Iain Strachan

 Introduction In this exercise with my ongoing experimentation with the AI program chatGPT, I took one of my short poems "Hoovering up the violets on the lawn", and got it to do an analysis of the poem.  I then asked it to rewrite the poem from the point of view of various characters in the poem.  I then attempted my own rewrites.  Since when you write anything poetic you are influenced by other writing you have seen, it is arguable that my rewrites were influenced by chatGPT's attempts, and that therefore it could be a tool to spark creativity.  First, here is the original poem, my own work, motivated by a real event, followed by chatGPT's analysis of it.  The title "Hoovering up the violets on the lawn" came to me while mowing the lawn and noticing how the rotary mower seems to resemble a hoover, sucking stuff up. Hoovering up the violets on the lawn There they were, unobtrusive yet elegant  Mingled with the straggly grass and tatty daisies. A sham...

 I have been playing recently with the AI program "chatGPT" which has been causing quite a stir recently.  Initially I tried fairly silly questions to trip it up, and attempts to get it to write poetry (it can't!). But then I hit on the idea of getting it to rewrite an serious article about a minor academic discovery I made in 1996, in the style of a tabloid newspaper, such as the Daily Mail, and to suggest a headline for it. The details of the story are below in the text of the AI-generated article and the question I submitted to chatGPT.   chatGPT's "Daily Mail" style article about Shostakovich: SHOCK DISCOVERY: Data Scientist Uncovers Shostakovich's Cryptic Musical Message Beyond the Grave!  Iain Strachan, a data scientist with a love for mathematics and music, has made a startling discovery about the music of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. While studying for his PhD in machine learning, Strachan uncovered a hidden pattern in Shostakovich...

As is quite well-known, Quaker meetings are based around silence, with occasional contributions, which anyone can make, if they feel moved by the Spirit to do so.  This is known as "Spoken Ministry".  Occasionally, no-one will speak for the entire hour of Silent Worship, and on occasion maybe three or four will speak out of the silence.  Sometimes one piece of spoken ministry will trigger another, but it is not in any sense a discussion or a debate.  We try to sense where the words are coming from and learn what has nourished the life of other. For me, giving spoken ministry is something that builds up inside during the Meeting.  I do not go in with the express intention of speaking, or make any prior preparations - what sparks the ministry might be something I've recently seen or observed, or it may simply arise during the silent contemplation.  As a thought builds up that might lead to ministry, one needs to consider if it is appropriate to speak, and g...

It's now notorious and has "gone viral".  I'm referring to Stephen Fry's response on being asked by a television interviewer what he'd say if he found God actually existed and was confronted by Him at the Pearly Gates.  Stephen replied that he'd say (something like) "Bone cancer in children - what's that about? How dare you deliberately create something that can cause so much misery and it's not our fault?"  Such a God would be evil, malicious, and he would want nothing to do with such a being. I sympathise, I really do.  Some years ago, I used to go to a poetry group.  The founder was a lovely lady called Sally.  Sally was one of the most honest people I'd ever met - if she liked your poem she'd say so, but wouldn't pretend if she didn't like it.  Everyone valued her.  She died at the age of 36, in Indonesia, when her plane crashed into the side of a mountain - she was one of the two Brits on board. I searched the sho...

When as a child I came into the world Helpless and lying in a draughty shed Your wisest men, they say, brought gifts to me: Of gold - for crowning of an infant King; And frankincense - for raising prayers to him; And myrrh - portending burial and death. But would you bring me gifts like this today, And lavish me with costly offerings? I would instead you follow me and let Me show you where I make my dwelling place. See this naked child, starving in the sun Witness his ribs etched starkly on his skin See his swollen belly, and how his eyes Ignore the soft caresses of the flies. I am that child. Today I live in him. Each pain, each pang each gasp is also mine. I would have you bring not crowns of gold But food and water, simple gifts for a King For when you nourish him, you nourish me. And see the tramp who shivers by the door Frozen from the night spent on the streets. So will you offer up a prayer for him That floats to heaven on a...

The following is a somewhat expanded version of an article I had published in the "Christian Forum" column in the Abingdon Herald: One particularly hapless character in Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot", is ironically named "Lucky". I think that Lucky is a negative analogue of Christ: a suffering servant treated abysmally by his master, carrying a heavy burden of two bags about the stage. A famous passage in the book of Isaiah in the Bible also concerns a suffering servant: Christians believe this to be a prophecy of Christ. Lucky only gets to make one speech, a long, rambling and incoherent tirade, the gist of which is this: no matter what we do, we are all going to waste away to death, and our labours will be unfinished. The final word of the speech is, despairingly: "Unfinished!" By contrast, the last words of Christ on the cross are triumphant: "It is finished." The text of Lucky's speech (along with gui...

I have been returning quite a bit this year to T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" (in fact those who know me might think I'm becoming a bit of a T.S. Eliot bore!). I first read these poems in 1996. I found them challenging to understand, but equally I have found that they repay re-reading, and each time reveal a little more wisdom, which Eliot had evidently accumulated from his readings of mystical and religious figures across the ages. A recurring theme of Four Quartets is timelessness, or a contemplation of the "timeless present", compared to our continual pre-occupation with contemplating the past and the future - an activity which Eliot saw as pointless instead of living consciously in the present moment - something which we can only experience fleetingly, and in doing so access the true spiritual states. In the final section of the third of the four poems ("The Dry Salvages"), for instance he wrote: Men's curiosity searches past and future A...

The following words from David Hartley, whose wife Marie was killed in the 7/7 bombings in London struck home to me, amidst all the celebrations on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and comments that justice has been served: They have got one but there are more behind there. I can't see this meaning terrorism is likely to stop there. They might try retaliating a bit more now. There is no sense of justice. They have some one but there are plenty of people willing to take his place. He is just one of them. Of course, I am not saying that David Hartley speaks for all those who lost loved ones in 7/7 or 9/11.  Many of those will feel a sense of justice; and be glad that an evil man who had no conscience about killing innocent civilians is now dead.  I guess for all of us there is a feeling of "he got what he deserved". But evil atrocities, whether they are on a mass scale or perpetrated by one individual on another, make us all feel angry.  In my voluntary work, I ge...

[Author's note:  One of the biggest questions facing believers is the problem of pain and suffering.  There are no easy glib answers to this question.  It is clear that on a planet of fixed size, if there is birth there has to be death to make room.  But what if all pain were removed and death was always painless?  I have tried to imagine what this would be like in the following story ..] One in fifty thousand is not much to worry about.  It is hardly worth concerning yourself when you go to sleep that one in fifty thousand will not wake up the next day, and you could be one of them.  One in fifty thousand will go to sleep, content and happy and painless, and will be carried off by the silent swathe that passes over the slumbering.  One in fifty-one thousand one hundred and thirty-five, to be precise, the statisticians have calculated.  It is so curious an exactitude that one may expect to live, on average for precisely threescore years and ...

Quakers believe that something of God may be found in every human being.  That thought prompted me to dream up this modern reworking of a very old joke. After a long, good, moral, and kind life, an atheist finally dies at a ripe old age.  Much to his surprise he discovers that there really is such a thing as God, and life after death, despite never having entertained such notions during his life.  Moreover, he discovers that God, whom he had previously been warned was a jealous and judgmental character, was in fact the source of the good that was in his life - and indeed he had lived a very good and noble life. So, as a result, completely unexpectedly, he finds himself admitted to Heaven.  It is a wonderful place: a massive party with tables laid out with delicious food that never seems to run out,  and plenty of drink which you can drink without ever getting too drunk.  Laughter and dancing abound all over the place. He takes a stroll around and come...

Inspired by Carol Ann Duffy's new poem  Silver Lining  (hear the Poet Laureate read her poem  here ), I took some photographs, and wrote my own poem, which bears no small debt to "Silver Lining".  The weekend where the skies were so empty of planes felt like a pause at home; a pause that caused havoc for those stranded however, serving to remind us how dependent we are on a precious resource that is bound to run out eventually. Our Labour Paused Not in fifty springs May I see the cherry-blossom thus: Dancing against a plain and planeless blue, Endless shades of white undulating the petals, Stamens accosted by hoverings of wasps and bees; Nature reclaiming the skies and continuing to work. But this morning, deemed safe To receive our own outpourings Of earth's innards, The blue infinities, Criss-crossed with kids' crayons, Streaked with white fragments In straight lines, billowing to a dull blur, Witness: Lovers, reunited, Supermarkets, re...

Coincident with my daughter doing an essay for her English Literature coursework on Beckett’s “Endgame” on the proposition whether tragedy creates a sense of meaning to suffering, I find myself also pondering this subject – a fitting one for a Good Friday, when we remember Christ’s suffering on the Cross.  Rather than consider academically whether the literary genre of tragedy can create a sense of meaning for suffering, I shall try and consider the broader question of whether suffering has a meaning at all, or is it the the inevitable consequence of a blind, pitilessly indifferent nature , as Richard Dawkins has argued in “River Out Of Eden”? Dawkins’s materialistic explanation has the merit that it is the easiest to understand.  If there is no God, then there isn’t the difficult part of explaining why such a God should allow suffering. And yet, we all somehow want to find meaning in suffering – and some better explanation for it than random chance.  I do not know why t...

I regret to announce that I have had to enable comment moderation on this blog.  This is because some moron is leaving comments in Japanese that contain embedded links to Japanese porn sites, disguised as a row of dots.  This has continued despite the fact I have enabled the "Captcha" technology, so the moron has to sit there and manually enter the Captcha code.  I apologise for the inconvenience to any regular readers who might wish to comment.

In watching the "Lewis" TV detective drama last night ("Lewis" is the follow on series from "Inspector Morse") I was struck by the misquoting of a T.S. Eliot poem.  The sergeant (who is the "intellectual one" of the pair of central characters) states "Where is the wisdom we have lost in information".  On being asked what that was from he said "T.S. Eliot" as I knew he would.  However I also knew that the quote was slightly incorrect.  Two lines have been telescoped into one by the scriptwriter.  The correct quote is: Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? I first encountered the second line during the literature review study for my PhD in Computer Science.  The quote was placed at the beginning of someone else's thesis that I included in the review.  The thesis in question was about techniques for visualising complex multi-dimensional datasets in order to sp...

"I'll be your right hand, Nicky." I am lost for words at her offer.  Some would say she's pretty if you like that sort of thing.  I will describe her she has ginger hair descending in ringlets elfin features sparkling light blue eyes and an impish smile but it's not her looks that have led me to confess all my shameful secrets to her not her looks at all but something in the way she listens and seems to understand and accept me for who I am; no matter what she is there and she's listening listening listening taking away all my shame and still seeing my inner human being and her demeanour says that what she sees is ok. She's given me a hand moving my stuff into my student room setting out all my photos posters books cups cutlery baseball caps videos beer bottles cider bottles wine glasses with that female flair that just always escapes me but which I recognize when I see it.  I show her my computer, its keyboard being my chief means of expression as my f...