Recent mention by Marja-Leena and Cassandra
                            Pages and Tasting
                            Rhubarb  of La Vie en Rosé    led
                            to a very welcome upsurge in my stats which, like
                            every other blogger in blogdom, I obsessively check
                            now and then - oh allright, very frequently - to
                            see whether I am loved more than I am ignored. Come
                            to think of it, that's a life-long preoccupation.
Anyway, Dorothee
                            Lang who, amongst many other things, is editor
                            of the Blueprint
                            Review noted  Jean's mention of the Augustine                    comic
                            strips and invited me to join mycomics.de                              an
                            online community of comics creators. Of course
                            I was happy to do so and, thanks to Dorothee's
                            help, my complete INERTIA strip is now uploaded
                             there.The site
                             is mainly in German but comics from other countries
                             also appear and international participation is encouraged.
                             Gradually I will be posting more strips to this
                        friendly and well-designed site. 
Yesterday was the christening
                        of Lewis - my niece Sarah and her husband Elliott's second
                        baby - and the occasion was blessed by fabulous
                        Spring weather and perfect location: an English
                        village's 13th Century church with great pub across the
                        road where we all gathered for lunch after a cheerful
                        Anglican service during which the round infant, dressed
                        in pinstriped mini-waistcoat, white shirt, green socks
                        and black corduroy trousers, seemed puzzled but smiled
                        graciously. 
When the guests were eating lunch
                        at long wooden tables in the pub garden, I remembered
                        part of a dream I had about a week or so ago in which
                         the same image appeared. I've been thinking
                        about so-called pre-cognitive dreams, which I have fairly
                        often. The pre-cognitive bit is usually quite banal,
                        just ordinary scenes from ordinary life which I see
                        in a dream and then, a variable time later, encounter
                        in waking life. I'm aware of the theories, debates, experiments
                        etc. on this subject but I want to follow my own ruminations
                        about it and see where they lead. 
I'm starting from the premise that
                        some dreams can foresee events/scenes which have not
                        yet taken place in 'real time': how would this process
                        work? My intuition says that there's nothing
                        supernatural about it but that it's an actual process
                        happening constantly although we are rarely aware
                        of it.   Here's the gist of notes I was writing
                        while having breakfast this morning:
Suppose the events
                            of our day are like the successive frames in a film
                        - say,  24 frames per second or
                        some other fps - but we don't see separate frames,
                        only one continuous strip. Suppose something different
                        happens when we're asleep and dreaming: the film speeds
                        up and the gaps between frames narrows, they become
                        somewhat compressed. But our perception remains the same
                        as it was when awake so we're actually seeing some of
                        the next frames because they overlap. So maybe
                        what seems like foreseeing a future event is simply
                        looking at the present that we haven't caught up with
                        yet in 'real time' because 'dream-time' goes faster. 
Yes, I know there are all sorts
                        of  problems with
                            this conjecture but it's only a start.  I will expand
                        it with some animation/video experiments when I've worked
                            out how to do it. These are the kinds of questions
                        that really excite me and it doesn't bother me that I'm
                         not qualified to explore them - no degrees in
                        physics, neurology, psychology, biology, you-name-it-ology.
                        So? Who's gonna stop me? 
 

 
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