Dreams... I will be
very glad when this is finished...
Up to page 228 (less the 16 pages of the section I need to go back to), over half way. Which isn't bad, though I have a tough section coming up, with a lot of re-writing. (The need for rewriting isn't wholly my fault, by the way, it has much to do with the way the design department want the text organised.)
In other news... All the frogspawn has hatched and Roeg's Pool is full of tadpoles. A magpie was drinking from it earlier, though I assume the bird wasn't eating frog infants.
We have one lupin already breaking the surface of the potting compost on the shelf in the kitchen window!
I've been half watching Chris Crudelli's
Kick Ass Miracles (he's a British martial artist who's travelled around the Far East "discovering the beliefs underpinning the abilities of people who perform incredible feats of mind and body") on BBC 3 over the last few hours. It's fascinating, if only to see the appalling things people will do to themselves in the name of religion, but some of it is very very interesting, and presents amazing examples of the power of the human mind over the human body.
In one segment he volunteered to be the guinea pig in a British experiment to see if acupuncture works: he had an MRI scan of his brain as it is normally, then another with an acupuncture pin in his hand (I assume on one of the meridians. I don't know much about acupuncture, except that it's been used in Asia for 2,500 years, so I'd assume there must be something in it...) According to the results, the pin did actually activate the pain-suppressing part of his brain. I have to confess if it was available instead of anaesthetic here I'd go for it.
Another section I found particularly interesting was the ongoing study of British herbalism. I knew that yew tree extracts are major constituents of modern cancer-fighting drugs, that digitalin for heart disease comes from the foxglove, and that aspirin was originally made from willow bark (willow bark tea is an
excellent general analgesic, and very gentle on the body. Pity it tastes so horrible!), but apparently galanthine (from snowdrops and narcissus) is used in the treatment of Alzheimers. I need to try to keep up with the research...
And I loved the guru-debunking bit at the end, and the little proverbs that separate each segment of the programme -
"There are two ways to live - as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle."
And if that doesn't appeal, how about this one?
"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not too sure about the former..."
Certainly had me nodding wryly.
Addendum: 3am Onna and Lutra (and anyone else who's seen
Wolf's Rain), could you take a peek
here and tell me if this looks like the city in the anime - the one the wolves reach part way through their journey, where the local animals are allowing themselves to be used as beasts of burden in exchange for food? That's the first thing that hit me when I looked at the photos...
#
Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 12:22 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment