Friday, October 20, 2006
Invisibility is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Scientists have developed a cloaking device that can make objects invisible to radar, though not yet to the eye. The mind races. As Dr Ulf Leonhardt, physicist and probable anagram, says, 'Invisibility is just the tip of the iceberg." Meanwhile, David Cameron is tying himself in knots in an attempt to deal with Labour's risky attempt to outflank him from the right by bringing up the subject of veiled Muslim women. Jack Straw started this by saying he asked fully-veiled women to expose their faces in his constituency surgery. Veiled, they are as invisible as one of Dr Anagram's cloaked objects. Like these objects they remain visible to the naked eye, but invisible to radar - in this case the permanently switched on radar of our cultural, psychological and social associations. All fully veiled women look roughly the same so, in the conversation-free zone of the street, what can be said or thought about them? How, if we knew them, could we greet them? They might be somebody else. And what do their visible eyes see in us? Invisibility, as the wise Dr Ulf says, is just the tip of the iceberg.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
The way your mind manages to connect these things, Bryan, never ceases to amaze but maybe all these poor ladies in veils are trying to do is to nourish their obscurity, rather than than yearn for invisibility.
ReplyDeleteVery clever analogy Bryan.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes these women want to be so sequestered, d'you think?
It's terribly amusing to see the reaction of the liberal left feminists (both men and women). They just don't know whom to side with. And are bewildered to see Muslim women willingly adopting the anonymity of the full veil.
Is the veil and the other uniform, loose-fitting garb that some Muslim women wear designed in part to shield them from what they consider the sex-crazed male's prying eyes? If so, it is an affront to men. Moreover, it seems to me that the veil in particular is a grossly antisocial, even intimidating piece of clothing. It is very difficult to communicate with someone if you can't see their face. When speaking to someone we take most of our cues from their facial expressions. I really don't know - the whole thing seems rather absurd. Those of a religious mindset, particularly those that are extreme in their behaviour and perverse in their beliefs (from a Western standpoint), are impossible to fathom for an unreconstructed atheistic, secularist like me. That said, let's keep up the dialogue. There is no other way.
ReplyDeleteThe Moustache Brothers have got the right idea - smile and the world smiles with you.
ReplyDeleteInvisibility is just the tip of the iceberg. I like that. Where does that leave the rest of the iceberg? Shipping will become a very hazardess activity indeed! Is there a name for it when one uses a metaphor in that way?
ReplyDeleteExcuse the spelling in my last one.
ReplyDeleteUm, I think invisibility must be the bottom part of the iceberg. The part you can't see, that is invi ble. No? Ask the captain of the Titanic.
ReplyDeleteThe odd thing about this Guardian article is that, at the point where it cites examples of invisibility in fiction, rather than referring to H.G. Wells's 'The Invisible Man', it refers instead to Paul Verhoeven's desultory film, 'The Hollow Man'. I would have thought that Wells's book is rather seminal. Does the author of the article think that people will not have read or heard of Wells's book, or is the author himself ignorant of H.G.Wells? Does he also think that 'The War of the Worlds' is just a Steven Spielberg film?
ReplyDeleteGordon, perhaps you have seen through the author of the article. Perhaps his ignorance of Wells is just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows: he may not even know "The War of the Worlds" is a Speilberg film. The author of the article may be a true "Shallow Man".
ReplyDelete