The pathetic fallacy – are creatures sentient?

While walking to the station the other day, I passed the small farm on the corner where free-range chickens roam. I was in a hurry, brisk pace, so the chickens moved away from the road, clucking as they fled. But the rooster didn't. The rooster continued to watched me and  started advancing in my direction. The rooster was protecting his hens and demonstrating to them his bravery in this situation. I was looking at him, his gaze was fixed upon mine – and then his foot slipped on a clod of freshly ploughed earth. All of a sudden, he felt somewhat foolish. I could sense the shame in his galine face. The proud defender of his brood made to appear clumsy by a misstep.  I stopped for a moment. He turned away, the literal picture of 'crestfallen'.

But am I merely imposing human ideas of emotion upon a creature that's a mere automaton, devoid of soul, lacking in what we would call consciousness? This, in literature and art, is the notion of pathetic fallacy – conferring human attributes to non-human entities.

Yet I certainly would confer personhood upon creatures. When a pet-owner makes eye contact with their cat or dog, they feel certain that their pet is sentient, that it subjectively experiences existence, that their pet is for itself (just as you are to yourself) the centre of the world. Eyes are indeed windows to the soul, and just a fleeting moment of eye-to-eye contact lets you intuit the state of an animal's consciousness; anger or irritation, fright or anxiety, contentment or bliss. In the case of this rooster, I sensed annoyance and embarrassment; a small misfortune that made the ruler of the roost appear uncoordinated and maladroit; no longer was he a challenger but an unsteady bumbler.

The rooster may not make much sense of his surroundings; there are the people that feed it, the barnyard, the henhouse, the strangers that walk past where it lives, there are boxy objects moving around like little metal huts, there's ample food, many hens to tread, no natural predators (foxes are a rarity round these parts) – existence is good. Intellectual attainment, however, is not what chickens have evolved for; humans have bred them for food for the past 8,000 years. 

I ponder for a while about the nature of consciousness; I deeply believe that it is something far more than a mere emergent property of neural matter, the product of evolution. The leap from non-life to life has yet to be explained or replicated artificially. Moments such as this make me suddenly realise that consciousness exists in other living beings too. The fact that they are bereft of human-level intelligence does not mean that they are unaware of their own existence, although they are probably not aware of being aware.

Science and spirituality continue to develop along separate pathways, but ultimately I feel they will converge, though the road be infinitely long and the setbacks will be many.

******************************

The prospect of Trump returning to the White House fills me with dread and existential anxiety for the future of mankind. Another four years on a knife-edge. I cannot bear to switch on the news. Kiss goodbye to Net Zero. The zloty has lost 2% of its value to the dollar in a few hours. The market senses that this part of Europe is likely to be thrown to the wolves; the dangers of an authoritarian turn are clear to all people of goodwill and reason. I had been fearing this moment. Hopes are dashed. Evil triumphs, as it did in 1933.

This time two years ago:
Sunny Sunday meditations

This time eight years ago:
To Dawidy Bankowe, Łady, Zamienie and back

This time 13 years ago:
Town planning and the Sublime Aesthetic

This time 14 years ago:
On the long road from Zero to One

This time 15 years ago:
Łódź Rising

Autumn joy, continued

Blessed be the weather! Another mostly cloudless week – good for my soul. The strong sunshine brings out the vibrance of the leaves as they change colour; soon they will have dropped and the magic will have passed. But until then, an autumn wonderland beckons, each day's walk being glorious. In the meanwhile... do I feel my dreams are more vivid and memorable on cloudless nights?

Below: forest crossroads. Unasphalted tracks. To the left, Dąbrowa Duża. Straight on for Jakubowizna. Right for Machcin, and behind me, from where I've just come from, Rososz. 

Below: the train at the end of the lane – a Koleje Mazowieckie local service to Radom via Warka slows down as it approaches Chynów station. It's just 23 more minutes to Chynów from town compared to Jeziorki (or 16 minutes on the przyspieszony services). Worth every minute of it to be out in the country.

Below: sunrise this morning, as seen from my kitchen. An additional benefit to going to bed super early is having that hour of daylight to enjoy in the morning. Had I gone to bed at half past eleven, I'd have missed it. As it is, having gone to bed at half past nine, I have this view while sipping my morning coffee and listening to Farming Today on Radio 4.

And (roughly) the same view below, but in the afternoon, about half an hour before sunset. The birches and aspens are rapidly losing leaf.

In the orchards, the apples have long gone. An early harvest this year. Below: looking along a row of young apple trees, and an arable field beyond the tall trees beyond.

Below: my house beneath a polarised sky, sliders for texture and clarity both set to minimum to give a soft-focus dreamlike effect.

Left: distant view of my działka seen from across a newly ploughed field on the other side of Jakubowizna. You can't see the house (too far back) but you can see both gates and the fence. The medium-tension electricity pylons go over my land and serve the next village north of Jakubowizna, Nowe Grobice.

Below: the corner of ulica Miodowa (lit. 'Honey Street') and ul. Główna ('Main Street') in Chynów, against a low sun.

Below: photo taken on Sunday. This is the parish church of Rososz, which has been serving surrounding villages since 1985. It was built at the wishes of Fr. Tadeusz Stokowski (murdered in unexplained circumstances in his parish of Michalczew in 1990).

Below: as of September this year, a newcomer to the skies over Warsaw, the Boeing 777 wet-leased by LOT Polish Airlines from Portuguese carrier EuroAtlantic to service the Warsaw-New York route until March 2025. Here is CS-TFM over Chynów, starting its left turn towards its final approach towards Okęcie airport.

There may be more of this joyous material as the weather forecast for the next week is settled. More autumnal sun tomorrow!

This time five years ago:
Recycling my father's possessions

This time six years ago:
You can always go downtown

This time eight years ago:
Opinions vs facts – our media today

This time nine years ago:
Judging PO's eight years in power

This time ten years ago
Cloudless, 18C – the beauty of Polish autumn

This time 11 years ago: 
Call 19115: Warsaw Fix-my-Street

This time 13 years ago:
Vapour trails at sunset

This time 14 years ago:
Autumnal blues

First frost, 2024

My blog is a subjective account rather than an exhaustive and objective list. Over the years I have been noting the occurrence of the first frost of autumn, though not every one, only the ones that for some reason moved me to record them. So although patchy, the table below shows that date of first frost jumps around from year to year. However, a clear pattern is visible – I've not recorded first frost as late as November until 2017, and since then, not one has been noted in October.

Screening out confirmation bias – a climate-change denier might say "you simply missed out all the data points that don't fit". Well, go back over my blog and find me a first frost in November prior to 2015, or a first frost in October after 2017. There might have been one – but I didn't blog it. Not because I have an ideological axe to grind – but because it didn't move me enough to mention it. And click through the links below to check if you don't believe me.

Year	Date of first frost
2024	3 November
2020	25 November
2018	17 November
2017	21 November
2015	9 October
2014	24 October
2013	4 October
2011	16 October
2009	31 October
2007	16 October

This is not meant to be empirical proof anything. It may well be that next October there's a frost as early as 1 October. The table stands as a statement that over less than two decades, there is a noticeable shift in climate; winters are getting shorter.

One benefit is that I've yet to switch on the heating. This morning at quarter to seven, the kitchen thermometer read 17.5°C inside and -3.8°C outside; boiling the kettle and making myself some porridge and toast soon warmed the kitchen up to a comfortable 20°C.

This time two years ago:
Jeziorki Park + Ride finally opens

This time three years ago:
Are you serious about going green?

This time four years ago:
Nail-biting walk
[This beckons in three days' time]

This time six years ago:
Insights in the search for consciousness

This time seven years ago:
Loving Vincent - review

This time 11 years ago:
UFO credibility test

This time 12 years ago:
Junction ready for road to unbuilt sports centre

This time 13 years ago:
Park nad Książecem – Vistula escarpment, beautiful autumn

This time 16 years ago:
Obama wins US presidential election

To Warka, again

The nearness by train of Warka makes it an attractive destination for a short day out. Today's excursion takes me to the park at the eastern edge of the town, which houses the Kazimierz Pułaski museum. This (below) was his family home, Winiary, before he set off for America to become the brigadier-general and founder of the Continental Army cavalry fighting against the British for American independence.

Pułaski was fatally wounded while leading a charge at Savannah in October 1779, dying soon after. His leadership of his Cavalry Legion in the revolutionary army led to him being remembered as a hero who fought for independence and freedom in the US. Pułaski's name lives on in many American towns, counties, parks, highways. Warka sees Kazimierz Pułaski as the town's most famous son. Right: Pułaski's statue in the park by the family home, Winiary; his date of birth in 1747 and death in Savannah in 1779 are noted.

Basking in the autumnal sun, a terracotta pair outside the Pułaski museum. Round the base, translated lines from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men: "Waking alone/At the hour when we are/Trembling with tenderness/Lips that would kiss/Form prayers to broken stone."

Incidentally, The Hollow Men begins with a famous quote from Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness: "Mistah Kurtz – he dead." a neat circular nod to another Polish legend.

The museum parklands slope down towards the banks of the Pilica, from where I continued my stroll upstream back towards the town. Despite the gorgeous day (once again entirely cloudless), there were few people out and about, though the town's newly opened pump track attracted a goodly number of mountain-bike racers.

Crossing Warka, I passed the town's other significant producer of alcoholic beverages (the first being the Warka brewery owned by Żywiec/Heineken); this is Warwin SA (below), producer of not-from-concentrate apple juices, ciders and fruit wines. Like several other businesses I passed, there are signs outside saying that the firm requires employees. The Grójec poviat or district, of which the gmina or municipality of Warka is part, currently has an unemployment rate of 2.6%, compared to 5.0% for Poland overall. Shops and restaurants are also finding difficulty recruiting employees.

Having fallen on harder times, Warka's flour mill stands abandoned. I daresay it would make for an attractive block of post-industrial loft spaces.

Back to my favourite thoroughfare in Warka, ulica Lotników, below. There's some universally pan-European feel about the place – it's like it could be a somnolent village in rural Spain, France, Portugal or Italy rather than half an hour by InterCity train from Warsaw.

The sun, even at its zenith, is low in the sky, casting long shadows. On the short train journey back to Chynów, the fields and forests and orchards were stunningly gorgeous, setting me adrift on those familiar moments of exomnesia; recognition that consciousness spans more than a lifetime.

This time last year:
Early-November reflections

This time five years ago:

Autumn moods, Ealing

This time six years ago
Walks in the early-November sun

This time nine years ago:
Foggy evening, London

This time ten year:
Kraków – Europe's top short-break destination 

This time 12 years ago:
Rzeczpospolita publishes infamous 'trotyl' Smolensk story

This time 13 years ago:
Wilanowska - south Warsaw transport hub

This time 15 years ago:
Powiśle on a cold, clear autumn morning

This time 16 years ago:
Okęcie "to remain Warsaw's only airport"

This time 17 years ago:
Searching for autumnal perfection

All Saints' Day, Chynów

A day of importance for me; my mother died on this day in 2015; my father on 28 October in 2019. The time of year, as nights draw in and darkness spreads, makes one mindful of the presence among us of death – the separation of consciousness from the biological body.

I walked to Chynów to wander around the graves, visited by the families of the dead. Bearing bags full of large candles, they clean the graves and bring light to their loved ones' places of rest. A beautiful tradition – eminently more meaningful than the tacky commercialism of Hallowe'en.

Below: I arrive about half an hour after sunset, the western sky still iridescent, purple-gold.

Below: it seems that most of the visits have already taken place; rare is the grave without any candles upon it.

Below: looking west towards the newest sectors of the cemetery, I daresay a few Covid victims here too. Visitors are well-dressed and dignified. A solemn and important occasion. I frame shots so as to avoid including people.

Below: looking east across from the western edge of the cemetery. As a general observation, I was shocked by how young the average person buried here were when they died. Most men died in their mid 60s, with those dying in their 80s being outliers.

Prelude: before setting off for the cemetery, I went for a shorter walk to catch the autumn colours on the sunlit trees. Below: the path to the forest passes through a small thicket separating two orchards.

Left: the track leading down from Jakubowizna to Grobice, orchards and woods on either side. The local authorities had to abandon plans to asphalt this into a proper road, but the farmers didn't want to sell their land to widen the track. So grass triumphed, and I must say I'm rather glad.

Below: looking north as the setting sun illuminates the golden treetops. The sky is perfectly clear; the apples have all been picked.

Postscript: I left the cemetery by the rear gate leading down to the river, and turned right towards ulica Parkowa. "Interesting... there are lights on in one of the shops..." I got closer and a wonderful sight befell me. A kebab shop! Doing boffo biz – from ordering my large beef kebab in thin pitta bread with hot sauce to finishing it, I reckon that about 20 people must have come in, including two Nepalese women. Now, a Nepalese restaurant is something else I'd love to see in Chynów! I hope the Luxor Kebab does well and encourages the local population that eating out is a good thing, encouraging others to open up some more eateries in Chynów.

This time two years ago:
Thoughts on the occasion of Allhallowtide 

This time two years ago:
Four days of sublime Golden Autumn

This time five years ago:
Obit

This time six years ago:
Good News

This time eight years ago:

Jeziorki railway modernisation - update

This time nine years ago:
On the death of my mother

This time ten years ago:
Marek Raczkowski on All Saints' Day

This time 11 years ago:
Disclosure of UFOs - are we ready? 

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki pond development

This time 13 years ago:
Captain Wrona's perfect gear-up landing

This time 16 years ago:
Where's the daylight gone?

This time 17 years ago:
All Saints' Day - Wszystkich Świętych

Valencia and man-made climate change

An unthinkable tragedy for Europe; a year's worth of rainfall in eight hours and over 150 people dead. People who as they woke on Tuesday 29 October 2024 had no idea that this would be their last day on earth, no idea that their lives would be snuffed out by a climate event of unimaginable magnitude. Drowned by surging water or crushed by toppling buildings.

The image that will stay with me of the Valencia floods is not one of people suffering or buildings destroyed, but of this street chock-full of cars (below), swept along by an incredibly powerful surge of water. And I'm thinking – how could this possibly happen? The physics of shifting vehicles – sideways it seems – each weighing one or two tonnes, in such numbers along such a narrow street – the sheer violence of what has happened is all too visible, but hard to take in. But it also shows what a car-dependent species we have become.

Photo credit: B. Hynde-Paywall

There should be no doubts left in anyone's mind that climate change is real; the planet is now over 1.2°C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, and 0.4°C warmer than in 1980. The effect of that extra heat energy is more powerful storms and heavier rainfalls. Imperial College London's Grantham Institute that studies and attributes the effect of human greenhouse-gas emissions on the climate estimates that the extra 1.2°C of average heat in the system is responsible for rainfall events that can be up to 30% heavier than in pre-industrial times; a deadly difference.

To those who deny the fact that the climate is changing, here's a list of all the major flood events affecting Poland over the last century. Notice the increasing frequency.

Year/event	Fatalities in Poland
2024 Central European floods	9
2010 Central European floods	25
1997 Central European floods	54
1947 Polish floods	55
1934 flood in Poland	55

Slowly, I feel the message is getting through. Younger people are less likely to want to own or drive a car, and cars make up 12% of human greenhouse gas emissions. But we should all be doing more – or actually, doing less; as I wrote the other day, buying less, travelling less, consuming less.

If we don't, the climate will only continue to deliver more extreme weather events, more frequently. Today it's Valencia; next summer or autumn it could hit you, directly.

This time last year:
On death

This time three years ago:
Improvements on the Radom line

This four years ago:
Rural rights of way, revisited

This time five years ago:

Cause of death

This time six years ago:
Opole in the late-October sunshine

This time seven years ago:
Work begins in earnest on the Karczunkowska viaduct

This time nine years ago:
Sublime autumn day in Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
CitytoCity, MalltoMall

This time 11 years ago:
(Internet) Radio Days

This time 12 years ago:
Another office move

This time 13 years ago:
Manufacturing a City of Culture

This time 14 years ago:
My thousandth post

This time 15 years ago:
Closure of ul. Poloneza

This time 16 years ago:
Scenes from a suburban petrol station

Post-consumerist hygiene

As a youth, I adopted the phrase, "washing is a bourgeois affectation" with a bit of tongue-in-cheek desire to shock. But the notion of hygiene was essentially something I'd bought into from childhood – the Whig View of History which teaches that mankind's journey is a one-way path of constant improvement, that today was better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better than today. In the past, lack of hygiene would condemn a large swathe of the population to premature death. Today, we know better; our understanding of germ theory has led to a lengthening of life expectancy. We wash, we don't smell, society is healthier and more fragrant than ever.

But has the pendulum not swung the other way? Are we now not weakening our immune systems with too much hygiene? And are we not harming the environment by all the constant flushing of detergents, washing powders and cleansing products into our water?

I noted in August the media fuss around US Olympic triathlete Seth Rider, about to swim in the Seine: "In preparation for this race, I knew there was going to be some E.coli exposure. So I’ve been trying to increase my E.coli threshold by exposing myself to a bit of E.coli in day-to-day life. It’s just little things, like not washing your hands after you go to the bathroom." So the question, Seth, is – are we talking number ones or number twos? The latter, well, just no. The faeco-oral route is a surefire way of getting severe diarrhoea. But few drops of wee on the fingers? 

Have you noticed how fast-food outlets, the ones where you eat food with your hands – burgers, fries, etc – do not post hygiene notices in their toilets? Saying, for example, "Now wash your hands before putting our food into your mouth?" This suggests that the restaurant chains aren't at all worried by the prospect of a customer suing them for punitive damages after getting food poisoning from eating a burger with urine-splashed fingers.

We wash too often, we bathe too often, we shower too often, we wash our hair and our clothes too often. I am not advocating kołtuństwo; I am, however, calling for people to consider their hygiene habits in the context of whether they are necessary; approach it consciously, wash when you need too, not automatically.

Working mostly from home with one or two trips to town a week, I'll always, but always, take a shower before getting dressed in smart clothes to go meet people. But the rest of the time, I'd be more relaxed about personal hygiene. Washing hands thoroughly after a poo – absolutely. After a wee? Not necessarily. After doing some gardening? Yes. After going for a walk? Not unless I've been handling something out there.

Oral hygiene is a different matter; I brush my teeth after each meal and always have a toothbrush and toothpaste on hand in my rucksacks. Even after eating an apple found upon my walk will be followed by brushing my teeth out in the fields; sugar + fruit acid not a good combination for dental health.

Overall, my spending on personal hygiene products is low. Sensodyne toothpaste, Head & Shoulders shampoo, generic store-brand soap in bar- and liquid form, and that's it! How much of my currently accumulated wealth is the result of spending 20%-50% less than average on personal hygiene products over a working lifetime? Ignoring the blandishments of the personal hygiene industry and not filling my bathroom with a vast collection of plastic bottles?

This time last year:
October's benign end

This time two years ago:
Disclosure day tomorrow?
[Next congressional UFO hearing: 13 November 2024]

This time three years ago:
Coping with time change (go to bed an hour earlier!)

This time four years ago:
A sustainable food system for rural Poland

This time five years ago:
Sifting through a life

This time seven years ago:
Throwing It All Away

This time eight years ago:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again
[Again: avoid symptoms of seasonal affective disorder by going to bed an hour earlier and waking an hour earlier when the wretched clocks go back!]

This time nine years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time 11 years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time 12 years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time 13 years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew 

This time 15 years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden
[October 2024: no frost!]

Warszawa Zachodnia takes shape underground

Changing trains at Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West) railway station this week, I was in for a pleasant surprise. No longer must passengers making the connection to Peron 9 (platform 9) trudge (or sprint) a kilometre or so on a zigzag route along the length of Platform 8, down steps, over tracks, between corrugated metal fences and under more tracks; we are now sent underground to experience what will be the new subterranean parts of the station.

Reminder: part of the modernisation of what was once Poland's Worst Station is the construction under the railway lines of a new tram tunnel. This cuts north-south, one day it will conduct trams from Wilanów to Wola. [The brand-new tramline to Wilanów opened yesterday; I will have to go there and have a look at some stage.]

Trams don't serve as yet Zachodnia station; a new line will lead them from ul. Grójecka along the wonderfully named ulica Bitwy Warszawskiej tysiąc dziewięćset dwudziestego roku (can anyone name a London thoroughfare consisting of 18 syllables?), then dive under Al. Jerozolimskie and the plethora of railway tracks to resurface on the other side then bifurcating (one line heading north-west to Wola, the other north-east towards the tram depot on ul. Młynarska. This new tram infrastructure is expected to be ready in April 2026. And with that, the modernisation of Warszawa Zachodnia will be complete. More than five years after work started.

In the meanwhile, changing trains at Zachodnia can now be done through a series of underground spaces and passages to the north of the main station. Below: the path to Platform 9 now leads from the bottom of the footbridge, across what will be the taxi drop-off lane to the steps leading down into liminal spaces where reality bends back upon itself...

Below: ... but where do we go from here? There's too much confusion. Into the Zone. All is silent and still. Digital timetable indicators stare blankly; many passages are blocked off. Familiar destinations (ul. Tunelowa) are now accessible via new and unfamiliar paths. Which way now?

Below: one day, this concourse will be thronged with passengers from Kraków, Katowice, Wrocław, Poznań and Gdańsk, Berlin, Prague and Budapest, changing from the trains up there for trams down here to all points in Warsaw. But today, post-futuristic scenes like this have been opened up to the public, speaking of transition. Tomorrow as perceived from the far future.

Below: somewhere between the main body of the station (Platforms 1-8) and Platform 9. Otherworldly. We, the human lab(yrinth) rats. No one around; the next train from Platform 9 does not depart for another 20 minutes.

Below: emerging at Platform 9. Still much work to be done here, despite the recent modernisation which saw a canopy over the platform, but no electronic display boards or other amenities. The escalators down to the new tunnel are not yet in service. And at the other end of the platform, the pedestrian crossing to the footbridge and to the Expo XXI centre has still to be re-opened.

Passing through Zachodnia, as I do frequently, the changes appear slow week to week, but over the years, as can been seen on this blog, progress is visible and when complete, with all the lifts and escalators and indicators working, the improvement will be massive. Click on the label 'W-wa Zachodnia' to the left to see just how much this station has changed since the first decade of this century.

This time time three years ago:
Two years without my father

This time four years ago:
Death of my father

This time six years ago
Recent Jeziorki update

This time seven years ago:
Autumn in Jeziorki

This time eight years ago:
A driving ban for developers and architects

This time nine years ago:
Do you keep coming back, or do you seek the new?

This time ten years ago:
In praise of Retro design

This time 11 years ago:
First snowfall in Warsaw 

This time 12 years ago:
Of cycles, economic and human 

This time 13 years ago:
Why didn't I read this before? Grapes of Wrath

This time 14 years ago:
Małopolska from the train