The Fibonacci Sequence

This is going to be a strange old post but I was thinking of something so let's see how it goes.

Everywhere you look these days you will see the name of Alan Turing; this is for a number of reasons. One may be because there is a movie on release starring Benedict Cumberbatch – yes of course that's his real name and we will all remember it just as we remembered Schwarzenegger.

In the film Breaking the Code, Derek Jacobi played Alan Turing and he is seen staring at a fir cone; here:

If you look at it you will see that there is a distinct pattern. What we see when we look at it is the same pattern but when a mathematician looks at it he sees a pattern of numbers. 

That pattern is called the Fibonacci Sequence and was spotted nearly a thousand years ago by someone called, would you believe Fibonacci. 

He didn't invent it as it was used by Indian mathematicians in the 6^th century.

What do the numbers mean?

Well the Fibonacci numbers are the sum of the two previous numbers and so on so 1, 2, is followed by 3. 

Simple?

So far.

Then 3 is followed by 5 and 5 is followed by 8. What does this all mean; how can it be useful.

It's supposed to be  a way of predicting how many rabbits two rabbits will begat in a year.

But.

Somehow it is the meaning of life when it comes to a computer.

There is line in Breaking the Code when Turing, quite well in to middle age by now, says 'look at this cone; a Fibonacci sequence.'

Great piece of writing aye? Engels, meet Marx, Rolls meet Royce!! (you know what I mean).

Well look at this:

That is the pattern created by a Japanese Puffer Fish; the fish is about two inches long and in order to attract a mate he makes this pattern in the sand at the bottom of the ocean. When the female arrives he flattens the middle. It was on TV the other day in the David Attenborough series.

Isn't nature wonderful?

Here are some more patterns from nature all with Fibonacci numbers.

Amazing aren't they?

So how does the Fibonacci sequence lead to a genius inventing the computer?

That's why the genius who invented the computer invented it and not me – nor you.

Unfortunately Alan Turing was born in the wrong age: as with Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Michaelangelo and many more he was homosexual; gay.

But in the time he was active the practice was against the law; it was never against the law for one man to love another man but the actual practice was.

In Britain that is; in some countries it still is.

Gay marriage is legal in lots of states in America and lots of other countries but in Uganda and really backward countries homosexuality is still against the law.

So instead of praising Alan Turing the authorities persecuted him; they chemically castrated him and he eventually committed suicide.

At a time when people knew very little about genetics or DNA, Turing used the early computer to try to crack how a soup of cells and chemicals could transform itself and grow into complex natural shapes - a subject known as morphogenesis. In an incredible article published in 1952, Turing suggested that everything from the spots and stripes on animals to the arrangement of pine cones and flowers could be explained by the interactions between two chemicals. Turing’s work in this area is intimately connected with the timing of his trial and conviction for homosexuality, and his subsequent ‘treatment’ with a course of chemical injections.

Hope you like the patterns:

 And work this one out:

JMW Turner and the Hog's Head.

When the movie, Mr Turner, opens you are left in no doubt that a very important artist is about to make an entrance. Turner's father goes around the market to buy fruit, vegetables and other things that makes you ask the question if they are to eat or to be used as colours – after all this is the one and only JMW Turner, Britain's greatest ever artist; Billy, to his father, Mr Billy to his housekeeper - a housekeeper, who is a strange looking woman, with a stoop and a skin condition which progresses with the movie; he uses her for fleeting sex in passing; she uses him the same with a bit more; he greets her when he comes in with a squeeze of her breasts and a touch of her pubic area through her dress in both cases. He does this when she stands by him sitting in his chair and he gives her the greeting without even looking at her – she doesn't look at him.

I loved this film; I loved everything about it. Some clever clogs might come along and criticise it for leaving some things out and putting some things in which didn't happen but . . .this is a movie and a great one.

I don't know much about Turner at all apart from the fact that his father was a barber and one of the things the father buys at a street market is a pig's head; a whole head. The father – the barber – shaves the pig's head, with a cut throat razer, and when they greet each other they hug and kiss and settle down to eat the pig's head. They cut slices off and munch it down and it is as if Turner has eaten so much pig that he sounds like one. He grunts all the way through the film in fact Timothy Spall plays Turner as a pig; a sympathetic lovable hog.

Laurence Olivier said he based his famous portrayal of Richard III on the Big Bad Wolf; well I think Spall has chosen a pig. His perpetual grunt proves that.

Timothy Spall in Hog Mode.

The film doesn't go into Turner's private life too much; well his really private life; we know there was a wife, two daughters and a very strange looking granddaughter – is it a doll or a reject from Call the Midwife? - but they make two entrances whilst we are treated to his artistic raison d'etre.

It is not a typical Hollywood bio-pic even though Constable is in it and other famous figures like Ruskin but there are no lines like “Mr Rolls meet Mr Royce” or “Engels? Meet Marx.”

It should win some Oscars, and deserves, to – acting, directing, photography – well, I hope so, but I don't think so; certainly some BAFTAs but I would like to see Mike Leigh get it for directing and Timothy Spall for acting from BAFTA and OSCAR.

In Dreams I Walk With You.

My brother contacted me and said he missed my blog – well he said he missed the BS so here we go.

I have to say I don't need to bullshit as life is full of it – last night a dog came on to our bed and lay on me. 

It was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier and when I tried to turn over it moved on to my chest. The only thing I could do was push my legs out and . . . I fell out of bed.

 BANG!!!

Now that was a bit of a shock. I know why the dog came to me in my dreams; two days ago there was a programme on the radio presented by a Radio One Deejay whose name escapes me. He was talking  to an ex copper who had a stroke and was forced in to retirement: 'I love my Staffy' the cop was saying 'he's great company.'

The deejay also had a Staffy and he was fed up taking the dog to a park and seeing mums pick up their kids and running away from it. 

Now the Staffordshire Bull Terrier is a strange looking dog –  but who can resist this:

But it grows in to this:

Look at the look in its eyes ' hey doggy doggy doggy' - I don't think so.

Look at this:

He looks friendly but look at the power in its jaws - those teeth.

Did you ever see The Omen?? One of my favourite films.

I don't think it's a Staffy but some of those photos are a bit scary and why should mothers with their children be subject to anything frightening?
Can you imagine being smaller than a Labrador and seeing the bloody thing come up to you for a fuss – that's what a child sees.
A bit like standing at a bus stop and a dog as big as a horse comes over to you for a fuss; you would run like hell; wouldn't you?

On Tuesday evening, after I heard the programme on the radio, I went around to a supermarket and there, outside, tied up, was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier; he looked nice and friendly and wanted a fuss so I leaned down gently towards him, put my hand out to greet him and he bit me!!

I'm kidding – I never went near him but he did look very friendly.

So 24 hours later I dream about him – not exactly beautiful are they? I mean the puppy is very attractive but if you had one at home, and you had all the doors open in your house, would you let your arm hang down the side of the bed? I mean would you?

I don't do that in any case having had a cat for so many years.

Sometimes I dream about our cat; El Grande – the big 'un. I dream about my parents too and often wonder if that's what happens when people die; they come and see you in your dreams!

A nice thought isn't it but . . . I don't know. What's the alternative? We all go to heaven? All 50 million of us each year, or whatever the number is.

Well maybe heaven is in our dreams, maybe that's where we go.

Nobody dies in Ireland – nobody at all. When you die there they talk about you forever as if you are still around. 

They laugh at the things you have experienced with your late love ones – 'do you remember the time he . . .' and so on. 

That's the way things are there. 

In a way it's a shame Saint Patrick brought Christianity to the place; they believed in much stronger things before that old ballix came along.

They buried their dead on great hills so that they could look down on the living whilst the living could look up to their ancestors and maybe – maybe – dream about them.

So there we are, Paddy me boy; a few words of BS for you; sweet dreams.