Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Next on BBC1 : Not Jay Hunt


Right! That's it! No more on this subject until next time.

On to more worthy things. Ionian enchantment has been achieved and I now know (sort of) how E=mc2 is derived from Minkowski Space-Time. Maybe I could not explain it back to you without sitting down and going through the whole chapter again - making notes of course and possibly using a few Excel graphs. There is however a sneaking feeling that something is not quite linking together. I realise that the derivation is proved through experiment and that the truth of the equation is the result of the brilliant deductions by Einstein and others but there is nothing to explain the mechanism of why it is true. Of course that is all probably to do with particle physics which comes later in the book and may well be explained but at the moment it seems a little too much to take for granted. Possibly I may just have to accept the truth but that is not empirical enough is it? Do I even mean empirical? Maybe I mean epistemological.

Tonight of course there is a new BBC2 series which might be a little easier to understand - The Story of Science with Michael Mosley. After his history of surgery I feel we can expect a great programme - full of fact and large-scale demonstration.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Exterminate IPPs


Why do we bother? Why do programme makers bother? There are talented people around who put their entire energies into producing TV to a standard that we couldn't possibly begin to imagine even just 10 years ago. They have budgets cut for a popular show and they still manage to make drama that seems of the same brilliance as it ever was. And then some just-out-of-media-college dork decides to plaster inappropriate technicolour graphics over the top of this masterwork at its climax. You might analyse this travesty into oblivion - it is not a conspiracy to force us into a particular mode of watching, it might just be a deliberate policy based of flawed focus group research - it is most probably a mistake made because of the never-ending push for "value" in everything. The result of course is a descent of the once-professional flagship channel of a much-envied state broadcaster into the litter-strewn alleys of multiple digital broadcasting. Do you get the feeling that the TV company no longer respects the viewer - that they just do not care any more as long as they get the number of viewers up to a specific level? Even in the face of multiple alternatives, the BBC is still by far and away the best programme maker, the best supporter of independent programme makers and despite the views of a strange, dribbling minority of detractors, the broadcaster which reflects most closely the general views of the population. The fact that they can instantly turn suspense created with the simplest of dramatic devices into instant outrage and the inappropriateness and crassness with a simple button press on the control desk manned by some twonk who thinks he is a little bit dangerous, a little bit wild, who has the attention span of gnat with ADHD, is the start of the end ... if we do not stop it now.

We need to complain about DOGs. We need to complain about IPPs. We need to complain about credit squeezing. We need to complain about talking over the end credits for which our money has been paid to embellish with stylish and appropriate music. Leave that sort of behaviour to other channels. Question the responses that we get in reply to deluges of complaints. They say that viewers find DOGs useful. They do not. There are two types of viewers - those who get annoyed by DOGs and those who don't. There are no viewers who say "You know what's missing from this channel? A little ID in the top corner so that I always know what I'm watching." If DOGs either annoy people or leave them indifferent then in one fell swoop you make a large group of people happy by simply removing the DOGS. The standard response takes us as fools. We are not fools - we are the viewers and listeners - the entire and only reason for the existence of the BBC. The BBC is not there to provide employment for idiots - though it does - it is there to provide programming that people like. We are allowed to be annoyed at what programmes are on - if we don't want to watch something we must switch it off - but when the processes of programme making are visible AND annoying then they must be changed.

My vision of the barrage of complaints is probably wrong but I see a buzz of activity amongst the arty meetings that decide what us plebs deserve to watch - the general filtering down of diktats to the masses of button-pushers out there - the ones who spends days designing the annoying subject of my ire. In darkened rooms, the machines are re-configured, the light falling coolly on the faces of the technicians as they check their documentation, ticking off the steps they need to do to ensure that nothing outside the programming ever crosses the screens again. In reality, I suspect there will be a few meetings, a flurry of Birtspeak and a memo about referring such decisions up for higher approval.

Apologies for the rant and for it being the subject of two consecutive posts. It might seem a bit over-dramatic but I mean it. Support the BBC except when they are absolute prats.

I suppose we could always just suggest that responsibility for DOGs and IPPs should be given to Siemens.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Interview Without Coffee Sweetie



I want to stand inches away from the face of whichever Beeboid Drone decided it was a great idea to splash a multicoloured, cartoon Graham Norton over the point of maximum tension in The Time of Angels and threaten to send them back to whichever time in history would make them most uncomfortable. I already rate Over the Rainbow as possibly the worst programme ever for its sugar-sweet portrayal of the audition process and now I have even more reason to hate it. For the first time in my life I have broken my policy of enlightened ignorance and actually complained to the BBC as part of what I hope is the beginning of the end for DOGs on the state broadcaster. I am not a hard-core Whovian but I imagine that they are the last group of people you want to annoy. Graham Norton seems to be becoming the Nemesis of Doctor Who after his voice spoiled the broadcast of the first episode of the revived series.

Anyway, love this cartoon of River Song.

I suppose I should mention the episode itself. Terrifying! In this article, Steven Moffat says that these Weeping Angel episodes are Aliens to the original Sally Sparrow episode's Alien. Remember - whatever shows the image of a Weeping Angel becomes a Weeping Angel. Sleep well!

Friday, April 23, 2010

This is not a Biography : Lost in Floridita


Our house rings to the resonant tones of the above and her husband. I heard some of these radio pieces on Radio 3 a few years back but now they are available from The British Library with a long interview with both poets which starts the CD. The content then moves from the cheerfully domestic through some harrowing and dark poems to a dramatic review of other Poet's work at the end. Plath has a voice which is obviously coloured by her years in the UK and has like TS Eliot, an accent that only slightly betrays her origins. I thought at some points I was detecting a catch in her voice which suggested severe distress which she was trying to control such as in Parliament Hill Fields but this may just be her way - it sometimes appears in the most cheerful of recollections of her home life. For those who have not heard or read any of Plath's poems, you may imagine them as dusty exercises with little relevance for the real world but to hear them read by the poet herself is a time-suspending experience. Occasional heavy floridness can be forgiven as the result of the distance between then and now, the transfer of original antique phrase into modern cliche and that strange accent more English than most of the English and yet still obviously not English carries the recital over these missteps.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Stand Back! Give Mr. Minkowski Some Space!


Heavier and Heavier gets Mr Cox's and Mr Forshaw's book. Having to re-read quite a bit though it is definitely worth it for the Ionian Enchantment though my version of it is like a stuttering lawn-mower engine compared to the well-tuned purr of a Bentley. The current chapter is on Hyperbolic or Minkowski Space where space-time rules rather than just space and suddenly from out of the fuzz that is the perception of the position in the Cosmos of the authors' waking and breakfasts, comes the sudden appearance of the Lorentzian Transformation equation derived in the previous chapter. This is the enchantment - the sudden realization that the laws which govern everything in the Universe are natural and intertwined with each other. Imagine the ecstasy of this for people who really do understand the maths.

Maths is consistent within itself, though of course Godel had something to say about that didn't he? If this incompleteness extends from the abstract world of numbers to the real physical world, what is the implication for A Theory of Everything? I've often wittered on about the retreat of the details so that the more we understand about the detail of something the more it reveals further levels of complexity. Is it possible that one day an intelligence will be able to define everything about the physical world - not only all the "stuff" we already know exists but cannot yet explain the links between but also any possible "stuff" that we don't know about for sure - or are not even aware of? Or will the details keep increasing in a cosmic two-fingers held up to Occam and his razor? One day scientists hope to link our models of the mind to the physical characteristics of the brain through bio-chemistry and electronics. I always wonder whether this is possible. I think that we will keep drilling deeper into both sides, never finding a link point. This can be seen as as inverse analogy to the Seven Layer Network Model. This defines networks from the bottom up - starting with the physical connection and working its ways through various degrees of complexity to the top levels defining the human experience of networking. The mind/brain link starts at the high level using big concepts and builds under that more complex levels of connectivity, hopefully one day to reach a lower limit which relies on simple, small details.

Enough mind, brain and Relativity. I read the phrase "political fugue" the other day. It had no explanation and made me wonder what it actually meant. Ignoring the fact that it might just be a mistype, I suppose it must relate to the psychological condition rather than any complex piece of classical music to celebrate the upcoming democratic festivities. Could it be that we are all in the midst of an "episode" from which we will emerge blinking into the light with no memory of the fight?

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Which End of Him is Thick Then?


BBC4 are going for a week of map-related stuff pivoting on the four-part Beauty of Maps (narrated incidentally by the steely-voiced, Scottish X-Wing Pilot and Uncle of Obi-Wan - Denis Lawson). Last night this was about the Mappa Mundi which despite being in Hereford and close to where I grew up, I have never seen. This is a map which would probably keep me happy for hours (once I'd learnt to read Latin I suppose) though Grayson Perry's tribute/homage to MM, Map of Nowhere is a modern substitute. Give me an atlas an I am happy for some time.

And also keeping me busy is the band-wagon-jumping of Why Does E=mc2? (and why should we care?) by intellectual de-jour, Professor Brian Cox and equally clever Professor Jeff Forshaw. This is a readable book and jumps straight in with the explanation of why light speed is fixed and why this means that time and distance is not. It uses the standard light-clock-on-a-train method and Pythagoras to explain the changes and this is fine. However, it then avoids the standard historical narrative of Special Relativity followed by General Relativity and all the standard means of trying to explain them and goes into a real-world example of why space-time is a signal entity using the example of the time and distance between waking up and finishing your breakfast from both your point of view and that of a passing observer. I have to admit I have had to go back and read this bit again but the promise of a beautiful revelation at the end of it draws you in to quite happily repeating the difficult bits. I am hopeful for a full path to understanding all of relativity rather than just isolated bits of the equations.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Ash Slid Thursday


Out from the darkness came the quintuple organisers of the apocalypse, their shadows softened by the clouds of ash that surrounded them, billowing against the ground, pulled down by the gravity that they themselves created. Their horses crowded together, steam climbing from them, a second nebulous collection after the ejecta of the volcano from where they entered this world.

All is bathos, for the world's end is not this; it is the misery of queues, the boredom of the long wait at the airport, day-dreaming about a lazy afternoon in a sunny orchard you remember from home which as far as you recall did not have any orchards close by. All sentences end sometime. I remember the small wood that sat on the very top of the very furthest hill on the horizon viewed from my house all those years ago. I wanted to be there, walking over the dappled ground, cooler than the baking air of the plains and hills outside but my father could never be persuaded to visit. Many times I tried to cycle straight towards it but the roads between here and there confounded me, turning away and never seeming to revert to the correct direction, always returning me close to home after the point of no return. The countryside seemed to be folding itself as I moved through it, creating its own hills and lakes, moving the roads. It feels now like I stayed still while the ground span and moved under me, always seeming in the control of someone else.

Maybe I should try again, use the map, borrow a satnav, arm myself with photos taken from the air to prove that the place still exists for I still see it when I go home, a dusty green bump on the smooth line of the furthest ridge. Often it is lost in the haze of summer, a possibly-imagined thing, blending into the hills and clouds. Sometimes the weather turns the distance into a strange mix of land and sky where the clouds become mountains of impossible height, with Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga brought to us from far away. And at these times my little forest is lost in this giant world and yet it still exists, untroubled mostly by any human activity, left to the birds and rabbits, litter-free and quiet, a Little Nirvana, mysteriously hidden and yet left in plain sight to entire counties on clear days.

Monday, April 12, 2010

R2D2's Dad's Dog's Dead


Son is very happy - we finally collected all the gold bricks in Lego Star Wars and found that they fitted together to make a money machine - a strange contraption which spits out studs continuously. Not that we need this having reached the maximum score of 4 Billion studs collected. With the help of his sister, the boy completed the old version of the Pod race and voila all 160 bricks "belong to us". I am slightly deflated at realising that this does not get us 100% completion due to several other challenges which need to be done against the clock, one of which was given an hour and we did in 59 minutes and 32 seconds. Phew!

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Tate a Tate


Here today for a saunter round the art gallery and Maritime museum. We were all slightly surprised to find that one whole wall in one gallery was moving at a speed of 10cm per minute which while not exactly as scary as the Star Wars trash compactor, is slightly disconcerting. I'm certain it is art though. We also went down and made collages from very posh art and design magazines with scary phrases like "according to Marxist theory" in them. Result is below.

And then on to the Maritime Museum for spin around what can only be called The Luxury Liner Disaster Area - Titanic, Lusitania etc. There was also a very good bit of monologue from someone playing the Titanic Helmsman Robert Hichens, the man who Molly Brown threatened to throw overboard.

Of course all this didn't stop daughter's continuous announcements of the time left until the start of Doctor Who. And so was it worth the wait? Sure was! It kept a six-year old rapt for an hour and still has him quiet in front of DWC. And now the Weeping Angels are dancing. We are happy here and still two days of the weekend to go. We do have to go (shhh - don't tell Dawkins) to Church tomorrow morning but after that our time is ours. More collage maybe - more Infra-red and all the other manic inventions that float around my head. Somewhere we have The Quatermass Experiment on the PVR as well.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

But Why Would You Want to Oil a Snake?


It is indeed great news to see that Simon Singh has won his libel battle against the bone-crackers of the British Chiropractic Association who are just one of many organizations and individuals to sue in this country on the most flimsy of grounds. Cases are heard in this country on the basis of a few copies of a book ordered from overseas or viewed on a computer in Britain and this is just plain wrong. Now I can even understand that a few choice manipulations of various bones can help with certain musculo-skeletal conditions but the claims are way beyond that. The fact that is has taken £200,000 to sort this out is just silly. And (in my opinion - I'll just say that again - in my opinion) that Mr Justice Eady - what a [Phrase Redacted].

There is currently a Cardiologist being sued over something he said about a device made by a US company. We do not need good and clever people side-tracked by dubious and mercenary actions like this. We need science to be run by people who understand it and so I urge you to sign this. It is nice to be among the great and the good and Dara O Briain (only joking Mr O Briain).

And now to another group of charlatans - psychics. I see that the Lebanese equivalent of Derek Acorah has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia after being nabbed while on a pilgrimage. Now I really get annoyed at the superstitious being fleeced by the unscrupulous under the excuse of such quackery but to use the death penalty against it is an outrage. Much as I hate Derek Acorah, I would not want him killed - a little light verbal abuse should be enough). I also notice on his website that Acorah has carefully avoided the use of the phrase "due to unforeseen circumstances" against the announcement that one of his shows has had to be rescheduled. And as a point of order I would say that he is not a medium and is in fact very much below average (though not in income from all those gullible old ladies trying to get hold of Sid to ask where he hid the bank book).

V. Poor today isn't it?