The Metaphorical Greenhouse

A small plot of land

sjramuz — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:22:36 +0000

The plot.

I have recently aquired an allotment. It’s about 35 x 10. The units are strides

It is very overgrown, but when I saw it I knew it was mine. The ‘old boy’ of the allotments tried to put me off by telling me there was no soil, and that i’d never grow anything there. Other comments such as “I wouldn’t go near that with a barge pole” have been pushed aside.

The first bit to be tackled

Anyway, after just a couple of hours work, I have already cleared a decent patch and started digging the (plentiful) soil…

Clearance at first break

First test dig - see, there is soil!

We’ve got the power

sjramuz — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:45:46 +0000

This is as close as I get to being political…

Check out these links:

http://www.voterpower.org.uk/ - check out how much your vote is really worth.

http://www.power2010.org.uk/home - do something to change it (if you want to).

Meetings with Unremarkable Trees

sjramuz — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:59:15 +0000

I love the city where I live. It is filled with green open spaces, parks and trees. Beautiful, elegant, majestic trees.

In another town not too far away, I visited the newly-developed harbour, and a rather frightening thought struck me. As I wandered around the desolate, highly modern and designed landscape, I noticed that all the trees (such as they were) were growing directly out of concrete, and that they were all the same. Every single tree, in it’s straight row, lined up neatly with the strangely soulless buildings, looked exactly the same. At this moment I formulated my loathing of architectural trees.

Returning back to my home city, I started to see them everywhere. My enjoyment of city trees had been ruined.

The following is my pictorial essay about city trees. All these photos were taken on one walk from a residential area to the newer harbourside development. Some of them show what I think are ‘good’ tree use, and some startlingly bad. I’ll leave it to you to make up your own mind which you like or dislike.

All’s well that ends well

sjramuz — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:27:35 +0000

The challenge: 3 marathons in 3 days, along some of the hilliest cliffs on the South Coast!

The Jurassic Coast is staggeringly beautiful. With only a camera phone to record it, and time pressures to finish, great photography was not an option. Here are a few of my favourite pictures from along the way.

Beautiful scenery, but not easy to keep the momentum up.

With scenery this good, who cares about the blisters?

: Weymouth Beach. Looking along the coast, you couldn’t quite see where you were trying to get to.

The Long Walk to Freedom

sjramuz — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:39:41 +0000

So, tomorrow I am embarking on an Ultramarathon; the Jurassic Coast Challenge. This particular one is 78.6 miles long, and is run as one marathon per day over the next three days.

I am getting very nervous about it. I only just made it round a half marathon 2 weeks ago. At least I have (rather sensibly, I think) posted myself into the ‘Walkers/Joggers’ category, which means I’m not expected to run all the way!

I can finish a half marathon in 2h30 or thereabouts, which includes walking, so technically the marathon should take 5 hours. I’m sure this won’t be the case, of course. The course is very hilly, and I don’t think I can do the second half marathon in anything like the same time as the first.

The thing is, I’m sure that running long distances is more than 50% in the mind. Setting goals to reach certain points as you go along, thinking about how great you feel, and not thinking about the running at all – these all seem to help. Self belief is key. Positive Mental Attitude a must.

I have never pushed myself this far. I’m excited, nervous, and strangely calm about it, all at the same time. Wish me luck!

Chocolate trees – Update!

sjramuz — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:11:50 +0000

I obtained two cocoa seeds recently. They were on the ground, in a seed pod underneath a cocoa tree, already spouting out of their seed cases. I love to grow interesting plants, and couldn’t resist the temptation to rise to the challenge.

The seeds were ‘obtained’ on Saturday 6th Feb 2010, and planted on the Sunday evening. On March 1st, I noticed the first sprout breaking the surface of the soil. The next day another sprout appeared.

I have kept them in a plastic bag on a windowsill overhanging a radiator, and then moved them to a propagator. Here they are at two weeks old (since breaking the soil surface):

14th March 2010

Today they have outgrown the propagator and are now residing in an upturned olive jar. Here they are as of yesterday (3 weeks old):

21 March 2010

The cocoas are now 4 weeks old, and still seem to be thriving. Watching things grow fascinates me every time!

28 March 2010. 4 weeks old.

The cocoa seedlings continue to flourish. What am I doing wrong? They aren’t dead yet!

5 April 2010

They will soon outgrow their upturned olive jar. I have no idea what I can keep them in next.

1 May 2010

3 May 2010

The cocoa trees are now 3 months old, and miraculously, both are still alive and flourishing. They both have a new layer of leaves, and are rapidly outgrowing their latest containers – a storage jar and an olive jar.

Update: Now 5 months old, the younger cocoa tree is flourishing. It lives in bell jar cloche on a north west facing windowsill.

17 July 2010 - very happy indeed

Quote of the day

sjramuz — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 10:19:29 +0000

PHILOSOPHY, n.

A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Soul, Self and Secular Ethics

sjramuz — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:35:29 +0000

First principles, from a philosophical, a priori point of view

Data held in ‘organic’ living beings is destroyed as the cells are – making it impossible to transfer data.

In computerised forms – data can be transferred, carried around, edited and uploaded into any number of machines, computers, memory sticks, data storage.

Organic life forms take a long time to grow, mature and learn. Data is hardwired in as we go.

Can a machine undergo the same process by programming, or will it take as long to learn as we do?

Can a machine have a sense of self? If it does, is that a will to stay alive? What is ‘alive’ anyway? Is everything a ‘life’ does, for a purpose? i.e survival, growth, procreation…

What are the moral issues (secular ethics) involved in the creation of a sentient being? Is it analogous to bringing a child into the world? Does it have the same rights/responsibilities as we do? What therefore is the difference between us and other animals/life forms (and the new sentients)?

I am totally in agreement that we as humans are just another life form. We aren’t special. We evolved, and we evolved as one of the most advanced in terms of intelligence and thought capacity. This is due to many (physical) factors – enlarged frontal lobes, giving temporal sense, capacity to adapt, tool use, etc.

Looking at ‘life’ in general, in all it’s forms – the generic ‘life force’ appears to be, to the observer, to procreate, and ensure that your genes carry on through time and space. This is linked in with evolution, which is a process which over many generations of gene mutations means that the best adapted life forms survive. It is entirely random and unplanned, but that seems to be the outcome, and of course it is an ongoing process. Some life forms (sharks, for instance) are said to be at their evolutionary dead end, as they are as perfectly adapted to their environment as they can possibly be. To this end, they have not shown any significant evolution for millions of years.

Why? A question which may be impossible to answer, and perhaps one of those which tends to push thinking beings towards the ‘easy option’. God.

So is that our essence, the core of our very function? To keep our genes travelling on, assuming they are the best ones, and staying alive at all costs until this can be done? On a personal level, I’d have to say no, but as a species we have done everything we possibly can to become the dominant life form on the planet, to control all we can, and to procreate to rediculous and potentially unsustainable levels. As a species we want to survive. At any cost.

As a species we also have a thirst for knowledge, a will to understand and atomise every last part of the world and the universe. We think we know what the very first few milliseconds of the universe’s existence were like. We want to understand everything. Perhaps because we have become so successful at life itself, our evolutionary path has gone down the road of intelligence and understanding as the most ‘successful’ route.

Now we want to create life. Life from no life. Life from scratch. Proof that life from scratch is no different than life coming about from millions and millions of years of evolution. It doesn’t take long for a planet with simple life forms on, given the right conditions, to evolve and grow to a state of containing complex life forms. It has happened in Earth’s history more than once – catastrophic events leading to the destruction of most life on the planet, leaving an almost ‘blank canvas’ on which to let Nature work. In approximately a million years, the planet can get back to an equally, if not similarly, complex state. So why not create an intelligent sentient life form in a really quick and easy way?

“Instant life. Just because we can. (Comes in a can)”

Where does the ethics come into creating sentient life? In my view, there are many aspects which need to be explored. The first one is concerned with the idea that there appears to be a general need to know ‘where’ you come from. Many people who were adopted try to find their birth mother, for instance, and there are decreasing numbers of egg and sperm donors for fertility clinics, as laws about anonymity are relaxed. What is this desire? If you have been brought up by a good mother and father since birth, they are the only parents you have ever known, and then you find you were adopted, would you want to find your ‘birth parents’ or at least know who they were? I would, and there seems to be a very strong psychological or biological factor here, which makes it important for us to know ‘who we are’, and ‘where we came from’.

The creation of a sentient being would be somewhat different – would it have a mother or father? Would it need to know where it came from? Would the psychological aspects of this cause it harm or distress?

Presumably a sentient being could not be created ‘whole’ – it would need time to experience life and learn from every unique experience, thus making it a unique and single life form. Where then, does the programming stop and the learning and experience begin? How far are these beings the same, and at which point do they start to become different, unique?

The Geodesic Dome

sjramuz — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:55:45 +0000

Having recently visited the Eden Project, and read about Bubble Skyscrapers, I became interested in the structure of a geodesic dome, particularly as a possible structure for a greenhouse in my f uture garden.

I found a very useful internet site about how to make your own geodesic dome (http://www.yesmag.ca/projects/geodesic.html), so I thought I’d have a go.

Here is the result of trial one:

I made it of art straws. I first attempted to sew the dome together at every joint, but this became particularly hard, so I eventually resorted to random stapling, then sticky taping.

As a first attempt, I was quite pleased. I need to come up with new joining methods, but the effect is good.

I am hoping to explore the possibility of building my own geodesic dome in a garden somewhere sometime.

Quote of the day

sjramuz — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:06:03 +0000

“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, last chapter.