Dieter's Dinkskrum

Reflections, on the Subject of Freedom The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false. — Paul Johnson, The Quotable Paul Johnson The concept of freedom has been scratched into the stone surfaces of human experience in gritty, crimson hues. This sober testimony invites our attention, questioning both our personal commitment to human potential and our resolve to push back on depravity. Even the predominant skepticism of our day cannot entirely cordon-off this perplexing project. This because our human empathy and pain cannot be suppressed forever (tragedy and injustice finds us all, as do acts of kindness and mercy for that matter). Such experiential knowledge has the potential to animate our desire to find premises in support of...

Don't I see red and you see blue and we call it green as we told to do? At this time of year I often find myself embroiled in family dinner conversation. In my family someone will bring up, one of the old classics thought puzzles normally in an effort to steer the conversation away from the same old same old - money, religion and morality trench. Last night was no exception and I was delighted again to hear the re-discussion of such a classic puzzle. Do we all see red or do we have a random conditioned - name - allocated to a particular frequency of light - red in this case, irrespective of how it appears to us. The argument normally ends in the typical line - well, it's impossible to know. This morning I thought I would examine the claim for fun. So red (400–484 THz) hits the retina cones, each "tuned" to respond best to light from a portion of the spectrum of visible light (red, green and blue). In this case long-wavelength of light = re...