Face to face with Schrodinger's Cat

Lent 2019: Day 4

I assume we're all familiar with the paradox of Schrodinger's cat - it's in a box, we don't know if it's dead or alive until we peek into the box to check. Let's look at this famous thought experiment in more detail. It is, after all, the easiest way to begin to understand the concept of quantum mechanics.

We all know that radioactive isotopes have half-lives. The half-life of Plutonium-238, for example, is 88 years, so after 88 years it is half as radioactive as it was. After another half-life of 88 years, a quarter of its original radioactivity has remained undecayed. Now, said Schrodinger. Take a single atom of any radioactive material. We don't know when it will decay. Taken en masse, the lump of the stuff will follow its half-life. But a single atom could decay now, tomorrow, in ten years' time, in a million years' time. Only the probability of its decay can be determined, based on its half-life. There is no cause - it will or it won't, we don't know when.

Back to the cat. A radioactive isotope will either decay or not. Should it decay, the radiation emitted will trigger a switch that will shatter a glass vial containing a poison gas. The cat dies. [Sounds cruel, but this was only ever a thought experiment.] Should the isotope not decay, there is no radioactivity to trigger the switch; the vial remains intact, the cat remains alive.

Now, Schrodinger thought of this thought experiment as a riposte to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which - in the case of the double-slit experiment I wrote about yesterday - states that unless an observer is present, we do not know whether a particle is acting as a wave or a particle. The presence of a conscious observer is crucial.

One answer to the paradox of Schrodinger's cat is the Copenhagen interpretation. Heisenberg and Bohr posited that unless - until - a quantum state is measured, it has no definite properties. So, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is both dead and alive until a conscious observer checks.

How can a cat be alive and dead at the same time?

Another answer lies in the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI). This posits that at the moment a quantum event happens, an entirely new universe is created, parallel to the one you and I are witnessing, but with a different outcome. According to the MWI, the cat is alive in one universe, and dead in another.

Is there enough room for an infinite number of universes, side by side, evolving away from each other as the result of infinite numbers of quantum events? The MWI has been around since before I was born, and has neither been proved or disproved, being just one of about five mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics. Remember, that the basic physics behind quantum mechanics has been proven to eleven places after the decimal point, in thousands of labs around the world. The problem lies with interpreting it, understanding it philosophically. The science is sound and is the basis for nuclear energy, LEDs, semiconductors, magnetic resonance imaging and many more applications.

But what does it mean for us, for our worldview?

It's too big a jump to say that because we live in a universe governed by the laws of quantum physics, God exists or God doesn't exist. A lot of New Age claptrap has been churned out since the 1960s lazily leaning on the word 'quantum', as though it possesses mystical properties that can heal or enlighten.

Physicists are rightly cautious of having science hijacked by spiritualist cults, yet mankind today is further from believing that it has grasped the fundamentals of the universe than it was 80 years ago. There is more doubt, more questions. Cosmological questions, such as what preceded the Big Bang, the ultimate fate of the universe, the nature of dark matter and dark energy - and above all, the hard problem of consciousness. Did consciousness precede life? Is consciousness no more than the result of interaction between neurons in advanced brains?

I wrote a few months ago about Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose's theory about orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR); I shall be returning to this as for me it is something that intuitively holds true, giving a scientific basis for many of my own ideas about consciousness, life and the universe.

For the time being, I shall leave you pondering the fate of Schrodinger's cat - and whether there is anything that you or I can do [within the framework of this thought experiment, obviously] to keep the cat alive?

This time four years ago:
Opening of Line 2 of Warsaw's Metro

This time six years ago:
A selfless faith

This time seven years ago:
Ul. Profesorska after the remont

This time eight years ago:
Lent kicks off again, for the 20th year in a row for me

This time nine years ago:
Half way through Lent

This time 11 years ago:
Spring much closer

An introduction to the mystery of quantum physics

Lent 2019: Day 3

Until physicists started to understand what was going in within the atom in the first decades of the 20th century, the scientific model of the universe was based on measurable certainties. When it was first posited that within the shell of an atom, electrons can move from one energy state to another without any external cause, Einstein was shocked. He retorted famously that "God does not play dice". For there to be effect, there must be cause - thus spake Newton.

Several quantum effects outraged Einstein, including the communication between entangled pairs of electrons, where the spin of one affected the spin of another instantaneously, despite the two particles being a long way apart (therefore faster than the speed of sound). This Einstein called "spooky action at a distance".

The first decades of the 20th century saw rapid advances in mankind's understanding of the subatomic world, leading to the invention of the atom bomb and the nuclear power station. Yet for most of us, who have no intuitive grasp of the atom's inner workings, the model taught in schools during physics classes is the nearest we ever get to it. A nucleus composed of protons and neutrons surrounded by a shell of electrons whizzing in orbits around it.This model is out of date and over-simplified. Reality is so counter-intuitive that it's hard to find everyday metaphors that can help us understand. Even those who do probe deeply have difficulties in making philosophical sense of it all.

The hydrogen atom - as simple as it gets. Just the one proton in the nucleus, (no neutron), and one electron circling it in what is a shell of probability. To scale, imagine the dome of St Paul's Cathedral with a pea in the middle of it representing the proton, and a grain of sand - the electron, somewhere on the periphery. That grain of sand is in perpetual motion around that proton. Imagine a guitar string vibrating. Now imagine it not only vibrating up and down, but also side to side - and indeed in all directions. And then bend that stretched string until its ends meet, forming a circle around that proton.

So is an electron a wave then?

Consider the famous double-slit experiment. (Google this; there are many fine YouTube videos just several minutes long that do it justice with explanatory graphics). An effect first found by Thomas Young in 1801, it took on greater significance more than a century later when physicists were trying to determine whether light was formed of particles or waves. Turns out it's both - but only until the moment you check - and then it turns out to be purely particular in nature. How can this be?

Consider light passing through two parallel slits in a thin sheet of metal. The light - made up of photons - that passes through to the other side falls onto a dark screen beyond, where it forms a series of parallel lines, caused by the ripples of waves interfering with one another, the light bands where two waves peak together, the dark bands in between where the waves cancel each other out. OK, so light is waves.

Now repeat, firing one photon at a time. It will pass through either slit. Photon after photon, a pattern emerges - yes, it's the parallel bands associated with wave interference. Now here's the weird part: place a photon detector by each slit, to measure definitively through which slit each photon has passed. Monitor and observe, consciously. Will it be slit A or slit B?

We watch, we measure. Now what happens on the screen that records all the photons on it? No - it's not parallel bands. It's just two single lines. Now that we are watching, consciously observing, the photons behave differently. Not as waves this time, but as particles. No interference, no ripples, no waves. Particles travelling in straight lines. Again, this freaked Einstein out. He believed that light was particles, not waves. And proponents of light as waves were also proved wrong. Light - photons - is both waves and particles, until one observes them close-up. Then they behave like particles. The act of observation that causes light to alter its behaviour leads to what is called the collapse of the wave function.

Now here's the most interesting part of this experiment - conducted many thousands of times around the world over the decades - if you leave the photon detectors in place by the two slits, but this time you don't bother recording or observing the outcome - guess what - the resulting pattern is once again parallel bands. In other words, the lack of a conscious observer in the experiment results in there being no collapse of the wave function.

This discovery literally changed everything. No longer was Man a passive object in a preordained universe that majestically sweeps along its destined path. Now, human consciousness has a part in how this universe is perceived - and how it unfolds.

This discovery delivered more questions than answers, questions to which we don't have answers. Will we ever have answers? In the heady days of the 1920s, nuclear physicists believed that mankind was just a few years - months maybe - from solving all the essential questions of the universe.

Perhaps we never will.

This time last year:
Right and wrong in science and philosophy

This time three years ago:

Free thinking at the Second Vatican Council

This time five years ago:
Getting ul. Karczunkowska ready for Biedronka opening

This time six years ago: 

God's own risk

This time seven years ago:
A third of the way through Lent

This time eight years ago:
Balancing surfeit and shortage

This time nine years ago:
Congruent consciousness

Lent 2019 - looking for the Wonder of it All

Lent 2019, Day 1 - Ash Wednesday

Here we go. 46 days between now and Easter Sunday. Time to set off on this year's spiritual quest. Let's begin by being aware that we are alive; that the conscious being that is you, reading these words, intelligently seeks meaning in the human condition.

We humans find ourselves placed between the micro scale and the macro scale, unable to observe or fully comprehend either. From the atomic to the galactic, the orders of magnitude are daunting. And then there is time - eternity. From Big Bang to Big Crunch, then repeat ad infinitum? The collection of atoms that has been gathered together to form you - via your ancestors going all the way back through evolution to the earliest protozoa - is it there by accident? Or were those atoms, that have been around since the earliest millennia of the universe, meant too become you? Is there some purpose guiding your existence - if so, what is it? We grope in the dark, but intelligent seeking sheds light.

There is the atomic scale - the Bohr radius (distance between the nucleus of a hydrogen atom and its electron) is 5.3 x 10^-11 m.  Zoom right out to the totality of the observable universe, all 93 billion light years of it, and here the radius is 8.8 x 10²⁶ m. We are incapable of getting our minds around these measurements, and yet here we are, science constantly striving to define our universe in more and more precise terms. Back in the 1990s, Big Bang was thought to have happened around 15 billion years ago; better measurement of cosmic background radiation has now placed the scientific consensus at the 13.8 billion-year mark.

This Lent, following on from last year, I wish to explore the strange subatomic world of quantum mechanics, the notion of uncertainty (and therefore probability) and to link this to consciousness. Time and memory, memory and identity, identity of who we are and our place in the cosmos. And yes, my spiritual quest regarding my anomalous memories, qualia of familiarity that may shed some clues as to the existence of consciousness outside the living human body. The notion of will should also be considered at the quantum level; if Schrodinger's famous cat is both alive and dead until we peek into the box, can we will the outcome before lifting the lid?

Contemplation and meditation coupled with scientific reading with the goal of uniting our numinous yearnings for the transcendental with physics. A tall order, but there is some sense to this - increasing peace of mind, spiritual well-being, greater joyousness derived from the very awareness of being alive.

At the heart of this is the mystery of the quantum world, where something is and isn't at the same time until consciously observed, when it becomes one or the other. Science - and philosophy - are yet to make sense of it. I feel I 'sort of' get it in the same way a cat gets electricity from watching a human turn night into day by touching a small white square on the wall.

The seat of consciousness is linked to the mystery of quantum mechanics; last year, I wrote about orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR), the theory that consciousness is the result of quantum events taking place within the microtubules within our brain cells. On the one hand, this theory is still considered fringe by mainstream science, on the other, it has yet to be overturned despite being first published 25 years ago.

The war between science and organised religions is entirely understandable - bastions being defended, the status quo, academic tenures, religious doctrines etc. But it is counterproductive. If our lives are not just meaningless accidents, a greater dialogue between the two camps is necessary, although abandoning fears of the supernatural or ditching dogma makes this extremely difficult. I have long stressed the need for a life in balance. Balancing scientific fact with our spiritual instincts is part of that life in balance. Even if we stand no hope of reaching that goal within one lifetime, at least we are further on down the road from zero to one than when we started.

Ideas I shall again take forward throughout this Lent.

For the record - I was quite unable to last a day without fish or dairy - there was simply not enough vegan protein on offer at either of the hotels I was in today to keep me going. So some mackerel paste, herring and goat's cheese was essential. No matter - no meat, no alcohol, no fast food, salt snacks, fizzy drinks, cakes, biscuits etc. Walking and exercising - ticked those boxes too today.

This time last year:
That was the winter that was

This two years ago:
Self-discipline, habits and Growth

This time five years ago:
Putin - tactical genius, strategic failure
[I had - the West had - evidently underestimated the man.]

This time six years ago:
Socialist Realist architecture in late winter sun

This time eight years ago:
The Cripple and the Storyteller - part II

This time nine years ago:
The station with no name

This time ten years ago:
Lenten thoughts on motoring

This time 11 years ago:
Flowers, spring - already

"Honey, it's Post!"

Regular quote from my children, delivered in the American accent of their Californian cousins. From midnight, it's Lent (post in Polish - it rhymes with 'lost' and 'cost', rather than 'host' or 'most'). For the 28th year in a row, there no alcohol for 46 days, no meat, no salt snacks, no confectionery, no fast food. Will I be able to cut fish and dairy too this year? I'll give it a try, but if my hotel (the Mercure in Gdynia) can't offer me a breakfast with enough non-meat/dairy/fish protein to get me through to a late lunch, I shall fall at the first hurdle.

But Lent is not just about giving things up. That's but a start. The aims should be to do new things. Over the years, Lent has been starting new habits. This blog was launched during Lent; my exercising similarly (press-ups etc); kicking salt snacks and over-salting food (before even tasting it) - Lent is about the will to stop doing bad things, but also to develop good practices.

Over the years, Lent has become a time of enhanced spiritual ambitions - seeking answers to life's existential questions. How to place that spiritual search within a scientific framework that avoids being New Agey wishful thinking?

This year I will be looking at two things - quantum physics - what we know (and more importantly what we don't know) - and consciousness, in particular, memory.  Last year's Lenten search drew heavily on Stuart A. Kauffman's Humanity in a Creative Universe - a book that drew a line under the certainties of the Newtonian worldview. This year, I will take a broader look, considering Adventures in Memory: The Science and Secrets of Remembering and Forgetting by Hilde Østby and Ylva Østby, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin, and the 1975 classic, The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra. I want to delve as deep into the science as I can, and draw conclusions as to the purpose and sense of our lives, and in particular the nature of consciousness, what it means to be me, and you - and whether our consciousness can exist beyond our physical bodies.

Phew! A long way from kicking salt snacks to contemplating eternal life, but then that is what Lent is there for.

Sitting here in Gdynia, I am finishing a bottle of Fortuna Czarne Whisky Wood, a strong black Polish beer brewed with shavings from whisky barrels (7.5%). Intense, yes, the whisky's there - but for my palate it's OK but too sweet. Well, that's it - next alcohol will be downed at 00:01 on Sunday 21 April. In the meanwhile, time to grow, and move along that path towards greater peace of mind. Healthy spirit within healthy mind within healthy body. The spirit - consciousness - is all important.

Credo: "I believe in one God, the maker of all things visible and invisible." Yes, still true. But defining 'God' is crucial. More on this over the coming 46 days.

This time last year:
Consciousness, and the war between Science and Religion

This time two years ago:
The atoms within us

This time five years ago:
Our house gets connected to the town drains

This time six years ago:
No more revelations

This time eight years ago:
Free will vs. destiny

Chynów station - change is happening

With a week away in London, it's been a fortnight since my last visit to Chynów, and much has changed. Work is proceeding at a good pace, although there's still much to do. My heart goes out to those who come into Warsaw each day from further afield, from beyond Strzyżyna - rail services between Radom and Strzyżyna will be replaced by buses after 10 March for track modernisation work. For commuters from Radom and the four intermediate stations -  Kruszyna, Wola Bierwiecka, Bartodzieje, Lesiów - it will be many months - two years? two and half years? of travel hell, journey times (already long) extended by up to 40 minutes each way. Three hours each way in total. Six hours of one's day.

Having endured that, once the modernisation is complete, the total journey time for the 100km between Radom and Warsaw will be cut to 1hr 15mins. Now, bearing in mind that it's 130km to between Łódź and Warsaw, and the post-modernisation journey time is 1hr 20mins, it's doable.

In the meantime, in Chynów, the 'up' side of the single island platform has been closed off and is being demolished. Just as at W-wa Jeziorki and W-wa Dawidy, two new platforms will be built on either side of tracks that run straight between them (rather than arching around an island platform).

Below: the 11:47 service to Radom about to leave Chynów. This half-platform also serves 'up' trains towards Warsaw; the 'up' and 'down' services pass one another at Czachówek Południowy station.

Below: a new approach road from the east, serving the village of Jakubowizna. This ramp currently enables construction traffic to enter the site; before this appeared, passengers would have to step gingerly over a set of randomly-places slabs to get down to the tracks, then make their way between the rails to the platform, visible over to the left.

Below: a ballast train in one of the remaining goods sidings south of the station building at Chynów. According to Kurier Kolejowy, today there are 70,000 tonnes of ballast stored here, along with 50,000 reinforced concrete sleepers and 65 kilometres of new steel rails (mostly lying between existing track), waiting to be put to use.

Below: view of Chynów station from the north. To the left, disused freight sidings have been lifted. The main station building, with ticket office and waiting room, will remain (it could do with a lick of paint).

Below: PKP PLK, Poland's rail infrastructure operator, has set out in a series of PR materials, how the stations from Sułkowice to Radom will look after modernisation. This view of Chynów is new to me - no staggered platforms here, rather two in parallel. Note too the building across the road from the station building - it was demolished last year! There will be a subway linking the platforms - I hope it emerges on the east side of the tracks, otherwise I (and most of Jakubowizna) will be crossing live rails to avoid a 1km detour!

Below: the Minuta 8 Sklep Spożywszy store, Google Street View image, July 2013. Knocked down in 2018. Yet still faithfully portrayed in PKP PLK's rendering above. Will the shop be replaced? Could certainly do with a food shop nearer to the działka than Chynów or Widok...

Left: a new-style gablota or information display cabinet; inside are the current and new timetables. I trust that when the main work has been completed, there will also be electronic signage too showing in real time any delays as well as scheduled departure times.

Old buildings surplus to requirements will be demolished. Already gone (a few years ago - I didn't get the chance to photograph it) was a goods shed standing where the ballast is currently being stored.

Below: a small store for flammable materials, partially dug into the ground, with a No Smoking sign on the door. The undergrowth around it has been cut down; I expect within a week or so it will be gone.

Below: another disused station outbuilding that's due to for demolition, dating back to 1934 when Chynów station was opened.

Below: Chynów station from the approach road. Saturation and vibrance both untouched; the setting sun has rendered the walls this colour.

I hope that when the work's completed, journey time between W-wa Jeziorki and Chynów will be reduced by several minutes, and that the new platform will be a bit closer to my działka!

This time two years ago:
Mindfulness - more than a passing fad?

This time three years ago:
Pascal's Wager dissected with Occam's Razor

This time four years ago:
Speaking to God, listening to God

This time five years ago:
D3200 shoots X100

This time six years ago:
Weekend with the Fuji X100

This time ten years ago:
Sublime sunset, Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago:
Dramatic sunset, Jeziorki

Łódź and the Flat White Economy

For those who don't know the term, 'Flat White Economy' is an extension of the tech economy; it is the ecosystem that surrounds the IT industry in its broadest sense - from the baristas that make flat-white coffees that drive the IT workers through to the co-working spaces that host a myriad start-ups and the financial muscle - the business angels, venture capitalists and private-equity funds - that makes it all happen. The concept of the Flat White Economy was thought up in London, about London, by Professor Douglas McWilliams, founder and president of the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR). It is the title of his book, first published in 2015.

Back in the 1980s, I worked with Doug at the Confederation of British Industry, where he was chief economic advisor, while I edited CBI News. Doug was in Łódź today speaking at an seminar organised by the Łódź University MBA course, focused on the city's future.

I have written about Łódź on this blog many a time - both my children studied here (daughter at the world-famous film school, son at the fine art academy - ASP); my daughter continues to live in Łódź working in the film sector; I bought a flat in the centre of town, just 400m from the newly-opened Łódź Fabryczna station. Over the years, I have witnessed the rebirth of a city that 17 years ago was a dump, mired in corruption (remember Pavulon, anyone?), with 20% unemployment and major social problems. Block after block after block of crumbling tenements, Łódź was how Westerners imagined the entire post-communist world must looked, grey, depressed, without hope. Today unemployment is 5.6%, still way above Warsaw's 1.5% or Poznań's 1.2%, but still below the national average (6.1% - figures are registered claimants rather than economically inactive).

Yet so much has changed over the past 15-20 years. The city's leaders adopted a wise strategy based on attracting inward investment in sectors such as white goods (Siemens-Bosch, Merloni-Indesit), fast-moving consumer goods (Procter and Gamble, Gillette), computer hardware (Dell) and clothing (Wrangler Jeans); this was supported by shared services centres such as Infosys (serving Phillips and Akzo-Nobel), Accenture or Citibank, and R&D centres such as Samsung. But there are also large home-grown firms such as Grupa Atlas that makes adhesives for the construction market (I remember one of the firm's three co-founders, Grzegorz Grzelak, visiting my house in Perivale in the mid-1980s and explaining convincingly how free enterprise will pull Poland out of the mire it was then in - how right he was!). Last year, Grupa Atlas turned over 560m złotys (nearly £120m). There are also three major shopping galleries, including the amazing Manufaktura.

Where's the Flat White Economy in all of the above? It's there too, and visible in all the hipster bars and cafes along (and off) ul. Piotrowska - all the creative young people with laptops sipping their lattes and energy drinks. Film and fashion - this is where Łódź excels; many start-ups have emerged offering services in advertising, public relations, social media and indeed film-making - in today's digital world, demand for corporate videos embedded in websites is booming. You can see this is spaces such as Off Piotrkowska, where cafes and co-working offices jostle side by side in renovated post-industrial buildings.

Below: Doug McWilliams explains how London's workforce has changed from champagne-guzzling, Ferrari-driving 'Loadsamoney' types from the post-Big Bang financial sector to flat white-sipping, cycling hipsters earning much less but enjoying a higher levels of job satisfaction. Seated in the front row, taking great interest in the presentation, the deputy mayor of Łódź, Wojciech Rosicki.

A very important point made in Flat White Economy is the need for immigrants to make it all happen - a diverse workforce will be more creative; an open labour market is more responsive to employers' needs, and it is proven that extra economic growth more than compensates any tendency of wage rates to lower because of the presence of migrant workers.

The book is easy to read with a coherent narrative, with a solid backbone of rigorous economic analysis backed up by plenty of statistics. It's a book to buy now and read now, then to leave on the bookshelf for ten or more years - to return to it to see how the predictions made for cities of the future based on London's experiences in the 2010s work out.

One of the interesting conundrums raised concerns the point at which many start-up entrepreneurs sell their businesses in the UK - it's around £50m. When you have this kind of money in your bank account, you and your family are financially secure pretty much in perpetuity. But in other countries - the US in particular - entrepreneurs don't slack off to clip their coupons - they keep pushing on to build far bigger businesses. Doug poses the question - why. My answer is that the UK has (since the 1850s) drawn a clear line between money and power; governance has been the preserve of a professional, apolitical civil service, guided by politicians (far more capricious and of mixed quality), but essentially here today, gone tomorrow, with careers doomed to end in failure. In other countries the distinction is blurred - power is the real goal, money the means to the end, gaining more power which translates into more money, and so on.

Flat-whiters are less interested in wealth as in experience; less driven by greed than by the desire for interesting jobs with purpose. Doug's descriptions of ping-pong nights at co-working offices are familiar to many in Warsaw's Brain Embassy. This trend is rising - in Warsaw at least, where one-third of all new office space under development is intended for co-working.

How about Łódź or other Polish cities? Flat White Economy makes the point that the UK economy is dangerously skewed towards London to the detriment of provincial towns and cities. Poland does not have this problem. Yes, Warsaw is a boom-town that's much richer than the national average, but Kraków, Wrocław, Katowice and its agglomeration, Poznań and Gdańsk/Tri-City are all doing well, and Łódź is quickly catching up on its tier-two rivals. And in Lublin (life-sciences) and Rzeszów (aerospace) there are clear signs of provincial cities lifting themselves rapidly into the modern world.

Flat-whiters are very picky as to where they live. Their lives much have meaning, there must be good public transport and cycle routes, there must be good architecture (either renovated brick or hyper-modern). Flat-whiters will not tolerate for any length of time living and working in a mediocre place. It's now an employee's job market - they call the shots, employers are faced with ever-more sophisticated retention packages to hang on to their best workers.

I have been to several seminars about the future of Łódź over the years - one I remember from 2011 in which a senior city planner said that the key goal was to hang on to graduates once they'd completed their studies in Łódź. I was sceptical at the time, but it happened. The hipster bars and cafes have contributed to generating the lifestyle that graduates in their first or second jobs can enjoy - and afford. My daughter's choice to stay in Łódź and not to return to the capital is proof that this strategy has worked.

What of the future? Public transport is getting better - my journey to Łódź and back was smooth, punctual and quick. A journey that took two hours and 24 minutes in 2008 now takes one hour and 20 minutes. You can buy your tram ticket on the tram. But the roads are still clogged with traffic. Drivers need to be weaned off driving wholesale. More trams! More buses! But above all - better tertiary education. More IT courses, better courses, more suited to the needs to tomorrow's job market.

There's no doubt now that Łódź has taken the right course. The question is whether all the factors are in place for a Flat White revolution to happen in Łódź as happened in London.

This time last year:
Subatomic physics and Consciousness

This time two years ago:
Lent begins - the Big Questions

This time four years ago:
How does God speak to us? 

This time five years ago:
Spring makes itself felt in Ealing

This time six years ago:
Waiting for the warmth to return to Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
Remembering Poland's 'Accursed Soldiers'

This time eight years ago:
Getting the balance right between work and play 

This time ten years ago:
Sublime Jeziorki sunset

This time 11 years ago:
Sunrise getting earlier

Heathrow now and then

The more I fly from Heathrow, the more I like it. Luton feels provincial, difficult to get to. Heathrow's on the doorstep for me. And the sights! Waiting for my departure to Warsaw, armed with FlightRadar24 on my phone, I could see what planes are taxiing to take off - and look at this monster! An Etihad Airways Airbus A380. Magnificent sight!

On board my flight, taxiing to Runway 27 Left, I catch sight of Concorde, symbol of a bygone age of supersonic travel that started nearly fifty years ago - on 2 March 1969. Less than a month after the first flight of the Boeing 747 - which still remains very much in service today. Concorde G-BOAB was retired in 2000, the last Concorde flight was in November 2003. A short era - but I can recall watching (and hearing!) Concorde flying over my school in my last year, having entered regular service in 1976.

Going back to the 1960s, my father would often take me to Heathrow to see the planes - the photo below was snapped in June 1965 and reveal an interesting mix of aircraft - Hawker Siddeley Trident, Vickers Viscount, Boeing 707, Airspeed Ambassador, De Havilland Comet...

...and a two Vickers Vanguards and a Viscount, taken in  summer 1962. Photos: Bohdan Dembinski

We lived just over eight miles from Heathrow Airport. A place of real glamour - international air travel; the Britannic, Europa and Oceanic terminals (to prosaically become Terminals 1, 2 and 3), and the ongoing sense of change (during the 1960s the airport was systematically being extended and developed). The best place of all at Heathrow for me was the Queen's Building - below the control tower, on the viewing gallery. Here, the roar of the engines, the smell of kerosene, the romance of flight was at its most tangible.

This time three years ago:
Radom line modernisation will change the face of Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
How do we perceive good and evil?

This time five years ago:
Civilisation and a civil society

This time seven years ago:
Strong, late-winter sunshine

This time eight years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands freeze over

This time nine years ago
Kensington, a London village

This time ten years ago:
Lenten recipies

This time 11 years ago:
A walk through Sadyba

Smithfield Market

Today, Monday 25 February 2019, a new record was set; the daytime high in London was 20.6C, the highest temperature ever recorded in a winter month. Although when I set ofp for a meeting near Liverpool Street Station at around 9am there was still a light frost on the back lawn and roof tiles, by lunchtime it was t-shirt weather. London, as ever, beckons my footsteps, after my meeting, I made my way from Liverpool Street to Chancery Lane via the Barbican and Smithfield Market. This is familiar ground; while studying at The City University in the early 1980s, I'd often walk around the area between Farringdon and St Pauls; in those days Smithfields was far busier; in the mornings it would be a rare place in the UK where pubs would be open (slaking the thirst of butchers who'd worked all night).

One of the London's great wholesale markets, Smithfields is still in business selling meat - the other big markets (Covent Garden - fruit, vegetables, flowers - and Billingsgate - fish) having moved to new locations in 1974 and 1982 respectively. Meat has been sold in Smithfields for over a thousand years (the name comes from 'smooth fields'). Drovers would herd their livestock here for slaughter and butchery; as the population of London exploded in Victorian times, so the process of providing meat for its inhabitants became more regulated and sanitary. The buildings below date from 1868; by then meat processing had become properly industrialised. Live animals no longer entered the market; carcasses arrived by train at an underground station and taken to cold stores before being brought up by lifts to be butchered for retail at the many stalls on either side of the Grand Avenue (below). This is the Central Market, divided by the Grand Avenue into the East and West Markets.

Below: the west end of the General Market. Below this now abandoned building is the Snow Hill Tunnel; work is now underway here on the CrossRail project (which seems to be dragging on without end - Liverpool Street, Tottenham Court Road, Paddington, Ealing - along the line the hi-visibility community are getting on with it, at the same leisurely pace that befits all public-sector infrastructure projects from building a simple viaduct over the railway line at W-wa Jeziorki to burrowing under the centre of London. [Incidentally it's worth comparing London's great markets with Warsaw's Hala Gwardii and Hala Mirowska.]

Below: a derelict covered crossing at the General Market; I wonder whether it will be restored, maintaining at least the decorative elements of the facade.

Below: in the Great Days of Victorian Smithfields, this cobbled ramp led from street level to the platforms of the underground railway station and the massive cold-stores under the markets. Today, much of the space beneath the market buildings is given over to car parking, to which the ramp gives access. Smithfield Rotunda Garden lies on top of the brick retaining wall, today full of office workers enjoying the heat of a winter's lunchtime.

Traditional fare (such as a sausage-and-bacon bap) is available to market workers and employees of financial corporations alike. I remember these establishments in the early 1980s, popping in for breakfast on my way to lectures - they would be full of butchers in bloodied overalls having a snack before going home to sleep off the night shift.

Below: between Liverpool Street and the Barbican Centre - Finsbury Circus. This building stands on the corner of the eastern approach to the circus and Blomfield Street.

My regular walks between the City of London and the West End offer an almost endless permutation of routes, taking in so many splendid sights, such great architecture. I am very cross at the Germans who voted for Hitler in the 1930s, leading to the massive damage visited upon London by the Luftwaffe - and at the property developers of the 1960s who razed many fine buildings to make way for nondescript architecture. Today, London cherishes its heritage far more - facades tend to be left with new buildings adapted to retain the look of the old.

I love exploring the passages the run between London streets - this is Ely Court (left), between Ely Place and Hatton Garden (London's street for jewellery and diamonds). On Ely Court I stumble upon the Ye Olde Mitre pub, which English Heritage lists as having been built in 1773 (not 1546 as claimed by the pub). Anyway, it has great character - I popped in for a swift half of Fuller's Oliver's Island golden ale. Now brewed by Asahi (which bought Fuller's brewing business for £250m earlier this year). As I sat down to sup my ale, I noted a small group of (I presume) bankers having a farewell drink with a Dutch colleague who was leaving London due to Brexit - a subject of bitter mockery and regret.

This time last year:
Mid-winter in late February
(from -15C in Warsaw last year to 21C in London this!)

This time two years ago:
Ten years of digital photography

This time three years ago:
Between atheism and creationism

This time four years ago:
A peek into the Afterlife
[the best piece I've written about my spiritual quest]

This time five years ago:
The new dupes of Moscow

This time six years ago:
Late-winter commuting, Jeziorki

This time seven years ago:
My Nikon D80 five years on

This time eight years ago:
My Nikon D80 four years on

This time ten years ago:
Nikon D80 two years on

This time 11 years ago:
Nikon D80 one year on