Baleful Disk

I'm a bit chuffed with this, even though in the photo it's nothing like as awesome as it was IRL, with what seemed an absolutely enormous baleful red disk shining through the clouds. Amazing. Still, this is pretty good, I think. (Large here.) I was coming down the road and saw the clouds, shading the setting sun, and I took a couple of pictures. Then the disk started to show through a gap in the cloud, and I started clicking away furiously, changing exposure settings wildly to try to capture the way it actually looked. This was as close as I managed to get. I'm pretty happy with it. 8)

Laughing just now: mrs tsuken and I just looked at this quiz in the Guardian about the new UK citizenship test ... I did better than she. Why I laugh? She be British citizen; I be not. xP

Anyway, before I took the sun, I thought I was going to blip either a colour or B&W of a wee abandoned toy. I also took a couple of shots while walking (actually while walking: I didn't pause, and just clicked off the shutter as I was holding the camera) that I quite like: up stairs and behind me, and an effort at another One Street pic.

Interesting morning today: my registrar was presenting at grand rounds, and presented a rather fascinating and challenging case, then moving to talk about creativity and psychosis - with a bit of reference to an article I blogged about a few years back about thalamic dopamine receptor density and divergent thinking. It sounds a bit dense (ha!) but is rather interesting. Divergent thinking isn't the be-all and end-all of creativity, but is probably a pretty important aspect. Being able to see and work somewhat askew/outside the usual frame is often part of what creates something great. I was listening to some bit of Bach recently, and heard the most perfect illustration: it was heading towards a lovely resolution, melodically and harmincally - and just as it was about to happen, old Johann Sebastian took it in a totally different and unexpected direction. That's the sort of thing I mean - and the suggestion from this study was that there might be a relationship between the density of D2 dopamine receptors in the thalamus, and that sort of divergent thinking. Also perhaps vulnerability to psychosis, in which dopamine is implicated, and the effect of lower thalamic D2 receptor density on sensory gating/filtering does seem suggestive in terms of psychosis risk.

So. Interesting.

One of the examples that always comes to my mind here is Brian Wilson - yes, that Brian Wilson; much of the Beach Boys' music, behind the amazingly well-crafted pop exterior, is pretty twisted. What the hell is that theremin doing there? Where did that harmony come from? where's the resolution to that change? It's hidden from casual view, but it's not standard.

Anyway, enough of that. Time to actually post this.