Ransen's Blog

I can't help it, I love clouds and could stare at them for hours. And I think it demeans them to say "oooh, that one looks like a duck and that one looks like a face." They are amazing abstract shapes which exist in reality and don't need a petty narrow "imagination" to force them into something else. I mean, how can anyone not imagine going beyond these huge distant structures into some other world? I saw this scene coming back from work and drove around the block again so I could get a good photo of it. I think it must have something to do with the brain knowing that these things are huge, compared with the trees and other things on the horizon, but it just does not know how huge. And they, in our imagination, do not stop at the horizon, they carry on forever beyond it. It seems. To. Me. And when the huge clouds hang over and beyond a road with a vanishing point, I get the idea that the road could go on forever, again into some new and strange in

...luckily there's a delicious feast right near them.

The first time I came across this idea was in an introduction to the I Ching. (I was an adolescent and stupid with it.)  I can remember a Chinese philosopher was quoted as saying something like: "A man wakes up in the morning full of energy and good intentions, but there is only tiredness, irritation and failure by the end of the day." (Being a teenager I harumphed at that and threw the three coins to tell the future. I eventually woke up and realised that the I Ching is totally useless at predicting the future or being a guide to future actions. At most it can be used as a seed for lateral thinking.) The next time I remember coming across the same sort of idea was when reading "The Evolution of Consciousness" by R Ornstein.  He asked the question of why we can't keep to diets, or stop drinking or smoking. His answer was that we are not one unity, we are many people all mixed up in the same body, and the person who swea

I've always told anybody who will listen that I'm a vegetarian, but if it ever came to a fight and the choice was death for me or death for the animal, well, I'd prefer it if the animal died. And I have doubts that the few neurons a mosquito has can have conciousness, so when I found one sucking my blood this morning – SLAP! And for once, I got it, and even better it was not too badly damaged. " Out with the microscope! " was my immediate thought, and here is the little sod: You can see the blood sucking instrument between the two antennas, one antenna broken presumably by my slap. Can you see those white things between the antenne? They are the palps, the mosquito's nose(s). You can see them better below. So that is what she used to find my sweaty body. My friend Klaus gave me a Melissa plant (Lemon Balm or Mint Balm in English). The smell is incredible, and makes me smile without even realising it. Must go straigh

I was at the garden center and saw these flowers: My Mum used to plant them in our garden in Rowan Crescent. So I bought a few. The sight (only) reminded me of our garden 40 years ago, but closing my eyes and smelling them seemed to take me back in time physically . The smell is not even very lovely to most people, but it is full of crackling energy to me.  The amazing power of scents.

  I found this true story in Against The Gods (The Remarkable Story of Risk) by Peter L. Bernstein. Chevalier de Mere (real name Antoine Gombaud ) was a Frenchman who, in the 1600s, made money with this bet: "I bet I can get a 6 within 4 throws of the dice." The book does not explain the calculation, but does give the answer to his chance of winning (roughly 51.8% of the time). I'd like to be good at probability calculations, but I'm not. Anyway I thought I'd try to find out how the probability was calculated. I preceded like this: ...which yields... I was very proud of myself until I found out that there is a much easier way of calculating it. Just count out all the ways of losing, and take that number away from all the possible outcomes (winning + losing) and you've got the answer. To lose you must throw a non six four times. The probability of throwing a non-six is 5/6. To do it four tim

I don't care what you ate last night. I don't care what it was called or how it was presented or how much it cost. I want gossip. I want to hear about scandal, illegitimacy, failure, success, real lives. I don't care what wine you drank last night. I don't care about its colour or taste, I was not there, I did not taste that wine, and nothing you say can describe it. I want to drink it, not hear descriptions of it. I don't give a flying expletive-deleted what the colour of the sand was on your holidays. Or the quality of the hotel. Or the route you took to get there. I want to know how you make your money, what your work you do, if you enjoy it, if you have any plans or ambitions. And sure as hell I don't want to hear your opinions on football teams, or hear what you dreamt last night. When someone says "I had a really strange dream last night..." I feel like a caged animal.  I'll smile politely, and maybe, to my s