GALAXIES REVEALED, ANTI-POLITICS IN ITALY AND COMPUTERS WITH CONSCIOUSNESS.

Well, I thought that this was an interesting story reported in Sunday’s Observer.   “Britain has contributed £88 million towards the construction of the world’s largest telescope.   The huge observatory, to be built in the Chilean Andes will allow astronomers to capture images of the universe’s earliest moments”.    This great “eye in the sky” will cost $l billion which it seems is £900 million.   It will be known as E-ELT, European Extremely Large Telescope.   It sounds like something from Monty Python.   Built in the high Andes, it will avoid the atmospheric turbulence that affects observatories at lower altitudes.   According to Prof. Niranjan Thatte of Oxford University it will collect more light than all the other telescopes ever built put together.   The universe is believed to be permeated with mysterious dark matter, and users of this telescope will be able to study this – more Monty Python.

Also interesting to me in my ‘scientific phase’ I gleaned an article about consciousness from this week’s “New Statesman”.   I once studied Philosophy with the Open University, and it nearly drove me crazy trying to understand lots of it.    One of these concepts was “What is consciousness.”   Shades of Descartes’ famous statement, “I think, therefore I am”.   It seems that when we fall into a dreamless sleep, our consciousness disappears.   New transcranial  magnetic stimulation experiments in Madison, Wisconsin have shown that when people are awake, their reactions to stimulation are strikingly different to reactions when they are asleep.   Awake the response is complex and the stimulation causes interaction in the brain in an integrated network of constant feedback to the stimulation.   When the person is in deep sleep there is no feedback and it is as if the network has shut down.   Yet evidence from scanning brain activity of Buddhist monks during meditation suggests that they are able to raise both sides of the neural see-saw at the same time.  It seems that there are implications from all this for computers and a suggestion that computers could in the future be capable of consciousness.   Do I hear you say 'Monty Python' again?

I love going on holiday to Italy. We had a great time in Sorrento  (“Then say not good-bye, Come back again beloved.”)   We stayed at a great hotel, The Hotel de Ville.   Waiter service for meals and a really friendly, caring staff.   We went to Pompeii and took a bus tour up the Amalfi Coast.   However, I am so disappointed to see that the country is (like most of Europe, only worse) in financial and political trouble.   The Observer leader article considers that the success of the comedian Beppo Grillo in the latest election shows that 25% of the electorate were disgusted with political parties in general.   So they voted for a comic. The article suggests that if Britain is not careful, then, it could display the same nihilism, in trying to come to term with politics.  The rise of UKIP they take to be a sign of protest at the state of the economy, and the lack of growth in jobs especially for young people.   They finish by saying there is a responsibility on all of us citizens, “to step up to the plate.   Parties are partnerships too.   The time has come for the best to engage with the political system.”   I think they mean - help your local chosen party, and get out and vote.

It’s Mother’s Day apparently on Sunday.   Gerald and I have been asked out to lunch at a swanky hotel by daughter, Laura, son-in-law, Gordon and two grand-daughters, Shonagh and Emma.   I can’t wait.   Woman’s day was this week, so thanks to all women who do sterling work in the Media like Jo Coburn, in the papers like Polly Toynbee, and Tessa Jowell who worked so hard to get the Olympics off the ground.