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Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

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geophysics

Dream

May 1, 2020 by Simon Robinson 3 Comments

I had a couple of vivid dreams last night. Both of the dreams involved impossible workplace situations that sent me back in time to places that never existed. Some weird connections came to me as I awoke, those dream sequences having been extraordinarily real. I’d had enough of swimming in darkened crypts. Say no more.

Gus Always Bright
Gus Always Bright
[Read more…] about Dream

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: 3-sigma, bbc, booklink, ci lewis, clowns, dreams, dyno-nobel, earthquake, explosives, geophysics, julien meunier, jw de courcy, machine learning, mark henwick, monty python, nobel prize, pavillion cinema, popular, robert mallet, sahara, seg, seismic

Micromort and big numbers.

April 19, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I’ve decided to put my trust in the reader and dispense with long introductions and explanations. If you care what a micromort actually is, you’ll follow the links. If you don’t understand big numbers, you’ll be in good company. 

Today is the day we should have reached unorthodox Canterbury after walking out from Manchester on April Fools’ Day. Instead, like so many, I’m curfewed.

[Read more…] about Micromort and big numbers.

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: actuary, birds, booklink, computing, Covid-19, daniel kahneman, david eagleman, dinosaurs, geology, geophysics, governance, innumeracy, john berger, pandemic, seo, stephen pinker, the elders, tim harford, walking

Giants, Elders and Bosons

April 14, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

How many people know about The Elders? Not science fiction, they are a non-governmental organisation of global thought leaders. Oddly enough, I’ve met a couple of them. We spoke in social pleasantries rather than of their vision which ‘is of a world where people live in peace, conscious of their common humanity and their shared responsibilities for each other, for the planet and for future generations’. Our meeting was the day Lia was being conferred with an honorary doctorate by Dublin University. As her plus one, I was able to enjoy a meal among the honourees, their plus ones and the university principals. And in my own alma mater, something neither my adult imagination let alone my student version was ever capable of imagining.

[Read more…] about Giants, Elders and Bosons

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: aspiration, ephemera, geophysics, higgs boson, large hadron collider, lia mills, nobel prize, photos, the elders, trillium, university

On Coffee and untold stories

April 4, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

Coffee is an acquired taste. I read an online article somewhere a couple of years ago that reported on research that drew several conclusions, one of which was that the tolerance of coffee flavour needed some brain training. We accept that it is bitter because we have learned to anticipate the stimulation it will provide.

on coffee and a double rainbow in Anelo
Double Rainbow Añelo 1995

I like my coffee. I learned to really like it when I was working in Argentina with GQ from Colombia. He demonstrated that coffee doesn’t have to be bitter. But it was a slow learning.

[Read more…] about On Coffee and untold stories

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: cigarettes, coffee, computing, geophysics, jogging, photos, popular, travel

Borders

March 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

25 March 2020 at 10:31 GMT – 7°C Mostly Clear – Co. Dublin, Ireland

I stumbled over one of my photographs of the Mourne Mountains and that made me think of Slieve Gullion. Like Krakatoa and Vesuvius and Etna and Fuji, Slieve Gullion stands proud of its landscape though its a few million years older. And it’s often visible from South County Dublin some 90 km away and it less than 600 m high. Under high pressure conditions, not through today’s spring mists. It stands alone from our perspective, our eyes drawn to it in the same manner that drew megalithic people to build passage graves on the summit

I had the same view as my photograph when my age was in single digits. I remember seeing it once from where I grew up, through binoculars we were using to identify birds among the frames of hundreds of new houses being built at the end of our garden. My father joked “It’s a miracle” because the brown smog of Dublin city was between us and the mountains. The view disappeared shortly after that because my parents let the end of the garden grow wild to block our incoming neighbours from watching us in our kitchen and bedrooms.

[Read more…] about Borders

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, borders, garrett carr, geology, geophysics, mountains, photography, seg, volcano

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