Archive for December, 2009
Point Break
So, about 2 minutes after taking this photo;
I slipped on the paraffin-laden solid granite pavement, everything went flying, and I ended up getting a very different kind of photo entirely;
That’s my right arm, and somewhere in there a minimally-deforming radial fracture that I don’t remotely have the training to actually see. Though I definitely don’t like the look of that suspiciously lumpy bit of bone. Here’s another look;
As fractures go, I think I got the best kind. It’s now 3 weeks later and I’m almost back to a full range of movement and strength is starting to return. I can write, type, take photos and most importantly, play music once again. The people at St. James’s Hospital have been very good, and if you ever plan to break anything I can recommend doing it near them.
Science is really really cool. Randomised control trials have shown that a simple millennia-old sling (not a cast) is the best treatment, so that’s what I got. About a century of rigourous bio-chemical engineering has led to little pills I could buy in a pharmacy that magically suppress complex sources of pain with minimal side-effects.
Over that same century we’ve progressed from a naive understanding of “Röntgen radiation” as mysterious emanations from a vacuum tube, to a complex quantum-mechanical model of X-Ray interactions that allows us to record these highly-ionising photon jet-streams on a semi-conductor, convert the impression into a digital image and then have it pop up on my clinicians desktop. Right now, reading a random blog on the internet, you can see inside my body – as easily as you might look out the window.
And social science is used too. Because people frequently forget their appointments, there are text message reminders; a few days, and one day before anything that’s scheduled. Again, a trial has shown that this is both cost-effective and clinically beneficial. And when I go to the physio-therapy clinic, I get given a simple set of tried and tested exercises that have been shown to lead to improvements.
Cooler still is that despite all of the science, and care and attention involved in the whole process – really it’s the body doing the work. Through some magic – mostly unknown – system of DNA signaling, controlled protein unfolding, stem-cells and “stuff”, tiny microscopic organic “bits” somehow communicate and coordinate the building of whole new bone, mostly in the right place. So without having to do all that much, I can play Fussball and write dumb blog entries again.
It’s almost worth doing just for the experience.
Con-science
I’m sitting on a train, the Enterprise, moving along at about 140 kilometers per hour between Drogheda and Dublin. Something is causing practically every particle in my body to spark into a new life at a different position in space one instant to the next.
For each one of those particles, there’s some chance it could just pop into life on the far side of the moon, or even the universe. But something, I guess “motion” is averaging everything out and look, there the sum of me pops, every tiny instant getting slightly closer to Dublin.
If the train was in the vaccuum of space – or somehow free from the effects of friction – it wouldn’t even take anything to keep this atomic leap-frogging going. Each small micro-part of me would just keep on dancing. And somehow at the same time, it’s exactly as if I were staying still all along – there’s no real difference. This has been tested.
But if for any reason a change of tempo was required, to move from a waltz to a samba, something intangible and ephemeral – mysteriously lumped into the word “energy” – is required. It’s weird and mystical and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it can be measured and described – and relied upon.
And as I sit here and write, using the word “I” like that, it feels like there’s a “me”. It seems as if there’s a real sense of ownership over my thinking, I can’t tell where my thoughts come from, but they are mine.
I feel like I’m free to choose things, when I get off of the train I could get straight into a taxi or walk to a tram. I don’t know which I’ll do yet, there are a lot of factors to consider, but neither choice seems pre-ordained, and once it happens it will feel like “I” owned that choice.
“Free will” seems as real to me as the forward motion of this train, it’s an inexplicable dance, but it’s my tune. And that makes less sense. Reality is describable by all of these symbols and equations, and we can make predictions with them. This has been tested.
There are even divisions between what is predictable in detail, and what is predictable only in the aggregate, random and unknowable at the finer grain.
Here in my head, it doesn’t seem like my thoughts are predictable, or could be. If they are just an inevitable cadence, then that “I” is merely an illusion. It also doesn’t seem like thoughts are random or unknowable, to me anyway. I have patterns of thinking, recurring themes, and a detectable personality. It can’t be the same dance.
How many miracles are there on this train? Motion is miraculous enough, that “I” can think, that the universe even exists seems miraculous too. But most astonishing, is that these simple realities are seemingly contradictory.
I’m still on that train, I haven’t gone anywhere, there haven’t been any angels visiting me, or deitious interventions. These thoughts haven’t led anyone to complicated dogmas, wars or ceremonies. Some say science is cold. Maybe the dance is a myth.
And if this mental dance should one day just end, where are the real love-songs? Songs that speak to the real meaning, the genuine warmth, of spending a fleeting, passing, bittersweet whirl around the floor with someone. Not an infinitesimal slice of eternity living in hope of a better dance; that’s cold. This has been tested.
Role Models
Consciously, I’ve never been keen on the idea of role-models. Thinking it synonymous with hero-worship, it has always seemed a bit of an anti-pattern to me. Why try to emulate anyone? There are enough people in the world behaving the same as someone else, being different and original is definitely more useful, even if it makes you a bit crazy. When I did a dubious “leadership style” test I came up as “anti-follower”, so maybe it’s just another form of contrarianism on my part.
Over time, I’ve found that the best way to learn is by example, even if it’s a process of unconscious osmosis. And when I’ve spent time on what is sometimes called “personal development” I’ve found that there is real benefit in reading the biographies and the writings of truly awesome people. It certainly seems more productive than reading self-help books that are written in truisms and marketing crap.
I thought I’d share some of the people who I’ve really benefited from reading about, truly amazing people.
- Richard P. Feynman
-
RPF is a legend; a nobel laureate physicist with an uncanny ability to explain complex ideas, an anti-authoritarian maverick who loved to screw with officialdom but most of all an incredibly generous, warm, loving guy (even if a womaniser at times). His writings on physics and his letters to his first, dying, wife are an inspiration.
- Robert M. Pirsig
-
Pirsig, someone genuinely crazy enough to have been institutionalised, still managed to write one of the best sellers of the 20th century and to invent a philosophical system that many consider to have merit. ZMM is amazingly well written, all the more so when you consider that every paragraph was planned out in advance on index cards. Worrying, his narrator in ZMM is the only literary character I’ve ever strongly identified with.
- Grace Hopper
-
Grace Hopper signed up for the US navy during World War 2, and rose (primarily as a reservist) to the rank of commodore/rear-admiral back when this was incredibly unusual. But more than this, she was an excellent experimenter, and kept a rigourous lab-book, despite being mainly a computer scientist. She was a strong believer in getting things done, and coined the phrases “dare to do” and “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission”. Seriously awesome woman. Oh yeah, and she invented the compiler.
- Doc Watson
-
Doc Watson has been blind nearly his entire life, but that doesn’t stop him from being the truly most amazing guitar picker the world has ever seen, or doing crazy things like mending the tiles on his roof. His solo runs and accompaniment are incredibly good, and he’s somehow maintained humility in the face of multiple grammy awards and playing for the president on a regular basis. Another doer, he just kept going and became more productive after the tragic death of his duet partner and son Merle.
- Dolly Parton
-
Dolly is a self-described mis-fit, but she is also a very very shrewd business woman as well as being a dedicated humanitarian and gifted songwriter. She is one of the really great singers, and is emotionally invested in every song she sings (even the ones that sound like bubblegum, listen to how sad she is in “Here you come again”).
- CP Snow
-
CP Snow was basically a troll, but a very very good one. His arguments, lectures and writings weren’t always rigourous and balanced but they were always enlightening, thought-provoking and forward thinking. Most famously he identified the tension between literary and scientific cultures and made a great case for the unfair treatment of science. A scientist and a well-regarded author CP Snow is a great example that it is possible to straddle both worlds.
- Peter Watson
-
Peter Watson is a prolific researcher and writer, the volume of his output and the breadth of his knowledge is unfathomable. I’m constantly reading something of his. He has methodically and thoroughly condensed practically all of known intellectual history, writing about all of the inventions of the human mind. His writing is great, but it also brings home how relatively ordinary our time in history really is, yet serves as a great reminder that so many things we take for granted even had to be invented.
No doubt I’ll think of more now that I’ve put a list together. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some of these people, but I’ve also been even more fortunate in that other people I’ve come across in my life have served as role models (starting naturally enough with my parents). I don’t intend this post as meme, but if you have role-models, I’d be interested in hearing about them. As I mentioned, it’s definitely a great benefit to read about such inspiring people.