Friday, February 26, 2010

A Song of Love and Regret


So far from home, and yet I seem to know all these people. I think it's a wedding and that I should know all the people here but don't. The women all seem to have white faces though I think they have been crying as well. And at the centre, a stiff and tall woman, dressed in white, crammed into an expensive dress and looking really unhappy. Later I will browse through hundreds of photos of her that have all been transmitted to me from the various mobile phones. In all of them she is crying. I am told that this is because she is consumptive and that the knowledge of her impending deterioration trumps any happiness that being married might bring her. There is no sign of her future husband. I want to do something to help - the truth of modern medicine gives me hope but I want to do the saving myself and I am not a doctor so I just leave her to suffer. The guilt is overwhelming. I know that it being a wedding we should be happy but the unearthly behaviour and the standard lack of walls and ceilings a-la Dogville, leaves me unable to act on anything apart from spooling through the photos which now seem limitless, an infinity of images, never repeating, never ending and in all of them, this same sad woman. Maybe she is the White Queen.

This is some sort of factory, a clean and deserted collection of pipes and machinery between tall, corrugated buildings. The passageways are marked by jets of steam. Despite there being no one about I search, possibly for the sad bride but I feel that it is more likely something far more intangible, obviously suggesting that the woman represents something other than an afflicted human being. I begin crying at my inability to determine what this search is for and it makes me sad now in the same way. I have things to do, valves to turn, walkways to cross and nothing goes right. No machinery will behave as it is supposed to and I am stuck in places I know will not reveal the object of my search. These frustrations end the dream, for the anger that it all brings becomes real ire, a boiling inside that wakes me up in the dark and familiar room. The usual relief floods in like ink in clear water and is quickly followed by a different colour, the blue fug of drowsiness and I sleep until morning.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Leaning and Meaning


I mentioned last week, the Magic Realism of travelling to Manchester by train. This picture was taken on the train and I didn't have high hopes for it because the carriage windows were very dirty which may have explained the strange gloom that gave me the feeling in the first place. Well a bit of auto-correction and we have the above - very Lowryesque I thought, apart from the lack of stick people I suppose.

I have decided to be more political on this blog. So here goes - watch out Guido. George Osborne - what an oik hey? And now for the sake of balance - Alistair Darling - could he be any more of a prat? And don't get me started on that Lembit Opik - politician - more like a human anagram.

We now return to our regular programming.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Flat Head More Like


The last time I read anything about The Flat Earth Society, it all seemed to be run with a huge sense of irony and gave me the feeling that no one involved took it really seriously. However, this article in the Guardian shows that all that has gone and that the society's members have a new found confidence in their basic view. I rifled through the forums and came to the conclusion that a good bashing with a large encyclopedia would not go amiss. The number of deferrents and epicycles being introduced to explain away all the evidence that the world is oblately Spherical shows a dedication to a position not seen since The Pope realised that Galileo was not his friend any more. Why if the Sun and the Moon are spherical as the President admits why on Earth is the Earth flat?

The society also seems to assert that gravity is produced by the acceleration of the Earth's disk directly upwards. I can't really be bothered to work out how fast that means we are moving after all that regular 1G acceleration or to even think about how Relativity comes into the picture. I'm saving the newsletters from the 70s for a time when I really need a good laugh.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Car v. Tram


This picture is here for no other reason than I like it but then again isn't that the reason for all of them? Other than this I have nothing to write about despite being blown away by the clarity of the stars last night which led in turn to an excited promise to read something scientific after completing The Eyre Affair and to be specific something astrophysical . Mathematical might be good as well though I always start mathematics books with enthusiasm and then it all turns to epic fail at the first point I can't understand something without reading it more than twice. I've been thinking of getting another graphic novel but the racks of them at Forbidden Planet just seem like geek fodder rather than something meaty and satisfying like Logicomix. There are a few Shakespeare Graphic Novels using the original text out there but the art looks like half-hearted and insipid when compared to the words. Ho hum - spring is on its way.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Otter Ming oo


Minitrue yesterday.

We were all in Manchester yesterday and while the town itself is very impressive, all tall buildings and trains and trams passing through at different levels like some Magic-Realistic invention, the process of getting there was filled with frustrations. The continuous Orwellian tannoy announcements regarding CCTV being there for "your safety and security", the extortionate prices for what as far as I am concerned are basic human rights (it's not a penny you have to spend anymore), and the ticket collectors who have recently morphed into a team of bouncers who may or may not be armed under all those black jackets and military style pouches, make the whole thing depressingly unfamiliar. I can't help feeling that the 150 or so photographs I took myself yesterday are far outnumbered by the number of CCTV cameras I actually appeared on just walking around. I am not sure I am comforted by the view that this keeps me safe and secure.


Wednesday, February 17, 2010

It's not Rocket Surgery but it Might be Brain Science


The train passed more fields, and then suddenly the track was skirting some sort of military base. Right at the bottom of the high railway embankment was a high and rusty fence topped with barbed wire, then a few metres of daisy-speckled grass before the strange sight of what seemed a forest of white and black missiles all pointing nearly to the azimuth. This was the modern squadron, the future of warfare in unmanned craft, leaving all the risk, at least on our side, to the poor saps who fueled the things and remained out in the open. The real pilots were the radar boxes and rudimentary computers that keep them on track high into the blue above.

It was intriguing enough to be at once on the midst of this defensive display and he sat facing the window, taking in the changing perspective as missile passed in front of missile until he had lost count of how many there were. But without warning, out in the distance one of them fired, streaking out into the sky, leaving just a spiral track of white smoke dispersing over the remainder. It had been so fast and so out of his vision that at first he longed for another to launch, the desire to witness the power of the things far outweighing any worry he might have about why it had fired. He turned to where the missile had gone, straining against the brilliance of the sky to see any evidence of impact. He managed to locate the flash of sun on something high up and in the right place but there was no sudden silent puff of smoke signalling detonation. Eventually he was left straining to see where the speck had been. Back along the line, the smoke had cleared from the site and the rest of the missiles were as they were before. Leaning out of the window he could just see the gap where the errant projectile had been, its absence all that was left to signify its previous existence.

"Just a test?" he thought to himself, the question mark only half-hearted for he did not know of anything in the world that would raise our alert to the level where we might fire on something. And then he realised that he just could not know what went on at all times and everywhere. Of course we would hope that any attack out of the blue would be resisted quickly and the risks these days were more likely to be so rather than the ultimate result of sabre-rattling and raised tensions. The threat levels are just mere posturing, reassurance for the plebs and political brinkmanship for those inclined to the democratic process. "Why worry?" he mused further. The world was still the same.

High above him, close to the edge of space, the missile found its target, a speeding unknown, a slab of black and not black, glowing hot from the friction between it and the sparse atmosphere. Almost in silence, the detonation came, an instant vapourising flash of bright white, a moving off in the direction of the sum of two different momenta and the gradual fall to earth of myriad glowing fragments. Hours later they peppered the sea off the coast, unseen by anyone and the engagement was over.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Citizen Blair


He lifted his eyes from the newspaper - fatigued by the continuing effort to take it in - and viewed the countryside passing by. The landscape had changed distinctly since he had last looked and now with it more like he imagined it should be after so long in travelling, he resolved to finish reading for the rest of the journey. And as the visual sense flooded his brain, he became aware also of other feelings, scents and sounds which broke away from this other world and making their way through the open window, called to him with buccolic abandon. He realised that he was happier than he had been for some years and in that instant of realising, he forgot the toils and troubles of the world brought to him through the journal, now on the seat at his side and looked forward for the first time in as long. The breeze blowing in gently, carried on it the gentle tang of greenery mixed in with the rusty, oily smells of the locomotive just ahead and all this seemed a drug of forgetting, of not regretting, a reverse truth serum, designed to blot out the reality of other people's lives and to leave one feeling clean and happy.

But above all, it was the knowledge that this line led him home, back from the toil of leaving school and college, the Alice-in-Wonderland racing with the world standing still all around him, the meaningless rush to make money just to eat and sleep safely when all about the nation prospered on the back of the toil of the countless millions just like him. It was not fair he thought. It was obvious to him that the cleverest people he knew were not those in control of this mad rush; they were those who appealed to tradition as the reason for all this paradoxical, chaotic activity, those who could not believe the world should change because their own view left no room for anything other than their own ideas of correctness. His friends knew the way to a better world and yet coloured by their own desire for comfort and safety, they stayed safe beneath the parapet, wanting only the plush chair the good food that came to them at the end of the day, not wanting to think about those who slept on hard ground and ate irregularly and without enjoyment.

All this was why he had given up on it, realising over time, through so many crises which at first threatened to overwhelm him, that nothing bad ever really happened. Screaming in the night gives no comfort to the tormented and the depressed and the raging that came with his own flurries of instability had not helped him in any way. Life, he thought paradoxically, was in one's own hand and also the result of pure luck, the bouncing of particles at levels that no human would ever see directly. Whatever he did or did not do was of no consequence and so he might as well enjoy himself in the place where he had been happiest. And so he gave it all up, left the city and came home to start up again where all the happiness had ended.

No cry in the distance made its way into the carriage, no vision of pain and assault met his eye for the view was one of green and rough edges, the battle of the world against the human met in the continuous toil of the sparse population. But this was a happy toil he thought in his vision of rural perfection. He would be back to nature, not worrying about the harder edges of his working life up to now. He would be happy. He would be happy.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Argumentum ad Ignorantiam

(Cos I can't find the Latin for "Argument from personal incredulity" which I think is what I really mean.)

Where have you been? Where have you been you mean.

The book list has fragmented a little bit. I am reading The Eyre Affair on a sort-of-recommendation from Ed over there, though he doesn't actually mention the book, rather an audience with the author. Not sure whether I like it or not at the moment. The literary basis is great but some of the detail seems to remind me of other books, notably The Difference Engine. I'm also ploughing through The QI book of the Dead where my mind seems to be one sentence ahead of the text - in the Chapter on The Monkey Keepers I was suddenly reminded by a description of Madame Mao of Mrs Coulter from the His Dark Materials series and within seconds there she was. And then in a section on John Dee I thought about Giant Flying Beetles having been subconsciously reminded of one that was mentioned in Hunt Emerson's Phenomenomix strip from The Fortean Times. I suspect that at least one of Lloyd and Mitchinson are regular FT readers.

I'm also trying to find out about a book I nearly bought on a three-for-two in Waterstones the other day, realising it was an important one to read and then mindlessly forgetting everything apart from its cover. Update when I find it.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Dawkins is Dead! Long Live Dawkins!


The Dawkins - it is finished! It ended unexpectedly, falling into nothing with no pithy statements, just a random rant about various polls about evolution across the world. Leave it Dawkins - they just aren't worth it. Though actually to see that 20% of people in the UK don't know what a year is astronomically speaking is quite worrying. Keep banging the rocks together guys.

That's your lot for today - I have an appointment for coffee in the "encounter area".

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Napoleon Revolving Virtually in his Grave


Dawkins still unfinished but nearly there. Time was taken up watching The Virtual Revolution presented by Dr. Aleks Krotoski up there. This was meaty stuff - no whizzy little sideshows - just well-presented narration and opinion from the great and good of CyberVille, Terra. And straight into it my wife learned something - that www stood for World-Wide Web. She lost interest after that and started on the practical lessons before the end of the theory. A funny bit of prime-time for a Saturday night, much more suited to BBC4 but BBC2 does have occasional throwbacks to its high-brow glory years every so often.

In best novelistic time-shifting mode I now return to the programme we watched before this which has filled the BBC4 Monday brain-box slot (Mind Games etc) - Only Connect - a fiendish quiz of linking four, sometimes apparently random words/phrases/pictures/pieces of music/smells. Well maybe not smells but after 3D I am sure that odour transmission is next on the list of gimmicks. Last night was between a team of neuroscientists and one of rugby fans. The former only needed an extra geeky member to be the main cast of The Big Bang Theory and from the start it was obvious that they did not care whether they won or lost. They did of course win.

An example - what links :

Cream, Quote Marks, Tennis, Yellow Lines

Answers on a postcard - boiled sweet to first drawn - not valid outside Mozambique - offer expires July 1974.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Mmmmm. Doughnuts.


Nearly finished the Dawkins and he has saved the best until the end. The chapter on the fact that evolution is a terrible designer is very convincing. It goes into how part of the vagus nerve (a nerve that exits the brain directly rather than being a spur on the spinal cord) descends into the chest, loops under various arteries and veins and returns to the Larynx, an unnecessary detour that in Giraffes becomes a screaming extreme, looping all the way from the brain, down into the chest and back up to the throat. The reason for this is that evolution does not design from scratch, it makes heuristic adjustments with the raw material it starts with. Our descent is from fish where the body plan is quite neatly laid out with the various nerves serving the parts of the body closest to them. Mammals have evolved in a way that tinkers with this standard plan and moves the segments about to best fit what the pressure of natural selection forces on it. However, there is no pressure to tidy up the mess that results from the various cablings being stretched to link various body parts which have moved further apart. Internally the whole mammalian body plan has become a tangled mess only topologically related to the simple plan of earlier organisms. The mammal has almost literally tied its internal connection up in knots.

I am surprised that Dawkins didn't actually mention topology. The sudden looping of a nerve over instead of under a particular structure is a busting of topology, like suddenly having a hole through a sphere busts its topology and it becomes a doughnut.

The other wonderful example of how evolution takes the easy rather than the best course is the fact that the nerves exiting from the sensory cells in the retina do so on the side facing into the eyeball and hence towards the source of light, therefore blocking a portion of it and requiring that the nerves find somewhere to exit the eye. This means that the sensitivity of the retina is reduced because of the wires all over the place and there is a blind spot where all those wires are bundled up and fed through a hole where they form the optic nerve. We only see as well as we do because the software of the brain is able to carry our super-fast and super-accurate clean-up operations (Dawkins I think calls this a real-time version of photoshop). There is evolutionary pressure to right the initial mistake of routing the wires on the wrong side because it works and the fact that humans try to make high-quality optics to match that of the eye shows that our eyes are indeed better at seeing than artificial technology designed to do the same.

RD mentions quite a bit about why these mistakes have never been rectified but I like to think that, sometime, a human will be born with a mutation which makes the nerve ending come out of the back of the retina and gives then a level of sight suddenly many times better. The question then is will the brain be able to keep up? We only have clear and accurate vision in a small patch of the retina I think because the brain could not actually process sharp information from all the retina. What we lose in definition around the periphery of the field of view, we make up for with a sensitivity to movement which allows us to direct the centre of vision to that movement. Would a human with the mutation above be mentally capable of processing the higher definition information?

On a similar note, and I may have mentioned this before, I often wonder if a portion of human mental illness is caused by the fact that our brains have to process many more detailed images that all those years ago on the plains. I feel we have to process out much more irrelevance now with the result that brain capacity we used to use for thinking and contemplating is now taken over having to make decisions about what is important.

I did start thinking that quite a lot of software ends up like this. I can see almost a direct analogy between the routing of the vagus nerve and the flow of control through some programs. Whatever we like to think about the efficiency of our code, a lot of it does evolve from previous versions and as such sometimes uses routes which should really be removed. However as we are now looking at programming using a form of natural selection, should we be wary that such programming will produce valid, accurate, working code, code which does the job but is inefficient in the extreme because the equivalent of its vagus nerve gets routed in and out of unnecessary portions of the application?

Anyway, a very convincing chapter. Hopefully I will have finished by tomorrow so I will mention the next book which is a recommendation from Ed and is The Eyre Affair by Jasper FForde and comes physically courtesy of Sefton Library Services so sorry Jasper - it's just the Public Lending Right rather than a royalty.