, it will be helpful to talk of tens if not hundreds of processes, bearing in mind that any such process structure is being superimposed on a rather softer substrate than that of the chips in a PC, even than that of the thousands of chips in thousands of PCs. This despite systems of this latter size starting to exhibit the same sort of unpredictable behaviour as people.

I also think it reasonable to use the terms id, ego and super-ego. We might no longer agree with the details of the Freudian project, but I still believe in some of the essentials. See, for example, reference 5 for a previous take on some of this.

Super process: id

The workhorse of the brain, running all the time, doing all manner of things and from time to time passing stuff along to the ego for its perusal. Sometimes with some indication of the importance and urgency of the matter, giving the ego some indication of how much time and trouble to take.

Sometimes also, passing along powerful feelings and emotions, feelings and emotions which provide an important backdrop to the activities of the ego.

Super process: ego

Running some of the time, responding to stuff which arrives from the id. More or less suspended when the host is asleep.

Note that we suppose that the id already has a mixture of bottom-up and top-down processes generating its product. The ego is bringing something else again to the party.

We are not here concerned with whatever it is that generates the subjective experience, not here needed.

We started off with the idea that the ego was a very simple choice function, without much access to data, other than that about the options. But it is easy for this to spread out, for there to be mission creep, and for this modest routine to become a brain within a brain, the dreaded homunculus. So what is the right compromise between the ego either being too small to be of interest or too big?

The next idea was of how some company boards work, with, for each board meeting, a pack being assembled by the support staff according to some fairly rigid timetable and given to board members so many days or hours before the (say) fortnightly board meeting. These packs are supposed to be pretty much self-contained and the idea is that most of the time there is enough information in the packs for the board to take the decisions needed without calling for more information, presentations or whatever, all of which would burn up more time, time which the company may not have. Such meetings will be ruled by a chairman who may, nevertheless, be ruled himself by a constitution of some sort. Think ‘point of order, Mr. General Secretary’ in the meetings of trade unions, or ‘point of order, Mr. Speaker’ in the House of Commons. So what could the id deliver to the ego which amounts to such a pack?

For the moment we are running with the idea of a choice model, as set out below. The idea is that we have a kind of duet between the id and the ego, a duet which delivers a choice, an action. But a model that allows a fair bit of latitude as to their relative size and importance.

Super process: super-ego

Running most of the time.

In analysis, I think it is fair to say that the idea is that, during free association, the super-ego should be more or less turned off. That the analysand is reporting reasonably directly from the unconscious.

Here, one might include the idea of cleaning the data up a bit, stripping it down to its essentials. Not cluttering up the very important minds of the very important members of the board with silly and unimportant details.

Data: public memory

Public memory is the data which the ego has to go on.

This data can be made conscious, but only a small fraction of it is going to be conscious at any one time.

Data: private memory

A variety of data supporting the working of the system as a whole, but not available to ego processes. Not available to consciousness.

Data: outside aids

The ego may not have access to all the data in the brain but it does have access to outside aids. Paper and pencil, books and the like. Stuff which can be used to add value to the choice model supplied by the id.

Data: choice model

When the id wants some help from the ego, it will build a choice model which it then shares with the ego. There is a conversation between them, with a view to agreeing on what to do, to agreeing on the choice, on the action to be taken – remembering here that most of the time it has to be just one action. One cannot be in two places at once, so choice can be important. In this, the balance of power between the three components, the id, the ego and the super-ego will vary across time and vary across people. Some people, for example, will have stronger egos than others.

This choice model, very much the sort of thing which might be used by a buyer in a large organisation, supports the choice between the null option – leaving things as they are – and one or more action options, actions which responds to the threat or opportunity presented by the current scene. See reference 6.

Maybe all this data will be held in the form of meta-stable states of meta-stable processes, a thought prompted by the Fingelkurts twins (see reference 3). And maybe these meta-stable processes will be synchronised to their work by gamma waves, or something of that sort, a thought prompted by Buzsáki (see reference 4).

Process: housekeeping

Public memory is decayed. Something which goes on in the background. There are lots of different ways of doing this, subject to the constraint of limited space and the tendency for older stuff to go first. And sometimes it is cleared, perhaps because the id has started on a new scene, a new set of choices.

Process: scene

Start a new round of activity by pushing a new scene into consciousness, into working memory. This is the world as it is, the null option. Something which the id will do from time to time, perhaps as often as every second or so. Depending on the amount of change this may include clearing away any options which might have been there with the old scene, clearing the rest of working memory.

Process: censor

The super-ego, when it is up and running, is given the opportunity to vet content intended for working memory, having the choice of pass, fail or modify. With modify meaning that the proposed content might become acceptable if some of the objectionable content is modified or removed. So for example, a bad image of an indifferent acquaintance might be substituted for a bad image of the important husband. Or a tiresome disease might be substituted for a fatal disease. Sometimes this will be helpful in damping down the ego response.

In so far as option choice is involved, such modification may be unhelpful in that the ego’s image of the world is less real than it might otherwise be. The ego is responding to something other than the real world, which may well result in error or worse.

Is this modification to be done by the super-ego itself, or does the super-ego prompt the id so to do? Following the example of respond in the next but one section, we might plump for the latter.

Process: choice

The id passes along a choice model and then asks the ego to respond to it. The id will go on doing this until it agrees to an option for action with the ego. In the jargon of a computer program, a ‘do until’.

Against the absence of response, there is a wait time, after which the id will move on, without waiting for agreement.

Process: respond

The ego indicates what it thinks about the choice model, in a sense, second guessing the id, using the information provided by the id, together with such relevant information as may be available to it in public memory and outside aids.

The ego, on the whole, can only attend to a row or a column of the choice model at any one time, although it can do better with outside aids. Each time that the ego’s attention moves to a new row or a new column, and from time to time otherwise, the id may take the opportunity to update that row or column with its latest information, for better or for worse.

Put another way and as suggested above, I see this part of the system as a sort of dance between the ego and the id, a dance during which we have the idea of a currency. Lifting the notion from Excel and its worksheets (aka spreadsheets), at any one time we have a current column (an option), a current row (a feature), or a current cell (a score). In the function descriptions which follow, I sometimes fill in the details of the interaction between the id and the ego, sometimes not.

One might see this dance as a conflict or a competition, with the two parties vying for supremacy – while I see it, in least in health, as a reasonably cooperative business where, implicitly, each process recognises the need for the other. A business which is more symmetrical than that suggested by the phrases ‘Her Majesty’s Government’ and ‘Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’.

‘Yes’ means that the id can move onto action with the current option.

‘Modify option’ means that the current option has promise and the id is invited to tweak it a bit. This might happen in a couple of ways. The id might have some idea about modifying the current option and pops the command ‘Modify option’ into consciousness, hoping that the ego gives assent. Or it might actually put the modified option into consciousness, then the command ‘Modify option’, once again hoping that the ego gives assent. What the assent does is write the suggestion to memory, a memory which will persist for at least a while, to which the ego has access and to which it will hold the id – with the id on its own tending to be a bit fickle, a bit wayward, with stuff coming and going in a rather disorganised way. And by breaking the process down in an orderly way into steps small enough for the ego to be able to trust the response of the id, the ego can trust and sign up to the result of the process as a whole.

‘Modify feature’ means that the current feature is still of interest but the id is invited to tweak it a bit.

‘Modify score’ invites the id to tweak the current score a bit.

‘Discard option’ instructs the id to drop the current option. Perhaps, for example, because the ego deems it to be unrealistic. Then go back to the option which was offered before the current one.

‘Discard feature’ instructs the id to drop the current feature. Perhaps, for example, because the ego has decided that it is no longer interested in it. Then go back to the feature which was offered before the current one.

‘Beginning’ goes back to the first option, the current scene. Which may have moved on a bit since the ego last looked at it. The tiger may have got a bit closer.

‘Top’ goes back to the first feature.

‘Last option’ goes back to the option which was offered before the current one.

‘Last feature’ goes back to the feature which was offered before the current one.

‘Best’ makes current the best of the options in the choice model; usually, or when things are working well, the best yet. In the case that that option is already current, there may be a bit of update, otherwise nothing.

‘New option’ asks the id for a whole new option. What happens here is that the ego is attending to a feature when a whole new value for that feature is popped into mind by the id. The ego then says ‘yes, make a new option for the choice model which incorporates this new value for that feature’.

‘New feature’ asks the id for a whole new feature. What happens here is that the ego is attending to an option when a whole new feature for that option is popped into mind by the id. The ego then says ‘yes, make a new feature for the choice model which takes this new value for that option’.

‘Next option’ moves onto to the next option in the choice model, looping round to the beginning if the last option is that current.

‘Next feature’ moves onto to the next feature in the choice model, looping round to the beginning if the last feature is that current.

In this way, the ego jiggles about with the choice model until the current option seems enough better than others which it has looked at recently; a sort of local maximisation process. It then signals ‘yes’ and the id moves onto action.

In doing all this it will have regard to the urgency of the need for action.

This is the one place where the ego, where consciousness, has to been seen to be doing something, where it is not enough to be an observer on the unfolding scene; the ego has to respond to the id. It may be a fairly small function, it may not have much to do when compared with the id, but it does need to be there. An essential management function. I point to the analogy of a Prime Minister, touched on in previous posts: such a person does not need to do much, to originate much, but we do need one. See, for example, reference 2.

Summary

I have set out above the implementation of the choice function which I am claiming to be one of the two main points of consciousness. The hypothesis is that, somehow or another, the business of making these options for action the subject of experience is a necessary part of the ego making a choice of the sort outlined above.

We will be thinking about the other half of the suggestion at reference 1, the processes needed for the execution of decisions, in due course.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/what-is-consciousness-for.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/an-analogy.html.

Reference 3: https://www.bm-science.com/team/fingelkurts.html.

Reference 4: http://www.buzsakilab.com/.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-freudians-fight-back.html.

Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-choice-model.html.

Statistics

Perhaps further evidence of declining standards from yesterday's Guardian, from an article about the dreadful toll air pollution was taking on the world's population.

To my mind, while absolute numbers are important, especially if you are one of them, in this case relative numbers would have been of a lot more interest to me. Of course there are going to be a lot of deaths in China and India, they are both very big places, and the graphic would have been much improved by taking that into account.

Endellion

Last Friday to our first, and possibly last (given the programmes on offer), concert given this season by the Endellion Quartet at the Wigmore Hall. Haydn Op.77 No.2, his last quartet, Bartók No.3 and Beethoven Op.59 No.1.

The Haydn, which it turns out we have heard at least once before (see reference 1), was rather denser than I have come to expect with Haydn, from whom I now expect a rather lighter, more courtly touch. But good, nonetheless.

Bartók very good, possibly helped along by the glass of colonial white taken beforehand.

While the Beethoven, of which I had been expecting great things, was, rather, good in parts. Perhaps the wine was wearing off, or perhaps I should not have had it at all, Bartók notwithstanding. Something of the same sort happened at the post turned up at reference 3, from more than five years ago. For more successful outings of the same piece see reference 2.

We had an encore, which rounded things off very well, pulling me up from the anti-climax, was very familiar and was said to be a scherzo from one of the late Beethoven Quartets. I cannot now remember the number but all I can think is that it was in the 130 rather than the 120 series. However, checking in the booklet which comes with one of my vinyls, the best I can do is a scherzando in Op.127, with the other late quartets not doing scherzos at all, their turning out to be more a feature of the early quartets, for example Op.18 No.6. YouTube confirms the familiarity of the scherzando, so I will have to settle for that.

I wonder now when the encores get chosen? All worked out during rehearsal when the shape of things to come is becoming clear? Or do they leave it until the day, and choose in the light of what has gone before? Choose from a repertoire of pieces which they can knock out, off the cuff, as it were? Thinking with my fingers, I suppose that practice will vary with quartet and with occasion.

Various young people, it being a Friday evening, provided entertainment on the two journeys.

A young lady, perhaps 20, on the outbound platform at Epsom. Petite, thin, wearing very tight blue jeans, smartly turned out. Lit up in full view, managing three or four puffs before our train pulled in, at which point she threw what was left away, presumably under the train. Rare to see such flagrant disregard of the rules in these matters.

Then another young lady, not so petite, making a big performance of eating a pear opposite us in the same train.

Later on, more loud eating, this time oriental. on the tube back to Vauxhall. Something fruity looking from a large plastic tub. Perhaps it was easier to avoid behaviour of this sort when I was young and such stuff was not available. I also remember reading, perhaps in the book noticed at reference 4, that Japanese people think that European people are very funny about eating noises. That they, the Europeans that is, make a great fuss about eating - but at the same time think it proper to do it without the noises, some slurping, some appreciative, thought proper in Japan.

Very cuddly behaviour on the same train from what I took to be a couple of gay young men.

A pair of very jolly shoes on a young lady, with the front uppers done up in appliqué work to look like the faces of cuddly animals, perhaps a cat and a mouse. Made all the more engaging by the design on the front of the left shoe not being the same as that on the right shoe.

And lastly, alighting at Ewell West, a Mrs. Beckham type with her rather tough looking boy friend, seemingly rather more interested in his telephone than in her. She was perhaps a little older than he, petite, very carefully turned out, but too thin and too determined looking for my taste.

PS: looking to YouTube for a reprise of Op.59 No.1, it turned up a performance which included a gentleman of colour playing the viola. Something which I have never come across before, with people of colour being quite thin on the ground in concert audiences here, never mind stages. A young quartet which seemed to me, early this morning, a little fast. I have no idea if 391,881 views makes it a popular item, but it does sound like a lot. What it does not give me is the name of the quartet or that of the viola player. Just that they come from Boston, MA. Later: google suggests David Mason, not to be confused with the cellist of the same name.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/navarrad.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=op.59+no.1.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=op.59+no.1.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/short-notice.html.

Recovery

Made up a new trolley fishing line on return, using an insignificant portion of the rope found at London Bridge mentioned above. So rope and picker now ready for the next hunt.

Group search key: trb.

Trolley 54

From Epsom Coaches, I patrolled the length of the Longmead Road stream, eventually turning up the trolley which had kicked off the hunt quite near the Hook Road end, and which I must have passed, but not seen, just before I turned up trolley 52. Perhaps I did not make allowances for how different things look when walking the road in a different direction.

Snapped here after hooking it out of the stream, making it a personal best of three scoring trolleys in one day.

The only downsides were that, first, standing up, I managed to snap something important in the business end of the litter picker, used here for roping up the trolley from above. And second, I managed to leave the rope behind, all nicely hanked up. By the time I got back, it had gone, presumably picked up by a fellow enthusiast for string, twine and rope of all sorts. Let's hope the new owner puts it to a good use. Oddly I was much more irritated by losing the rope, of which I have large supplies in the garage (see, for example, that at reference 1), than I was by breaking the litter picker.

Happening to be near Screwfix, I was able to replace the litter picker more or less on the spot. A good place: one of the girls there turned up the litter picker in the household goods section of one of their huge catalogues in a couple of minutes and another of the girls produced the picker itself from somewhere inside their huge shed out the back in a couple of minutes more. Looks identical to the one I had broken, albeit in different colours and made by a different company. Or at least badged for a different company. While the cashier took the opportunity to give me a new customer card (credit card size) plus a partner card (one third credit card size).

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/rope-1.html.

Group search key: trb.

Security

Trolley 53 having fallen the right way made a good opportunity to snap the replacement front wheel, thought (by me) to be some kind of security device, present on most of Sainbury's trolleys..

Asking google about 'canst', which looks to have been embossed on the top of the wheel (top, at least as seen here), turns up reference 1 which looks promising. Further enquiries pending.

Reference 1: http://canst.ca/canst/.

Group search key: trb.

Trolley 53

Carrying on up the passage after parking trolley 52, I came across this one, which I have scored pending the outcome of the enquiry reported at reference 1.

Perhaps an email follow up is needed to get some action.

In any event, the trolley was parked and I resumed my journey to the footbridge and Epsom Coaches.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/trolley-48.html.

Group search key: trb.

Trolley 52

I noticed a trolley in the stream down Longmead Road yesterday and was back today with hook, line and sinker with which to recover it. Not quite where I was expecting it, or quite the model that I was expecting, but I fished it out just the same and delivered it, via the tunnel, to Sainsbury's Kiln Lane.

I may have been kidding myself, finding what I was looking for, but I felt at the time that wheeling this trolley on roads and paths went rather better, with its slightly bigger wheels, with its slightly differently shaped tyres, than its smaller cousin.

Not sure that this was the trolley that I had gone out for, so thought to go back up the alley, over the bridge and back via Epsom Coaches, thus checking more or less the whole of the stream. The story will continue.

Group search key: trb.

The choice model

This post prepares the ground for moving on from the post about the point of consciousness at reference 1.

The choice model proposed here and illustrated left is also the sort of thing which is used, inter alia, in procurements in large organisations. Essentially a rectangular array with columns for options and rows for features. Typically:

The first option – Option 1 – will be the do nothing option; leave things as they are. No need for action, perhaps because nothing better is on offer. Otherwise the ‘as is’ or the null option.

A small number of options in total, N in what follows and not usually more than five.

A rather larger number of features, M in what follows and not usually more than twenty in this context – although noting that models of this sort can have much larger numbers of features.

Features which might be regarded as mandatory, desirable, flaws, threats or opportunities. Or just plain interesting. Most of this can be captured in a numerical weight, as here, a weight which might be positive or negative - but notice the slightly different presentation of the mandatory features in the illustration. They are not scored in the way of the others, rather, for the option to fly, they just have to be present. A slight complication in the scoring code mentioned below.

The scores might be words like ‘good’ or numbers like ‘10’. We assume the presence of some code underpinning the model which can aggregate such feature level scores into option scores, with the option score being, in essence, the weighted sum of the feature scores. Also known as the scalar product. Something things are arranged so that the maximum score is 10 or perhaps 100. Sometimes scores will be negative. When times are bad, all the aggregate scores might be negative and the best that we can do is select the least negative: that is to say, arithmetically the largest, which is simple enough to code.

Plus trimmings.

Note that the list of options and the list of features is apt to evolve as one, as the brain, goes along – evolution which is often not allowed under the public procurement rules: no moving of the goalposts after the starting gun has been fired! We don’t need to be so strict in this context.

We do not suppose that the whole of the model which follows is going to be conscious at any one time. But any part of it could be made conscious, typically a whole row or a whole column. But large parts of it might be exhibited outside the brain, perhaps on some kind of a display screen. These kind of props are useful and make possible choice arrays of a size which would otherwise not be possible – and difficult to talk about with others.

Pseudo code

Declare expression – a bracketed expression, for example ‘run(David with=hammer on=‘road to Cambridge’ because=walk(Mary from=Oakington))’. Something like a simple version of html. Data which:

Has been organised a bit, some of the ground work had been done and the data is accessible to conventional computer code, for example the Visual Basic available under the hood of Excel.

Has a hierarchical structure which allows more or less unlimited complexity – while also allowing stuff which is simple and easy.

Might well include pictures, video clips, audio clips and other stuff derived from the five senses.

Declare options as array [1:N] of:

• option_name as expression – name being a convenience for reference
• option_description as expression – description being something a lot more substantial, probably including data from various senses
• tone as single – which might be positive, zero or negative. Tone is the brain’s more or less instant reaction to the option in question, based on its past experience and expressed in terms of feelings and emotions, which feelings and emotions might be positive, neutral or negative. Condensed here into a single number: what might, in other contexts, be called a knee-jerk reaction. One of the inputs to the score subsequently computed by the ego in slower time. An input which is sometimes helpful, sometimes not so helpful, but one which is apt to be given more weight when the id is in a hurry.
• aggregate_score as single – the sum of the weighted scores, with weights taken from the next section. 

Declare features as array [1:M] of:

• Feature_name as expression
• Feature_description as expression
• Weight as single – which might be positive, negative or zero. We allow zero for the case where we thought that a feature was relevant but have decided, for the moment, that it is not – without wanting to discard the data.

Declare scores as array [1:N, 1:M] of score as single – non-negative reals. The extent to which this option exhibits this feature. Sometimes one requires the score to be a whole number between 0 and 5, 0 and 10, or something else of that sort.

Notes about the illustration

An incomplete blend of information from the options, the features and the scores arrays. We have used the top rows for information about options and the left hand columns for information about features, with the scores in the body of the worksheet. Incomplete in the sense that I have not captured everything in the illustration which I have put into the pseudo code. Completion is left as an exercise for the reader.

As was allowed in the foregoing, we have used labels rather than numbers for the scores. There would be some rule in the background which converted labels to numbers in some sensible way.

We use the convention that option 1 is what we have now, in the jargon of consultants, the ‘as is’. In this illustration, ‘as is’ has a high score, but not the highest. So we might think it worthwhile carrying on with the procurement.

Note the use of the special weight ‘mandatory’, together with the special scores ‘present’ and ‘absent’. The score of any option which fails a mandatory feature is here given a score of zero. If one was being pedantic, one might say that options which failed a mandatory should not appear in the model – while I prefer a bit more flexibility, flexibility which, for various reasons, some good, procurement people are not keen on.

In Excel there is no particular limit to the number of rows – that is to say features – or the number of columns – that is to say options: it will allow a lot more of either than we are likely to want here.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/what-is-consciousness-for.html.

Trolley 51

A personal first, that is to say a Wilkinson's trolley found in Manor Green Road, possibly the very one noticed at reference 1.

Quite a bumpy push over the hill to Epsom but I was rewarded by approving noises from a neighbour - possibly doubly disqualified from collecting herself both by being a lady and by being at work. Trolley collection not being a respectable activity for a lady, as unless one took care with one's appearance & deportment, one might easily be mistaken for a bag lady. Gentlemen don't usually trouble about such things, although their partners sometimes might so do by association.

PS: the first time for a while that I have noticed a Wanzl badge. Must look out for them more carefully. Visible here, if you click to enlarge, on the bottom right of the trolley basket proper.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/trolley-49.html.

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

Scientific American

The magazine may not be what is was it the days before we had the internet and online, but they still offer some good articles and some striking graphics.

This month, they had one about the millions of people who have had to move, within their own country, for either god or man made reasons, in 2015. Some 28 million them. A graphic which serves to keep the refugees and other migrants trying to get into Europe in perspective. And to my shame, I had forgotten about many of the larger flows - even supposing they had got to me in the first place - even the more than 3 million each of India and China. Not to mention the close to a million of the Ukraine. Was it really worth all that to climb back onto the bosom of Mother Russia? And more than 2 million in the Yemen.

My print subscription gave me right to download and include it left. Not as good as the printed original but maybe it will serve to give readers the idea. And if you are really curious you can either click to enlarge or download an only slightly degraded version - down from something more than one megabyte to something more than half of one. Or both.

PS: I had trouble with the disconnect between graphic A (top) and graphic B (bottom) and the statistician in me wonders about where the numbers come from. Have they been knocked up by some enterprising journalist in need of striking copy? Does a spell of a few weeks in a tent or a village hall qualify?

Wigmore two

Sunday past to our second Wigmore experience of the new season, the first having been noticed at reference 1.

Entertained on the train by a very active small boy with a fondness for orange poles, which, inter alia, he tried quite hard to climb up. We wondered how one could buy him such a thing for Christmas, with both the colour and grip of the orange poles on the trains of Southwest Trains being very distinctive, and I do not suppose one could easily get hold of the real thing.

On to All-Bar-One in Regent Street, where we were pleased to find that the supply chain problem with the smarties, noted at reference 1, had been resolved. We thought that the colours painted on the smarties had been toned down since our childhood, had been muted and made more tasteful, but that might just be distorted memories combined with failing older eyes.

Wigmore Hall gave us Nick van Bloss giving us Beethoven, and very good it was too. Op.34, Op.31 No.3 and Op.57, this last aka Apassionata. All very good, but I think I was most taken with the new-to-me Op.31 No.3 - which somehow seemed very familiar, despite my only ever having heard it once or twice before, if that, with the blog only revealing several outings for Op.31 No.2. I wondered afterwards whether Schubert had pinched some of the material for one of his sonatas. Oddly, but no doubt for some reason I felt that van Bloss was doing particularly well with his left hand.

For his short encore he moved to Bach giving us, I think, a gavotte. But it served to round things off really well.

Out, we were moved to try the Taillevent restaurant in Cavendish Square, passed many times but never before visited. Food not particularly expensive, so I think the idea is to make on the huge variety of wine offered, including a huge choice of wine by the glass. The idea was very much to match your wine to each course, but we decided that was too complicated for our unsophisticated palettes and went for a bottle. I might say in our defense that, like at concerts, I do not like having to change gear all the time. I like the various offerings to all come from the same stable, as it were. In any event, probably the most expensive bottle of wine that I have ever bought, I think a Chablis Montée de Tonnerre, Domaine Raveneau 2009. Served in very pretty glasses, so dainty that the glass had to be replaced by plastic, but really very good.

Food was a bit low on portions but that did not seem to matter - and it was very good too. In my case a Caesar salad, followed by steamed cod, perhaps the best cod I have ever had in a restaurant, followed by some old Comté. Plentiful supplies of good quality brown bread. Staff appeared to be genuinely French, friendly and efficient without being all over one. All rounded off by a drop of Calvados.

My only adverse comment would be the total absence of cabbage, of any sort, from the menu. Our waiter seemed to think that cabbage was the sort of thing that farmers and pigs ate, not the sort of thing that discerning customers ate at all. As a result, I do not think my taking my own cabbage along the next time we visit, as I had at Bognor (see reference 4), would be quite the thing.

All in all a fine place, all the better for us in that it was not very busy. Not sure that we would have liked it so much if it had of been.

Paused at Earlsfield on the way home, giving ourselves enough time to score a few twos.

Given the low density of level crossings in the London area, we wondered whether Motspur Park was the only place from which one can see two of them. I remember being told that one at least caused long delays in the rush hour.

PS: the programme noted a 15 year gap in the pianist's public life and we noted considerable activity of the muscles of the face, without connecting the two. His own web site says nothing, but wikipedia reveals Tourette's syndrome, a complaint which was sufficiently interesting to earn him a named place in the late Oliver Sacks's book 'Musicophilia'. But without wikipedia I would not have made this connection either, despite having read the book only a year or so ago. Still on the shelf, having survived the various culls.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/danish-bacon.html.

Reference 2: http://nickvanbloss.com/.

Reference 3: http://www.taillevent.com/.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/a-tribute.html.

More Maigret

Now on past the missing Volume IV of Maigret and onto 'Liberty Bar' in Volume V. Where I rapidly come across 'un pêcheur d'oursins' involving a 'roseau fendu', in clear water around 3m deep.

It did not take long to find out that an 'oursin', when it was not the sort of thing worn by guardsmen at Buckingham Palace or a hedgehog, was a sea urchin, often with spines. With the more usual word for hedgehog 'hérisson' perhaps being a corruption. Also the name of a commune in central France.

But was a fisher for sea urchins some sort of animal which specialised in same or a human being? Further research and I find that while plenty of animals do indeed eat sea urchins, the eggs and private parts of sea urchins are also something of a delicacy in many parts of the world and that there is an extensive commercial fishery. With all the usual concerns about over-fishing, trawls damaging the sea urchin beds and so on. So this particular fisher was almost certainly a French amateur.

I then turn to OED to confirm that their 'oursin' is indeed the same word as our urchin, to find OED, unusually, silent on the etymology of the word, but offering a variety of meanings, including not only hedgehog and sea urchin but also various kinds of small people: juvenile humans, hunchbacks, elves and goblins. So probably the same root.

Next stop 'roseau fendu', with 'roseau' being a reed. A split reed three metres long? Was it some sort of fishing rod? Still more research and I find that the common reeds in question often grow to as long as 5m, certainly in favourable conditions, so 3m not a problem. Usually split and made up into garden screens sold in the French equivalent of shops like Homebase - screens which I now remember seeing on the walls of suburban houses in the vicinity of Sables D'Olonne. But what would be the point of poking around with a stick at sea urchins so far down? Further thought needed.

With the common reeds in question furnishing the reed for the clarinet I once played, things which are about two inches long and near half an inch across. Maybe the sort of reed which grows in the south of France, where this story is set, rather than in the Cambridgeshire fens.

The lengths I go to to avoid drying the dishes.

PS: later: from http://www.clarinet-tips.com/clarinet-reeds.html: 'Most reeds are made out of a type of cane called Arundo Donax, which looks a lot like bamboo. The cane is cut into rectangular sections and then shaped and polished. Some clarinetists make their reeds by hand, but most of them choose to buy them'. And from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundo_donax: 'Arundo donax, giant cane, is a tall perennial cane growing in damp soils, either fresh or moderately saline. It is one of the several species of the so-called reed. Other common names include ... wild cane, and giant reed. Arundo donax is native to the Mediterranean Basin ... Arundo donax generally grows to 6 metres (20 ft), in ideal conditions it can exceed 10 metres (33 ft), with hollow stems 2 to 3 centimetres (0.79 to 1.18 in) diameter. The leaves are alternate, 30 to 60 centimetres (12 to 24 in) long and 2 to 6 centimetres (0.79 to 2.36 in) wide with a tapered tip, grey-green, and have a hairy tuft at the base. Overall, it resembles an outsize common reed (Phragmites australis) or a bamboo (subfamily Bambusoideae)'. So we get to the bottom of the clarinet business, with my earlier observation on the subject being a tad wide of the mark. And maybe the French are a bit easy going in their use of the word 'roseau'.

More bananas

I noticed a new-to-me meaning of the French word 'banana' at reference 1, taken from a Maigret story. And now, from one of the pieces about Simenon's travels in his boat 'Ostrogoth', tucked into the end of Volume III of said stories, I learn of a another new-to-me meaning.

It seems that in the far north of Norway, in the 1930's, where the cod fishery was the main business, rows and rows of cod fillets used to be hung up to dry in the arctic winds, out the back of the arctic villages. These cods were known as bananas. This in a part of the world where a fresh cabbage was an almost unheard of luxury.

Maybe Simenon had a special relationship with bananas. Maybe they were another luxury item at the time, something which only successful writers like him could afford, although this seems a bit unlikely as it must also have been about the time of the invention of the banana republic in Central America.

In the course of researching bananas I also came across pince monseigneur, a splendid phrase which denotes the sort of crow bar mostly known to me as a wrecking bar, but also as a jemmy. I remember a carpenter once telling me about travelling home late one night, with his tools in his bicycle basket, getting stopped by a policeman because he was carrying a jemmy, thus demonstrating a probability that he was about to go a burglaring.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/railway-lore.html.

Jogging the memory

I read in the Fernyhough book which prompted the post at reference 1 about how recent memories can be brought back into consciousness by a pictorial record.

In that post I reported on an attempt to recover old memories, while today I report on the recovery of recent memories.

So many of my posts are about things which happened to me a week or so before the time of the post. Sometimes I have either some notes made at the time or some pictures to help me, and I was struck both yesterday and again this morning by the number of memories which can be brought back to the surface with the help of a short note or a picture.

I am not sure whether the souvenirs one buys at the seaside would have the same effect, particularly those not being keyed in any simple way to the events & experiences of one's time there. What would a glass lighthouse full of coloured sand from the cliffs at Alum Bay do to recover my memories of a visit to the cliffs above the nearby Needles lighthouse?

Nor do I have much idea of how quickly the aforesaid notes will lose their power, although I suspect that another week or so might be enough for most of them. Perhaps policemen are trained to be careful about what they put into their notebooks, so that the notes are subsequently useful in court, perhaps months later.

I associate to a visit to an aunt when we were turning over some family photographs. One shot was of the aunt and her husband together with another couple with whom they had spent quality holiday time, over several years. But all that the photograph prompted was just that; their names and qualities were gone. And I don't remember if she remembered any of the stuff that she must have done with them.

Notwithstanding, it is clear that their are plenty of memories in the brain which are not readily accessible to conscious recall, with or without the help of souvenirs. That is not to say that the memories are not accessible to the unconscious: they might be being regularly scanned to update our general knowledge about the world, but with such scanning not being the same as either recall or index reconstruction.

But perhaps it is like computers with no access eventually being translated into recycle, with the neurons concerned being reassigned - with the odd feature that the indexes are going before the data, rather than with the data. I shall try to think this morning of what it might mean in human terms to lose the data but not the indexes.

No doubt there are plenty of memory scientists out there doing experiments on all this sort of thing.

PS: pursuing the computer analogy, one might delete both indexes and files at the same time, but with the files having a life after death denied to the indexes. They will be lurking in one or more of the many recycle bins around the computer, entirely up for recovery if you know where to look. And then the actual data, the electrical spots on the disc might not be reused for a long time - years even - but there one really is getting into the realm of luck rather than judgement.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/madeleine-moments.html.

Platanov

Following the Seagull noticed at reference 1 and followed up at reference 2, we were enticed by email to go to Platanov at the National, a piece of long-unpublished juvenalia, originally weighing in at 5 hours but halved in this Hare adaptation. More or less full house, at least downstairs.

Much the same set as the Seagull, and it served well. Actors properly dressed in sensible period costume. We opened with a servant plucking a duck. The plucking action seemed to us to be very realistic, although it seemed unlikely that the duck would be real: we regretted not having thought to take our opera glasses along, with which we could have taken a closer look. Fair bit of smoking along the way, exercising one of the very few exemptions from the laws about smoking in enclosed places of public entertainment.

Some very funny bits. For example, falling out of trees while lighting fireworks and having the railway come sliding, slithering over a hill as part of setting a new scene. Some nice singing, presumably Russian folk songs.

I found the male lead - James McArdle - very irritating, possibly because of his regional accent. I know that he is supposed to be playing a rather dodgy charecter, but I thought the idea was to pull that off without being dodgy oneself.

The world portrayed seemed very unsatisfactory, with well educated middle class people without proper occupation, leavened by rather less well educated business people, not much better than crooks. Plus real crooks, lurking in the forests & marshes, good for the odd murder if the money was right. I had not realised before that money lenders were the scourge of the Russian countryside in something of the same way that they still are in India. Remembering that they are there for a reason: farming is a very uncertain business and it is only the rich or the lucky who will survive the twists and turns of harvest fortune without occasional recourse to the money lender, aka the bank. A bit like payday lenders in that you might not like them - but they are performing an essential function.

We managed half, leaving at the interval, to spend the journey home pondering about the 75 year old runner, Ray Matthews, who claimed to have run 75 marathons in 75 days. One thought being that I might walk 5 miles a day, but the idea of walking 25 miles a day, never mind running them, was rather daunting. I would need a considerable push to attempt such a thing and I am not at all sure that my legs, ankles and feet would take the strain. I remember stories of well meaning church types on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury, falling out with ankle and feet problems after only two or three stages. It seems that the Facebook content police had trouble believing his claims too and took them down. See reference 3.

PS: the free cast list would have been much improved by the addition of a few words of description like 'doctor' or 'money lender', in the way of the better translations. Raw Russian names always seem to be terribly difficult - and terribly difficult to connect to the people carrying them on the stage. The role one remembers, the name one does not.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/seagull.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/frou-frou.html.

Reference 3: http://www.rwrr.co.uk/. At a quick look, inconclusive. Doesn't look too promising, despite the claims in the Metro of the day.

Trolley 50

Following the advertisement at reference 1, I did indeed check East Street the next day, and the trolley was still there.

Collected for a very bumpy return to the depot at Kiln Lane. These trolleys are really not designed for use on public roads, with the mystery replacement front wheels (the bottom one in the snap left) performing particularly badly. The wheels suspected of being some kind of anti-theft device.

A bumpy enough ride to make one wonder why one would remove a trolley from its home, in the certain knowledge of unpleasant shocks to the wrists to come?

Otherwise the golden trolley, the fiftieth. Will I make it to the hundredth? My bet is that I will, with trolley collection seeming to suit me better as a senior activity than the litter collection which I think about from time to time, in part because one does not usually need to carry any equipment about.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/trolley-49.html.

Invisible export

The crane guarding another chunk of so called invisible export going up in Vauxhall.

In a small triangle of what was derelict land, occupied by derelicts, now moved on. Opposite a small block of flats in which I once took turkey and other refreshments.

Gmaps 51.483773, -0.123630 and clearly visible from the trains to Epsom, which is how I know about the derelicts.

Group search key: tca.

Old pub

The view from the very spot, in what was the Wheatsheaf of the South Lambeth Road, at which I used to take the odd cigar, in the days when that was still allowed. Plus a very decent pint of Courage ordinary.

New chairs and tables. Some paint stripped off. Some brick flavoured wall covering added, and a mirror on top of that. But if you look carefully in the mirror you can see that some of the elaborate wooden bar furniture, quite possibly more than a hundred years old, has been left.

Do we have the concept of listed furniture and fittings yet - or is that something for the heritage team to get to work on?

Group search key: tca.

Old bit

Armoured effigies apart, one of the few old bits of the Temple Church. Door firmly shut except for very special occasions and one was directed around to the side.

Interesting how the stonework looks out of focus in small but in focus when you click to enlarge. One might have thought, naively, that it should be the other way around: presumably some trick of the various codings and decodings of the image.

Group search key: tca.

Derain

Pursuing the mystery picture, I took its picture - with it being rather more tricky than I expected to get a snap without reflections - and gave it to google's image search facility (at reference 1), which found the name and number of the original more or less immediately.

Described as '185 - Kunsthaus Zürich (CH) - André DERAIN, 1850 - 1954 - Vue de Martigues, 1908 by Lumière-du-matin', with the first bit being the owning gallery, the penultimate bit being the name of the picture and the ultimate bit being the name of the photographer who took the picture. At least, so I suppose.

However, google failed to find a proper art reproduction of the picture and the owning gallery don't seem to offer anything of that sort, so I use this one from http://www.flickriver.com/, a site not previously heard of. Along the way I signed up for another image site I had not previously heard of called https://uk.pinterest.com/.

Without the search facility, I am not sure how I would have found this painting, having barely heard of Derain. I now suspect that our reproduction had originally been bought, at a time when the painting had not long been painted, by my father's eldest sister.

So much for my extensive knowledge of matters arty.

PS: next day: I have now had a play with Pinterest, which is very good at recovering nice images of paintings. But I have to work out what it is offering that google is not. Perhaps wikipedia will advise.

Reference 1: https://images.google.com/ and click on the camera to get the reverse image service.

Group search key: tca.

Knights in armour

Last week I was moved by the television adaptation of the P. D. James yarn 'A Certain Justice' to visit the Temple Church, a very old foundation, which we had never been to, despite its being just off the Aldwych, which we pass through on a regular basis.

Started the day by using Wetherspoons as a waiting room, which cost me £1.65 for a bottle of water, a little over half the price per pint of that of one of their better beers. But quiet and convenient, well worth the money.

Via trolley 49, onto the train and onto the ramp at Waterloo where I found that my key was red-lighting every Bullingdon in sight. Encouraged by the staff loading up the stand to phone in, I realised that the problem was that TFL had an out of date expiry data for my Visa card - and was pleased to find that this was something that could be sorted out then and there over the phone to the Bullingdon Bunker at Enfield. Fortunately I could remember the silly answer to one of my security questions.

So off across Waterloo Bridge, around the Aldwych and into Fleet Street, to drop my first Bullingdon for a while off at Chancery Lane. From there but a short step to the Temple Church, only the fourth church I have been to in London which makes a charge - with two of the other three being a good deal larger. The excuse of the pleasant lady at the check-in was that the Temple Church was not a regular part of the Church of England with access to regular diocesan funds, being some kind of direct extension of the monarch.

The church included a rare round replica of a church in Jerusalem (with another being the round church at Cambridge), was substantially rebuilt by the Victorians and then again after substantial damage in the second world war, and did not strike me as a very holy place, despite dating back to the Knights Templar and the reign of King John. The tombs of knights in armour which featured in the adaptation were a mixture of the real thing and replicas - with the most striking feature for me being the length of the effigies and the various Earls of Pembroke so memorialised must have been very tall. The Templars being the people who were suppressed with great cruelty in France in 1307, possibly because the French king of the day needed their money.

I don't know how old the altar piece illustrated was, it looking very late Stuart, but it was a handy reminder of what members of the Church of England are supposed to believe in. I wonder what proportion of the people who had to sign up to it all thought that it was all twaddle, even back then?

The lawyers' premises round about provided a further link to Cambridge in that it was all rather like Cambridge colleges with quads and stairs. I seem to recall that they also go in for wardens, masters, high tables, refectories, dining in and all kinds of other stuff of that sort - which I believe some law students, particular the ones from ordinary backgrounds or from overseas, can find a bit tiresome.

Next, popped into the nearby Courtauld Gallery, partly because I used, a long time ago, to work in Somerset House, entering by the door opposite what is now the way in to the Courtauld, and partly because I remembered that they had a lot of good stuff there. Which they did indeed, although the lighting is still a problem. A fine Cranach Adam & Eve. A lot of fine French painting from the second half of the nineteenth century. Not, however, impressed by some giant Gainsborough's which were much bigger than their subjects warranted and were not my sort of thing at all, fine portraitist though he was. Plus I am now rather irritated to find that I had confused Cézanne's 'Le lac d'Annecy', at the Courtauld, with a reproduction of something else which hangs above our stairs at home. Been seeing (rather than looking at) it more or less every day for 30 years and still managed to muddle it up with something else, albeit a superficially similar composition with a large dark tree left. And now rather more than irritated to find that I cannot now identify the reproduction at all. I shall work on it.

Picked up a second Bullingdon from a stand called 'Strand Strand' by the TFL web site and over to Vauxhall where I was pleased to use the cycleway provided which took me from the Albert Embankment to South Lambeth Road without having to brave two or three lanes of heavy traffic - my nerves for such not being quite what they were. Plus one does not have the speed on a Bullingdon to be able to pedal out of trouble. Dropped the Bullingdon at Hartingdon Road, Stockwell and repaired to the Wheatsheaf, once a Courage public house and now  a Brazilian flavoured music bar. Entirely respectable and very cheap white wine.

Carried on with a rather fancier wine, a 2014 Sancerre, from Berry Bros, which was very good indeed. And so to the Estrela Bar for a spot of grilled mackerel - not bad, but not exactly fresh either. Fresh out of a freezer perhaps. Portions of rice and salad very generous, but I suspect them of having changed their baker, with their bread not being up to their previously high standard. On the other hand, some of their waiters must have been there for at least ten or fifteen years.

PS: later: I think I must be right about the bread because I made exactly the same complaint in the other place about it back in November of last year.

Group search key: tca.

Shame

Our Prime Minister's performance on migration at the UN, at least what I have read of it, made me ashamed to be a citizen of the UK.

She seems to have set her face against trying to come to any sensible, decent or collective approach to the problem of migration. She seems to be personification of those of her countrymen and women who want to retire behind the moat of the English Channel and let the foreigners sort themselves out, for preference as far away from us possible.

She is prepared to spend some money, quite a lot of money in fact, but there is little sign of common charity towards the plight of the migrants, no sign of solidarity with our fellow Europeans and no allowance for the fact that we have some responsibility for the huge problem the world now faces. And she is trying to dump that problem on the mostly poor countries which are the neighbours of the failed countries which are generating the migrants. She does not even appear to have attempted weasel words about how she would love to be able help more but she has terrible problems of her own at home.

She has put us on the same unsavoury level as the Poles or the Saudis. At least the Hungarians have been pushing back against the hordes from the east for a thousand years or more, so it is perhaps understandable that they are neither forgiving nor helpful. But we have no such excuse - and we are one of the richest countries in the world.

Maybe the worm will turn one day. Maybe we will face some terrible problem and the world will just say 'where were you when we had a problem'.

PS: regarding our share of the blame, I ought to add that collapse of empire or disengagement from empire has rarely been accomplished without pain. Think dark ages. We should not beat our selves up too much for the failings, for example, of the countries which were once our colonies. The places were not so great when we arrived and it is just a pity that we had not got them into better shape by the time that they kicked us out.

What is consciousness for?

Treading where many have trod before, and where many others have feared to tread, I here propose that the point of consciousness is to provide its host (hereinafter ‘H’) with a proper place in which to take important decisions and in which to manage the execution of those important decisions – processes from which other conscious activity is largely excluded, consciousness being a place where only one thing is done at a time, in an orderly fashion. So I might be running along while making a decision about something, and in order to be doing the running I do need to be conscious in the ordinary sense of the word (except in rather rare & extraordinary circumstances) – but I do not need to be paying any conscious attention to the running, which is not quite the same thing. Indeed, could not, if I was to have a reasonable stab at making the decision.

In a contemporary human, part of this ‘one thing at a time’ is the fact that we can only have one word in mind at a time. In order to have a word in mind it seems that we have to activate a good part of the machinery which would be needed to say that word out loud – and we only have one copy of most of that machinery. Just try thinking two words at once and you will find that the best you can do is to flicker between them. So, in so far as we think in words, we can only have one thought at a time.

Two qualifications are needed here. First, what I offer here is not the whole story, not a story about how or why we have subjective experience, rather a story about what it is that is useful that seems to be provided along with that subjective experience. Second, it is a story about what consciousness evolved for, the behaviour which it enabled and which was selected for. But that is not to say that there might not be all kinds of additional benefits on the side. That having evolved for one purpose, it then went off and did all kinds of other stuff.

So, the subconscious, from time to time, projects stuff into consciousness about which it thinks a conscious decision is needed. It is taking decisions, doing stuff, all the time without bothering consciousness, but sometimes it thinks that a conscious decision would be better. Sometimes it thinks that there is time and space for H to make a conscious decision.

At a lower level, the subconscious might be concerned about a flicker of movement in the bushes in the jungle, which it thinks that H ought to take a more careful look at. Is there any need for either flight or fight?

At a lower level still, the subconscious might project stuff into consciousness which it thinks needed H’s undivided attention. It wants H to attend to this stuff, to give priority to the myriad decisions which need to be made, perhaps micro decisions about, for example, exactly where to place the chisel in the mortice and how hard to tap the handle of the chisel with the mallet. In this particular case, the vision system will also need to attend if the brain is going to come up with the right judgement, the right commands to the motor system. And while the unconscious may have several things on the go at once, that does not work very well for the eyes; if you want a decent job done, they need to attend to it.

But for the moment, we suppose that the need for a decision about A has been projected into consciousness.

One possibility is that the need just sits there in a rather blank consciousness until the answer B pops up, which H then accepts. The value added by consciousness is that H now feels that he owns that decision and will stick with it. He will have written it to memory. Maybe activating program P which will carry it out. I associate to the way, commented on in this blog before, that once we have come up with a solution to something, we lock onto it, often without being too clear on why the solution was a good solution. Television detectives do this all the time when casting around for a story to fit around the facts, casting around for a perpetrator of the dirty deed. They lock onto a story and run with, as far as it goes, and it takes a good hard push to get them off it.

Another possibility is that the subconscious offers H a short list. Should he turn left here or right? Or neither? Or taking a lesson from Ian Fleming’s C, should he take bourbon or branch water with his stilton?

Once again, the conscious mind just waits until an answer pops up from the subconscious for ratification. One of the key words here is wait, with adult humans being much better at this sort of waiting than children or animals – from where I associate to the term delayed gratification. And while a cat might sit and wait for hours for a mouse to come out of the mouse-hole, and be much better at this sort of waiting than most humans, it is not the same thing at all.

Another possibility still is that the decision will seem so tricky that the next thought in consciousness is the need to invoke overt decision making machinery. Maybe to start listing the options. Maybe going further and listing the pros and cons of the various options on a whiteboard. Breaking the problem down into sub-problems to which the subconscious can be trusted to provide the right answer.

The brain does do machinery. It can remember and carry out plans. When it is very young it can only do sequences. Do this and then do that. When it gets a bit older it can do ‘do until’: for example, keep polishing that table until there is a nice even gloss all over. Then you can start putting the cutlery out. When it becomes an adult, maybe it will be able to do choice, thus completing the triad of constructions needed for effective programming – as described at reference 2. Generally speaking, only new or tricky plans need to be executed consciously. Stuff which is old-hat doesn’t need that.

So my point is that the first thing that the brain can do is make decisions about the options thrown up by the unconscious. Decisions which are supported but not determined by the value system expressed in our feelings and the emotions. The flow of feelings and emotions, partly keyed to the state of the body, partly to the context and partly to particular thoughts and objects, sometimes offers an instant judgement on these options: this or that option is good, bad or indifferent. This judgement will be a big input to unconscious decisions and a rather smaller input to conscious ones. The backdrop against which decisions are taken – with part of the point of conscious decision making being that it can do better than just go with the feelings and emotions, probably an old system in evolutionary terms, built deep into our psychology, but not terribly reliable for all that. Better to stop and think, to let the subconscious ruminate for a bit.

The second thing that it can do, or at least that the adult brain can do, is to retrieve & execute execution plans for decisions, plans which can be reasonably thought of as simple computer programs, programs which could be nicely illustrated with a box diagram on a white board, or a Powerpoint, like that illustrated above. And sometimes, just to be on the safe side, we do exactly that.

Like a computer, the brain needs to be able to keep its place in the program. So it reads off step N from the program, goes and does step N – which might take a while – and can then come back to the program to get step N+1. It does not, usually anyway, lose its place.
And like older computers, these programs only try to do one thing at once. The simple way that they are put together almost, of itself, eliminates the possibility of requiring a hand or a foot to be in more than one place at any one time. The process understands that a lot of the resources of which H has charge can only be in one place at any one time. While the unconscious, with its many processing threads (in the jargon of reference 1), quite possibly incoherent, is less particular.

That apart, what thinking amounts to is waiting for the subconscious to pop something into one’s mind. Any whirring away that is going on is going on there, not in the conscious mind.

And if we believe the story about consciousness supporting decision making and planning, it does at least give us somewhere to look for the solution to the hard problem. That is to say, what, apart from single threading, does subjective experience bring to the party? Or will it turn out that subjective experience is no more than a by-product of insisting on single threading?

I am grateful to Michael Geddes, principal consultant, for his program for the execution of the decision to make the tea. A little more complicated than what I had in mind, and there is at least one spelling mistake, but hopefully it gives the idea.

PS: while it is true that consciousness can only do one thing at a time, it is also true that it can flicker very quickly from one thing to another. But when it comes to making decisions it is best to slow down a bit.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/describing-consciousness.html.

Reference 2: http://www.jacksonworkbench.co.uk/jsp.htm. In the days when I used to know about this sort of thing, making the tea was an example which often popped up in the training school. It is left as an exercise to the reader to translate this example to that of the pre-historic wife suggesting to her husband that he pop out and get an elephant for lunch.