Synaesthesia

 

Synaesthesia

                             Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Professor Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey. He hosts a programme on BBC called The Life Scientific, in which scientists are invited to talk about their life and work.

The broadcasts are interesting because the scientific experts speak clearly and articulately about their fields in a way that is readily understood.

A recent podcast featured Julia Simner, a Professor of Psychology. She has led research to understand how brains process the sensory world.  The main part of the programme was about synaesthesia, which is the merging or cross-over of senses. For example, when one sense is stimulated, like hearing, another sense is involuntarily engaged. One in twenty-three people has synaesthesia – roughly 4% of the population.

One of the most common forms is grapheme-colour synaesthesia, when letters or numbers, sometimes both, are associated with specific colours. It has been suggested that this arises because of early exposure to coloured alphabets or number charts or toys in infancy, but this is not proved.

Another type of synaesthesia is chromaesthesia, in which people see colours when listening to music. Van Gogh is believed to have experienced this, to the extent that he had to abandon piano lessons. 

In one of his letters, he gave evidence of another way in which synaesthesia affected him, when he said, ‘some artists have a nervous hand at drawing, which gives their technique something of the sound peculiar to a violin.’

Some people have lexical-gustatory synaesthesia. For them, hearing a word may deliver a taste sensation, not necessarily associated with food per se. For instance, the word ‘plum’ may initially evoke a mouth-watering response, but over time, just the ‘um’ sound or phoneme may produce the same result in words like, hum, bumble bee, umbrella, sum, crumb. In this form of synaesthesia, the phoneme (sound) may induce an unpleasant taste, depending on the association. Julia Simner prefers to be called Jules (Jools) but one person she knows is unable to call her that because of the disagreeable association with the ’oo’ phoneme.

Another very common type of synaesthesia is day-colour, in which people connect colours with the days of the week. Tuesday may be orange and Sunday blue, and so forth.

One remarkably interesting form is mirror-touch synaesthesia, when someone sees something happening to another person and feels it physically, too.

Synaesthesia is inherited, though the form it takes may differ between family members.

I have known one or two people who admitted to a form of grapheme-colour synaesthesia. They seemed to think it was linked to early reading experiences.

Do you have any experience of synaesthesia? Have you ever thought a particular letter or number had a specific colour?

                            Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Watching again . . .

 

Watching again . . .

Magpie Murders, an adaptation of the murder mystery by Anthony Horowitz. Clever writer, excellent cast.

One for sorrow, 
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret
Never to be told.

Doing the wrong thing

 

Doing the wrong thing

Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is as bad as doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Either way, we upset people without intending to, so it’s probably better to do nothing at all, unless we’re absolutely sure we’ve got everyone’s best interests at heart.

This, too, shall pass.

Christmas crackers

 

Christmas crackers

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

In my usual galumphing way, I didn’t appreciate that for some people ‘crackers’ would summon visions of small biscuits to be eaten with cheese. It’s yet another example of my rather parochial view of the world. I do remember at lunch many years ago my middle daughter asked if we had any crackers, and I was about to go upstairs to retrieve some, when I realised she was talking about biscuits for cheese.

So, what is a Christmas cracker, and why? Traditionally, it decorates the table on Christmas Day, when the company sits down to eat mounds of food for lunch – turkey, pigs in blankets, sprouts, bread sauce, roast potatoes, with ‘all the trimmings.’

A Christmas cracker is a cardboard tube covered in brightly decorated paper, twisted at each end to stop the contents falling out. Contained within are a paper crown, a motto or joke, a small gift, like a thimble or a tiny notebook, and a cracker or banger. The banger is made from two narrow strips of paper, attached with a slight overlap. The overlap is coated with gunpowder or a thin layer of a friction-sensitive chemical, like silver fulminate. When the cracker is pulled, to break it open, the friction causes a tiny explosion, a snapping bang, which the cardboard tube amplifies.

Each place setting has a Christmas cracker, and the tradition is to pull your cracker with your neighbour or someone opposite. At the same time, your opposite number is supposed to hold out his or her cracker and you both pull together. The person with the largest section of cracker wins the contents.

Hats are donned, jokes are read out and scoffed at, and little gifts are exclaimed over. The hat is worn until the meal is completed, and that can be quite a long time if there is a starter, a main course, pudding, and cheese and biscuits – or crackers!

Some people make their own crackers. As a tradition, it originates in Victorian times, as do so many British practices.

Tom Smith was a London confectioner who sold sugared almonds wrapped in twists of paper. Around 1845 he started including mottos with the almonds.They were frequently bought by young men for young ladies, so the mottos often took the form of love poems. Later, the paper twists became tubes to which Tom Smith added the ‘bang’ to make them more exciting, and almonds were replaced with small gifts. Tissue paper crowns were added by his sons in the early twentieth century, and the love poems were replaced with jokes or riddles.

   In Great Britain, under the provision of the Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2015 people under the age of eighteen are not allowed to buy fireworks. An exception is made for Christmas crackers, which are classed as fireworks, but it is still illegal to sell them to children under the age of twelve.

Aviation authorities have different rules about Christmas crackers. Some countries, like the USA, ban them outright, while others allow them under certain stringent conditions. Homemade crackers are banned by all airlines.

At the Eleventh Hour

 

At the Eleventh Hour

Often this expression is used to indicate action at the last possible moment, usually before disaster strikes. It’s dramatic, perhaps over-used, but what is its origin?

It comes from the parable of the vineyard workers, as related in the gospel of St Matthew (chapter 20, vv1-6)

It was the custom of landowners to hire workers throughout the day to strip the grape vines. Men could be engaged at the beginning of the working day, but their numbers might be supplemented as the day wore on, even at the end, or eleventh hour, of the day. Regardless of how many hours they worked, all the labourers were paid the same amount. This led to some resentment, naturally.

It led me to ponder, not for the first time, why the eleventh hour was chosen to announce the Armistice in the First World War - it was actually signed at 5:45 a.m. in the Forest of Compiègne. Logistically, hours were needed to allow the news to filter through to the commanders and the troops. Indeed, fighting continued until the last moments.

“The fighting continued until the last possible moment. As a result, there were 10,944 casualties, including 2,738 deaths, on the war’s last day. Most occurred within a period of three hours. The last soldier to be killed in World War I was Henry Gunther, an American of German descent, who was killed just sixty seconds before the guns fell silent.”

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month has a resounding poetic timbre, unforgettable, echoing.

I watched all the hundreds of people marching past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday - heads up, shoulders back, pride in every step, a diminishing number every year, some of their places taken by younger relatives.

I watched and thought of them as young, strong men and women, 'doing their bit.'

I watched and saw the older, sadder men and women they had become, maybe diminished, disabled, disillusioned, but still with a spark of defiance and grit, a belief in their cause and their country, a fellowship with their comrades across the generations and the nations.

How long will this tribute continue? How many decades, centuries, must pass before the memories are consigned to history? We don’t as a country commemorate Boudicca’s revolt against the Romans in the first century, the Anglo/Saxon invasion of fifth century Britain, the conquest of the English by the Norman-French army at the Battle of Hastings in the eleventh century. Yet these were important and bloody and life-changing for hundreds, thousands.

Of course, we must never forget the horror of wars and the misery they inflict on all affected by them, but when and how do we move on from the last terrible conflict? Is it a natural process?

It seems inconceivable that the awfulness of both World Wars and subsequent skirmishes across the world should not be marked in a meaningful way, like the Remembrance Day ceremonies. It is essential to try and prevent such atrocities occurring again, to stop young lives being ended or scarred irreparably.

History is vital and must be taught meaningfully. We must remember, lest we forget.

Free gift

 

Free gift

In my groceries today I found a packet of Percy Pig sweets. ‘Made with real fruit juice’ is the claim on the front of the packet. They are vegan, and have ‘no artificial ingredients or flavourings’ (I quote from the Marks and Spencer website.)     

All well and good. Free gifts are often to be welcomed.

I tried a couple. They had a pleasant enough texture, but no discernible, easily identifiable flavour.

They are definitely not something I would ever buy. ‘Something of nothing’ is my verdict. Perhaps others relish them and cannot have enough of them.

I wonder why they are being sent out as free gifts. Overstocked, maybe? I’ll never know.

Free gift? Aren’t all gifts free?

Crackers!

 

Crackers!

I decided to check up on the Christmas cracker situation today. I thought we had drawers full of them, but they’ve all vanished. Maybe they grew legs and pranced away.

I’d better check the Christmas cards!