Flights of the butterfly

  • I DON’T LIKE JANE AUSTEN

    I don’t like Jane Austen. Today, in the town centre, outside the old town hall building, they have set up lighting rigs. This is to illuminate the interior of the building through the windows so that interior shots can be lit as if by strong daylight. Probably to make some period drama, most likely yet…

  • The Onion

    The universe is like an onion. Well, not exactly, but there are aspects of it that are definitely onionesque. I am referring to the solving of problems. From this point of view there is a property of the universe that seems like an onion. Trying to solve the mysteries of the universe, from our first…

  • Facts

    Ah, facts. Don’t we just love ‘em? Here’s a fun fact: there aren’t any. Well, not in Realworld anyway. The other day, a young man, nice but arrogant, told me something. He said it was a fact. He said it more than once and said it emphatically. Facts do exist, but only in somewhere like…

  • Newspeak

  • Ockham’s Razor

    We need to get this out of the way before we do any complicated stuff. William of Ockham (1287 – 1347) The trouble with Ockham’s razor is that it’s a two-edged blade and you can get a nasty cut if you start slashing about with it indiscriminately. There are many ways of stating, or misquoting,…

  • Frankie and the Wolf chapter II

    I wasn’t expecting to be doing this so soon. It’s beginning to sound like I’m banging on about stuff. But, I bumped into an article in the Times about our old mate Frankie. Time marches on and things change: 1877 Merson Luc Olivier This is very  clearly a completely different kind of art. A lot…

  • The four chambers

    Why has the human heart got four chambers? 1 CHAMBER OK, so we need a pump to circulate blood through the lungs, the organs, muscles, brain and Clapham Junction. So, we get a pump, fill it with blood, squeeze it and Whoosh – off it goes all round the system. Job done. Er, slight problem.…

  • The History of Art

    Mike and Pablo Mike was a painter. You may have heard of some of his work. He did the ceiling of a chapel somewhere which everyone raves about. (It was a bit of a surprise for the old Popeydope who was expecting two coats of magnolia emulsion.) Mike had an assistant called Pablo, of whom…

  • And so it began

    Throughout my childhood and my schooldays, I was told I had a Butterfly Mind. This was a Bad Thing and I must not have one. This is tricky, because you don’t choose it, it chooses you. This has dogged me all my life. Until now. Suddenly, I realise that, far from being a handicap and…