Threat to Children

High on a roll due to the total failure of the Donkey Backbone (you didn't really expect them to stand up) the Chief Pigeon Target had these words to say::

"They are a threat to your children, David, and whoever is in the Oval Office better understand that and take measures to protect the American people," he said.

Excuse me, Georgie, who is a threat to children???

Helicopter bombs school
An attack by a US helicopter against suspected insurgents in Iraq has killed a number of children at a primary school, Iraqi security sources say.

The attack took place in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad, the sources say.

A spokesman for the US military said there had been helicopter activity in the area but he was not able to confirm any other details.

The school is in the village of al-Nedawat close to the Iranian border.

One police officer said the helicopter was shot at from the ground during the morning.

The school was said to have been hit when the aircraft returned fire.

And who was the threat to these children??? (I'll give you a hint....No, I won't)







(and over 500 more in my files alone)

Friday Crab Blogging

Thoughts on Information VI (Man is a Creature of Habit)

First of all, let me apologize to any readers for being so long in getting this post up. It did not flow so easily as the first five. If anyone is, by chance, reading this for the first time, the prior posts on information can be found at:

Some Thoughts on Information I
Some Thoughts on Information II
Some Thoughts on Information III
Some Thoughts on Information IV
Some Thoughts on Information V

I would like to address both Mr. Putnam’s and the Growelry’s thoughts on “information” after I have finished this post of the “information” thread. There is much to ponder in their posts and, while it intersects with what is below, there are some ideas here that I would like to develop in commenting on their discussion. In addition, I will try to use the word “data” for where I previously used “information.”

Goal
What I hope to do in this post is to finish up the data transfer from the eye to the brain as we have discussed for the last 5 posts in the series and get to the heart of the matter (or brain of the matter, if you will) to discuss how some of the workings of the human brain might be viewed in terms of the molecular mechanisms of nerve conduction and transfer.

Please let me reiterate that these are all personal observations and do not carry the weight of the academy, though I have tried to document as best one can the mechanisms such as nerve pulse generation in the eye. Perforce, the discussion of the action of the brain is much harder to document since there is much disagreement on how we actually “think.” (a much more loaded word than “information”).

Let me also state early on that the hidden purpose of this exercise has been to eventually address the question of free will. I know that sounds extraordinarily presumptuous, but decisions deemed to be made by a person exercising his or her "free will" are made in the brain, and that is what we are examining. Just think of how much rests on the belief that humans have the facility of Free Will. From this belief flows all laws and responsibility, in particular the concept of evil. It is the absolute underpinning of our modern Society. With that, we will cut to the chase.

Eye to Brain
To follow up from the previous posts, the path data takes from the eye to the brain can be seen in the following diagram.



It is interesting to note that not only does some processing occur in the retina, as postulated before, but most assuredly there is processing of the data in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) before traveling to the occipital cortex.



In the occipital cortex, there are a number of areas of interest where data is further processed and then sent on to other areas of the brain. The principal one is V1:



In the following diagram of the posterior brain (from here)there are two “streams” arising out of the visual cortex. The first is the inferior or ventral stream. It is associated with recognition and in some way with long term memory. Since memory is the basis of “thinking” we will return to this point. The upper or dorsal stream is associated with motion and control of the eyes or arms.



Thus, there is radiation to the motor cortex, and also to areas known for memory location (e.g. hypocampus and the amygdala.).

At this point, then, we have tracked data from the eye to the brain. In order to move further, I would like to propose a simple model. Though we “see” the world in all its glory, data that strikes the eye is actually contained in a vast (and I am speaking vast here) spatial and temporal array of photons. In two dimensions, and in an much simplified view, the data appears as the following;


When these data strike the retina they are transduced into a spatial and temporal data stream that is carried to the brain via action potentials down the optic nerve bundle. At both the level of the retina and at the lateral geniculate nucleus, there is initial processing of the data. We will propose a simple model of processing in a minute.

At some point we should review the purpose of this data. Clearly, it is to determine the actions of the organism. Data are essential for an organism to find food, ingest food, reproduce and avoid destruction. Quite simply, an organism gathers data, compares it to stored information, and then makes a decision based on that comparison. I see an elephant, I run. I see a Big Mac, I eat. I see Anna Nicole Smith, I puke. Man is a creature of habit. While man’s behavior is complex in the extreme (to us, maybe not to an alien) it may still be reduced to the laws of chemistry and physics.

Just as we discussed isolation tanks (and I have just finished reading "Altered States" by Paddy Chayefsky, who, also wrote "Network" with the great line: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more") it is my contention that man's action are entirely driven by external stimuli.

In past posts we have reviewed the electro-chemical processes that convert photons into action potentials. Importantly, we have observed that these pulses from the eye to the brain along the optic nerve (there are 1.2million "nerves" (fibers) in the optic nerve) are an either/or phenomena and that the presence or absence of an action potential depends, in the end, on the difference of one molecule of G protein or neurotransmitter. Recently I discovered that this is termed "The Principal of Bivalence."

We will never unravel the complexity of the signal from the eye to the brain and that is certainly not our purpose here. What we want to do is show that the restrictions imposed by the either/or nature of the transmission of pulses place restrictions on how we think.

The key cell in the transfer process and, of course, in the brain is the neuron.

The brain is composed of approximately 100 billion neurons plus a number of other, supportive cells. The neurons have about 100 trillion synapses. All neurons are not completely alike but their function is similar in many respects. The nerve cell is composed of the nucleus and cytoplasm with multiple connections to other nerve cells via the dendrites and with a long process called the axon with connects with the dendtrites of other cells. As we have shown before (neurotransmitters and the action potential), the action potential is generated in the nerve cell by the change of the permeability of the cell membrane to ions which is, in turn, caused by the binding of neurotransmitters.

The major cell in the cerebral cortex is the pyramidal neuron:

A pyramidal cell (or pyramidal neuron, or projection neuron) is a multipolar neuron located in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex. These cells have a triangularly shaped soma, or cell body, a single apical dendrite extending towards the pial surface, multiple basal dendrites, and a single axon. Pyramidal neurons compose approximately 80% of the neurons of the cortex, and release glutamate as their neurotransmitter, making them the major excitatory component of the cortex.

Here is a slide show on neurons:

How the brain works on a biochemical level is not very complicated except for, possibly, short and long term memory. Action potentials arrive from other nerve cells (e.g. a fiber of the optic nerve) at the soma, or body, of the nerve cell. The level of the potential is summed and, depending on the threshold, a new potential is generated. The site of the summing is at the axon hillock.


Here I quote from the Wikipedia reference:

The Axon Hillock is the anatomical part of a neuron that connects the cell body called soma (biology) to the axon. It is attributed as the place where Inhibitory Postsynaptic Potentials (IPSPs) and Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials (EPSPs) from numerous synaptic inputs on the dendrites or cell body summate.

It is electrophysiologically equivalent to the 'initial segment where the summated membrane potential reaches the triggering threshold, an action potential propagates through the rest of the axon (and "backwards" towards the dendrites as seen in backpropagation). The triggering is due to positive feedback between highly crowded voltage gated sodium channels, which are present at the critical density at the axon hillock (and nodes of ranvier) but not in the soma.

Thus, the brain is composed of neural circuits where outgoing impulses are generated depending on the incoming pulses at the level of the neuron. Again, remember that this is an either/or phenomenon because of the biochemical nature of the action potential

Neural circuits are, of course, very complex. Here are just ten out of the 100,000,000,000 nerve cells in the brain:


Neural circuits are similar to electrical circuits in that there is potentials (generated by batteries, e.g.) and conductors. The neural "batteries" are gated, in that they either generate a potential or not. I am unsure whether the strength of the action potential varies. I am inclined to think that it doesn't but I need to research this in neurophysiology.

We are all familiar with electrical circuits. Here is a mundane but interesting example. A hobbyist has built a gizmo that detects when trains are approaching a crossing in a model train set.

It has pulse width modulation so it can be used to control the speed of motors, not just on/off. So far I have only used mine to control my Remote Control Level Crossing, an infrared sensor detects a train approaching the crossing and automatically lowers the barriers. When the train has passed, it raises them again.

. Here is copy of the circuit:

Notice the similarities to the 10 neurons above.

One of the interesting thing that comes out of thinking about this is how on earth did the brain evolve? If there are 100 trillion connections, each one, of course could not have be the result of evolution. Furthermore, this is done with only 25,000 genes! I will leave this now since it certainly deserves much discussion. One final thought though is that the brain is not predesigned (as ID contends) but is the result of evolution. Successful evolution always leaves an out; unsuccessful evolution (the dodo bird) doesn’t. That is, unless we are at the DoDo end of evolution, the brain can go much much further even biologically. Unfortunately for us, it will take millions of years.

Back to a discussion of neural networks:

The complexity of neural networks is daunting. However, just as one does not need to know the direction vector and the kinetic energy of every molecule in a gas to know the behavior of the collection, there should be ways of simplifying neural circuits so that they can be better understood.

Let me simplify the scheme of photons hitting the retina even further. I do not know whether you have read “Flatland” by Edwin Abbott. In it, a man must function in two dimensions, as a square (pentagons are superior, triangles are serfs.) However, he does dream about a one dimensional world called “LineLand.” In following data from the eye to the brain and beyond, it is useful to simplify to the utmost. Thus, consider the scenario of a single photon (and its opposite, no photon) as the ultimate carrier of data in “LineLand.”


This impulse, on reaching the brain of the individual in Lineland must be compared to something in order to trigger a response. This something is, of course, memory. In Lineland, every photon hitting the eye triggers a response just as every photon that doesn't triggers a no response. This seems trivial in the extreme but it is the absolute basis of behavior. Behavior as reflex. Behavior as habit, if you will.

Memory
Unfortunately, human memory, or even nematode worm memory (302 neurons) is not well understood.

It occurred to me to question in this respect what is going on in the retina of the eye and the LGN where nerve signals are processed even before they get to the brain. I suspect there is no "comparison" with stored memory there but most likely a type of filtering of the data. Processing that is entirely under genetic control. Sort of like behavior in the nematode.

An ongoing theory has memory as as a hologram, i.e. that the memory itself is spread out over many neurons and is like the visual hologram which appears as a diffraction pattern on film. As attractive as this hypothesis is, it seems difficult to reconcile with the physical reality of what we have presented above. If, indeed, a pattern of neural signals is the pattern of currents in a neural network, it would make sense only if the memory that they are compared to is itself such a pattern.

However, there are many who believe that there is permanent change in the nerve cells in the brain that accompanies long term memory. Any change like this would most likely be at the gene level where genes were activated or suppressed depending on the potential of the cell. If the memory is long term, i.e. not erasable (though we do "forget") it would needs permanent.

An infinitude of research is going on in this area and I don't pretend to be conversant in it in the least. Let me cite the abstract of one paper:

Vision, emotion and memory:from neurophysiology to computation
Edmund T. Rolls*
Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, England, UK
Abstract
The inferior temporal visual cortex provides invariant representations of objects. The computations underlying this can be understood in the framework of a hierarchical series of competitive networks in the ventral visual stream which learn invariant representations by using a short-term memory trace to extract properties of the visual input that are invariant over short periods and are thus statistically likely to be from the same object.

Whew!

Summary (again):
Information from the eye arrives in the brain a a patteren of digital information in both “space” and time. The spacial information depends upon which of the 1.2 million nerves in the optic nerve carries an action potential and the time factor depends on the frequency of firing. There is a limit on the latter dependent on the latency of the action potential and, perhaps, the distance from the eye to the brain. The latter is probably not significant but it could be (need to get the speed of a nerve impulse in a mylinated nerve).

While, as we have mentioned, there has been pre processing of information prior to arrival in the brain, there is probably no actual processing of information between the retina and the occipital cortex.

Once in the occipital cortex the signals are further processed, i.e. undergo modification by neural circuts, and radiate to areas that are known to contain memory.

Once at the memory "site" the impulses are compared to memory, whatever that is, and a signal is sent to the motor area to "do something."

In the end, the workings of the brain are totally dependent on the electrochemical reactions of the neuron which are bivalent. That is, Either/Or.

Free Will:
Let me give an example. Most of us remember this awful picture as one of the strongest to come out of the Vietnam War:



If asked, one would be inclined to say that this assasian was practicing free will. One would say that this action is premeditated (i.e. he is not reacting in self defense), and that he is not being compelled to murder a defenseless prisioner.

However, this man is not in an isolation tank. He is receiving mostly visual, photon input that exists in patterns. Those patterns are being preprocessed in the retina and the LGN and are travelling to the occipital cortex where they are further processed. Once there, they radiate to areas of long term memory. If this was a reflex, like raising your hand to avoid a blow (i.e. something the prisoner might have done if he was not bound) the comparison here might go immediately to the motor cortex.

In this case, there are most likely signals to the prefrontal cortex. In the prefrontal cortex is the executive center which:

The so-called executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events.

I would like to postulate at this point that what transpires in the executive center is exactly like what transpires in any other neural circut. That just as in Flatland, there is a decision made on a signal neuron basis. That the command to pull the trigger is an either/or decision based on the threshold reached in a signal cell with the concentration of a signal molecule or neurotransmitter.

Either the man pulls the trigger or he doesn't. While the actual pulling of the trigger involves many muscles and commands, the actual decision between pulling and not pulling rests on the potential (or, more likely the activation or inactivation of genomic DNA) in a single cell. This is due to the "The Principal of Bivalence."

I am very weary after trying to put this together so at this point I am going to stop and return to the discussion of the ramifications of this hypothesis in the next post.

Friday Crab Blogging

Now Atrios posted a picture of crabs on his blog yesterday. I ask you, is there any comparison? I don't think so...

Boring!

Friday Crab, etc. Blogging

Friday Crab Blogging

Storm Troopers of America

It is finally starting to sink into the thick skull of America that we have been led mightily astray by our President, his minions and the news media. Tom Shales yesterday in the WaPo about the Bill Moyers series on how the media mishandled the lead up to the invasion of Iraq:

Perhaps the truth shall eventually set you free, but first it might make you very, very depressed. Tonight's edition of "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS is one of the most gripping and important pieces of broadcast journalism so far this year, but it's as disheartening as it is compelling.

It's always depressing to learn that you've been had, but incalculably more so when the deception has resulted in thousands of Americans dying in the Iraq war effort.

Yes, Mr. Shales, over three thousand Americans have died in Iraq. But, Hundreds of Thousands of Iraqi Citizens have died, many of them children!

Just look at this picture for a while. Imagine that it is your daughter humiliated by the presence of this sinister storm trooper. Your father has just been shot dead because he tried to defend his family by reaching into a cabinet for a gun. Yes, the trooper is an American. But this young girl is a human too. We have destroyed her life for now and the future. She no longer has an intact family. And all of this is so a bumbling idiot can "win" his "War."

I have no idea how Americans in the future, if we have a future, will be able to comprehend this.

Reply to Comments

Jim Putnam and one of his commenters, Mac, were kind enough to offer comments on the last installment of the Information thread

Mr. Putnam states:

But I have a small point of disagreement:

What he describes here, in this specific essay, isn't information. It doesn't become information until it is recognized by the brain. It's merely a carrier, not matter how intricate or beautifully it has evolved to give us sight. ….. A map of that highway may be information, but the highway itself is not information.
…………….

Light wave/particles aren't information until they reach a means of converting and using them, in this case a brain. Until that point, it seems to me they're physical objects with no inherent informational qualities.

Later he says about recording thoughts:

…..The mind seems to conceive faster than words. I believe I think in words, in those cases where I actually do think as opposed to simply processing what's arriving through the senses, but recording thoughts is slow and laborious.

And Mac states:

While I'll admit to more than a bit of confusion on the subject, you (Putnam, drc) seem to be saying that 'information' comes into being only when acted on by the human brain. Although you do not use the term, it seems that to you, what exists prior to that human activity may be data, but is not information.
If nothing else, between you and Dr. C. there needs to be some agreement as to what this 'information' is that you are writing about.
Mac

Reply: Mr. Putnam’s point is entirely valid and it is a deficiency of my explanation that I did not make it more clear that what we were describing was only the manipulation and transfer of information from the perception in the eye to the brain. Please remember that this thread started from the observations of the Growlery about the evolution of robots and how they were not self contained but had to refer information back to the central processor and that this struck us as exactly what was happening in the human brain.

In the next installment, when we get information to the brain, I hope to discuss various ways in which the information can be recognized for what it is. At that point, we should commence a discussion of exactly what constitutes information as opposed to data. For the moment please accept my apology for being obscure.

The second blurb, on recording thoughts, I would also agree with. Many a time I have thought of something earth shaking to say in a post (or, at least, it seemed earth shaking at the time) only to get to the keyboard and find that it had floated off into the land where such thoughts go (imagine that country if you will; all the great ideas that were never recorded floating around like lost ghosts. A little spooky I would say.) As for the “speed of thought”, that is a very intriguing question. Because, much like a computer, the faster the thinking the more information that can be processed. This should be compared to the size of the brain. Of course this is similar to the clock speed of a computer and the built in RAM. It brings up questions as to why our brain doesn’t overheat when it is really thinking (yuk, yuk), or if that thinking is going on all the time, and how much is outside of "consciousness" (since Freud, there has been the idea that consciousness is only the tip of the iceberg. Some would say that all true decision making is below the surface and we only get the final “decision.” One can see that we need a new vocabulary to describe thinking since I hate putting words in quotes!)

In answer to Mac, we promise to try harder making distinctions.

We hope to have the final installment out in the next few days.

Friday Crab Blogging

This guy's been watching too many videos.




Sneaked a lobster in.


I know, Iknow. He's Sponge Bob's significant other. Whatever.

Tragedy

Condolences to the families and friends of the students and staff killed by the gunman in Blacksburg, VA.

Juan Cole has a very poignant post relating this to Iraq.

Helpless in Never-Never Land

Since 9/11, when less than three thousand American civilians died in a suicide attack on the World Trade Center, George W. Bush has used this event relentlessly to press for endless war and the gradual destruction of our Constitution. He still apparently is able to obtain a response from Americans when he speaks (misspeaks would be a better characterization of his oratory) by repeating the mantra of "9/11, 9/11, 9/11." Now Rudy Giuliani, the then Mayor of New York City, is chanting this faux-religious chant in his attempts to gain the presidency.

While we have known how insane this is for some time, Americans are almost totally oblivious to the carnage that occurs on a regular basis in Iraq. This particular paragraph struck me in the "ho-hum" news piece that purported to report good news:

Figures compiled by the AP from Iraqi police reports show that 1,586 civilians were killed in Baghdad between the start of the offensive and Thursday.

That represents a sharp drop from the 2,871 civilians who died violently in the capital during the two months that preceded the security crackdown.

Do I need to remind myself and others that there is no difference between the people that died in the World Trade Center and the 4,457 that died in Iraq over four months? These are men, women and children, just like you and me, who have been caught in a situation of our making. They are, in a large part, innocent victims of civil strife generated by our presence there.

I feel absolutely helpless in the face of this horror. I was led to believe that voting for Democrats in the last election would change things. It has not. It is all smoke and mirrors and words. And there are no options except to see this played out over the years. Damn.

(Oh, and:

Outside the capital, 1,504 civilians were killed between Feb. 14 and Thursday, April 12 compared with 1,009 deaths during the two previous months, the AP figures show.

)

Friday Crab Blogging

Sort of an interesting critter. Claws define the Crab.



When you are really down, remember that children have the right view of the world. If I didn't know better, I would say this was Woodstock, 1968.

I apologize for not finishing the information thread, I hope to work on it this weekend. This is mainly because it inevitably has to leave the region of hard science. This includes answering the estimable Mr. Putnam concerning the medium and the message (Ah, Marshall McCluhan, you are so misunderstood).

How did we get here from there?

"Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in, and no one can bring them back. For the sake of our country, and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them. Otherwise, we will be totally destroyed by Iranian retaliation. Uh, my boys will give you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth, and you sure as hell won't stop them now, uhuh. Uh, so let's get going, there's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids. God bless you all"...............

Friday Crab Blogging

Once again we feature a guest today, sort of an Alice in Wonderland theme:



It will be years before these two school girls, victims of a bombing last week in Iraq, will live in an environment where they can draw pictures like the above.

Mr. McCain, please read this

This man has recently been in Iraq. He claimed before he went and while he was there that "things are going better." He visited a market (with a hundred troops, circling helicopters and wearing body armor) where he bought a rug.

Mr. McCain, your support for the occupatin of Iraq has led to incredible misery. Misery for which the world blames the United States, even though many of us have been against the invasion since its inception. If you doubt that there is misery, read this:

Sarah Abdullah, a beautiful girl of 8 years old, was an eyewitness to her father’s slaying two years ago, while he was giving her a lift to school one day in the predominantly Sunni Mosul.
Sarah, who could not speak for a while after the tragedy and who lost her mother from grief for her dead father, said “I knew that they went to heaven. However, I would look at the sky through my window everyday hoping to catch a glimpse of them.”


Ms. Khadija, the orphanage keeper or Mama Khadija as the children like to call her, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) “Sarah has passed through a difficult time. She used to scream at night and was unable to live with her relatives, but here she has found herself in harmony with other children.”
“She has been here for ten months now and still has nightmares. I stay up entire nights reading the Quran by her bed for tranquility. Sarah would sleep then as she embraces me,” the orphanage keeper said.

And this:

Hamid Abdul-Razzaq, 12, has sorrow stamped on his face as he lost his entire family when a mortar shell fell on their house three years ago. He was the only survivor because he was outside buying breakfast food for the family.

Hamid told VOI, “all words are in vain… I lost a whole family who were buried under my house. I cursed myself for not being among them when the round fell on them. What is the taste of life if you do not have a living father, a mother, sisters and brothers. Now I have none. The orphanage cares much for us but I would like to be part of a family rather than a member of an orphanage.”

Then look at these pictures:





Mr. McCain, what the United States has done, and what we are doing, in Iraq is wrong. Dead wrong. How can anyone be more explicit than that.

Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright….

Some comments over at the Growlery deserve some meandering in the blogsphere. First, the more one looks at the human eye (no pun intended) the more complex it gets. The eye may be the most sophisticated organ in the body including the brain. While we concentrated on the molecular events in the retina, maybe it is worthwhile to look at the overall structure for context:



From this site:

The retina is composed of 10 layers, from the outside (nearest the blood vessel enriched choroid) to the inside (nearest the gelatinous vitreous humor):

1. pigmented epithelium
2. photoreceptors; bacillary layer (outer and inner segments of cone and rod photoreceptors)
3. external (outer) limiting membrane
4. outer nuclear (cell bodies of cones and rods)
5. outer plexiform (cone and rod axons, horizontal cell dendrites, bipolar dendrites)
6. inner nuclear (nuclei of horizontal cells, bipolar cells, amacrine cells, and Müller cells)
7. inner plexiform (axons of bipolar cells and amacrine cells, dendrites of ganglion cells)
8. ganglion cells (nuclei of ganglion cells and displaced amacrine cells)
9. axons (nerve fibers from ganglion cells traversing the retina to leave the eye at the optic disk)
10. internal limiting membrane (separates the retina from the vitreous

We have focused on one of the sensing cells, the rod cells. The nerve cells that synapse with the rod cells and that we have assumed to have a “preprocessing” function would include the bipolar and ganglion cells:

Activated photoreceptors stimulate bipolar cells, which in turn stimulate ganglion cells. The impulses continue into the axons of the ganglion cells, through the optic nerve, and to the visual center at the back of the brain. There are about 120 to 130 million rods in each eye, and they are sensitive to dim light, to movement, and to shapes. There are about 6.5 to 7 million cones in each eye, and they are sensitive to bright light and to color.

This total to 130-140 million receptors!

From here:

There are approximately 1.1 million nerve cells in each optic nerve. The optic nerve, which acts like a cable connecting the eye with the brain, actually is more like brain tissue than it is nerve tissue.

Lets see: 130 million receptors funneled down to 1.1 million internet connections to the occipital cortex. 120 to 1. That’s a fair amount of processing in those bipolar and ganglion cells.

This just reemphasizes that information is preprocessed in the retina and that there is not a one to one mapping of image pixels (photons) to the brain.

And, you know, we haven't even touched on how or why evolution designed such a complex structure just to get the information from a few photons back to the brain. It is just amazing!

---------------------------------------

I had never thought much about “The Stars My Destination” since I read it in the late 50’s.

From: Amazon.com

When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science-fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. First published in 1956 (as Tiger! Tiger!), the novel revolves around a hero named Gulliver Foyle, who teleports himself out of a tight spot and creates a great deal of consternation in the process. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for forty years. (Bester fans should also note that Vintage has reprinted The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)

Interestingly enough, I just read “The Demolished Man” and had no idea it was by the same author. I’m not sure how I got the name except that it might have been in a Wikepedia article on cyperpunk or something.

But, of course, “Tiger! Tiger!” caught my attention since a fragment of William Blake had come up when I Googled “Optic Nerve.”

Just go to Optic Nerve. There you will find this fragment of Blake's "Milton":

The Sons of Ozoth within the Optic Nerve stand fiery glowing.
And the number of his sons is eight millions & eight.
They give delights to the man unknown, artificial riches
They give to scorn, & their possessors to trouble & sorrow & care,
Shutting the sun, & moon, & stars, & trees, & clouds, & waters,
And hills out from the Optic Nerve & hardening it into a bone
Opake, and like the black pebble on the enraged beach,
While the poor indigent is like the diamond which, tho' cloth'd
In rugged covering in the mine, is open all within,
And in his hallow'd centre holds the heavens of bright eternity.

'Milton' - William Blake (1754-1827)

OPTIC NERVE
is an independent production company which specializes in making television programmes on history & the arts. Much of our work in recent years has been for Channel 4.

CREATIVE TEAM
Colin Still: producer, director, cinematographer
Michael Hrebeniak: researcher, associate producer

Blake was not too far off if we assume he was talking about nerve fibers in the optic nerve when he mentions the Sons of Ozoth (don’t bother Googling "Sons of Ozoth", this guy only appears in Blake’s imagination; and doesn't his imagination sound like Lovecraft?) except 8 million vs 1 million is a little over the top.

But, back to “Milton” by Blake. This is one wild and crazy guy.

From here:

William Blake's "Milton" - Meaning and Madness

Most people know William Blake as the author of the poem The Tyger ("Tyger Tyger burning bright / In the forests of the night....") ……In his long narrative, "Milton", Blake describes how the author of "Paradise Lost" returned from heaven and entered Blake's foot in the form of a comet. Afterwards, the familiar world of the five senses turned into a shoe. Blake tied the shoe and walked with the Spirit of Poetry to the City of Art. A few years later, back in the ordinary world, Blake saw a twelve-year- old girl flying down to him. He mistook the girl for one of his own muses, and invited her into his cottage to visit with him and his wife, who could also see and hear "the spirits". The girl explained that she was actually looking for John Milton. The older poet emerged from Blake's foot, and in an apocalyptic scene, the ordinary world was transformed along with all of human perception.