I like your views on simplicity, by the way. They rhyme with mine.

I’ll be watching you .

well for the meantime, blogger is relaxing – while Facebook is on high, so is Twitter.
http://twitter.com/nepalsites

II
O what can ail thee knight at arms
So haggard and so woe-begone
Your sent mail box is full
And the inbox blank

III
I see the cyber-light on thy brow
With anguish and fever dew
And in thy cheeks a fading page
Fast vanisheth too

IV
I met an android in the leads
Full logical – a Godel’s child
Its reach was long, its touch was light
And its mind was fired

V
I found a bronze form of its head
And axioms too and empty sets
It looked at me as it approved
And made sweet hum

VI
I set it in my pacing mail
And nothing saw all day long
Until it sent and brought
Another blog along

VII
It found me worlds of ideas sweet
And Jungian and Freudian too
And sure in language it said
“It all is true”

VII
It took me to its elephant train
And there it pinged and buzzed some more
And there I dabbed its bold “on” switch
With sandmen more

IX
And there it lulled me to sleep
And there I dreamed ah! Woe betide
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold keyboard

X
I saw pale monks and poets too
Pale bloggers, electronic all they were
They cried “The Cyberspace Without Mercy
Hath thee in thrall”

XI
I saw these absent thoughts
With horrid emptiness gaped wide
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold keyboard

XII
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering
Though the edge is banished from the Web
And no birds sing.

[ ... With apologies to John Keats]

AK: I’m blushing.

CBS: Yes. I was either asleep or folding laundry. I don’t have to tell you, as fun as the blogosphere can be, it doesn’t bank well.

RM: I’ve got the answer. I’m planning another HB field trip. This will take place at an undisclosed (sic) location in the Rocky Mountains in July. We’ll build a fire and spend the night (week?) chanting the Iliad. AK can wear his pelt. No electronics allowed. Bring a sack lunch and comfortable walking shoes. Feel the love, brother.

Andreas: Help!

Andreas: your absence is ironical – the elephants are perishing in the Alps – inspiration, please – the blog is dying.

Mr Crotchety: lack of expertise doesn’t stop us talking about the recession, why anything else?

Comment arrived.

My guess is that you tried hypnobirthing first and an epidural second.
I tried Lamaze first and an epidural second.
My daughter tried a midwife and natural childbirth first and a C-Section second.

A pattern?

Incidentally, I just tried leaving a comment on your blog (for the rest of you: I’ve not been able to leave comments on some Blogger blogs for some reason). Curious if it works… (I used the new and supercool Safari 4.0 Beta to do it. Maybe that’s the trick)

Perhaps Andreas has a modern character in his book who is worthy of your wit and intelligence. I just latched on to Amy Tan because 1) she is my age 2) I have an autographed copy of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and 3) I want to be famous, like Amy, for writing a great book, but I will need to get busy soon (at our age).

Gosh, this admission is pathetic.

Well, Andreas is away, so we need to be naughty. Let’s see. Another virtual idea?

I’m working on a metaphor for DNA. How about this? DNA doesn’t change, but different traits manifest themselves in time. The traits are associated with different bits of DNA. (Think chest hair.) DNA is a long organic molecule with characteristic entities that from patterns like a piano’s keyboard. Playing a chord generates is a chemical reaction. Not all the chords are played all the time. Now think about something like Cancer. Organic molecules (like benzene) will do damage to DNA. The damage is analogous to playing a chord with a misplaced finger. The outcome is a chord that sounds wrong. The temporal triggers are a mystery to me. Why do the chords happen in sequence, or happen in the first place?

Cheri: I can’t remember who is in the book. I think I wanted to be the uglier, grumpier Cato.

Regarding Sand Dabs, they are not gritty, but taste like Dover Sole. Are you close to Dover?

Mr Crotchety: I’ve had to read and read every line of your conjectures in order to be able to understand them and am only just beginning to. Do you mind answering a few questions to help me?
1 Do you say that we should expect DNA to change radically during the lifetime of an organism? We know about mutation, of course, but do you say there should be much, much more of it?
2 I suppose genetic switches are programs that change programs. We know that’s OK. Are instincts just a subset of thoughts, though? Instincts are tied to the physical world through the process of evolution. The physical world appears consistent, but thoughts are plainly inconsistent. Is this where the divide comes between instinct and long-term memory? If you agree, wouldn’t that exclude an algorithm, or is my argument circular?
I don’t think it matters about not having expertise. Sometimes experts can’t see the wood for the trees and get very protective of their specialism. In my legal practice, I invariably found that my clients new far more about the topic that affected them personally than I did, and I learned to listen carefully to them. My function was simply to lead them through the forest.

Cheri: Do you think sand dabs might be too gritty for me? Remember my teeth are falling out.
Logic never created anything. We need intuition, vision, imagination, inconsistency to get anywhere.

The candidates are those heroes who seek to grasp the great ideas and communicate them to stragglers and strugglers like me with compassion. Those, perhaps, with a social conscience and a regard for the human condition. Independents and shunners of cliques. Non-ivory tower dwellers. Communicators like Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Freud, yes: Darwin, Beethoven, Roger Penrose, andreaskluth, Einstein, even.

For me it’s between Beethoven and Shakespeare, who formed timeless and immortal ideas and communicated them.

Do I make a case? Where’s the polling booth? I won’t mention Jesus… [Note your ellipsis again. I'm still trying to work out the extended vowels.]

I do think it’s remarkable how your streams of thought are coming together. Can’t wait for your book.

Cheri: Can you at least remain neutral about you having only one life? Though intuition is superior and creative, it has to be tested with boring old logic. Why project the darkness before birth beyond death? What evidence do you have to support your position? You might ask: where do blogs go after they die?

Mr. Crotchety: I’m still battling with your thoughts about genes. Are you really a neophyte?

Thank you Cheri. Sensation – thinking – feeling – intuition. You make me feel Jung again.

Where can we get a sand dab in Croydon, England? Then I’ll ask Glenys to cook one for me.

I’ll ask Andreas to have a recount on winner Godel.

For the record (now I am afraid to use parentheses after Andreas’ last post ), but anyway, I do not believe in past lives. That’s why I am trying so hard in this life, my only one.

I do believe that we carry genetic codes/memory/stuff in our DNA from our ancestors. I am a big believer in genetics. I am clearly not a scientist, but rather a lover of literature and the written word, so I have no scientific anything to use to make a case. Just a feeling. My husband and I have gone round and round about “feelings” versus “thinkings.” Heart vs. Head. Intuition vs. Science.

Same old debate.

I look forward to your posts, Mr. Crotchety, and think you should have a blog of your own. ( If you don’t already…)

Here’s to Monday.

PS. Richard, Sand Dabs are a fish. Thin and pan-fried. Great with lemon and garlic and bread crumbs….Poor Andreas… his Hannibal Blog has become a foody one as well.

A butterfly dies with same DNA it started with as a caterpillar. That is one of life’s bigger marvels. Sometimes I think the cure to cancer lies in that phenomenon. That is, not only genetic code, but what about genetic switches that turn things on and off (e.g., cancer, beauty, anger, lunacy). These switches are inherent (aging Dolly?) as well as being affected by our environment (cancer, fall foliage). Today we can splice DNA and make something really nasty smell like a rose. Or we can grow meat from stem cells in a Petri dish without ever creating an ‘animal.’ So it seems like only a matter of time before we learn that the billions of permutations that create traits also generate information in our brain that we know as instincts and long-term memories. If someone jumps out of a dark alley and scares us, the conventional wisdom is that we fight or run. This is a first-order reaction. Raising a baby is also instinctual (for most of us). But raising a baby is more than a reaction. Maybe it’s a string of reactions with a bit of real-time learning thrown in. It’s just a string of reactions that kind of look like an algorithm when it goes well. In addition, we can perhaps begin to explain other difficulties. It’s easy to dismiss someone who says they’ve had a past-life memory. Is a past-life memory a more complicated string of code? That is, genetic chemistry that ‘makes up’ a memory of something that was never lived? Like creating a memory of a virtual experience, but with real chemicals? If nothing else, I believe our brain chemistry has the ability to add ‘theatre’ to link a few snapshots of virtual memory.

These things are fun to think about – especially without the burden of expertise. One can probably find a dissertation or a summary of someone’s life work about just a single idea without going more than three deep on a Google search. That can take the fun out of being a hack (or a quack).

Went to Tadich’s Grill last night for Sand Dabs…nice guys at the bar…

Do ideas die?

Keep em coming…

In other words, I post a Tweet, and maybe one of my “Followers” will notice it, leading I hope to some sort of action on their part.

Which sometimes happens, I’ll get some sort of response. But most of the time, not much…

Cuz most Twitter birds are busy, very busy – trying to get noticed and followed.

And that’s cool, wanting to be followed…however it can also be kind of boring.

And your brilliant 140 character (super mini post) get lost, and become, at least for me, way to ephemeral. And that’s one of the things that is strange about platforms such as Twitter, is how temporary they are…

Still I Tweet, cuz it’s interesting, and it has generated some “Meaningful” relationships, but of the 256 “Followers” I have, I can only say this about a handful.

Blogging on the other hand “Seems” a bit more “Permanent.”

Thanks for your post…

Martin

Well, er, I don’t have that kind of Twitter feed.

I’m afraid that if I got a Twitter account, my life would disintegrate. I’m writing a book, writing for a magazine, updating a blog, and parenting….

http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2008/12/a_farewell_post.cfm