THE THIRD POLICEMAN (FLANN O`BRIEN) AND THE SLOWNESS OF MIRRORS

If a man stands before a mirror and sees in it his reflection, what he sees is not a true reproduction of himself but a picture of himself when he was a younger man. De Selby's explanation of this phenomenon is quite simple. Light, as he points out truly enough, has an ascertained and finite rate of travel. Hence before the reflection of any object in a mirror can be said to be accomplished, it is necessary that rays of light should first strike the object and subsequently impinge on the glass, to be thrown back again to the object to the eyes of a man, for instance. There is therefore an appreciable and calculable interval of time between the throwing by a man of a glance at his own face in a mirror and the registration of the of the reflected image in his eye

What a strange argument, I always feel the opposite: I look older than I think I am. Someone says you should never look at yourself in the elevator mirror, not even when you are 20 years old, and I guess he is right

As for O´Brien´s text, it´s an excessive version of the famous twin paradox of Einstein, in which a second brother is not even necessary. As they say, an exaggeration is sometimes the most accurate lie

A TRIP BY BUS ( JOSEP PLA) AND THE ETOLOGY OF SPARROWS

 There are, finally, varieties of birds which live in complete freedom even at the breeding moments. The sparrow- a rascal bird, fornicating and individualistic- may be an example of these ungrateful animals. Sparrows live in a regime of systematic and perpetual social gathering and they don´t mind neither the blood ties nor the birdie feelings, that although rudimentaries, they exist somehow.

Now I understand  the expression ‘Hey, Sparrow!’better, the one which is used by males of human specie when they see each other in a delicate situation or when they tell some naughty plan to  one each other . I would never think of a bird  in such  a way  with such a pacific appearance. Most birds (you can also say: Hey, Bird!) interrupt their social-gathering or café rules while their breeding time, but   sparrows keep it even in this critical situation. In this time, their chest swells up so much  that they seem to be more male doves than sparrows.