Lake Eyre.  © Adam Williams/The Light Collective

The photo above, yes, it is a photograph, not a painting, is one of a set of 18 published in the Guardian yesterday, and I highly recommend a look: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/nov/03/lake-eyre-from-the-air-in-pictures

One of my Mr Negative friends immediately branded them as having “magic” applied, i.e. they’ve been digitally enhanced. So bloody what?! They are stunning and beautiful, and give me great pleasure. I don’t care if they’ve been punched up. They are great images.

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I’m more nervous now than I was during the Cold War. The possibility of that idiot Trump becoming president of the USA is truly frightening. Putin would lead him like a monkey on a leash. I reckon there would be a strong possibility of a small nuclear conflict in the Middle East, as a proxy for an all out war between Russia and the US. Trump is mad enough to try it, I reckon, and Putin would goad him.

Hillary must win, but the problem is that Trump and his band of Republican idiot chumps will immediately set out to destabilise her with law suits and court challenges. This will make it almost impossible for her to govern properly. This is a horrible prospect.

The USA has gone mad. And they’ve got guns and nuclear weapons. It’s scary.

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I’m often on about coincidences. Yesterday I was so surprised by one that I gasped and sat back in my chair.

The news radio was talking about a TV program called something like “Program for a murder”.  At the very moment I heard that, the title of one of the tracks on a CD I’m ripping popped up – “Anatomy of a murder” by Duke Ellington. I was so surprised that I made a noise and just about fell off my chair. Coincidences, they keep a’coming.

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I’m quite addicted to this CD ripping process. So far, 294 non-classical CDs done, and 104 classical. Plus six comedy discs and a big collection of 60s hits that I made in 2007 for a reunion. I reckon I’m about a third of the way through my CD stock, and I’m finding discs that I’d completely forgotten I had.

Such as an ABC disc of 65 tracks of historic ABC radio sounds, including all the variations of the classic news theme. It used to be quite slow and very classical/orchestral back in the 30s, 40, through to the 70s. Then it was speeded up and made to sound more modern, the theme we hear today. Interesting. I haven’t listened to all the tracks yet.

(Notice how I avoided using the word iconic? I hate that cliche word. It seems to be impossible for any journalist to leave it out of any piece. Sometimes it will be used twice or three times in the one article. Lazy writing.)

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I’ve been making name cards for a mate’s reunion of all his Viet Nam war buddies to be held soon in Busselton.

Those are the Viet Nam war campaign medals. Mick has a sticker on the back of his car, and I photographed it a couple of years ago. Lucky I’ve still got it. He’s pretty pleased with the result. There are 78 names and they’re all done. I’ve just got to print them (12 per A4 page) and cut them up. Easy. I like doing this sort of thing.

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Lake Eyre from the air. © The Light Collective.

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I’m nearly finished reading the biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan, an amazing Indian mathematician born 1887, died 1920 of TB. The book is called The Man Who Saw Infinity, and I highly recommend it. That’s if you like maths, of course, as the author doesn’t hold back. It’s a masterful explanation of some of the maths concepts, with many equations in the book.

Ramanujan was an absolute prodigy. He was self taught and never got full recognition in India because he couldn’t get a uni degree. Why? Because he was so fixated on the maths pouring out of his brain that he totally lacked interest in any of the other subjects required for a uni degree course.

He was finally noticed and was sent to Cambridge University, where he was so brilliant that they gave him a BA degree without requiring other studies. In 1918 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, F.R.S. This is about the highest honour any academic can get. (I must admit, if there’s one thing I would love to have, it’s F.R.S. after my name. Impossible, of course, but I’d walk over hot coals.)

Anyway, he got TB in England and became very sick, and had to return to India where he died a couple of years later at age 35. He was a prodigy in the same way Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were, just geniuses, work so perfect that it only happens once per century, almost.

But get this: he was a Brahmin caste, the highest in India. But the Hindu religion forbids Brahmins to travel overseas. Why? Just because, that’s why. So by going to England, he broke that rule and when he died, he was refused a full Brahmin funeral. All the big Brahmin dignitaries in India stayed away from his funeral. Bloody religion. It’s a curse on humanity.

The book has been made into a movie of the same name, and I’ve got it. I won’t watch it until I finish the book (about 50 pages to go), but I bet I’ll be disappointed. The book is so detailed that the movie will have to brush over it all. Oh well.