Summertime, and the living is lazy

When it's hot and humid, the will to exercise diminishes. This is clear when I look at my walking. I'm still walking the paces (still averaging 11,000 a day, winter and summer) but I am doing them more slowly, without vigour, pausing frequently to take photos. In fact, in summer, there are more longer walks, in winter the walks are more energetic (the more so that I now have Nordic walking poles). Plus it's dark for most of the time, so less photography.

A similar graph can be drawn spanning all my other daily exercise routines. Start the year with good intentions, hammer away at the pull-ups, sit-ups, planks etc; as summer begins to set in, there's less determination, more excuses for inactivity (the chief one being "it's summer - you deserve it"). Then as the evenings start drawing in again, I get back into the swing of pushing myself harder once again.

It seems inevitable. Summer is the time for letting go a bit - for relaxing, taking it easy (or at least easier). Not for giving up altogether, but for acknowledging that there's a time to push oneself and a time to reap the rewards. And not feeling guilty about it!

I have taken one step to ensure less excuses for summertime laziness - I have invested in a pull-up bar and a pair of 5kg weights for the działka. Looking at my spreadsheet numbers, I can see that I am on track to beat last year across nine out of my ten categories (drinking less alcohol, eating more fruit and veg, walking more paces/and at moderate- and high-intensity, plus seven sets of exercises - with one exception - press-ups. These are clearly in decline.  Yet there have been fewer days of zero exercising in the first half year of 2022 than in any previous first half. 

Full results, as always (barring any unforeseen health issue or accident!) at the end of the year. A time to feel gratitude, stave off complacency and pray for health, and luck.

This time last year:
Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

This time three years ago:
First half of 2019 - health in numbers

This time four years ago:
Key Performance Indicators - health - first half 2018

This time five years ago:
Three and half years of health and fitness data

This time six years ago:
First half of 2016 health & fitness in numbers

This time seven years ago:
Venus, Jupiter - auspices

This time eight years ago:
Down the line from York

This time nine years ago:
Cider - at last available in Poland

This time ten years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time 11 years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 13 years ago:
Late June lightning

Consciousness, space and time

I believe that we are getting closer to a new paradigm that will completely overturn mankind's current views of both science and spirituality; a new way of looking at the Cosmos that will hopefully bring the two worldviews closer together.

In much the same way that the scientific method and rationalism replaced alchemy, the Hermetic tradition and Gnosticism as repositories of Western explanation of the physical worlds, the new paradigm will replace materialism as the dominant perspective.

Over the past three and half centuries, science has brought us great advancement in terms of technology and living standards. And yet it has failed to explain the spiritual world that so many of us intuitively feel. Not only has it failed to explain metaphysical phenomena, it actively states that they don't exist. For all its benefits, science hasn't (for example) explained the leap from non-life to life, or what happened before the Big Bang; or why the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (dark matter and dark energy have had to be devised, neither of which have been observed); nor can it reconcile General Relativity with quantum mechanics. And above all, science cannot solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

There is a materialist-reductionist view of  consciousness, that it's merely an emergent property of matter (atoms joined to form molecules, which formed proteins - life then (somehow) appears and evolves to become more and more complex, and in the most complex of brains - found only in Homo sapiens and perhaps a few more higher-order species -  the phenomenon of consciousness eventually manifests itself - a product (presumably, again unproven by science) of neurons firing within the brain.

Today, a growing body of researchers and thinkers rejects this view, saying instead something that has hitherto been unthinkable - it is not consciousness that could not exist without space and time ('spacetime'), but it is spacetime that could not exist without consciousness. In other words, consciousness creates spacetime, and not the other way around.

Consider your experience of consciousness - it is a phenomenon central to the very essence of you being yourself. Materialism would say that such consciousness exists only within the skulls of sentient beings - and the only ones we know of in the entire Universe are on our planet.

Can you envisage consciousness (such as the very consciousness that you experience) as a property unique to eight billion people in a Universe that's 93 billion light years across? My intuition is that consciousness is everywhere, filling what we perceive to be spacetime.

But in what manner? Is consciousness granular, measured in discrete units down at the Planck level, a property of matter alongside mass, charge and spin, or is it even more fundamental than that - the ocean in which all matter swims, as it were? Are our individual consciousnesses nodes somehow connected in a Universal network, or web, or lattice, or grid? 

Panpsychism - the notion that every thing is conscious - right down to the subatomic particle - is also gaining in popularity. I should say here 'returning to intellectual respectability', for panpsychism has a long tradition with roots in Ancient Greece, India and across the Far East. 

More and more scientists and philosophers are prepared to step away from the old certainties of materialist reductionism. Central to materialist reductionism is the notion that matter - and only matter - exists in space and time, with consciousness is an illusionary epiphenomenon that somehow emerged from that matter.

But there is a long, long way to go before science, philosophy and religion get anywhere close to agreeing about the true nature of consciousness.

Two short videos with the (ever-sceptical) Robert Lawrence Kuhn - the first is with Harvard neurology professor, Rudolph Tanzi. The fact that this is a Harvard neurology professor speaking is mind-blowing.

...and with philosopher David Chalmers, famous for framing what's known as the 'hard problem of consciousness'

This time last year:
Midsummer photo catch-up

This time two years ago:
Stormy high summer

This time three years ago:

The opening of the Raffles/Europejski hotel, Warsaw

This time six years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time seven years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 12 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 13 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 14 years ago:
The Road beckons

Warsaw: midsummer's day, midsummer's night

Midsummer's Day - the middle of summer, or the astronomical start of summer? A busy day in town today, to the office, a conference call, a trade workshop, an economic conference and a business mixer. On my way from the workshop to the conference, I walked along ulica Prosta, popping through the completed Norblin complex (which I last visited before work here started in earnest). Below: looking towards Norblin from the plaza outside the mBank building.

Below: walking along Pasaż Ludwika Norblina. Quiet for the time of day. But it's so nice - a blend of old brick and modern architecture.

Below: looking back at the mBank building along Pasaż Ludwika Norblina. A stone's throw from where my father lived as a small child.

I wrote recently about pre-war German ghost signs in Silesia, here's a sign from Poland's more recent Stalinist past - a health and safety slogan from the early '50s by the look of the typeface that was uncovered during the reconstruction and preserved. 'On each job, take care not only of your own safety, but also equally of your work comrades.'

Below: from the 32nd floor of the Warsaw Unit, looking east along ul. Prosta (lit. 'Straight Street'); the mBank building to the left, the narrow black building is Skysawa tower; beyond that the (shorter) Central Point that sprang out of the ground outside my office during the pandemic; to its right, Rondo ONZ tower, further right is the Intercontinental Hotel. The Palace of Culture is hidden from this view.

Below: looking at the same skyline from street level. Plenty of cyclists and e-scooterists using the cycle path. Build it, they will come.

Below: plac Grzybowski, standing there a vintage Jelcz 043 coach.

I reach the Bristol hotel to see to my delight a whole lot of classic cars (including three Jaguar XK140s, three E-Types, two '65 Ford Mustangs) outside - participants in the Imperial Rally, from Oslo to Lisbon.

Below: looking north along Krakowskie Przedmieście towards the Bristol hotel. Tourist season hasn't yet begun in earnest.

Below: waiting for the train home, W-wa Zachodnia station. This view will soon be history, as work will soon start on the modernisation of the suburban platforms.

Below: the new long-distance platforms as seen from an old suburban platform. Note the difference in lighting. Sunset (the year's latest - 21:01 in Warsaw today) leaving light in the sky nearly an hour and half later.

This time two years ago:
Rural rights of way

This time three years ago:
Not a whole lot going on...

This time seven years ago:
Dreamtime supernatural

This time nine years ago:
Baszta - local legend round these parts

This time 11 years ago:
Downhill all the way to December

This time 12 years ago:
What do I want for Poland

This time 13 years ago:
Summer holiday starts drizzly

This time 14 years ago:
Israeli Air Force Boeing 707 visits Okęcie

Inflation: how do we deal with it, how do we cope?

When I moved to Poland 25 years ago, inflation here stood at 14.9%. Given that only seven years earlier, in 1990, it was 585%, having got it below 15% was quite an achievement. In 2015 and 2016, Poland actually had falling prices. But now, consumer price inflation stands at 13.9% - stoked to a significant degree by government handouts intended to win votes. Economists predict it will peak between 15%-20%.

With petrol around 8zł a litre, household gas costing twice as much per cubic metre as it did a year ago, and food prices soaring, people are talking about little else when you strike up a conversation. 

But how should we deal with it - as consumers, employees, and voters?

What to do? You can put off purchases like clothing and a new car or some building work, but food and fuel isn't anything you can do much about, other than buying cheaper cuts and using less fuel. But should you put off capital projects, building works? Prices of building materials have rocketed and those builders that are willing to do the work are short-handed (so many Ukrainian builders have returned home to fight for their country). As I wrote recently, installing eight solar panels on the działka cost 30% more than the ten panels on the house, a 38% increase per panel. For those paying off mortgages, watching interest rates rise (belatedly, it must be said) must be scary.

The old saying 'mend your roof while the sun shines' suggests that capital investment is best done when the economy is weak and inflation is low. 

Does paying inflationary prices only encourage more inflation? It works both ways.

You can ask your boss about a pay rise - if you get one, that increase in the firm's employment costs will be passed on the client, and ultimately onto the consumer in the form of increased prices for goods and services. So pay rises only fuel the price spiral.

Behavioural economics is a tough subject, because like quantum physics, it introduces so many random elements into a system as to upset classic theories. Do people in a market behave like a herd? Or do even the slightest variations between individual human behaviours at the interface with the market make it all too difficult to model accurately?

At a time of inflation, the urge is to hoard, to stockpile. Wholesalers, intuiting that they will be able to sell their stock at current price plus 10% if they hang onto to it for a few more months, are filling their warehouses to overflowing, ordering extra stock from the factories, who are running behind with their order books. And so they put more labour onto the job, but labour is lacking, so they pay more for it, thus further fuelling the spiral.

Flour, toilet paper, sugar - favoured staples of hoarders preparing for an inflation apocalypse - should we be buying these in bulk? No. We're doing no one any favours, least alone ourselves.

Italian economist Carlo M. Cipolla, in his classic 1976 work, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, set out this grid (below), defining the behaviour of the stupid as those "whose efforts are counterproductive to both their and others' interests". How we behave en masse as a market of economic actors at a time of difficulty will determine how quickly we emerge from the current inflationary crisis.

My approach is to take it easy - calm down, we've been here before (even in the UK, when inflation topped 26% in 1975). Spend less, focus on needs rather than wants. And don't vote for political parties offering uncosted spending plans. "Vote for us, and you'll retire on full pay at 55, and get 1,000zł a month every month for each child!" You'll pay for their promises with a weak złoty.

This time last year:
Midsummer wild food

This time two years ago:
Summer Solstice at a Time of Pandemic

This time seven years ago:

Ahead of the storm

This time nine years ago:
Fashionable bicycles for Warsaw's hipsters

This time ten years ago:
On Jarosław Gowin and leadership in Polish politics

This time 11 years ago:
Death of a Polish pilot

This time 12 years ago:
Doesn't anyone want to recycle my rubbish?

This time 13 years ago:
End of the school year

This time 14 years ago:
Midsummer scenes, Jeziorki

Warka Miasto

Opened three months ago, the completely new station serving Warka (rather than its north-western outskirts) is an entirely welcome development. Warka Miasto station lies a whole kilometre closer to the centre of town than Warka station (opened 1934). I decide to go into Warka from Chynów by train to give the new station a go. 

Below: the journey there was on the oldest rolling stock that Koleje Mazowieckie could muster - a ripple-sided, three-windscreen EN57; here it is pulling into Chynów, it dates from 1973; it's 49 years old. Heritage railways in the UK have newer attractions. [This was to be my last ever photo and ride on an unmodernised EN57 on the Radom line.]

It arrived in Chynów just four minutes late (not bad since it set off from Pilawa 97km away, stopping at every Warsaw station en route). These old trains are unreliable and lack modern facilities, but they do have one huge plus in summer - you can open the windows. And that allows me to take photos like the one below - as my train pulls out of Krężel station (staggered platforms), a modernised EN57 awaits the signal to depart for Chynów and then on to Warsaw. Note the lowered pedestrian level-crossing barrier.

Below: arrival, Warka Miasto. My first time on this platform. At the end, the new viaduct carrying ulica Lotników over the line (the bridge replacing a level crossing). Beyond, just about visible (click to enlarge) the pair of new bridges carrying the railway over the river Pilica. A reminder that until the modernisation of the Warsaw-Radom line, it was single track south of Warka, including just the one bridge over the Pilica. More on this here.

Below: remember, this is a new-build, not a refurbished station; everything is as it should be - shelters, signage, level access with lifts up to street level. Lifts have a habit of breaking down and attract vandals, which is why I prefer gently sloping ramps (like the ones accessing the foot tunnel at Chynów station). I guess these lifts were installed because of a lack of alternative (private land on either side), and that the cost of installation was one of the most expensive parts of the whole investment at Warka Miasto.

Below: from the top of the viaduct, looking down ul. Lotników towards the centre of Warka, which lies behind the block of flats in the middle of this picture. A nine-minute walk from the station, rather than the 20 minutes or so marching along the main road into town.

Below: on the roundabout as you come into Warka from the north, the Lim-2 (Polish licence-built MiG 15) on a pedestal, looking like it will be devoured by plant life soon.

Below: it looked a lot tidier back in 2015 when I took this photo.

I took the opportunity to walk around Warka's periphery (building-material and agrochemical wholesalers, sand-, gravel- and coal merchants, car washes, what have you) and took the train back to Chynów from Warka rather than Warka Miasto. In contrast to the train out, the return journey was on the latest rolling stock; this is the Newag Impuls - which arrived from Radom 25 minutes late. For a 15km journey that takes all of 12 minutes. 

I suspect the delay was a knock-on effect caused by the late running of the Sienkiewicz, the Kraków-Olsztyn express, which was running 50 minutes behind schedule. The local train would have had to be held at Dobieszyn (two stations south of Warka Miasto) to allow the express through. Below: here indeed is the Sienkiewicz, pulling into Warka. From here, next stop Piaseczno (23 minutes), then four Warsaw stations, then a further eight stations to Olsztyn (over three and half hours away). I quite fancy the idea of taking a short hop from Warka to Piaseczno and having a craft beer in the bar towards the middle of the train, watching the orchards fly past.

This time last year:
Elegy for a lost exurbia

This time two years ago:
Farewell to Papuś

This three years ago:

Classic cars, Ealing

This time four years ago
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics reviewed

This time five years ago:
Now it belongs to the ages - on Great Works of Art

This time six years ago:
More Brictorian Liverpool

This time seven years ago:
Łódź - city of tenements

This time eight years ago:
Liverpool reborn

This time nine years ago:
What goes round comes around: retro is cool - again.

This time ten years ago:
Warsaw's southern bypass by this time next year?

This time 11 years ago:
Stand Easy! - a short story

This time 14 years ago:
God Save The Queen - I mean it, Ma'am

Familiarity, revisited

Me: "There's no direct equivalent in Polish for the word 'familiarity'."

Stock response: "Yes there is - it's znajomość".

Nowhere near, I'd argue. Look at the etymology. 'Familiar' shares the same root as the word 'family'. From the Latin familia, or 'household'; Znajomość, like the word znajomy - acquaintance - has its root in the verb znać, 'to know'. Znajomość is defined as 'relacja osób, opierająca się na utrzymywaniu ogólnych, niezbyt bliskich stosunków' ('relationship of people, based on maintaining general, not very close relationships'). 

"Are you familiar with the works of James Joyce?" "No, but I am acquainted with them." 

There's a big difference.

Familiarity is defined as 'close or habitual acquaintance with someone or something; understanding or recognition acquired from experience'.

It's that second part I want to focus on - 'understanding or recognition acquired from experience'. Familiarity - with a landscape, with music, with taste - with all manner of subjective experience - is a matter of consciousness. Something you intuitively feel - or not. A period of history, a place in space and time - do you feel it - or not? It either clicks, or suits, or falls into place in your consciousness - or it doesn't. The familiar is congruent. It fits. 

Familiarity is important, just as comfort is important. If something is unfamiliar, it can be uncomfortable. But something strange or even eerie can be comfortably familiar. 'Strangely familiar' is itself a familiar term, suggesting a common experience.

My childhood included numerous conscious moments of anomalous familiarity - "where do I know that feeling from?" A snatch of melody, a particular cloud formation, an old motorbike, a scent - intimate experiences, unique to me, outside of ego or imagination, yet instantly familiar to me and only me.

These flashbacks of anomalous familiarity occur to me a couple of times a week, more often when the seasons change. I had one on this evening's walk - I turned west towards a sun setting towards a flat horizon in a cloudless sky, under the wide brim of my bush-hat. Strongly familiar yet not West Ealing or Warwickshire.

They are pleasant and bring me comfort and indeed joy. And with them comes a sense that life is less transient than our physical selves - biological containers for our egos - think it is.

[Update Jan 2023: One suggestion I was offered was bliskość - (literally 'nearness') - good one! And the adjective, for familiar, would be bliski/bliska/bliskie. Thank you, A!]

This time four years ago:
Karczunkowska viaduct - further delays

This time ten years ago:
Russia's going home

This time 15 years ago:
Sun and zenith rising

As I walked out one midsummer's morning

The sun rose over Warsaw today at 04:14, it's earliest in the year (indeed it rises at 04:14 from the 12th to the 23rd of June; the latest sunrise - at 21:01 - is on 21st to the 28th June, making the 22nd the longest day). Making the most of the public holiday (Corpus Christi), I woke up this morning just after 3am, dressed and ate breakfast, leaving the house in Jeziorki bound for Jakubowizna on foot. Temperature was a cool 9C, thin jacket required. 

Below: in case anyone wants to know what quarter past three in the morning looks like in suburban Warsaw in mid-June, here we are - view from my bedroom window. Untweaked in Photoshop - out of the box. Light mist on the meadow behind the house.

Below: end of my street, junction with ulica Karczunkowska. I'm on my way. No traffic - public holiday as well as being really early!

Below: the pond on ul. Pozytywki, ducks and coots still asleep. Nothing stirs. One dog barks nervously.

Below: still incomplete, the new Orthodox church on ul. Puławska catches the rising sun. This is Warsaw's Hagia Sophia, belonging to the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church (nothing to do with the war criminal Patriach Kirill). Modelled on the one in Constantinople. It stands just metres from Warsaw's southern border (this side of the treeline).

Onward through Mysiadło to Piaseczno, the Slough of the East. Not my favourite Polish town, though I must say, that like many places right now, it is currently undergoing a thoroughgoing modernisation. Below: work under way, roads closed - an early bus runs empty across (Piaseczno's) ul. Puławska. Photo taken one hour after leaving home. I look forward to seeing Piaseczno when all the work's been finished. Looks promising. Proper provisions for cyclists and pedestrians.

Onward, south to the edge of Piaseczno, over the footbridge crossing the river Jeziorka (nothing to do with Jeziorki) and into Żabieniec, still noted for its fishponds (farmed carp) and the freshwater fish institute (Instytut Rybactwa Śródlądowego). The ponds are a landmark when flying into Warsaw Okęcie airport, to the left of the flightpath.

Having passed through Żabieniec, I enter the Chojnów landscape park (Chojnowski Park Krajobrazowy) - the best part of the trip. After a while, the footpath joins the Gościniec Wareki (the archaic word gościniec is akin to the English 'highway' in the historical context - think of 'highwaymen'). The road runs south; to the west the fishponds, and the Warsaw-Radom railway line - audible but not visible. Below: bliss - two hours' walk from home. About one-third of the way.

Having crossed the road to Zalesie Górne, the Gościniec Warecki becomes asphalted. Cars are mercifully rare - on this seven-kilometre stretch, I saw just two (and two cyclists, two dog walkers and one deer). Below: the curious settlement of Nowinki (lit. 'Little Tidings' or 'Little Novelties').

What makes Nowinki (at least its northern end) unusual is the character of the buildings - działki set back from the road, modest wooden shacks mostly, neglected, yet fenced off with concrete posts and barbed wire, surrounded by tall trees. The hallmarks of a communist-era enclave - a rural retreat for middle-ranking apparatchiks. Having retired and or died off, their działki have become terminally  shabby. No one claiming them. Further on up the road, new houses are appearing - brick-built and without the paranoid fencing.

Time for a second breakfast and a ten-minute rest at the three-hour mark between Nowinki and the next village along - Krępa, at the southern edge of the forest. The Gościniec Warecki gives way to ul. Długa. Krępa was much prettier, brighter and better looked-after than Nowinki - pavements, notice-board, well-kept houses. 

Leaving the forest behind, my next waypoint is the Skierniewice-Łuków railway line, which crosses the main Warsaw-Radom line at Czachówek. Like the locals, I avoid a half-kilometre detour via a road tunnel under the tracks by using an unofficial but well-worn path over them. Having just seen (in the distance) two passing container trains heading east-west and west-east, I knew the coast would be clear for a long while. In the distance, the Czachówek diamond.

South of the line, I feel I'm almost home in Jakubowizna. But it's still a long walk to Sułkowice. On one side of the road flows the Czarna river, floodbanks on either side protecting adjacent lands. Coming up to 9am, but still very few cars on the road. Below: a footbridge over the Czarna, leading to Czachówek Południowy station.

Below: another curiously named settlement along my route - Kiełbaska (lit. 'Little Sausage'). Untouched by progress.

Soon, I arrive in Sułkowice - famous for being home to Poland's police-dog training school. Past the village and station, the DK50 viaduct on the horizon means I'm no more than 20 minutes from home on the działka. Rushing through (non-stop between Warka and Piaseczno) is the 'San' express.

It's good to know that I can get to the działka under my own steam - ended up spending no money today (all shops along the way firmly shut) - walking 26.4 kilometres (16.4 miles) with six or seven kilo on my back.

Arriving on the działka, time for a wash, a beer - and a nap (which ended up being two hours long!). But then I only slept five hours, so I needed it. A total over over walked 36,500 paces today.

This time seven years ago:
Central Warsaw rail update

This time ten years ago:
Poland's night train network

This time 11 years ago:
On a musical note

This time 12 years ago:
Standing stones

This time 15 years ago:
The year nears its zenith

Powered by the Sun

My działka will soon be plugged into the sun - as soon as an electrician from PGE Obrót reprograms my new electricity meter to current in (from the grid) and current out (generated by my new panels). Apart from my new smugness that I'll not be burning any fossil fuels downstream to heat the house, I will have an extended dwelling season in the country, where solar-powered heating can ensure the interior stays warm and dry all winter long. No more entering the house to find it's +4.5C inside, the heating can be left on day and night at a low level to keep damp at bay.

The downside is having to adjust to a new view. The panels had to go on the ground, as the roof of my house could not be aligned more badly to catch the sun. As it is, on the ground, it is optimal (I just need to prune back the trees and shrubs to the south-east of the array - see bottom picture). Tilted just slightly west of due south, the panels will catch the sun at its most energetic, around 1pm. With the drive now located to the east, the panels do not interfere with access.

There's more energy than I currently use; an electric vehicle charging point may come in handy one day.

Below: how shall I optimise the space behind the panel array? Small, metal tool-shed? (nothing flammable, just in case) Or a conifer screen, kept neatly trimmed?

As I wrote, these eight panels cost 25% more than the ten panels on the house in Jeziorki (installed November 2020), reflecting supply-chain difficulties from China and the inflationary spiral - dearer electricity means more people ordering solar panels. Still - it's done, it won't be any cheaper in the near future. In the more distant future, perovskite film will be available to stick onto any south-facing facades (in theory, because perovskite is translucent, you will also be able to stick it onto existing silicon-based panels to increase their effectiveness. Also better than the Jeziorki set-up is the user interface on the junction box, complete with phone app (which will start to give data once the meter has been seen to). Much more legible. The new system is from Columbus Energy, by the way.

Will there be money from the government for this? I've discounted it. Last time round it was broken promises (5,000zł became 3,000zł, with over a year's wait); I'm not doing it for any subsidy but for the planet.

This time two years ago:
Poland's town/country divide explored

This time six years ago:

A long walk to Czachówek

This time eight years ago:
Half a mile under central Warsaw, on foot

This time nine years ago:
Dzienniki Kołymskie reviewed

This time ten years ago
Russia-Poland in Warsaw: the worst day of Euro 2012

This time 12 years ago:
Thirty-one and sixty-three - a short story

This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw rail circumnavigation

This time 14 years ago:
Classic Polish vehicles

This time 15 years ago:
South Warsaw sunsets

More blues and greens from early summer

Blue and green continue to dominate - top temperatures exceeding 25C, but interspersed with rain in reasonable amounts. The sublime summer. I feel like I want to go to one specific place - so off I set.

Below: the fields between Jeziorki (in Warsaw), and - in the distance - Mysiadło (not in Warsaw), the treeline marking the border. Crops coming up nicely. With the geopolitical situation as it is, the worst thing that could happen to agriculture is flooding or drought.

From Mysiadło to Nowa Iwiczna, I walk along the track of the old sidings for the agglomerate ramp (below), ripped up to make way for one housing estate (didn't happen); the area was then earmarked for an even bigger housing project (again didn't happen). So, lots of recreational land remains.

 Below: how it once looked here, with rails in situ. Photo taken February 2008, nearer the Jeziorki end.

Below: at the other end, in a small tongue of Zgorzała that crosses the tracks, a small development of about a dozen houses is being built.

Below: across ulica Krasickiego in Nowa Iwiczna, where the unelectrified coal train* line curves away from the main Warsaw-Radom line. A Warsaw-bound Koleje Mazowieckie Impuls train rushes by. These trains pick up a nice turn of speed, necessitating longer stops at stations to fit the same timetables as the old stock.

Below: I reach my destination - the pedestrian level crossing across the coal line. Photo taken from Nowa Iwiczna; beyond the houses in the immediate front line facing the tracks lies Stara Iwiczna. A sudden yearning to visit this spot led me here.

*Just as I'm indexing 'coal train' under Labels, John Coltrane's tenor sax solo kicks in Miles Davis's So What on YouTube

This time last year:

Warsaw West station under construction

This time seven years ago:
Loakes in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Gdynia, on the beach, six am

This time nine years ago:
Polish doctors in UK offer new healthcare model

This time ten years ago:
Football in Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
Era becomes T-Mobile

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw-Góra Kalwaria-Pilawa rail link closed

This time 13 years ago:
Marsh harrier, golden airliner over Jeziorki

This time 14 years ago:
Bus blaze on way to town

This time 15 years ago:
A beautiful, stormy twilight

Conscience, consciousness and sensitivity

When I was a teenager, I had an air rifle. One fine summer's day when the cherry tree in the garden was full of fruit, I pointed the gun out of my window at a flock of starlings that had descended to peck at the cherries. I singled one out and pulled the trigger. It fell out of the tree. The rest scattered. 

I went down to inspect the fallen bird lying fatally wounded on the ground. It looked at me, scared, confused, in agony, aware that its life - which had been so wonderful until now - was rapidly draining away. I felt that the dying bird had connected my presence with its plight; it was it accusing me of having taken its life. Or was I being over-sensitive? [Interestingly this piece in the Guardian today asks how birds can have a sense of self without having a neo-cortex in their brains.] 

The memory of my emotion remains so strong that I have been putting off writing this post for about three weeks, finding other things to blog about. 

Since that moment of communion with a dying creature that I had mortally wounded, I have never consciously harmed any creature. Indeed, as I get older and wiser, I am beginning to feel sentience across all life-forms - trees, indeed - even bushes and grass. Scything the lawn outside the działka, I begin with a silent 'I'm sorry' to the grass that will be cut. Pulling out saplings that have grown too close to other, slightly larger, young trees gives me guilt.

Sensitivity is a matter of degree in us humans. Does Putin, for example, suffers from any remorse about killing innocent Ukrainian women and children, ordering the bombardment of residential blocks of flats, letting loose thermobaric rockets on Ukrainian villages (or indeed bombing Syrian hospitals) etc - or is he such an utter sociopath that he lacks the ability to feel guilt or sense of wrong-doing? Indeed, is conscience a biological or social construct?

Conscience is an individual matter, it can be honed or dullened by the people around us. Gang members will feel less bad about their minor misdemeanours than cloistered nuns. 

The sensitive will be more likely to feel that their misdeeds trigger karma - or the nemesis that is triggered by hubris, divine retribution. This is a thought I've been wrestling with for years. The notion that we self-regulate our behaviour in line with our sensitivity. But is there a link between consciousness - the awareness of being aware - and conscience? 

Conscience, says Wikipedia, is a cognitive process that "elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual's moral philosophy or value system. In common terms, conscience is often described as feelings of remorse when a person commits an act that conflicts with their moral values."

I think there's more to conscience than a reflection of the moral system we have absorbed - it is a far broader link, a binding with the flow of the Universe through our consciousness.

This time last year:
Little annoyances and optimising one's life

This time two years ago:
The 13th thirteenth

This time three years ago:

Ghastly June day in London

This time four years ago:
Perfect weather week in Warsaw

This time five years ago:
Further progress is unimaginable

This time six years ago:
Baletowa reopens as rail works move on

This time nine years ago:
Polish doctors in UK offer new healthcare model

This time 12 years ago:
The closure of the Góra Kalwaria - Pilawa railway link

This time 14 years ago:
My blazing bus pic gets on front page of Gazeta Stołeczna

This time 15 years ago:
Storm clouds rising

'High-functioning savants', UFOs and psychic abilities

An increasing number of scientists are prepared to speak openly about the UFO phenomenon, saying that it's worthy of serious scientific inquiry. "There is something unexplainable out there, we need more data" is now becoming the usual response, rather than "it's just a handful of maladjusted attention-seekers - of course there are no visitors from other worlds." Mockery of the subject as 'flaky woo-woo' is evaporating as more and more big names make appearances on the social media to posit their latest theories. The new name, 'unidentified aerial phenomena' (UAP) seems to draw an official line under the terms 'UFO' and 'flying saucers' - UAP we can talk about.

One scientist who has been at the forefront of academic UAP research for some while is immunologist Garry P. Nolan, professor of pathology at Stanford - an academic with a rock-solid track record of published research, patented technology and commercial start-ups. Following his debunking of the Atacama skeleton in 2018, Prof Nolan was approached by the CIA to look at cases of military personnel who had claimed to have seen flying saucers. 

He has since helped investigate the brains of around 100 patients, mostly defence or government personnel or aerospace industry employees "related to supposed interactions with an anomalous craft". The majority have had their brains scanned with an fMRI scanner. Preliminary findings suggested that the basal ganglia within numerous individuals in the group had been somehow "damaged". Subsequent inquiry, however, showed what they first took to be "damage" was actually an "over-connection of neurons between the head of the caudate and the putamen," disproportionate in this cohort compared to the general population." The role of the caudate is linked to intelligence and planning. For at least multiple individuals of this subset, this brain characteristic was something that the people were born with. And indeed, further research showed family links - a clear genetic component. And there is also, says Prof Nolan, a tendency for those with this characteristic to marry and breed with others who have it.

I have watched and read several interviews with Prof Nolan, who, along with his collaborator at the CIA, Dr Kit Green, consider members of this group to be 'high-functioning savants' - words traditionally associated with autism spectrum disorder. A trait of savantism is known as RRBI - restricted, repetitive behaviours and interests - an intense focus on a narrow range of interests, which, paradoxically is essential in science (Einstein, Newton and many other geniuses showed elements of it).

So now we come to the crunch question: are close encounters with UAP linked to a specific configuration of the brain seen only in few people? Or are these people - because their brains are physically different to those of the rest of the population - more prone to imagine such encounters? People who feel themselves to be in some way special, or different, to the majority of humans? ['Starseeds' is one term I've come across in the social media]

The family links make it more interesting. A defence contractor, for instance, who claims to have seen three glowing orbs close-up, has the tell-tale fMRI signature. But then... so does his father! This would tend to make sceptics say - "Aha - I told you so. I bet the father never saw those glowing orbs." Hard to refute, as is the observation that many people who report UFO sightings have been interested in the subject since childhood, and often have a savant-like knowledge of cases, places, dates and people involved. A link between an attraction to science fiction as a genre and interest in UFOs is quite clear.

The genetic aspect serves to intrigue me further - bolder hypotheses (not necessarily propounded by Prof Nolan), posit that only certain people have 'mystical visions', 'supernatural powers' or 'psychic abilities', and that these powers are the products of anomalies within the brain. A genetic element to this is fascinating too, suggesting evolutionary processes. Spiritual evolution or alien-human hybridisation?

Neuroscience and genetics, however, are both in their infancy and you can't (yet) google any papers into the connection between anomalous connections within the brain and claimed paranormal abilities. However, the Pentagon is now obliged (as of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act) to provide unclassified annual reports to Congress and classified semi-annual briefings on UAP incidents, specifically mentioning any health-related effects - which suggests that research is on its way.

As though to underline my opening point - here's Dr Robin Hanson (Oxford University, DARPA, Lockheed, NASA - an intellectual heavyweight) in conversation today with Lex Fridman, about UFO sightings. Part of a rolling programme of managed dissemination, to quote former CIA officer John Ramirez?

This time last year:
A proud moment

This time two years ago
Rail progress - Krężel to Chynów

This time eight years ago:

Aberdeen, dour city

This time ten years ago:
Fans fly in for the football

This time 11 years ago:
Cara al Sol - part II

This time 12 years ago:
Still struggling with the floodwaters

This time 13 years ago:
European elections - and I buy used D40

The time 14 years ago:
To the Vistula, by bike

This time 15 years ago:
Poppy profusion