Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »
In Bordeaux there is a spectacle well worth waiting for – le miroir d’eau. It’s a large area which fills periodically with a thin layer of water and once the movement in the water settles down it make a giant mirror. The absolute best time to see it is just after the lights are turned on in the streets and surrounding buildings.
Really, it qualifies for the adjective “spectacular”
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on July 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on July 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »
This little rock easily fitted into the palm of my hand but look at it! The rock itself has many layers of different colour and probably of different elements, then on top, there is layer after layer of different types of lichen and sea plants. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were little creatures living in there too, at least at one time, if not now.
I enjoyed looking at it, turning it this way and that, wondering about the incredible diversity I could see, and how all the elements of this little ecosystem might have interacted over the weeks, months and years gone by.
In some ways this is what our stories must look like, as we interact with others, live with others, and are changed by the events which occur in our lives.
If there is this degree of complexity in one little rock ecosystem, then the complex uniqueness of an individual life must be astonishing.
So why do we treat people as if they are not unique?
Why do we think we can isolate just one aspect of a complex life and influence that exclusively, and predictably?
That doesn’t make sense to me.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »
What makes something seem beautiful to you?
Here are two photos I took this week which are completely different but both seem absolutely beautiful to me.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on July 13, 2014| 1 Comment »
B for “back”. Back as in supporting, getting behind, cheering for……as in “I’ll back you up” or as we mean when we say “I’m right behind you”.
We are both supporters and at times we need to be supported.
In teams, or in groups, it is hard for a leader to lead, if they don’t have the backing of the team.
So, here is something to bring to your awareness this week. Think about backing in terms of support.
Who do you back? And how do you do that? What kind of support do you give?
And what about you? Are you being supported, being backed by others? Who backs you up, and how do they do that?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Previously I’ve photographed sunflowers in the full brightness of a sunny day, but the other day I decided to take a photo much closer to sunset.
See how the colours and the light seem quite different…..at other times.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on July 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »
I just can’t imagine how this tree grew in this particular shape, but it’s quite a metaphor for life.
Often something happens which means you have to change direction and go forward in a completely different way. This happens again and again and the events, their effects, and the changes you made stay embedded in the reality of you. They become the story you tell when someone asks you who you are.
Then you connect with someone, form a close bond, and your lives become entwined.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on July 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Two thoughts – firstly, isn’t this amazing? This little creature carefully checked out my fingers with its feelers, but decided to stay on the plant. Secondly, if evolution is a random process of mutations selected by their contribution to the chance of survival, then why did creatures become so complex? After all, single celled organisms have successfully adapted to every single physical environment on our planet.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Posted in education, from the consulting room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, neuroscience, personal growth, science on July 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »
There are something like 100 billion neurons in your brain – a literally mind boggling figure. Are you really able to imagine what a 100 billion of anything looks like?
As if that weren’t challenging enough, each neuron has up to 50,000 connections with other neurons, and each connection (a synapse) is an electro-chemical switch of a sort – passing information and energy across the gap between two neurons. This makes the total number of states of the brain (number of “on” or “off” neurons) a figure which is……well, unimaginably huge!
I was taught at university that a synapse was a pretty simple connection between two cells where on neuron released a chemical, which then crossed the gap and stimulated the next neuron. This, of course, is a huge oversimplification.
Researchers have recently managed to describe a single synapse much more accurately.
The new model shows, for the first time, that widely different numbers of proteins are needed for the different processes occurring in the synapse,” says Dr. Benjamin G. Wilhelm, first author of the publication. The new findings reveal: proteins involved in the release of messenger substances (neurotransmitters) from so called synaptic vesicles are present in up to 26,000 copies per synapse. Proteins involved in the opposite process, the recycling of synaptic vesicles, on the other hand, are present in only 1,000-4,000 copies per synapse. The most important insight the new model reveals, is however that the copy numbers of proteins involved in the same process scale to an astonishingly high degree. The building blocks of the cell are tightly coordinated to fit together in number, comparable to a highly efficient machinery. This is a very surprising finding and it remains entirely unclear how the cell manages to coordinate the copy numbers of proteins involved in the same process so closely.
It’s not just the numbers which are astonishing, its the complexity, and that last sentence particularly struck me – “it remains entirely unclear how the cell manages to coordinate the copy numbers of proteins involved in the same process so closely”
Just how much DO we know about how the human body works? How much DO we know about how it evolves to this level of complexity, both through an individual lifetime from the fertilisation of a single egg cell to a fully grown human being, and throughout history from single celled life forms to the multi celled human beings?
Humility. That’s what we need as scientists. Humility. Our ability to discover and understand is astonishing, but so far pales in comparison with the complexity of a single human being.
I’m amazed.
Heroes Not Zombies 