What I read on my holidays...

For the last seven days of camping in Cornwall (or Kernow, in the sense that Burma should be called Myanmar) I aimed to clear up a huge chunk of my to read list.

As usual I overestimated how fast I could read. I managed the last two-hundred pages of Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full and the entire 730 pages of The Bonfire of the Vanities, as well as the first one-hundred pages of The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

In my copy the eye in "Tom" is part of an image on the inside cover

That's 284, 700 words in The Bonfire of the Vanities, plus 78, 000 of A Man in Full, bringing the total number of words by Tom Wolfe I read over the holidays to 362, 700. Then another 33, 000 words of Michael Chabon's brilliant The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

As to Wolfe - he writes superb prose, and is characterisation is excellent. The sense of reality that underpins the text makes his style even more compelling. The description of prison life in Santa Rita and the political machinations of the mayor in A Man in Full have a kind of real-world grittiness which, even if completely false, at least discourages me from ever trying to ascertain their truth for myself.



Spoiler alert:



As an aside, it is extraordinary how much of the plot of The Bonfire the Vanities would be implausible were the novel set in 2007 rather than 1987 (the date it was first published). The key event of the book involves a wealthy Wall Street bond trader getting lost in the Bronx in his luxury Mercedes. With satellite navigation built in to most luxury coupes this is an unlikely proposition in this century.

A narrative solution?

Another event is the selfsame Wall Street bond trader inadvertently dialling his home-number rather than that of his mistress from a pay phone outside his house.

Again, with ubiquitous mobile phones equipped with speed dial this is unlikely (the narrative equivalent would be the wife looking through her husband's text messages).



End of spoilers.



The Yiddish Policemen's Union is rather superb. It's written in a present-tense, sing-song style that (according to Cory Doctorow) evokes the unique qualities of Yiddish speech.

As with Tom Wolfe's reporting-style nonfiction novels there is something reassuringly real about how Michael Chabon writes.

Nice cover art as well

There is a problem in a lot of classic or hard SF (I'm thinking specifically of most of what Arthur C. Clarke wrote, Stephen Baxter's Xeelee and Manifold series of books and pretty much everything written by Isaac Asimov) where the fantastic nature of the surroundings overwhelms any attempt at creating strong characters or building "reality" into the text.

Chabon creates an alternate world but rather than indulge in gratuitous info-dumping he drives the plot via a murder mystery and political intrigue.

[images from Unhindered by Talent, Amazon.co.uk, and Illarty.com]

Geek Culture

People seem to crave identity: in lieu of creating their own they often adopt a pre-defined set of mannerisms, beliefs, clothes, attitudes and habits.

I present an excerpt from my upcoming work: A Field Guide to the Tribes of the Left Hemisphere:

You're shitting me, right?

[images from here, here, here, here, and here]

We're all doomed...

Well so much for that. I had personally been willing to consider that the programme was more than pseudo-scientific bull-hockey because I'm a sucker for the underdog and relish dissenting opinions.

Woody Guthrie's Birthday

Observation

To win an argument, it is not enough to have the correct answer to a question, one must also be the one who successfully frames the question.

That's right: you are right to worry

For example: in the UK at the moment concerning the issue of immigration the question is "how do we reduce it?"

But with an aging population and an increasing need of skilled labour it is obvious that the question we should be asking is "how do we enhance the benefits of immigration?" Or better yet "how do we increase immigration?"

Damn straight

Those who are against immigration for short-sighted and selfish reasons have successfully framed the question, so that they will always win. If people think that immigration is a bad thing then anyone who proposes measures to reduce it will be seen to be solving the problem.

However the question "how do we reduce immigration?" begs the question "do we want to reduce immigration?" This is a question that is never discussed.

[images from Daily Hate and alex-s on flickr]

Review: The Taming of the Shrew

Playing at the RSC, The Taming of the Shrew. It was pretty good. The opening "play within a play" conceit included a pole-dancing segment and drunken hooligans, highlighting the inherent misogyny and sexism of modern life.

It's difficult to nail The Shrew. On the one hand it's clearly dated and was probably completely sincere, without any trace of irony. However it is useful in that it demonstrates how far women have come and causes us to reflect on where they are to go.

The performances were all brilliant. Stephen Boxer went from playing Sly to Petruchio brilliantly. Michelle Gomez played a brilliantly eccentric Kate.

All good stuff.

Not much of a review: but it's Shakespeare! And it was well performed etc.

Review: Hancock

Here Be Spoilers:

An interesting film. What started off as a light hearted comedy segued into an Epic superhero story without any kind of explanation. The direction reminded me a little of Arrested Development, lots of fly-on-the-wall shots and shaky camera work.

There was material here for two or three movies:

1. A comedy about an alcoholic superhero that meets a PR man, attempts to steal the PR man's hot wife, and comes up against some kind of whacky supervillain. Meanwhile the penultimate scene has the PR man having to choose between helping the superhero who attempted to take his wife and helping the villain who gives the PR man everything he ever dreamed of.
2. An Epic, centuries-spanning quasi-classical tale of Gods and hubris, with no irony or reflection. Probably a fairly crap film.
   
3. The same film as the previous one but with irony. With a dash of humour and a self-awareness of absurdity.

A decent but schizophrenic movie, I felt. It lacked a really bad supervillain as foil to Hancock - Charlize Theron doesn't count as she was kinda on the same side.

The ending was weak. It started well, and if I had only seen the trailer I would have been quite happy with the movie.

[image from mlive.com]

And Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen...

What a load of nonsense.

This is the best summary of what might have happened that I can find.

I, for One, Applaud the Success of our Planetary Engineers...

...with the news that the fabled North-West passage is now open and should soon be suitable for trans-Oceanic freight.

Huzzah for Global Warming

Suck it, Panama! (in a couple of decades or so...)

Tom Harris MP: "Stop being Miserable!"

Journalist Michael Kinsley once said that "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth."

In the case of junior minister Tom Harris this is entirely correct: he suggested on his blog And Another Thing that the public should cheer up, considering that they've never had it so good:

In our own country today, despite the recent credit squeeze, our citizens have never been so wealthy. High-def TVs fly off the shelves at Tesco quicker than they can be imported. Whatever the latest technological innovation, most people can treat themselves to it. Eating out - a rare treat when I was a child in the ’70s - is as commonplace as going shopping. And when we do go shopping, whether for groceries or for clothes, we spend money in quantities that would have made our parents gasp.

This is a point I always raise when people suggest "this country is going to the dogs!" How exactly is it?

Although I believe that open debate is an essential component of democracy, why do we glorify in complaining so much? So petrol prices are high. The prices of clothes and electronics are down. And maybe if people walked rather than drove their cars they'd save money and be healthier.

Living Longer ... and Longer

The Daily Mail took exception to Harris' remarks (I'm not linking - I dislike the Mail's editorial stance on immigration, gay marriage, women's issues, abortion, foreign policy, education, crime - as such I don't want to contribute my Google-mana to their cause). His response is clear:

I know it’s only the Mail, but for the record, I absolutely was not telling people to cheer up. I was simply asking why people in the current generation - even those who aren’t suffering as much from the current economic slowdown - aren’t as happy as our parents’ generation. Am I being too optimistic in expecting a grown-up debate about this?

Apparently he is. I am incredibly fortunate to be living in the UK at this time in history. I'd say being middle-class in the UK is probably amongst the top five best possible states for a person to exist in all history.

Like. Things have never been better.

I think nostalgia and sentimentalism for the past are negative forces in debate. If something can be shown to have got worse, bring it up. Otherwise people should be suggesting how things can be improved, rather than complaining that they think things have got worse.

In a more general sense, polymath intellectual Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog, The Well) comments that "good old stuff sucks" in The World Question Centre's What Have you Changed your Mind About?:

Remodeling an old farmhouse two years ago and replacing its sash windows, I discovered the current state of window technology. A standard Andersen window, factory-made exactly to the dimensions you want, has superb insulation qualities; superb hinges, crank, and lock; a flick-in, flick-out screen; and it looks great. The same goes for the new kinds of doors, kitchen cabinetry, and even furniture feet that are available — all drastically improved.

The message finally got through. Good old stuff sucks. Sticking with the fine old whatevers is like wearing 100% cotton in the mountains; it's just stupid.

Give me 100% not-cotton clothing, genetically modified food (from a farmers' market, preferably), this-year's laptop, cutting-edge dentistry and drugs.

The idea that things have become progressively worse over the last fifty years (at least in the world's Western liberal democracies) is ridiculous.

[ImageWorldGDP from here, Life Expectancy at 65 from here]

Sonny J: Handsfree (If You Hold my Hand)

Utterly awesome:

New Colour Scheme

To celebrate the imminent surcease of my despised teenagerhood (six months and counting) I have decided to remove my depressing and difficult-to-read white-on-black colour scheme of the past two years and replace it with an airier, more mature, and pleasant black-on-white colour scheme.

Old blog

I'm quite happy about it.

There is No God, And Your Idiotic Human Ideals are Laughable!

A good article by Ariane Sherine over on CiF on the apparent gap between atheist expression and religious expression in the public sphere.

I personally think this is because atheists tend to be well-balanced, intelligent, and self-contained individuals that don't need to ascribe to a tribalistic ideology to support their egos.

However I would certainly not describe myself as well-balanced, intelligent, or self-contained. As such:

We're not asking you to believe, it's true anyway

[original image by SideLong on flickr]

Superclass and the New Elite

I've mentioned my obsession with the ultra-wealthy before. Reading David J. Rothkopf's The Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making today I was stuck by the utterly unoriginal insight that it might not be that much fun being an elite.

Rothkopf punctures a lot of the usual paranoid beliefs about a mysterious global elite - he observes that conspiracy theories are almost always psychologically comforting fictions: it is disturbing to think that one man, working alone, can assassinate a president.

This fact suggests a random and capricious universe. Much better to imagine that bad things that happen are the result of organised conspiracy.

However I do feel that it isn't really worth being a member of any kind of global elite.

The symbol of the global elite

Constant pressures on your time; scrutiny from the press, your peers, and governments; concerns over kidnapping, and the happiness of your friends and family would probably nullify most of the advantages of being extremely wealthy and/or powerful.

No, not for me famous, multi-billionaire status. Give me £30 million and obscurity, reputably and happily earned, and I will be satisfied.

New Year Resolutions

Why? Because it's been nearly six months and I've finally formulated the perfect resolutions. Here they are:

1. Legally purchase every single track of music I have on my PC.
   
2. Improve my German and French to the extent that I can translate the main, front-page article of both Die Welt and Le Monde into English without having to look up any words.
3. Read Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days.
4. Read one fictional classic, and one non-fiction classic. At the moment I'm thinking War and Peace and The Wealth of Nations.
5. Quit my job.
6. Start higher education again.
   

Mmm. This is not actually as interesting as it seemed in my head.

As compensation, here is the picture of the Firefox girl:

For your delectation or sneering

New Firefox 3

It is actually surprisingly good. Websites load appreciably faster. Other than that usability seem to be about the same.

There was actually a picture of an attractive woman in a Firefox top. But how could I pass up the crop-circle reference? Tears.

Firefox 3 has yet to do anything that seriously irritates me. This means I already consider it to be good software.

Maths and Melancholy

For a while now I've been meaning to write a very long post about maths, science, religion, and education.

The fact that I never finished the essay is testament to the fact that education is an immensely complex issue, and invites ignorant and uneducated opinion.

Take this appallingly titled article by Simon Jenkins: Maths? I breakfasted on quadratic equations, but it was a waste of time. Right, OK. Where to begin?

This all seems to be in response to something called The Reform Report, which has been compiled from a think tank called Reform.

Anyway let's look at what Jenkins says:

"In the age of computers, maths beyond simple and applied arithmetic is needed only by specialists. Ramming it down pupils' throats in case they may one day need it is like making us all know how to recalibrate a carburettor on the offchance that we might become racing drivers. Maths is a "skill to a purpose", and we would should ponder the purpose before overselling the skill."

Riiiight. So a journalist thinks that in the age of computers complex maths is needed only by specialists.

If economic prosperity is still considered a Good Thing, then surely preparing students for high-paying and rewarding roles in finance, economics, engineering, business, and science by promoting maths is a positive step. Anyway, let us ponder:

"When Kenneth Baker invented the national curriculum in 1987, it never occurred to him to question its content. Science and maths lobbied hard and captured the core, alongside only English. Not just history and geography, but economics, health, psychology, citizenship, politics and law - with far better claims to vocational utility - were elbowed aside."

All of those subjects have a strong claim to vocational utility. But there is a distinction between vocational utility and simple utility.

Learning psychology is fair enough: but without knowledge of statistics how are you to interpret pschological studies? Learning economics is good: but a central part of economic modelling relies on a knowledge of mathematics.

Maths is a subject that ensures all doors into future careers are kept open. Liberal arts still offer enormous choice but you are still locked out of some career paths.

Anyway as Ben Goldacre points out, there is some questionable use of maths in the Reform report itself.

I feel much more comfortable with the third way: no more conflict between arts and science and engineering, just an understanding that well-rounded people should be versed in as many subjects as possible.

One Last Post...

One of the more annoying aspects of the NewsCloud is it's tendency to simplify then exaggerate.

Take science vs. religion.

The mere fact that you have some idea of what I'm talking about it disgusting. How can such a puerile expression be useful? As a mental hook for something so complex and profound (and so misunderstood) that it escapes almost all serious consideration.

In the last 24 hours the British parliament has been debating and voting on a series of issues associated with abortion (should the last date at which an abortion can happen be lowered from 24 weeks), hybrid embryo research, and saviour siblings.

Some tasteful sketches of a foetus from Leonardo da Vinci

All these are important issues. I won't comment on them because there are facets of the debate (particularly associated with abortion), which I simple don't know about.

These issues are important and as such they should be treated as such. This is not, nor has it ever been, about "science vs. religion."

That expression "S vs. R" begs so many questions it is almost impossible to dissect it without falling into the trap of dignifying the debate, but I will attempt it.

Science is a tool. It is a way of thinking about, and observing the world. Empirical evidence (input from our sensory apparatus, both biological and artificial) and recorded data acquired through empirical means are considered.

Once they have been considered scientists think of ways that any patterns, or lack of pattern, in the data can be explained. They create a hypothesis.

They then attempt to disprove the hypothesis. They create experiments that are intended to disprove their hypothesis. If a hypothesis stands up to this treatment, and the work of one scientist is corroborated by the work of many other scientists, then an hypothesis is accepted as a scientific theory.

Yes, I know there's more to it than that. Check out this document on the scientific method for more details on the subject.

Religion is many things to many people. To me it is yet another system of control, external to myself.

It is also a panacea in moments of weakness. It is a crutch and it is community. Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is bad. Sometimes it is right. Usually it is wrong.

I do not judge those who have faith. I know what faith is. It is like a powerful drug, and it can make difficult things ... less difficult. I have had faith.

It's glowing! It must be SCIENCE!

However I am entirely within my rights to call anyone who believes in the afterlife a fool and anyone who thinks the universe is run by some dude with a beard who isn't a science fiction writer of some sort (if God can't be a science fiction writer, or is not a full-time [and published] science fiction writer I quit - god is wrong and it is immoral to have faith ;-)) an idiot.

Anyway I despise how this argument is corrupted and dragged through the dirt by slavering hacks wanting to churn out copy on a "controversial" debate.

Addendum: I am entirely aware that this article is without evidence, empirical or otherwise. It is also fairly badly written. So sue me.

Business and Capitalism

In recent months there has been an extensive debate in the NewsCloud (I'm fed up with talking about newspapers, media, the press, the blogosphere - the NewsCloud will suffice) about capitalism; where it is going, where it now, and how it got here.

Two articles in the Cloud today highlight two different issues:

1) Luke Johnson writing in the FT comments:

"Innovation and progress come from embracing markets and encouraging entrepreneurs. The world is more competitive than ever; we cannot rely on old industries and the state to maintain our standard of living."

I happen to agree with this. When commentators go on about how awful the credit crunch is and how evil all these userous capitalists are in dragging us into this mess they always fall foul of the fact that they do not have a coherent alternative strategy.

I also agree with Peregrine Worsthorne that a squeeze on the financial industry might lead to an egress of talent away from finance and towards more useful things like medicine, pharmaceutical research, and entrepreneurism.

Johnson goes on to say:

"Markets are naturally dynamic, whereas governments resist change and fresh thinking. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, overall early-stage entrepreneur activity in Britain involves about 5.6 per cent of the population, a much lower rate than in the US, Brazil or China."

An Entrepreneur

A nation of shopkeepers? I think not. However Johnson makes the point that:

"A slowdown in the economy and rising unemployment might just stimulate more to start their own business as an alternative. This would be the silver lining of the credit crunch cloud."

Although the UK is not openly hostile towards entrepreneurs, they are not afforded the same respect as accountants, physicians, architects, or academics. Johnson describes entrepreneurism as just as much a calling as these respected professions but (partly because of our confused and irritating emphasis on class) in the UK "entrepreneur" is not listed on the job sheet.

2) The second article is from Edward Pearce in The Guardian:

"Modern capitalism has become etiolated. It has flourished lately upon deals ever more remote from raising capital investment for steel mills and biscuit factories, upon leverage and derivatives, upon credit and the ghost of credit, upon financial rice paper."

Speculation seems to be endemic to capitalism. Fortunately all this credit crunch nonsense seems to be having a negligible effect on actual global economic growth. China makes things.

From a science fictional perspective there is something reassurring about this. Times change, technologies change, but wherever there are financial markets there are speculative bubbles, and crashes and crunches.

The two ends of capitalism: the rarified ivory tower of deriveratives of deriveratives (George Soros et al) and the coalface of business and wealth-creation (Felix Dennis, Richard Branson) and the inbetweeners of capital allocators like Warren Buffett.

How it worked in the good old days

The whole wagon will continue rushing into the future. If it all breaks down completely (a situation where "end of the world" insurance would come into play, from Pearce:

"The existence of such manic trade created secondary explosions (or do I mean secondary deposits?) in the insurance world. Here the rule is the greater the likelihood of damage, the higher the premium. But the least probable horrors may be insured against at modest cost. The top point is called "end of the world" insurance, the unthinkable: Hugo Chávez takes over the White House, the moon coming perceptibly nearer. It's so remote it's cheap, $2,000-$3,000 a year rents $10m worth. Or it did. That volume now sets you back $20,000-$30,000."

I know! WTH?) then at least capitalism, or at least the concept of trade, will survive.

A Self-Hating Pedant

...or should that be "A Pedant Who Hates Himself" or "A Pedant Which Hates Himself Because He Is A Pedant" or "A Pedant That Hates Himself, Due To His Pedantry."

Yes.

I am a pedant. I am not especially articulate, and I am not especially critical of others in most circumstances. However I have a verbal tic.

Every time someone is grammatically incorrect in speech, or mis-pronounces a word, I will respond with a correction.

Sometimes I manage to bite my tongue and get away with just thinking the criticism very loudly.

I am aware this is annoying and boorish and I can also bring to mind several occasions when it has got me into little social faux pas.

It is an artifact of my upbringing (and probably one that will, on balance, do more good than harm for me over the course of my life). One of my particular annoyances is when I want to use a word and suddenly realise that although I know perfectly well what it means and how it is spelt I don't know how to pronounce it.

Hegemony.

What? Exactly! Is the "g" like the "j" in "just" or is it like the "g" in "grandma?"

Thank goodness for Wikipedia and the phonetic alphabet.

Anyway Marcel Berlins has written a stock journalistic article: "let's do something really straightforward and easy to make the world a better place."



A long time ago USAmericans, Canadians, and Australians (and New Zealanders, possibly) rationalised their versions of English by pronouncing clerk as "clerk" rather than clerk as in "Clarke" (as in Arthur C...). They also changed the spelling of "colour" to "color" and did a whole load of other sensible things.

But in the UK these words remain irrationally pronounced and spelt.

The reason for this is that there is a very strong vein of illogical, bloody-minded, stupidity in the British (the English, in particular)...

[ouch! my future self just dropped a few points in the speculative polls or whatever the hell the media uses to cripple the democratic process 20 years hence ... don't worry Future Self, you'd never make it as a Tory (you went to comprehensive school for gawd's sake). Go and try to get elected in Scotland. Bashing the English would probably win you some votes there. Go squander what remains of the oil money...]

...that results in things like this (crappy video link, SSM).

It also results in the sort of people whose sense of morality is based around the sort of trash Melanie Phillips writes in the Daily Hate Mail (she's only doing it because she gets paid more as a "right wing" blowhard than a "left wing" blowhard --- and more power to her for it!) getting shirty because something profoundly "British" like inches, pounds, ounces, and pronouncing ghoti "fish" (Google it or read Berlins) is being "attacked" by meddling bureaucrats from Brussels.



None of that was actually very clear, was it?

Essentially a key component of Britishness is doing something stupidly perverse just because you've always done it like that.

Beyond the point of being funny or endearing.

Seriously.



Also: the first two comments on that Marcel Berlins article have a rather lovely bit of pedantry...

A Commentary on Commentaries

At any given time there are a smattering of article in the dead tree press, blogs, websites, and magazine outlets worthy of perusal by anyone with a healthy interest in what is said about what goes on in the world.

Collected here are a few items that I feel are worthy of comment (I'm going to have one post per article, 'cause it's easier that way).

Privacy and social networking are two key components of the zeitgeist of social debate in the first decade of the 21st century. Zoe Williams writes in The Guardian writes of teenagers and online exhibitionism:

"...trying to inculcate discretion at a time when everybody is seeking exposure is like teaching abstinence at a time when all they want to do is have sex. Never mind the rights and wrongs of it, it doesn't work..."

There is no doubt that adolescence is a time when children are emotionally crippled by their own biology until they emerge, as if from a crysalis, into the neurotic grab-bag of talents, proclivities, and questionable ethics that makes up what passes to be a fully-functioning adult and denizen of the 21st century (that's an awful sentence, on two levels, but I will keep it because I enjoyed writing it - damn it!). However. I don't think teenagers are necessarily stupid.

This brings us on to the next key point in Williams' article. Something that has already occurred to most journos and commentators is that all this rubbish that is stuck up on social networking websites will (theoretically) still be there in the year 2020, when yours truly might be thinking of running for election to political office.

What's to be done? Williams suggests:

"...that 15 years hence, people won't need to be protected from their past excesses, because the very fact that this is a universal impulse that social-networking sites merely cater to, will mean that tomorrow's politicians will all have as many skeletons in their closets as one another. In fact, if you don't have a YouTube video from when you were 16, dancing to Britney Spears's Toxic, then it'll be as much an impediment to your public approval rating as being single is today."

This point is well made. I will now smatter this blog with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, safe in the knowledge that people will draw from this the conclusion that I am "genuine" and "honest about my mistakes."

However they could also conclude that I am too computer-illiterate to spellcheck my post!

[However if Ray Kurzweil is right, by 2020 the computers will have taken over in an event already being labelled as "the technological singularity" - if I'm capaigning on a pro-singularity ticket my spelling mistakes will be interpreted as an early and tacit recognition of the need to augment my feeble human intellect with a Mighty Processor. On the other hand if I'm going to campaign on an anti-singularity platform my PC-illiteracy will be seen as being evidence of my inherent suspicions of technology.]

The agony of indecision! I feel like the press is saying Gordon Brown must be feeling.

I don't owe the person who I will be anything. I would vote for him, but only after a close examination of the policies he supports on a variety of issues and the relative positions of his opponents.

In conclusion if, by 2020, we're still going on and on about politicians' personalities as if they mattered a gnat's shite then Dog help us, Dog help us all.

And You're Only Just Realising This?

There comes a point in every man's life when he realises that he is almost certainly never going to create one of the fundamental circuit elements of electronics.

Also: one of the things that struck me as odd about the recent discovery/invention was how old-fashioned a discovery it seems.

We are no longer used to "fundamental" breakthroughs in areas other than the biological sciences, as Charles Stross comments in this interview:

"We seem these days to be seeing new ground-breaking theoretical developments at a rate of one every six months to a year: breakthroughs on the same order as general relativity or quantum theory. (You don't see such breakthroughs routinely in physics, which is a relatively mature field, but if you look into the biological sciences equivalent breakthroughs appear to be coming thick and fast.)"

There is something wonderfully retro-1950s-buttoned-down-white-labcoat-brylcreme- and-horn-rimmed-glasses about the invention/discovery of the "memristor."

Sadly my knowledge of electronics is ever-so-slightly too limited to truly grasp the theoretical implications of this. However the practical implications look extremely interesting:

"Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses data when the power is turned off.
But a computer built with memristors could allow PCs that start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks without needing a charge."

I spend at least ten minutes every morning waiting for my PC to power up at work (yes I know I could agitate for a better PC... but [deleted due to imminent curtailment of career prospects - free speech go hang]).

Imagine all the time you've spent waiting for a PC to power up: adding up all those two to three minute gaps could make a lot of difference in the world. You probably wouldn't even notice power cuts.

Of course my reading of this is that "instantly" means within a second or two and that the computer would retain the current session.

Anyway there's another thing off my list of things to do before I die...

C'est la vie.

Quotation Phase Space

There is a phase space of excellent quotations.

As the human race progresses human thought will expand through this phase space.

One day in the dim and distant future every thought that can be expressed will be expressed beautifully.

However as things are today this cannot be so.

So I have to add a lenthy addendum; what applies to programming languages also applies, in a slightly altered form, to natural language.

Natural language and expression can either be practical (easy to create and understand, efficient, complete) or beautiful (witty, concise, pleasing to read and hear).

Sometimes it is both.

The quality of being concise in natural languages can be both practical and beautiful. It depends on the user. Sometimes superfluous words aid understanding to someone who is new to the idea, but cause irritation to someone familiar with the idea.

On the other hand in some situations it is important that meaning be transferred as quickly and accurately as possible.

As such safety instructions are rarely written in iambic pentameter.

"Behind the line of white could patrons please remain."

or

"Beware the dog that lives within."

Perhaps one day we will learnt he basic principles behind the creation of natural language, and perhaps then we will be able to "create" one that works really well.

Someone Within Earshot is Perpetrating Morris Dancing

And as such I am doing a roundup of definitions:

Culture: something invented by the Victorians to describe the things people did that weren't directly connected with business, science, sex, politics, or making things.
Culture is nowadays afforded too much respect and taken too seriously.

Politics: the name for the study and practice of groups of people make decisions. It has the potential to be an enlightening and enjoyable experience but is generally irritating, boring, and full of pointless meetings and unnecessary complaining.

Voters: the cause of most of the problems facing any democratic country.

Technology: a much-overused word that should be avoided, if at all possible, in any discussion involving practical problem-solving. It is a general term for a massive variety of things and should be treated as such.
Also it is not synonymous with "consumer electronics" - whatever the BBC and every other news outlet seems to think.
"Technology" is any tangible or material product of the human mind.

Economics: the study and practice of how scarce resources like time, energy, materials and work are distributed.

Money: an arbitrary unit that equates to a certain amount of a particular resource. Money is used to distribute resources.

Those Morris Dancers are still at it!

Back

Sorry for my silence over the last few days. Stuff's been happening.

Anyway I've found a new idle hobby: browsing through the images of the space in which people work on Flickr's Workspace Karma Pool and workspace.

There is something oddly compelling about workspaces. They are a reflection of our passions, desires, neurosese, habits, beliefs and ideosyncracies - a sort of voyeurism of the soul.

Voyeurism in general seems rampant on the web. Anyone who comments on FaceBook will mention the compulsively stalkerish aspect of it.

Privacy, at least as baby boomers understand it, will become a scarce and valuable commodity over the next fifty years.

Addendum: Also, what is with men and Moleskine notebooks? They're great, but most of the satisfaction in them comes from telling other people men how great they are.

This creates a pyramid-scheme-style cascade of smugness, starting with the likes of Mark Twain 100 years ago and carrying on to the present day.

And of course they are great. I mean they really are. They perfectly designed notebooks, and they cost a little more than most, but it's worth it.

Nootropics and Alterable Brains

One of my big philosophical hangups is the nature of the Self. What defines what we are? I don't believe in the idea of soul (although I love Soul music...).

However I also believe that our physical brains are malleable enough to alter any identifiable characteristic of our personalities; our temperament, how we respond to different stimuli, how we react to situations; our emotional, social, philosophical, and intellectual temperaments...

All these can be altered by the twisting and rewiring of neurons in the brain.

This is a fascinating story in The New York Times about Dr Anne Adams, a teacher and scientist, who suffered from a neurological condition called frontotemporal dementia.

This caused her skills, abilities, and interests to shift away from mathematical, language-based, and scientific, and towards visual, spacial, and artistic.

FTD also changes your temperament.

Another story I noticed in the news today was a feature in The Independent about nootropics: these are drugs that improve the abilities of the brain in certain ways.

This sort of technology and this area of study is going to do the same for the 21st century what automobiles, HTA flight, and computers did for the 20th.

We don't even have the language required to describe many of the ideas of how our brain works and psychology and neurobiology are surrounded by myths and perceived weirdness.

Combining greater understanding with an ability to combat pathologies of the brain and even alter the brain to improve it's abilities will lead to a revolution, not just in medicine, but a revolution in what it means to be human.

Whining about My Generation

Considering the environment within which we have been brought up, I am disappointed in my generation.

If there is something we don't approve of we blog, or we set up Facebook groups.

Although we are supposedly incredibly "tech savvy" we only interact with technology in a fairly peripheral way. In fact there is currently a shortage of skilled, creative young programmers.

We don't take action.

It is possible that this is simply a demographic trend. But we are luke-warm on any political or ethical issue.

I, personally, have no strong beliefs whatsoever, but to hear myself going on you'd think I should be doing something to encourage my peers to action over the issues that matter.

But I honestly can't be arsed. Someone else do it. Or pay me...

Oh OK, my generation is pretty good. But we do whine a lot.

More Felix Dennis

Felix Dennis made the front page of The Times today with this interview in which he claims he “killed a man.” It’s an extraordinary claim to make. From what I’ve read about the man it might just be possible; but it is far more likely that it is part of his usual self-aggrandising self-promotion.

Opinion, Belief, Greg Egan and Philip K Dick

I’m currently reading Greg Egan’s Axiomatic. It is a collection of short stories. The ideas in them are extraordinary.

I have certain moral, ethical, and political beliefs. However I know that if a sufficiently strong argument was made against any of these beliefs I could change my mind. I also know that if a billion tiny nanomachines were injected into my skull and rearranged the structure of my brain they could also change my mind.

If, like me, you have decided to reject the idea that human beings are “defined” by an immortal soul then you are left with a wholly materialist (or “physicalist,” as materialist has the wrong connotations...) view of what a person is.

The physicalist view is that everything that makes up a human being can be expressed in the ordinary matter of the universe as we understand it at this point. We don’t have to invoke anything metaphysical to explain consciousness, love, art, mind, personality, or free will.

And if this physicalist view is correct then whenever we change our minds the person we were dies and becomes the person we are now. Of course this is nonsensical. Human beings are dynamic: changing with time. Phillip K. Dick spent a lot of time thinking about these topics:

The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?

If my most fundamental beliefs; including: “I love my family” and “killing people is wrong” can be altered in this way then what is it about me that can truly be described as me?

The basic atoms I am made of are constantly in flux, and are rarely the same for more than a month or so. The shape of the pattern of these atoms also changes over time. I have a beginning and an end, and I am of finite physical size. I probably have more in common with people my own age than I do with my “self” from ten years ago.

So what gives? What am I? Does this question mean anything and if so, what is the answer? Egan’s book explores all these themes in a fascinating and readable way. Egan isn’t so arrogant as to offer answers, but he is uniquely gifted in posing the questions.

On Steampunk Design

One of my favourite SR subgenres is that of "steampunk." I love Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships.

Recently there have been a number of steampunk style casemods. These are great.

Part of the idea of steampunk is a celebration of the mechanisms within the machine itself.

There is also romance. The "style" of Steampunk, as exemplified by Alan Moore's depiction of The Nautilus in his The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series.


This "Bi-Orbital Spectral Audiometer" from Professor Emilio Zanturas is an example of a Steampunk style machine where the romance and style is more dominant than the fundamental mechanisms, which are hidden from view.


Here is another rather lovely Nautilus-inspired movie theatre from the designers of Tokyo Disneyland:


Combining this celebration of the mechanism with Victorian-era materials like brass, riveting, mahogany panelling, and a bespoke finish has lead to some amazing creations, all lovingly catalogued by the superlative Boing Boing.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke is dead.

I'd have really liked to have met the guy at some point.

Clarke wrote the first ever "grown up" book I ever read: 2010: A Space Odyssey.

The Asus Eee, Google and Cloud Computing

I saw an Asus Eee in an electronics shop today. It is qualitatively different from any laptop I have ever seen. It has the feel of a child’s plaything, and carries the same air of cheapness.

As Charles Stross says, the laptop and PC are both heading for a period of commoditisation. As the cost of laptops, PCs, and consumer electronics in general start to fall they will become as expendable as pocket calculators and digital watches.

Aside from the size, the two things that struck me about the Asus Eee are how quickly it starts up, and the operating system. The OS is some Linux derivative. Because the Eee has a solid-state hard-drive and no disk drive it has no moving parts (except for the hinge and keyboard) and as such immediately feels less fragile than a normal laptop. There are no air vents either. Altogether it gives the impression of something you can pour tea on and drop on the floor and it will still work.

The OS is pretty straightforward. There is no messing around with desktop metaphors. There is a simple tab-based menu system with applications grouped into web, office, games, education etc. A great deal of the Eee functionality is based on connections with the Internet, and specifically with the web.

As I said, the laptop restarts in seconds. One of the single biggest causes of minor stress in my life is slow computers. It is a joy to finally discover one that starts in less than ten seconds.

These days most laptop/PC functionality for the casual user is connected with the Internet. Even office programs are now being brought online. Games are now played online. Programs can be developed online (I can’t actually bring an example of this to mind but I know they are there).

Would I buy an Asus Eee? Yes. If I had the disposable income, and if I actually needed one, and if I didn’t know that before my current lappy conks out there will be many cheaper and better laptops in the same league of cheapness and niceness as the Eee.

Google and Cloud Computing

If the Eee teaches us that laptops will become (even) cheaper and (more) ubiquitous then other movements in the world of technology show us even more about the nature of the world ahead.

One of the big buzzwords of recent months has been the idea of “cloud computing” where instead of running programs on a box on your desk, you just enter the data and the commands and they are actually processes in a big “cloud” out on the Internet. Eee-style computers will presumably one day be connected to the Internet via high-bandwidth links and farm out surplus processing to large servers many kilometres away.

Companies like Google have recently been moving towards support of this sort of computing. The Register article where I first noticed this is here. Those at The Register use the charming phrase data smelters (coined here) to describe the vast powerhouses of computation that exist for the purpose of swapping bits in the service of the Net.

The problem for Google is that what they really have (and all they’ve ever really had) is a good search algorithm, a superb brand, and a lot of computers. The search techniques that made Google so successful have now been copied by other search engines. The brand remains as strong as ever, and will be crucial to Google’s long term survival.

The last point: the lot of computers, gives us our glimpse into the future, not just of Google, but of computing in the second quarter of the 21^st century. Vast data-warehouses connected via high-bandwidth links to thin clients like the Asus Eee.

Moore’s Law will probably chunter along for another few decades and then we’ll be left with ludicrously cheap laptop/mobile form-factor devices equipped with prodigious memory and processing power themselves, but connected via high-speed links to processing yards many orders of magnitude more powerful.

Every individual on the planet will own one of these cheap laptop/mobile form-factor devices but only the largest companies and states will be able to pay the huge costs of running the data centres.

Of course this could all be complete rubbish. It could be that swarm computing networks will emerge that reject the centralised client-server model in favour of a more egalitarian “flat” model without hierarchies.

Anyway: I’m willing to bet an Asus-Eee-equivalent of 2018 (i.e. £50 or thereabouts) that the next major upgrade of the MacBook family will involve a solid-state hard-drive.

Tom out.

UPDATE 21/03/2008: Goodness me I am such a fool. The most recent update of the MacBook family, the MacBook Air, does have a solid-state hard-drove option.

Morals and Markets with Robert Skidelsky

Economics boffin Robert Skidelsky has written an interesting article over at CiF about the morality of capitalism, this is my paragraph-by-paragraph response:

"...Because no social system can survive for long without a moral basis..."

This isn't really correct. Slavery persisted for centuries in the ancient world as the economic prime mover and yet was and is morally suspect.

"...It has often been claimed that capitalism rewards the qualities of self-restraint, hard work, inventiveness, thrift, and prudence. On the other hand, it crowds out virtues that have no economic utility, like heroism, honour, generosity, and pity..."

I think this depends on other cultural factors. Capitalism may encourage or discourage certain characteristics, but it doesn't mean these don't exist.

Also it isn't entirely true that honour and generosity are "crowded out" - good businessmen and businesswomen know the value of honour and generosity.

"...For quality of life, we have to rely on morals, not markets..."

This is very true.

"...But it is truer to say that the market economy is sustained by the stimulation of greed and envy through advertising..."

I wonder if it is useful to distinguish between capitalism and consumerism, and if it is useful to distinguish between "good" (buying organic, locally produced, low-CO2-profile vegetables) consumerism and "bad" (cigarettes) consumerism?

"...In a perfectly competitive market, with full information, models of the market show that all the factors of production receive rewards equal to their marginal products, ie all are paid what they are worth..."

As in the market, so in life. If everyone had "full information" we'd all be much happier. But because having "full information" is unfeasible it isn't useful to use this as a stick to beat capitalism with.

"...But no actually existing capitalist market system spontaneously generates justice in exchange..."

This is why liberal democracies have (democratically elected) representatives who control the state and who provide justice.

"...That is why the liberal theory of justice demands at a minimum equality of opportunity: the attempt - as far as is compatible with personal liberty - to eliminate all those differences in life chances arising from unequal starting points..."

Sorry, I should read down further before I comment. I agree completely.

"...Finally, the claim that everyone is - under ideal conditions - paid what they are worth is an economic, not a moral, valuation..."

Yes, I agree with this.

"...The simplest way of doing this is to restrict advertising. This would prune the role of greed and envy in the operation of markets, and create room for the flourishing of other motives..."

Governments do restrict advertising. "Re-moralising" wants is an interesting idea. But I don't see how "restricting" advertising accomplishes that.

Promoting morality is a difficult thing to do without being morally puritan and judgmental of other people's pleasures.

I would say that a good step would be to replace "RE" lessons in UK schools with "morality and ethics" lessons where students were taught about different moral and ethical structures and asked to consider moral and ethical problems.

Word of the Day: Agonism

Agonistic pluralism is the idea that we will never eliminate all the divisions and differences of opinion in society, and that it is unwise to try. It also means individuals can win and succeed, but not forever and not in everything. You can be President of the United States but not for more than eight years. You can build up a big corporation but not a monopoly.

Rather than try to destroy what are really irreducible differences of opinion; as liberalism, socialism, capitalism, and all the other political and economic ideologies attempt to do, agonism tries to find ways to accommodate disagreement and pluralism.

I stumbled across this concept today whilst reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder. This is a superb transhumanist, post-singularity, hard SF novel that deals with some interesting ideas about reality, democracy, and the future of humankind.

I strongly recommend everyone read this book. If you don't like it then I clearly do not have the same taste in literature as you do. Neither of us is right or wrong, so what does it matter?

Addendum: I know this doesn't affect irreducible differences, but there are some things that are considered (almost) universally bad and as such will still be considered bad in a agonistic situation.

del.icio.us and 6pli

I've applied the ubercool data visualisation tool 6pli to my del.icio.us account: it's pretty awesome, and give me a new appreciation for how my interests overlap and relate to each other.


The results can be viewed for yourself here.

Saul Bass

A while ago I commented on a trend in the design of movie and TV programme credits.

I noticed this style again in the opening credits of the sublime Mad Men.



A casual reference in The Independent informed me that this style was pioneered by someone called Saul Bass.



This sequence is inspired. Saul Bass is truly the Duke Ellington of graphic design.

This style must be retro at the moment.

Politics

There are three distinct meanings of the word "politics."

1. The process by which groups of people make decisions.
2. The study of the processes, conventions, power structures, rules, laws, ideologies, and schema involved in the making of decisions.
3. The interactions between people involved in the process of making decisions.
   

The difference between the first and third definition is nice, to the point that I can't be sure there really is a distinction.

I dislike "office politics" and I dislike the personality-based gossiping that passes for political commentary in many newspapers (ooh, get me! - but I actually think commentators should concentrate on policy, process, and personality in that order of importance rather than the other way round).

I am fascinated by ideology. I haven't really made any firm ideological political commitments yet. In the past I've tried to define what my political beliefs are, but I've decided to suspend this definition for the time being to concentrate on policy and problem solving.

Ubuntu Update

This is by way of being an update, rather than a full blown review.

There are many aspects of Ubuntu that I like and there are some I dislike. The ones I like are:

1. There is no need for tedious and memory-consuming virus scans.
2. When new hardware is plugged in Ubuntu waits for me to do something about it, instead of trying (and failing) to be helpful by providing Autorun features as Vista does.
3. Change is good. It's refreshing to use something other than Windows.
4. There seems to be much greater scope for personalisation than with Windows.
   

All these things said, for the average and casual user there isn't a great deal in any of this. Most of the above points are more to do with the general crapness of Windows rather than anything good about Linux/Ubuntu.

Things I don't like about Ubuntu:

1. After dual booting Ubuntu with Vista I can no longer disable my Synaptics touchpad.
2. Ubuntu does not include native support for DVDs or mp3 players. I know that this is a niggle and shouldn't be a big obstruction, but for the casual and lazy user (like myself) it is just irritating.
3. New things scare me.
   
4. Ubuntu defaults to being so like windows that there doesn't really seem to be much point.
   
5. I've been prodding the bash shell or whatever it's called and it's all very oldschool and cool but to be honest I don't want to have to learn a whole new language just to get my PC to work when a GUI would do. And yes, I know that I can do pretty much everything through the GUI but I'm lazy.

OK - my conclusion so far is that there really isn't much point to Linux. If it's ever going to go mainstream it will be through things like the Asus Eee, which Charles Stross comments on at length here.

I'm still having trouble understanding the ubiquity of Microsoft Office in business, when OpenOffice is free and does exactly the same thing (at least as far as 90% of corporate users are concerned).

I think when I buy a new PC or laptop the first thing I'll do is install Ubuntu and use it from day one. This way I will avoid falling into the habit of using Windows.

Who do They Think They're Kidding?

A while ago I commented on the peculiar way computer/web use is portrayed in advertising brochures for banks and universities and news websites.

I've found another one on the Java website!

Laptop-use in a forest!?

Outrageous!

Such free-thinking-ness is absurd!

What is this? xkcd land?

Because that would be really cool!

Rudy Rucker and the Singularity

To quote from Rucker's post:

"This is because there are no shortcuts for nature’s computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the “principle of natural unpredictability,” fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don’t allow for drastic shortcuts."

Rucker's argument is fair enough as far as it goes but the whole point of the statistical mechanics invented by Gibbs and Maxwell and Boltzmann is that once you have enough particles in a system you can make accurate statistical statements about that system.

So we have the gas laws, the laws of thermodynamics etc.

Another point worth making is that current developments in spintronics (computations using the "spin" of electrons) offer a layer of computation beneath that of atomic matter.

I concede that at some point "fudging" will have to take place, but as I pointed out before: statistical mechanics isn't really fudging. Diffusion can be accurately modelled without having to model every single damn particle.

Anyway my gut feeling is that if something like a singularity happens it will be much weirder than simply grinding up the Earth into nanomachines then running a simulated Earth on the nanomachines.

I mean c'mon, if you're a superhuman intelligence what's the first thing you're going to do? Create the perfect lay? Work out the formula for the perfect cup of tea (of course, according to Douglas Adams this is a much more difficult computational problem than most anything else...).

Neil Gershenfeld

I stumbled across this talk with MIT Bits and Atoms dude Neil Gershenfeld on Edge.org from way back in 2003.

I'm too exhausted to comment on it now. But I implore you, dear reader, take a few minutes out of your day and read what Prof Gershenfeld has to say.

I'll comment on this further later.

Information Overload

Hi, my name's Tom and I suffer from Information Overload.

Every day I open up my web browser. The browser currently contains tabs linked to slightly over 100 blogs, newspapers, magazines, and news sites.

On a typical day each of these sites will have a couple of articles worth reading, but call it one article for simplicities sake.

On average each of these articles is around 500 words long.

That's roughly 50 000 words every day.

At the moment I'm also reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder, and Java for Dummies by Barry Burd.

I have a box of books in my bedroom and another virtual boxload in my Amazon wish list.

I also have a 9:00 - 17:00 job.

Something needs to be done.

But what?

....

RSS feeds have never impressed me. Taking blogs, mulching them up and squeezing them into an email format doesn't appeal.

The challenge then is to find a service or piece of software that combines several blogs together without pissing me off.

I would first have to define exactly what I wanted. This is actually pretty hard.

If anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate them. I haven't thoroughly researched RSS feeds and similar services and if I'm missing something I'd appreciate being told about it.

Mania

Like most people I have a few neurotic manias.

One of them is the one where I compulsively switch off wall sockets that don't actually have an appliance plugged into them.

I'm trying to wean myself off this as there is no discernible benefit.

However there is also my inability to tolerate TV screens left on standby. This is fairly reasonable as that TV is consuming valuable 'leccy but not actually being used. The puritan in me also suspects that getting up and turning the box on reduces sloth.

So standby button are bad for the soul.

The hotel across the street recently had a new wall-mounted flat-screen TV installed.

The room is unoccupied now but I can see that little red dot floating in the darkness...

...taunting me...

It would be the work of moments to email the hotel requesting they replace the offending item with a TV not equipped with a standby button.

..................