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The Muse

Intended as a photo-blog musing site with regular updates and oblique commentaries...

The Association of Gerty

Here's a picture of Gerty the Hamster. Every time I pass this picture, which sits in a shop window in NW England, I'm inevitably reminded of a story told by Geoff Zeig about Milton Erickson which I paraphrase below.

A well-prepared lawyer tried to undermine (Milton H) Erickson's testimony as an expert witness. When he asked Erickson, "Who is your authority?" Erickson, aware that the lawyer would challenge any citation, said, "I am my own authority." The following exchange ensued (Erickson related it to Zeig as a teaching metaphor to ease the latter's discomfort when appearing as an expert witness in court).

The lawyer asked, "Dr. Erickson, you say that you an expert in psychiatry. What is psychiatry?" Erickson responded thus: "I can give you this example. Anyone who is an expert on American history would know something about Simon Girty, also called 'Dirty Girty.' Anyone who is not an expert on American history would not know about Simon Girty, also called 'Dirty Girty.' Any expert on American history should know about 'Simon Girty,' also called 'Dirty Girty.' "

Erickson explained (to Zeig) that when he looked up at the judge, he was sitting with his head buried in his hands. The clerk of the court was underneath the table trying to find his pencil. The (other) lawyer was trying to suppress an uncontrollable laugh. After Erickson gave that (seemingly irrelevant) example, the lawyer put aside her paper and said, "No further questions, Dr. Erickson."

Then Erickson looked at me and said, "And the lawyer's name . . . was Gertie. Don't ever let anybody overawe you"

Sign of the Times

Ah for a walk in England's green and pleasant land: the cooing of the doves, the singing of the crickets, the buzzing of the honey bees and the gentle whispering of the breeze.
But wait, what's this????

Learn a Trade Boy

The parents of the old-time footballers always warned their sons to 'get a trade' to fall back on once their (short and not very well paid) professional playing days were over. Seems Gordon Brown has taken the same advice and set up a small business just in case his supposed take-over of the leadership of New Labour founders on the reef Blair will leave in his wake...

Rare Anchisauripus Footprint on Sandstone:
200 million years old ...

Our revels now are ended.
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits
And are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
Rare Anchisauripus Footprint on Sandstone

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on,
And our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(WS)

Evolution by Bifurcation and Speciation ...

Evolution by Bifurcation and Speciation
I was doodling and considering how parthenogenetic entities replicate by twos - forking down the road - and how those twos miight speciate.
Different generations shown in different colours, with a major speciation (arbitrarily) occuring at the yellow 'cauliflower' boundary.

Evolution by Bifurcation and Speciation

Interesting in that as the generations developed, they began to compete (for the available space on the page) with things getting tight in some places, as the offspring (or species) multiply and crowd & things being easy in others, and how these latter expand and move away from each other to occupy vacant space.
Interesting to observe that starting from a singularity & progressing by splitting (as most life did/does), we get the 'cauliflower' shape (albeit in two dimensions) characteristic of so many plants/trees/bushes and organic entities - eg brains & other physical organs, corals, anenomes, etc, etc. arising from the manner in which the reproduction process/environment interact.

"With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read"
(Khayam)

I realise this is a simple model (wherin, from a species pov, unsuccessful mutations rapidly die out): one wonders what it would be like for sexually reproducing entities??
My wife does 'family history' & it's notable that if we work inwards (=letting the outer elements of the model be progenitors) then we have a binary convergent sexually generated 'family tree' stretching back several generations & ending uop with an individual at the circled spot or 'origin'.

The Processes used in Learning to Read ...

The Processes used in Learning to Read
The origins of reading spider map. Spider map worksheet as study aid for examination of the manner in which we acquire visual symbolic 'language' association or 'reading'. It would appear that the same associative processes occur in our acquisition of rudimentary (kinesthetic) child consciousness and then aural language skills.

In the beginning was the word...