Time flies

As I was walking to the station the other morning I noticed something weird about the digital clock on one of the buildings. I stopped and captured it using the video function of my digital camera. Then, just for fun, I imported it into imovie8 and plopped the opening bars of a Jimmy Nail song [...]

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Apprivoise moi

One of the key scenes in Le Petit Prince is where the little fox appears. The fox declines the little prince’s invitation to play saying “you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your [...]

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giant snowdrops

giant snowdrops, originally uploaded by bobsee.
Just because they’re beautiful…..
Actually, one of the reasons I love flower photos, is that I SEE much more in the photo than I usually notice when out walking. The photos seem to actually help me SEE better. In fact, I find carrying a camera changes the way I see the [...]

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Judas Tree

Judas Tree, originally uploaded by bobsee.

This lovely tree is known in France as l’arbre de Judea – which probably relates to its prevalence in the Middle East. However, in English, is has come to be known as the “Judas Tree”. Many authorities believe this is a mistranslation from the French.
However, the story which goes with [...]

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The Last Lecture – choosing to live

I posted about Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture before.
If you haven’t watched it, please go do that now. You won’t regret it.
Yesterday morning Amazon delivered a copy of the book of the lecture. I had decided on the spur of the moment to make the most of the long holiday weekend and fly to Aix so [...]

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Reflections – sailing

loch sailing, originally uploaded by bobsee.

There’s something almost universally appealing about sailing boats. Even if you don’t actually like sailing, they are beautiful to see. They have a tall elegance and somehow capture the idea of freedom, pleasure and travel.
I’m not a sailor at all, but I do always find the sight of sailing boats [...]

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Sunday

loch venachar, originally uploaded by bobsee.

How do you spend your days off?
Yesterday (sunday) I had lunch in a little restaurant on the banks of Loch Venachar. It’s lovely to be able to sit outside and eat. There’s something about the relationship between food and health that is so much more than the nutrients that food [...]

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A chronic illness is not a long-lasting acute one

Human beings are complex, dynamic, constantly changing organisms. To understand a single person you have to consider them within their multiple contexts – temporal, spatial, social, cultural and so on. Changes in any of these contexts can profoundly change our understanding of an individual.
Medicine tends to divide all illness into two types – acute and [...]

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Person sized Medicine vs Molecule sized Medicine

The rationale for what is known as “orthodox”, “Western”, or, more accurately, “biomedical” medicine, is very materialistic. It’s focussed on the physical, and has been since the morbid anatomists of the 15th and 17th century Parisian hospitals began conducting post-mortem dissections and claimed that disease was what you could see, touch, and measure. This reduction [...]

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Achieving what you don’t aim for…(part 2 – a long life)

Yesterday I posted about Seth Godin’s comments about making money.
Today I read an article by Desmond Morris about living to a grand old age. Remember Desmond Morris? He’s the zoologist who wrote “Manwatching“, a book I read as a teenager and found utterly fascinating. Well, he’s 80 years old now and he was writing about [...]

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