Author: Chris Jefferies

I live in the west of England, worked in IT, and previously in biological science.

A new Christmas song

This is a family song, it’s about gathering round and spending time with the people we love most. Enjoy it!

A still from Sarah’s YouTube video

While we’re on the Christmas theme I thought I’d post another song from Sarah Reynolds. It’s quite delightful and, in a lovely way, rather old fashioned. Scroll down, have a listen, and see what you think.

This song is quite different from Sarah’s other material, I suspect it was far more spontaneous. It’s a thoughtful song. She doesn’t accompany the words with one of her usual, excellent, multi-track compositions but with a pretty melody on the piano, and there’s a gentle, relaxed rhythm throughout. The video doesn’t provide the lyrics, but Sarah’s voice is clear enough and written words are not neccesary. The graphic is suggestive of a Christmas card from past decades, well-matched to the music and the choice of piano. The whole thing breathes close family enjoying the season together, burning logs in the grate, home made mince pies, warmth indoors with cold weather outside the house.

This is a family song, it’s about gathering round and spending time with the people we love most. Enjoy it, give it a like on YouTube, Spotify, and Facebook. Go on… you know you want to!

And wherever you may be, gather with your family and friends if you can, and enjoy Christmas and New Year together.

Christmas and New Year 2021

It’s good to be out and about to see it all and just as good to get back to a warm house.

Castle Street in Cirencester

Season’s greetings to all my readers! Cirencester is showing off its tasteful street decorations once again, the days are short, the nights are long, and it’s good to be out and about to see it all and just as good to get back to a warm house afterwards.

My thoughts are especially with those who have no warm house to come back to this year, there are so many – the homeless sleeping alone in shop doorways, refugees desperately crossing the sea and hoping for asylum, and people who do have a roof over their heads but lack money for presents for the children or depend on food banks for their next meal.

Life can be wonderful, fun, exciting. It can also be tough, exhausting, and depressing. Whoever you are, whatever your circumstances, my prayer and hope is that people will be kind to you, there will be new opportunities in your life, and that there’ll be reasons to hope and overcome the difficulties.

And if your life is comfortable and you have more than enough, my prayer and hope is that you will be kind to others, search out new opportunities for them, and provide reasons for hope and ways to overcome difficulties.

None of us can solve all of the problems; but all of us can solve some of the problems.

Some ideas:

And don’t forget to enjoy Christmas with your friends and family. Grace and peace to you all.

PS – As a reward for reading to the end, here’s a bonus – A Christmas Song!

Other years

2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
2019, 2018, 2017, 2016

The snowflake designer

I’ve always been interested in their symmetry, their beautiful shapes, and their infinite variety

Since I first saw a photograph of a snowflake under the microscope, I’ve always been interested in their symmetry, their beautiful shapes, and their infinite variety. But never had I imagined that it would be possible to create such snowflakes in the lab or control their growth to order.

Meet Ken Libbrecht, the snowflake guy. He began by investigating how they form, and can now build snowflakes more or less to order. Amazing! Watch this video in which Ken demonstrates his work to Derek Muller on Veritasium.

Ken has discovered so much about the conditions that cause snowflakes to form. He also understands the subtleties of humidity, temperature and so on that produce different kinds of snowflake growth, why they show the six-fold radial symmetry that they do, why they branch at particular places, and why individual ‘arms’ of a snowflake are almost identical to one another while different snowflakes are unique.

See also

Evolution and behaviour

A computer program that simulates coding and inheritance on the one hand, and neural function on the other, permits the emulation of simple animal-like organisms

Today I want to share two striking YouTube videos that I found recently. Maybe you’d like to watch them yourself.

Part of a DNA molecule (from Wikipedia)

Introduction – The animation shows the molecular structure of DNA, rotating so you can visualise it more easily. Watson and Crick famously published this structure in April 1953.

DNA contains the genetic information that specifies the nature of plants, animals and other life forms. Each species has it’s own form of this DNA ‘instruction book’. Amongst other things, a species’ DNA controls the basic structure of the brain just as it does for other body parts. But here’s an interesting fact: The coding and behaviour of DNA can be simulated by strings of characters stored in a computer.

Brains involve cells called neurons with connections between them, and neural networks running on a computer can behave in a similar way to a very simple brain. Building a computer program that simulates coding and inheritance on the one hand, and neural function on the other, permits the emulation of simple animal-like organisms, and there are applications out there that do just this.

First example – One such program is Minute Labs’ Evolution Simulator (check out their YouTube to see it in action).

Second example – Another program, and I want to focus mainly on this one, is from David Randall Miller. He wrote a particularly fascinating simulator, see his YouTube demo and explanation below for some quite deep insights. It’s a long video, but breaks into logical chunks for easier viewing; I suggest viewing the first section and continuing if it seems interesting.

It’s a really helpful approach for anyone wanting to better understand evolution. It assumes only fundamental levels of the topics, but will enhance your appreciation of maths and computing while also demonstrating the basics of genetics, inheritance, simple neural networks, and animal behaviour. That’s quite a lot of benefit from just one video!

Some questions to ask yourself…

  • What new understandings did you gain?
  • Did you disagree with anything?
    • If so, why?
  • What conclusions did you draw about the nature of living things?
  • Was anything surprising to you?
  • What questions do the videos cause you to ask?

Another great song from Sarah

Sometimes we struggle because we know we’re at a place of final defeat. Yet beyond that defeat, hope can still spring up.

Sarah Reynolds is a talented singer and musician in the Cirencester area and has written, performed, mixed and produced several of her own songs. A little while ago her latest song, Wilderness, was released and I’d like to share it with you. Here’s the version with lyrics.

So – What is special about Wilderness and why do I love the song? For me, Sarah manages to capture both the anxiety and the struggle of seeming failure, but also the hope and expectation of redemption. Sometimes we struggle because we know we’re at a place of final defeat. Yet beyond that defeat, hope can still spring up – sometimes unexpectedly.

This is surely an experience we’ve all had – I’ve been at the end of my tether but finally realised the way forward depends, not on my ability and strength, but on an external source of help. So have you! We’ve all felt this way from time to time.

So this song’s emotional engagement comes from reminding us that there’s defeat within us, yet ‘hope springs eternal’ from elsewhere.

Follow Sarah online: