It’s all real to the brain

In interesting article in the Daily Mail last Saturday. Link

As all top sports people will tell you rehearsing the moves sends the same messages and creates the same muscle response as actually doing the moves, something sports scientists have proven, so this latest research should not come as too much of a surprise.

An interesting aspect of it is that it would, seemingly, lend weight to the argumant that violent computor games will have a physical affect on brain development.

It seems to me that development and progress often outpaces research and knowledge. There is, obviously, a lot we have still yet to discover regarding our own brains and it seems rather foolish to create games, devices and new technologies before we really understand the affect they may have upon us. I guess it is called progress and science has always supported it but it seems a rather short sighted form of progress to me: A great leap forward followed by two leaps back (in the form of unforeseen side-effects or damage) is, hardly, what I would call progress.

Science can dismiss these concerns but we only have to look at science’s track record to see the warning signs. Listen to the scientists of the 1950’s with their almost religious fervour, by the year 2000 we should have been living in a world of abundant, safe and free energy, 9 to 5 would be a thing of the past and we would all be taking vacations on the moon.

Feel the strain

I would be interested to know how much extra grime, dust and dirt the average Londoner is breathing in due to the countless building sites that are manifest throughout the city. Add to this the work to replace water mains, roadworks and, in my neighbourhood, a number of roof replacements and front gardens being concreted over and you have a whole ton of extra pollution.

A lot of it is new housing: The government is very keen on extra houses, what they like to, laughingly, refer to as “affordable housing”. We do not need extra houses but what we need is such a political hot potato that they are reticent to declare it.

Or, perhaps, they really are too naive to realise it.

What we need is less people.

It is not a racist declaration, not a statement of hatred or intolerance and not prejudice towards any section of the community, indeed it could be argued that putting a premium on the price of housing because of the demand is prejudiced towards a considerable percentage of the population, those on average or below average salary who can not afford to step onto the property ladder.

It is simply logistics and common sense.

London can sprawl a little but there are limitations, one hopes. The U.K. is an island. The area of land, in both cases, is finite. Finite has one important property, it has limitations.

Take an easy example of a limited space: A lift (elevator).

A number of people can ride in it comfortably, a few more people and it still functions but is a little less pleasant. Crowded and squeezed in and it starts to become unpleasant. If you continue to pack enough in that the cables break, everyone gets hurt.

There is already a concern that there is not enough water to service London and the population is forecast to rise. Think of rush hour tubes, think of them with yet more people.

It is shortsighted and dangerous to just throw houses up on every spare plot of land. Let us say that, on average, each new house has one car, that needs a parking place, it needs a road infrastructure that can cope with it. Say every other new house has a child or two, they need a school and teachers to teach them and someone driving them on the school run..and the whole family, all the increasing population need doctors, nurses, hospitals, GP surgeries with room on their books, sewage systems, water, supermarkets……

Every time you hear that announcement that a train is cancelled, every time you hear the sound of houses being built and every time you see a grinning politician telling you increase is the right way to go…I suggest what you are hearing are the cables snapping.

for the Lamb & Rose

Some days we love
Some days we lose
but tomorrow
the birds sing
to greet the rising sun.

We leave eachother’s life
and on the first day of being apart
and for each day thereafter
the birds will sing
and greet the rising sun.

And when my life is lived
all my hopes and dreams
failures and success
are nothing but trifles
in the vast unknown
past the worry once invested
and spent on each and every one.
I will be carried slowly to my grave

and the birds will sing
to greet the rising sun.

The Ten: Has someone…

“Has someone drank my pint?”

“I dunno, don’t look at me….bird’s shouldn’t drink pints anyhow, don’t look right”

Now many painters have attempted to capture that fleeting impression of intense pain, that moment of sheer agony that can cut across a man’s face when caught in some painful crisis thrown at him by an unforgiving world. Photographers taking pictures in wartorn tragic circumstances have frozen images of excruciated and contorted features upon the faces of many a person, yet there is something horrifically unique about the expression on the face of a man who is having his testicles squeezed with a vengeance by an irate Becca. Danny had just discovered this and was manifesting just such uniqueness and, perhaps, in his mind he was beginning to regret his last comment...more

The Ten: They all think…

They all think Mikey’s mad, but Mikey isn’t mad. Let me tell you about Mikey. Mikey’s the kind of guy who has too much energy to contain in a smaller than average frame. Always on the move, sitting at the pub table, legs jittering, fingers fiddling; Mikey has a way of converting beermats into…well, into bits. He looks around while you are talking to him, like there are other things he should be doing, if only he could name them. Looking around for other people he knows and Mikey knows everyone. He’s a sound bloke.

I first met him peeing up the door of a bank after closing time…more

Ghost story: The Diary of Captain Fiske-Bowen

I sit in stillness, the heavy silence of a full moon night. I sit in my study, in my battered and well-used Queen Anne Chair. I sit. I sit with a loaded army issue Webley in an uneasy palm. I sit, waiting….more

Ghost Story: Last night’s beat

It felt like one of the coldest nights he had ever experienced with that sense of stillness, the timeless quality one sometimes senses on a frosted, silent night. It was silent, very silent, not one sound issued from any direction. No iron of horses shoe on cobble, no rattle of wheel and no human voices. Sergeant Dunn stood pondering his present situation with the reasoned logic of his profession and it left him with a modicum of mental discomfort. All he wanted in the world right now was the sight of a Hansom cab trotting its way home to come round the corner, but no cab came. Nothing came. Just the all encompassing silence…more

Ghost story: The Second Pot of Tea

One’s expectations alter during war time; the uncertainty of it all I suppose. Each day lived without any high hopes, when reaching the end of each day was accomplishment enough. One thing I would never have expected, in time of conflict or blissful days of peace, was to see a spectre in daytime…more

Ghost story: Blood will out.

“Well, at least the rain held off”, Jess offered, almost apologetically.

The drive home from the cemetery had been conducted in awkward quietness and her innocent attempt to break the oppressive silence had resulted in an increasingly heavy atmosphere made worse by the fact that the rain she had so, obligingly, mentioned now began to thrash down as if to spite her. It fell in large drops that splashed on the road and streamed down the windows relentlessly. She caught herself noticing Jack’s reflection in the glass, distorted by the rain that attacked the outer surface so that his whole demeanour seemed to be made of tears, the tears he refused to shed in his anger and grief. Why do men refuse to weep, she thought. more

A change of plan

well I thought I would be moving and changing my life but it did not quite work out that way. So a change of use for this blog and not quite sure what that use is going to be. At the moment I have other concerns: Like being told by my optician that I may have thinning retinas that could lead to tears and blindness, not good for a writer, worse for a photographer, and it would mark the end of my life if it happens.