All together, saving our planet

To Kraków for the 2nd Carbon Footprint Summit. A nice idea which shows me where the social problems lie in persuading humanity to give a shit about the planet we live on...

The idea is great - bring together everyone that cares, to discuss what's needed to be done. Turning up at the venue, I was struck by the large number of young activists, full of fervour, and a business crowd that were there to talk about what's actually being done.

I came by train emitting 8.1kg of CO₂; by car, would have been 29.6kg; plane 70.8kg.

I had come all the way (an 03:20 alarm to catch the 04:56 train from Jeziorki via W-wa Zachodnia) mainly to hear Olga Malinkiewicz, co-founder and chief technology officer of Saule Technologies. Dr Malinkiewicz is famous for having invented a way to ink-jet print perovskite, a translucent crystal with photovoltaic properties, onto plastic film. The implications of this are huge. Unlike conventional silicon panels - heavy and clunky rectangular slabs - perovskite can be wrapped around irregular shapes, it can be applied to windows, it can even be applied to silicon panels boosting their combined efficiency. Looking at the potential, I believe that Dr Malinkiewicz will one day be seen as the greatest Polish scientist since Marie Curie-Skłodowska.

The event was organised along the greenest of principles. I am irked at going to a big conference and getting a visitor ID badge that's printed onto a sheet of laminated plastic and hung around one's neck on a lanyard with metal clasp, bearing the sponsors' logos. One day, and then all that waste... Here, the badges were made of recycled cardboard and suspended from a length of jute string. There were no programmes or brochures - again, a waste of resources. Instead, we have the programme in our phones. Signage at the event was hand-written on recycled cardboard, rather than printed on plastic and mounted on polyurethane. 

The event felt like a mashup between a normal business conference, the sort of thing I'd go to two or three times a month before the pandemic, mixed with a trendy hippy-hipster happening. Girls dressed as butterflies wearing gasmasks would flutter around Making a Point. A jumble-sale of recycled clothes sat in one corner of the arena, between stands for Porsche and Ford. You could get composting starter kits and advice on recycling, or watch films about the damage being done to our planet by the meat industry. The volunteers who ran the event were friendly and earnest about the Cause. A Cause which is literally the life or death of our planet as a habitable ecosystem for humanity.

Note the recycled pallets and social distancing. Good stuff!

The presentations and panels were generally interesting - good stuff about food waste, hydroponic plant production, green investment and capital markets, ESG reporting, the future of hydrogen, green redevelopment of buildings - very encouraging to hear so much positive messaging from businesses in Poland about the changes being made to hit ambitious decarbonisation goals ahead of deadlines. But where's Dr Olga?

After a while, it struck me that something wasn't right. I couldn't get online via my phone (I guess there wasn't enough bandwidth locally) but remembered from reading the programme at home online that Dr Malinkiewicz was due on at 11:40. That time came and went... there was instead an interesting panel with a lady from the United Nations and the deputy chairman of Grupa Azoty... I popped over to the Saule Technologies stand to ask a representative where his boss was. I was told that she was onsite, but that she'd already spoken - "Impossible - I've been here since the opening speech..." I asked one of the guys on the mixing desk. He didn't know either; he made a phone call. "She's already spoken..." It turns out that there were two conferences going on simultaneously! On was on the main stage, a conference in Polish (which I don't recall reading about online), while the international conference was tucked away in a small room a few corridors away from the arena, the signage for which was poor.

Left: This way... It is easy to see how I missed the sign saying Międzynarodowa konferencja ('international conference'). Click to enlarge. Please understand that at this international conference would be speaking the woman whose invention is about to transform the photovoltaic industry for the benefit of our entire planet.

And so I'd missed the very speech I'd come for, even though I heard some compelling content from a series of interesting speakers. Yet the one thing that struck me most was the Extinction Rebellion stand (below). It was unmanned. The point that the environmental pressure group was making was "we don't talk to business because business is destroying our planet". Right on, man. Business also happens to be feeding, housing and clothing you. This Pol Pottist, neo-Kropotkinite movement is so utterly counterproductive. In refusing to hear what business is doing, Extinction Rebellion is painting itself into a corner, it is glueing itself to the asphalt. Extremists. How about coming up with an invention similar in significance to perovskite film instead?

A monologue from nobody.

My key takeaways from the Carbon Footprint Summit - 1) It's all about changing the individual behaviour of billions of people - in particular the wealthiest two billion. Stop being greedy and focused on the acquisition of material possessions. Change your habits with the planet foremost in your mind. 2) Your carbon footprint is one thing, your water footprint is just as important. How much water do you literally piss away? Even by pushing the 'small flush' button on your WC, it's three litres of cleaned, potable water per wee, seven wees a day, that's 21 litres down the drain (with a full flush toilet, it's 42 litres a day). I'm smug here because for the past several years, I've been storing my urine, allowing it to ferment into ammonia, then using it as fertiliser (or mole deterrent) in the garden. But then I live in a house with a garden... 3) Business and activists need to be talking to each other non-stop about climate change. The danger of extremism can sparking counter-extremism, as is explained in this excellent piece from The Economist.

This time three years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia Platform 8 to reopen

This time four years ago:
Learning to fly (swan pics)

This time six years ago:
Scotland's answer to the Hoover Building

This time eight years ago:
In which I don't vote in the mayoral referendum, thus helping to save HG-W's job

This time nine years ago:
Gorgeous cars from Czechoslovakia

This time ten years ago:
Donald Tusk and Co. get re-elected 

This time 11 years ago:
Poland's wonderful bread

This time 12 years ago:
An October Friday in Warsaw

Are you a special or a typical observer?

I assume that you are curious, and that you observe and then deduce; that you fit observed phenomena together, making sense of new correlations; that you puzzle over them, seeking out answers online and in books, and by asking the right questions of the right people.

Albert Einstein knew that his greatest driver was his curiosity. The urge to know. When coupled with intelligence, determination and focus - and luck - curiosity has the power to move humanity forward. But not all of us are gifted in the amount required to make a difference.

I wrote shortly after my father's death that the last words he wrote down, on two Post-It notes, were, respectively, 'Primitivo' and 'Quantum supremacy'. The latter has struck me, as I follow developments in the field of quantum computing, as proof of his unquenchable curiosity - right there, up to the last days of his life. I have posited that it will have been that curiosity that propels his consciousness into another incarnation. [I dreamt in May that he has indeed returned - as a boy born in the Warsaw suburb of Ursynów, to a mother with a high-flying career in banking, looked after mainly by a stay-at-home dad. By coincidence I saw a dad pushing in a pushchair a small boy just old enough to have been born around the time of my father's death, today in Ursynów; the scene was just like the dream, except the weather there was stormy, under dark clouds - today was sunny.]

My father's innate curiosity kept him going, gave him a reason to live. The explosion of the internet, towards the end of his days, in particular the existence of Wikipedia, suddenly gave him access to a scope of knowledge undreamt of in his pre-war youth or post-war middle age.

Along with his urge to understand how things worked, my father was also characterised by his powers of observation. He'd notice things around him to a high level of detail. Going for walks with him, he'd point out things to me that I hadn't noticed before, despite having walked past them many times. 

At the heart of quantum mechanics lies the role of the conscious observer, who is there to observe consciously whether or not the wave function collapses. Particle or wave? Without the conscious observer present, the outcome can only be a probability. Conscious observation is therefore crucial to understanding reality, what goes on at the micro- and macro levels.

And then there's the fact that the Universe seems equally dense whichever edge of it you look towards. This gives the impression that the earth is at the centre of it. We do know that our solar system is not at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. But look beyond that and across billions of light-years, galaxies cluster evenly in all directions, everything looks the same, homogeneous, with small fluctuations, as far as we can observe.

You are far less than a grain of sand compared to the entire Universe. 

And yet the entire Universe was created just for you to observe.

Are you a typical observer, or a special observer?

This time last year:
Jabłkowizna

This time six years ago:
Low water level - Jeziorki lakes

This time seven years ago:
Around the Czachówek diamond, again

This time ten years ago:
Second line of the Metro runs into delays

This time 11 years ago
Army helicopters in action at Kielce defence show

This time 12 years ago:
World's largest helicopter over Jeziorki

Golden autumn, golden years

Another birthday (64) in that space running up to retirement age (65 in Poland, 66 in the UK). And while I harbour no thought of stopping, slowing down does make sense. Slowing down to speed up, slowing down to optimise the time left, to get all those things done that I need to do to fulfil my human potential. That much I owe myself.

I have been lucky (in Poland at least) with a good run of fine weather for my birthdays. From childhood, I associate 4 October with large, wet, brown leaves; mud, conkers and slippery grass on Ealing Common and a sad sense of the ebbing year. Yet when brightness prevails - I went for a walk today regretting my second layer, daytime high 22C - an entirely different, and positive perspective on life is achieved. The Hammer of Darkness still lies ahead, but until then, it's a cause to celebrate. An additional day of summer in autumn. Below: between Jakubowizna and Grobice.

"The crooked straight, and the rough places plain" - between Chynów and Nowe Grobice. This is one of several places where a footpath would be useful, rather than having to wade waist-deep in weeds and clamber over a couple of fences and a stream.

Nearly home - just around the corner from my działka.

A new tradition - the birthday blood-pressure chart. As I've been on the działka since Friday, this year's readings are an average of the last seven taken up to 1 October. Remarkably consistent, although I must confess that during high summer they went up somewhat, which I attribute to physical laziness. It seems that around the summer solstice each year, I have the highest readings; by the autumnal equinox they are back to normal; by my birthday - optimal. For that - deepest gratitude. Key to optimal blood pressure - early nights (in bed before 22:30), vigorous exercise, and a diet low on animal fats that includes a daily bowl of porridge.

	Systolic	Diastolic	Pulse
4/10/2017	115	78	77
4/10/2018	116	79	75
4/10/2019	117	79	76
3/10/2020	113	80	75
1/10/2021	115	79	75

Make the most of each day. Appreciate. Be grateful for your health, for each additional sunny day. Waste not a moment. Time ticks away at the rate of one minute per minute, one year per year. Although I'm becoming convinced that we have supernatural powers, which we can develop to alter that truism. In the garden today I came up with the notion of a simulchron - a machine that can simulate time itself.

"Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere"

This time last year:
Last embers of summer

This time two years ago:
It's that Day of the Year again!

This time three years ago:

Decline and growth

This time four years ago:
Health at 60

This time six years ago:
In search of vectors for migrating consciousness

This time seven years ago:
Slipping from late summer to early autumn

This time eight years ago:
Turning 56

This time nine years ago: 
Turning 55 

This time ten years ago:
Turning 54

This time 11 years ago:
Turning 53

This time 14 years ago:
Turning 50

Droga donikąd, by Józef Mackiewicz

 An important book for me - the first novel in the Polish language that I read of my own volition (before that it was only set texts from Polish Saturday school in London). I was given a copy of the book in the mid 1980s. It had been printed in exile, in keeping with the author's wishes, for distribution to those who opposed Poland's post-war communist regime, On finishing it, I passed it on to the daughter of an opposition leader. Since moving to Poland, I've been looking for another copy. Now, at last, it is freely available...

Written by Józef Mackiewicz in exile in London in 1955, Droga donikąd ('Road to Nowhere') covers the period between the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in the summer of 1940 and the eve of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Set in Wilno/Vilnius, the novel is semi-autobiographical, and shows the nature of Soviet repression from first hand.

Pre-war Wilno was Poland's fifth-largest city. It was predominantly Polish and Jewish, with a small Lithuanian minority. On 19 September 1939, it fell to the Red Army, being in the Soviet sphere of interest as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov (or more accurately, Hitler-Stalin) Pact. The Red Army ceded the city to Lithuania by the end of October 1939; the Lithuanian state had barely seven months to integrate Vilnius before USSR annexed it along with Latvia and Estonia. 

Droga donikąd begins with the annexation of Lithuania, depicting clearly how a small, ethnically diverse capitalist country is swallowed by the communist system. "Our life today is waiting - waiting in queues, waiting to eat, waiting to be arrested, waiting for the next steps in the implementation of communist society". One by one, freedoms are snuffed out, freedom to speak, freedom to do business, freedom of movement. All is done with a semblance of the people's burning desire for justice and equality. Mass rallies (compulsory attendance). Wild applause for speakers (woe betide anyone reported not clapping and cheering). Red flags, bunting, portraits of Stalin everywhere. And one by one, shops, restaurants and other businesses would be nationalised, goods would disappear from shelves to be replaced by shoddier products with unpredictable supply. 

Smuggling became a way of life, especially across the border between the newly created Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and the longer-established Belarussian SSR. Author Józef Mackiewicz, like his protagonist of Droga donikąd, Paweł, kept his head down by quitting his journalist's job and buying a horse and cart - to be less visible to the Soviet authorities, and to make a living by transporting goods across country.

Each successive turn of the screw is shown. People start wearing their shabbiest clothes lest they be identified as bourgeois counterrevolutionary elements. The new Soviet overlords, arriving in Vilnius, were expecting to find a city full of capitalist riches - instead they were surprised to see people as (outwardly) poor and shabby as what they had in other Soviet republics. Moral decisions have to be made; within families there are schisms as a daughter joins the Komsomol while her father tries to cling on to his business. Fighting the new order seems pointless; melting into the faceless crowd the best option for most.

Deportations are being planned. The local NKVD was instructed by Moscow to begin drawing up lists of families that were to be deported. The date is drawn up - days before Operation Barbarossa is due to begin. Like Titanic, we all know what's about to happen, as the clock counts down. The targets are the Polish and Jewish middle classes, the property owners, the intelligentsia. They suspect this was going to happen to them; Paweł, the novel's protagonist, is tipped off and makes a break. 

There is a sub-plot about a religious mystic and seer who foretells a miraculous event that will happen in small village - again, on the very eve of Barbarossa. Crowds of believers flock to the village to see the miracle - but will it happen at noon (Polish time) or noon (the newly-adopted Moscow time)?

Sadly, the book had never been translated into English - it offers such an excellent view of what Soviet takeover looks like; it had a profound impression on me, reading it during those years between the imposition of Martial Law in Poland and the collapse of communism has very much shaped my thinking. A rejection of political ideologies, left or right, as bringing suffering rather than any improvement to the human lot.

This time last year:
Words that pop into the mind, unbidden

This time three years ago:
Hops there for the taking
[Hops mouldy this year - too wet.]

This time four years ago:
Two weeks and two days of travel

This time five years ago:
Final end to a local landmark

This time ten years ago:
Independence Day

This time 11 years:
Out and about in Jeziorki

This time 12 years ago:
Funeral of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz

This time 13 years ago:
Puławska by night

Trains of thought, insights and 'voices'

Trains of thought - let them run, coupling from one to another - the default mode network at work in the brain. Sit back, detach yourself from what you're doing, and let your mind wander at will; mundane concerns - bills to pay, household tasks to complete, one thought leads to another - issues to resolve, emails to write - at the higher level, ideas half-digested, 

Then along comes that flash of insight - a moment of sudden realisation of something new, a new correlation, some deep truth that had not been hitherto appreciated. Generated as the result of a lumbering train of thought, chugging ever onward, the synthesis of what you have been reading, listening to, thinking about - and then a higher understanding clicks.

But what of the truly unbidden thought - inspiration - the Holy Spirit, for those who choose to think in these terms. These are rarer. They feel like they are from an extraneous source. The notion of 'voices' has a negative connotation, aligned with mental illness, schizophrenia - auditory verbal hallucinations. But these inspirations are non-verbal - they are as silent, wordless, as the thoughts in a train of thought. I am experiencing what feels like an unbidden inbound thought; telepathy rather than a voice.

Should I trust their veracity? One I had this summer - I felt the need before turning in to go outside onto the rear balcony of the house on my działka and look at the night sky. As I did so, the thought came to my mind "everyone who seeks God must find their own way". Profound stuff. Feels so right!

Another one I had many years ago (and reported on this blog) is that "we are all part of a continuous whole". Yet another is the notion of congruence in memories. Thoughts, ideas, unbidden - as opposed to unbidden qualia memories (of subjective experiences).

'Unbidden' is the crucial word here. The insights fall into a train of thought that's under way; they are neither summoned nor do they result from the preceding thought.

Summoning - or channelling - is a separate matter. I had a go at channelling alien intelligences three months ago. Just as I was about to drop off, I channelled the aliens to ask how mankind can get nuclear fusion to work. [Atomic energy, but without uranium and other nastiness we get from fission reactors.]

The answer was instantaneous and astonishing: "Have a look at anomalous data from experiments conducted in March 1970". I wasn't expecting this!

Seven weeks later, my brother then pointed me to this:

Nuclear Fusion Reactions in Solid-Deuterium Laser-Produced Plasma

F. Floux, D. Cognard, L -G. Denoeud, G. Piar, D. Parisot, J. L. Bobin, F. Delobeau, and C. Fauquignon

Phys. Rev. A 1, 821 – Published 1 March 1970

He points out that the experiments mentioned in this paper must have been conducted before March 1970, a time in which research around the world had switched from various forms of fusion reactor (Astron, Levitron, Magnetic Mirror and Bumpy Torus) towards the one that the Soviets had demonstrated so much promise with - the Tokamak. Maybe scientists had rejected a promising technology because of anomalous data? Interesting... And in case you're wondering - the answer to my question did not come to me in either English or Polish, rather as a telepathic message.

Here's another one... This one did come in Polish, because it is a form of words that won't easily translate into English...

Nie odpuszczaj sobie!

This time two years ago:
Parliamentary train at West Ealing station

This time three years ago:
Progress in Jakubowizna

This time five years ago:
Miedzianka by Filip Springer

This time six years ago:
Out of the third, into the fourth

This time seven years ago:
Inverted reflections

This time eight years ago:
Observations from London's WC1
and Observations from the City of London

This time seven years ago:
Civilising Jeziorki's wetlands

This time ten years ago:
Warsaw's Aleje Jerozolimskie

This time 12 years ago:
Melancholy autumn mood in Łazienki

This time 13 years ago:
Autumn gold, Zamienie

This time 14 years ago:
Flamenco Sketches - Seville

The glories of a sunny day in early autumn

Polish autumn has two halves - złota jesień - golden autumn - with leaves changing colour before falling from the trees; and then there is the grey, leafless, muddy autumn under leaden skies that endlessly awaits the arrival of the first frosts and proper snow. Today was a most excellent złota jesień day. Jakubowizna was in a fine mood.

Perfect light for one of the XII Canonical Views:

Time, shortly after lunch, to set off for a circular walk taking in Widok and Machcin II before returning to Jakubowizna. Below: somewhere between the three.

Below: parasitic climbing vines live in the tall pines, trailing to the ground. Their leaves turn red at this time of year, looking spectacular in the low late-afternoon sunlight.

Another parasite I have mentioned recently is the oak apple, below; like the real thing, it ripens and turns red. Inside, a wasp larva. They do not cause significant harm to oak trees.

A sad sight, harvested tomatoes left to rot. The pickers were there; I suspect the wholesale price was too low to make their transport to market worthwhile. Note the solitary sunflower in profile, looking towards the sun (click to enlarge).

What made Grójeckie famous - apples, apples everywhere. There are still many orchards where the apples aren't sprayed, but are prone to various apple diseases and infestations.

Below: the collection point (Punkt skupu). Tractors towing long trains of apple crates were less numerous than last week - an early harvest this year. This trailer is piled high with 'industrial apple' (jabłko przemysłowe), destined for juices and preserves. 

Below: where the forest yields to orchards, sun streaming in from the west.

Back home, time to make a start on Phase II of making poziomkówka - wild strawberry liqueur. This involves straining the 95% alcohol from the fruit, which will now be subjected to secondary fermentation through the addition of sugar. I reckon I'll be lucky to get two litres of the liqueur from this year's harvest - although it will be mightily sublime. To be followed by blackcurrant and aronia (chokeberry) liqueurs. It's costing me a fortune in spirytus rektifykowany, the price of which has risen by up to 20% since before the pandemic.

This time three years ago:

The possibilities of a quantum multiverse

This time four years ago:
More about sleep

This time nine years ago:
On behalf of the workshy community

This time ten years ago:
Classic truck cavalcade

This time 11 years ago
Narrow back-roads clogged with commuters

This time 12 years ago:
Autumn gold, Łazienkowski Park

This time 14 years ago:
Of bishops and bands

S7 extension update

 It's been over three months since I last posted any new photos from the S7 extension works. I'm surprised at how much has been achieved in that time. It's just over a year and half since work began, there's still much to be done, but the big question is about section B (between Lesznowola, where the section going through Jeziorki ends, and the already-open section A at Tarczyn Połnoc).

Below: my first foray onto the viaduct spanning the S7, looking south towards Lesznowola. In the distance the footbridge where the old ulica Dawidowska ran. There are still no ramps onto the footbridge.

Below: from the old ul. Dawidowska, again looking south. This view shows well the thick layer of concrete (more expensive but more durable than a regular asphalt surface) - and the machine that lays it down. Note also how the camber changes from the foreground, sloping from left to right, to the machine, where it slopes from right to left.

Below: back to the viaduct - not the best shot (a bit soft), but one for the record - looking north along the S7 towards Warsaw. Concrete still needed for the slip road that takes eastbound traffic off the S2 at the airport junction, just out of sight, merging it into the southbound S7. Here, the road's camber is clearly visible.

But then a mystery - an unsettling one. This four-lane stretch of asphalt, below, coming off the roundabout east of the viaduct. It stops at a dead end. Why? Where is it likely to go?

I consult the internet. Back in 2014, there was an article in Halo Ursynów about a new road planned to link the village of Janczewice, Dawidy and Mysiadło. The maps there pre-date the final master plan for the S7 extension, and show the new road heading off at a northerly tangent to the alignment seen in the photo above. The way the actual road is pointing suggests it will cross the railway line (just beyond the trees on the horizon) and proceed along ul. Dawidowska (currently an unasphalted track that only gives access to local residents), crossing ul. Karczunkowska, then heading south into Mysiadło before swinging east to join ul. Puławska. The question is when - will this stretch of dual carriageway just sit here, completed but leading nowhere, for decades? That's my guess - and my hope. Building viaducts is expensive and time consuming. I have marked the possible route in yellow. Not good news for locals.

This time last year:
Covid - we still really don't know where we are

This time seven years ago:

Thoughts occasioned by today being equilux

This time ten years ago:
The magic of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand's Marlborough region

This time 11 years ago:
Grandson of Poles elected to lead UK's Labour Party

This time 13 years ago:
Give me sunshine!

Science, Religion, Magic and Consciousness

I retreat from the physical world into my conscious mind, where Science cannot reduce me to mere matter. It is in here that magic is worked; it is in here that my innermost, deepest, truest feelings (qualia) are being experienced.

I hold dear the primacy of the subjective conscious experience - qualia, and memories of qualia. These contain and retain the essence of who I am. They are the purest experience of self, devoid of ego, unshaped by biology - an experience [noun] that I experience [verb] uniquely; no one else may know of it - unless I share it.

Waking from sleep, I have a flash of inspiration, placing consciousness into the context of science, religion and magic.

Science has yet to understand consciousness. Yes, there are those reductionist materialists who argue that consciousness lies exclusively within the brain of higher-order animals; confined within the skull - merely an emergent property of evolution. But there is a growing number of scientists who are turning to panpsychism as a physical possibility - the notion that consciousness, like mass and energy, is a fundamental property of matter. A field - like an electromagnetic field or gravitational field. Consciousness organises and grows together with the sophistication of the life that carries it. It grows in the direction of God - goodness, wholeness, understanding - total awareness of All.

Without a scientific underpinning, the supernatural, metaphysical or paranormal have no frames of reference; they are full of hollow babble. There is but one Universal truth, to which we humans on Planet Earth are edging slowly towards.

Can you manipulate natural forces or alter destiny by conscious thought? That is magic in its purest meaning.

Magic - mind over matter.Willing outcomes to happen. "If you will it, Dude, it is no dream." [Leb. 7:19]. Yet over the years, I have singularly failed to will evil men from high office. My will to remove them is 10³⁸ weaker than their will to remain in power. Or something of that order.

Having said that, I do believe that in our day-to-day lives, it is possible to influence outcomes by conscious thought. Especially when the outcome you seek is ultimately good. The result of prayer. Prayers of gratitude, prayers asking for those most basic of human needs - health, security, companionship. But then what is religion but institutionalised magic? 

"Expect the unexpected" is something I taught the children when they were young. We teeter ever on the edge of chaos; bad events can be warded off by thinking of their happening. I have long held that on board an airliner that crashes there was not one passenger who had consciously contemplated the possibility of that happening. When our train from Kraków to Wrocław was two hours late the other week because a derailed engine had ripped up the points at a junction west of Gliwice, I felt sure that like me, not a single person boarding the train had considered the possibility that it may be delayed so badly.

Walking home the other day I was mindful of the cat, which had not shown up after a night outdoors. Would Felusia be waiting outside for me? Yes she was. But the house key, which over the past few years has three or four times refused to open the door, once again jammed. I hadn't expected that. After looking for neighbours (can of WD40? Cat food?) and walking around the garden, I tried the key again. The door opened as if nothing had ever been wrong. Intermittent faults that randomly occur are, I believe, events that can be prevented by consciousness. 

But can I prove this experimentally? No. Am I aware of this phenomenon over my 63 years? Yes. Magic? If you say so.

Whatever cannot be falsified by science, is. It exists until such time as it can be disproved in multiple experiments which are verified in peer-reviewed papers. Until a team of scientists in a lab at MIT devise an experiment which shows God doesn't exist - an experiment that can be replicated in labs all over the world - God will continue to exist. 

Over the centuries, science has shown that base metals cannot be turned into gold, that phlogiston doesn't exist, that vaccines work better than prayer, but science does not hold all the answers.

The magic, the wonder, in the world is held in our minds. We should be open to the possibilities, but at the same time not expecting miracles. If I were to proclaim that using my mind power, I can swing a needle one way or another - I won't, because the outcome would be meaningless in practical terms, a crude human attempt to try to capture something that's immeasurable in nature.

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By coincidence, I was reading the print version of last week's The Economist and came across a story about China's growth. The headline grabbed me - 'The Thales of Economics'. Thales, the multinational that builds electrical systems for aerospace, defence and transportation? I read the whole piece - no mention of the company. Maybe a play on words? The Economist likes a good pun. If so, it's lost on me. Maybe an song by Bruce Springsteen or David Bowie - favourite songwriters of The Economist's subeditors? No, I know them all too well. This obscure reference to Thales, by the way, is from a magazine that's careful to point out that JP Morgan Chase is a bank and that PwC is a consultancy. I'm left guessing that this Thales is some ancient Greek guy known only to those who studied the Greats at Oxford.

So I check. "Thales of Miletus, 624 –545 BC, a Greek mathematician, recognised for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world and the universe, and instead explaining natural objects and phenomena by naturalistic hypotheses – a precursor to modern science." So - we can trace back to Thales the human urge to understand the wonder of the Universe in non-magical terms. [I still have no idea what Thales has to do with the article about trade wars and capital controls.] 

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UPDATE 8 December 2022:

I come across this sentence about Thales in a newsletter from the John Templeton Foundation: "Noticing that magnets have the capacity to move iron, Thales of Miletus reasoned that “the world is not divided into animate and inanimate as easily as we might think.” Associating psyche, or soul, with movement, Thales maintained that even inanimate things have a type of “psyche.”  For Thales, the world is alive because “soul is mingled in the whole universe.” "

This time three years ago:
The house on the działka, coming on
(Amazing how much as been done since then!)

This time four years ago:
Autumn comes early

This time five years ago:
Kriegslok passes through Jeziorki

This time nine years ago:
A little way west of Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
The Old Sailor's Tale - part II 

This time 11 years ago:
Prague-Jeziorki-Moscow

This time 12 years ago:
The passing of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz 

This time 14 years ago:
Summer ends, autumn begins