At the top of the Widget is Circle - quite an impressionistic piece that needs a bit of promotion. I was out of the house before 7am to get to New Fetter Lane soon after 8am for a seminar on biomimetic design. There was a free breakfast which for me amounted to half a muffin and some fruit. The theme of the seminar was how at various levels and in various ways people are designing things by borrowing or adapting biological features. Probably the most serious are BAe and their developments of stealth technology from biological examples of adaptive camouflage. This was part of NESTA's series on potentially important new ideas. 3 presenters gave a brief outline and most of the time was taken up with questions and answers.

Afterwards I walked down to Fleet Street and then along the strand to stop to have a coffee. I took 4 pics which I have loaded up into FB including one of a Nissan Leaf which I dont remember having seen before.

I am pressing on with AH's music and aesthetics. This morning it was mainly about various facets of romanticism which tended to favour the idea that music is expression of feelings. But after that the emphasis shifted to music for music's sake or absolute music. Under the influence of C Rosen I have been shifting towards the idea of music as the expression of negative feelings. I was interested to see that the contrast between Apollonian and Dionysian music which features in AK's radio interview with the Dutch station is formulated by Nietzsche. N changed tack sharply when he heard Parsifal - because the opera seems to endorse ideas which are the opposite of his own.

When I was at the IoE I picked up an article about learning in clusters. The suggestion is that in a cluster there is an aopportunity for firms to learn from each other in a way which is not readily available to outsiders.