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| No, it's not mine; I have a much better developed hippocampus |
In a two-part series which started yesterday on BBC2 Professor Jim Al-Khalil summarised the 600m years during which the cerebral equipment of an average mud-hopper eventually manifested itself, much improved, in 2025 in the person of, let us say, J. D. Vance. Not only that but there were show-and-tells.
We saw a tiny living worm blessed with the most primitive brain presently extant. This Model T brain not only existed way back but actually worked; lab experiments demonstrated it could differentiate between left and right, making it superior to a large percentage of the folk in the county where I currently live.
It only took another 100m years – give or take – for another milestone to be reached: the faculty of imagination, notably to envisage possible future events. Allowing the user to plan to his/her own advantage.
And it’s here that I leave the prof. and become personal. BTW those Brits who have a smart TV may watch both episodes on I-Player, one of the rare advantages of living in these embattled islands.
Imagination! (And yes, the screamer is justified.) It’s presently active in the shreds of tissue I call my mind. After a hiatus lasting several years I’ve managed to resume writing my novel Rictangular Lenses (Misspelling intentional.) The word count, an auto-feature of Microsoft Word for those who asked if I used my fingers to help me arrive at this total, has risen from 65,000 to 70,000.
And I'm presently working on this bit: X (a woman) has put information in front of Y (a guy) wondering if he’ll arrive at what would be a desirable conclusion; Y (a typical guy) is struggling but won’t admit it. For me it’s not just a question of laying out the facts and the deliberations, I have to make them entertaining. It’s a hard ask but I love it.
It’s what I was put on earth to do.
Yeah, The Man With The Scythe may be just round the corner but XXXX him (count the letters); I’m happy imagining. And I'm thinking thank goodness the worm, the mud-hopper, various lizards plus one which learnt to climb trees, a whole slew of gibbons plus a figure in the fog that may be The Missing Link all took up the options they did. Retrospectively they deserve my gratitude and my hope is that they - like me – also experienced the sheer joy of creation. In the words of William Faulkner: bringing to light that which never previously existed.
Oh ye millions I embrace you (Quote: LvB)
Questioning females very often ask of their male companions, at sensitive moments, "what are you thinking?" The fished for reply from the thoughts of most males making an honest reply would not be forthcoming. That question is generally unanswerable - damned if you don't and damned if you do.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: Because I wanted to emphasise the need to animate the encounter quoted above I deliberately removed all references to the subject matter. Interestingly, and because it was an encounter between a man and a woman, the assumption you make is that it had to hinge on gender. In fact it was about increasing the efficiency of running an investment bank although the background of the novel as a whole could - for the sake of brevity here - be said said to be pro-feminist.
DeleteYes. I was aware that my comment didn't bear direct connection with your characters, but the general intercommunication between the sexes sprang to mind, and your snippet does indicate that the woman in this case was sort of fishing for the right answer and he was "struggling." In his case it was probably more to do with the solution to a technical problem rather than a persomal delicate interaction. Also, she had already stated her case, but not so in my example.
DeleteNow we are told by David Attenborough no less that the coelocanth who spends her/his life scarcely moving in the depths of the ocean is the same as the organism it was back in the ancient day and is probably our direct ancestor. Also quite good at avoiding challenges.
ReplyDeleteFed: Not only did I see the Attenborough-quoted documentary about the coelacanth but I also remember the reaction (in the newspapers) to the first ever discovery of a dead coelacanth. Front-page news. Could it have been in the fifties?
DeleteI have to say the documentary inevitably reminded me of the blues song:
Methus'lah lived five thousand years
Methus'lah lived five thousand years
But who calls that living
When no gal is giving
To a guy who lived five thousand years?
AI tells me that “inert” usage peaked around 1960. Coincidence? And I’ll posit that the lowliest booster of our Failed Yam Cassarole has more firing synapses than the smug lefties who failed to vote.
ReplyDeleteGlad you’re feeling the Ode - I was perplexed by my search results for the “LbV” typo. “Late Bottle Vintage”? “Lines of Blank Verse”? Either seemed plausible as an RR reference (you ARE quite universal), but I sensed a wrongness and caught myself. Turning potential embarrassment into this (hopefully) less embarrassing confession.
As for Sir Hugh’s musings on male/female interrogation, (men also ask “what are you thinking”, a foolishly unimaginative grope. I’ve done it.) I will recognize that there are mind matters that mustn’t be shared - generally about persons non- present.
Otherwise I practice full disclosure - often something like “trying to decide how to fix that washing machine” or “I’m congratulating myself for not posting death threats on social media”. My questioners seem reassured by such responses.
MikeM: I'm assuming you mixed the sequence of initials yourself and have now come up with the correct expansion. Should this not be the case let me give you a clue: the lower case v stands for van. Will address other points you raised later; just off to Tesco, the British equivalent of Mecca
DeleteYes, my typo.
DeleteMikeM: Indirectly, I suppose, you raise the question: do years of responding to blogposts and to blogpost comments project yet another version of ourselves? Crisper, a tendency towards one-liners, sometimes (in the case of disagreement with a point raised) a barely disguised chunk of smartyboots. Not, of course, when I'm responding to you when I'm visited by a long historical perpective going all the way back to the sight of your backside as you edge your way up the church tower. And then there's a years-old photo of floorboards or wall panels being re-positioned which I never fully understood And ... yes... that eerie, but very persuasive, bit of video in which L stars and I like to think of as a US version of that most English of English movies, Brief Encounter. Without which no one can possibly understand our culture as it reaches back to the discovery of modesty among pre-evolutionary mud-hoppers.
Delete