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Interested in Pascal's
wager? Read this superb site, one of the finest demolition
jobs on Christianity I have come across
There was a slight break up at this point caused by the death of
Douglas Adams and my iminent need to produce a quiz for the local
Parent Teacher Association, there were several short messages not
suitable for publication. Mike contributed this
piece for the Guest Zone.
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Hi Martin
I joined the library in Farnborough today - they didn't have
"The Selfish Gene", unfortunately, but I managed to bag a
copy of "Unweaving The Rainbow". I read chapter one in my
lunch break, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest! I suppose
I could ask my dad for his copy of The Selfish Gene, but
he's in London, so I'd have to wait a while to get it off him. You
didn't mention whether you'd read the Julian Jaynes book that I
mentioned a couple of weeks back ("The Origins Of Consciousness
In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind"). If you do get around
to reading it (or you've read it already) I'd be interested in your
opinions.
Quiz
Sorry, I seem not to have had time to put anything more together.
I'm still quite distressed that I know so little about people.
Every time I try to come up with a good question about people, either
I'm not sure enough of my facts to risk it, or my science-brain
kicks in and distracts me with stuff about the physics behind what
they're famous for, or something! I suppose I must be a "true geek".
Oh well, it could be worse. I could be an unsatisfied whinging fantasist
with no life, sitting around waiting for the next life...
Mike
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Thanks for the quiz stuff, I am still working through it all. I
think I will have to ask "What is the best way to get a drink out
of a Vogon?" I hope I can do it without choking up too much.
I have published (should-will be have published by the time you
may/should have read this) your letter as a Guest Zone article.
(We need those new tenses!)
The line about Hendrix is original, feel free to quote me on it.
I thought about comparing him to a Jazz musician but it didn't have
enough resonance, or truth. I too enjoyed The Meaning of Liff,
Kettering has entered the family vocabulary. I haven't read it for
a while, but I don't suppose there is much chance of getting it
in the library for the next eighteen months or so.
But I do know where my Guide is.
Martin
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Hi Martin!
Now that quiz night is over (how did it go, by the way?),
and DNA's demise is receding (albeit slowly, I'm still a bit cut
up actually...), I'd like to respond to a couple of things you said
in an earlier email (10 May). Badges Another good badge thing -
a school friend of mine had four of them in a vertical line down
his lapel:
"Sex"
"and Drugs"
"and Rock"
"and Roll"
Cool! Well, I thought so at the age of fourteen, anyway.
Slartibartfast
Yes, I've seen the explanation about his name being made
up of offensive words - but do you know the story about the typist
who was transcribing Douglas's hand-written script? Apparently it
was his private joke on her, because the character's name isn't
mentioned for ages, and the character himself even says that it
isn't important. Douglas was trying to wind the typist up because
if the name were never mentioned, he could just as easily have written
"Bob", so he was hoping to send her into a rage at having to type
this 14-character name on every other line of dialogue!
Baldness
Am I in denial about follicle regression? My dad started
losing significant amounts of hair about ten years ago, at the grand
age of about 55. His identical twin brother lost his quite a few
years earlier, probably through greater stress (he was married about
four times, whereas my dad has always been in a more stable relationship).
I freely admit that mine was going a little bit thin on the crown
before I shaved it off, and I also freely admit that this was at
least part of the reason for cutting it. Actually my hair is very
fine anyway (we measured it with a micrometer at school and it was
the thinnest in the whole class, about 4 micrometres, if I recall
correctly) - so any bare patches were bound to be that much more
visible, sooner. I've had the beard for many years, so that's nothing
to do with it.
Strangely enough, the beard thing was an accident. I was
shaving one morning and got distracted halfway through, when I'd
only done the sides. When I returned to the task I took a look at
the "goatee" and moustache, and thought, "Hey, that's not bad!"
Never looked back :-]>
I don't find baldness embarrassing per se, I just
think it can sometimes look tidier if it's on a shaved head - and
why not? A case in point is a friend of mine called Dick Heckstall-Smith.
He's one of the coolest-looking old men I know, and he's been head-shaven
for decades now. One thing I certainly never wanted was to end up
with the notorious "comb-over" - but I don't think I would ever
have done that, even if I'd kept my hair a normal length.
Pascal's Wager
Do you think that we are the only species that has a sense
of its own mortality? If so, why specifically do you think that
it is so terrifying to most people?
I have to confess (no pun intended) that since a few weeks
ago when I made the personal decision not to have any more truck
with all this mystical nonsense, I have had a few "What's the use?
I'm gonna die one day" moments. I expected this of course, and it
doesn't bother me on a large scale, but it got me wondering. What
exactly is so scary about death? Is it the fact that we are so used
to events following one another in an ordered way, be it with or
without a purpose, that we just can't face the fact that one of
them will have no successors? Or is it a purely selfish phenomenon
of being greedy for more years?
During one of my "scared" moments (and I think everyone probably
has them, and should admit to it, otherwise they are hypocrites),
if I relax my reason for a second and imagine that I believe in
an afterlife, the terror instantly subsides. Is that something that
is solely based on my cultural context and upbringing (i.e. I've
been taught at some point that people go to heaven), or is there
some deeper-seated need for it in the way our brains have evolved?
Julian Jaynes would probably say that there is an evolutionary reason,
relating to our ancestral mode of consciousness that relied on hallucinated
gods for guidance. I wonder what Richard Dawkins would say. What
would you say?
Utilitarianism
I've always been ambivalent on this one. It's a great idea
but I can't imagine it working. I recall an occasion when I was
talking to a friend at University about ethics, and I made the point
that, since one can't keep deriving each human right from a prerequisite
one ad infinitum, at some point one has to draw the line
and say: "We have the right to life, and I'm not going to explain
why." He responded with the utilitarian position, and I was interested
in it, but thought that (like democracy in its purest definition)
it suffered from the (admittedly minor) risk that the majority may
see fit to persecute a minority and nothing would stop them - the
reason being that anything based at least partly on calculation
rather than reasoning is open to interpretation, and interpretation
spells vested interests, abuse and corruption.
I therefore concluded that utilitarianism
was a double-edged sword. Yes, it could provide a pragmatic solution
to many difficult problems, but its lack of philosophical basis
gave me cause for concern, and it still does. I understand that
the whole point of it is to be pragmatic and that therefore all
the fine details would have to be thrashed out to everyone's satisfaction,
regardless of how it was implemented, but I still worry that this
process (of attempting to reach agreement on what constitutes an
"optimum state of minimised suffering") would, without sufficiently
strong philosophical grounding, be fraught with pitfalls. In other
words, I am not convinced that you could persuade people to accept
all the necessary changes to society unless you were armed with
strong reasons based on reasoning that everyone could follow. There
will always be people who will look at any utilitarian system and
say "Well, I'm not accepting that! It's just a load of numbers,
and it doesn't feel right to me." Without being able to give them
philosophical reasons for what you want to do, you are at their
mercy, and the thing won't work unless you apply it via a totalitarian
dictatorship (let's FORCE people to be happy!).
Am I being too pessimistic? Perhaps. Who knows, in a few
hundred years we might have finally settled down into a system that
works so well that no-one will want to change it. I'd love to think
that that will happen, but I can't quite believe it. Funny, I used
to be such an optimist. Your comment the other day about psychologists
referring to the optimism of most poeple as a delusion rang sadly
true with me. I've come to realise more and more that things don't
just work the way we want. It's taken me quite a while to get there,
but at least I'm no longer deluded. Sometimes I'm tempted to go
back, though - you know, to be blind and gullible - but happier.
Do you ever feel that? If not, you've a stronger mind than I.
Regards,
Mike
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Baldness
What do you do if you have long hair by choice and you go bald?
It is a tough one. A lot of men do as you do, cut it short and make
out that it is their choice and they are happy about it. Who am
I to say they are lying? But it does look a little fishy. I am trying
to think what I would do. Certainly I would never do the comb over,
the embarrassment that must cause on a windy day! I am happy to
say that my boyhood hero Bobby Charlton has seen sense and gone
for a neat short style and an honest crown rather than the comb
it over from the sideburns style. I suppose a short crop is the
most sensible option, shaving or reducing to stubble are a bit extreme
and does seem to suggest an element of defiance or revenge.
The Quiz
The Quiz went well, of course there were some questions that nobody
got right and some disputes but not too many and most people seemed
to enjoy themselves, which is the main thing. You can't teach by
a quiz, not really, if you try you will come unstuck. I have decided
to put in a quiz page on the site, possibly a weekly event, depending
on the response. It might be a good way to encourage repeat visits,
people will come back for the answers and while they are around
they will probably check out the What's New page and the Forum.
I think a good mix of questions is the best way to go. I will quite
enjoy doing some stuff like identifying quotes, recognising paintings
from small detail and other such stuff.
With my stack of encyclopaedia disks and the whole of the world
wide web to browse through and sample material from I should be
able to come up with lots of material. Then there is the possibility
of using audio clips too. It opens up whole new ways to avoid mowing
the lawn.
Death
You have made me wonder about whether or not I have understood
the issue. The fear of events no longer unfolding in sequence. That
had never previously occurred to me. But then, no, that's totally
wrong-headed, if I am dead I will have no capacity to appreciate
the weirdness of it. So back to the blasé approach to death. I know
it is inevitable and so it is hard to get angry about it. Rather
like the difference between getting soaked by rain and getting soaked
because some moron has driven through the puddle you were standing
next to; only one makes us angry, the other we just put up with
and grumble about rather ineffectually.
I have never hallucinated a god or anything else. I did once have
a mild hallucination after taking a substance that I was informed
was a hallucinogen, I can't put my finger on exactly what happened
to my perceptions but I am sure that The Amityville Horror
was not meant to be a slapstick comedy.
I have never felt that there was a god or a resurrection and eternal
life, or reincarnation or any form of spiritual existence. Maybe
that isn't normal, but if there is a treatment I don't want it.
Martin
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Hi Martin,
This is a bit of a long one, because I worked on it for a
couple of days before sending it, and I kept having more ideas on
what to say. Sorry!
I've got over halfway through "Unweaving The Rainbow",
and I'm really enjoying it. I especially liked the chapter about
misinterpretation of coincidences, a subject that's always interested
me. I also discovered that among all the romantic fiction and pap,
the library's audio books section harboured a little treasure: "The
Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose - a book about Artificial
Intelligence and the nature of consciousness. So I'm listening to
that in the car now too - libraries are great, aren't they?
Anyway...
Quote for the day:
“I have come to believe that the
whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible
by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying
truth.”
Umberto Eco
Baldness
OK! OK! I admit it! I shaved my head in defiance (as well
as laziness, appetite for change, desire for better treatment in
shops etc.)
Quiz
Glad to hear the quiz went OK. Did you manage to use any
of my contributions? I've had a look at the quiz on your site, and
I could only answer about three or four questions straight away
(and I'm not even sure they're all correct answers either, except
the one you've already told me!). I think I might have a closer
look later on. Good idea though, a weekly quiz - should keep you
busy (not that that's an issue, of course!).
Things no longer unfolding in sequence
I wasn't trying to say that the experience of death was
scary, I was talking about the idea of it. So, the fear of events
no longer having a successor was intended as an illustration of
how our imaginations run away with themselves, causing fear as an
interesting and unusual by-product of abstract thought, rather
than simple fear of tangible events like getting hurt, or being
embarrassed in public.
I think that if I had to place fears on a sliding scale,
I would put death at the top of the "abstract fears" list, but still
well below more practical things like fear of falling, fear of injury
etc. Below death in the list would be relatively minor tremors such
as one experiences in contemplating certain great imponderables,
like whether or not time had a beginning (which I consider to be
a little bit scary, whatever the answer) - and further still, below
these, I would place tangible but trivial fears - like fear of being
bitten by a mosquito, for example (though this would climb the ranks
somewhat if I travelled to a malarial country).
I like the puddle/rain analogy, and I do agree with you,
in that for almost all my life (I am excluding those moments of
which I spoke, when I occasionally dwell on my mortality), I too
have the feeling that there's no point worrying about something
inevitable, and usually this enables me to enjoy life more. It's
just that - rarely - this approach can break down and make me depressed
for a day or two. I don't think I can do a lot about it: the last
time it happened was a week or two ago, before I wrote the last
email, but the time before that was probably a year or two back.
Since last week, the weather's been glorious, I've been getting
on with some DIY around the house, planning our wedding etc., and
have been happy as could be. So I don't want you to think I'm morose
most of the time, because that certainly isn't true. But if somebody
asks me whether I ever get scared of dying, I would have to say
"Yes, occasionally I do" - because I'd be lying otherwise.
Altered mental states and horror films
Your Amityville Horror story made me laugh! I think
you had an experience much like the one I had in my first year at
university. One Saturday night, I returned from the bar in my hall
of residence, having drunk a couple of snake bites and god knows
how much scrumpy (ahem), to find everyone sitting in our communal
kitchen watching "The Thing" (the modern colour version) on video.
Every time something horrible popped onto the screen, everyone jumped,
gasped or screamed - except me. I sat there giggling. I wonder what
part of your brain is inactive when you lose the ability to be scared
like that? Probably most of it ;-)
Questioning Things
Reading your page, and thinking about memes (although I haven't
read any serious books on memes yet, but I get the general idea)
has made me begin to question everything that I have ever accepted
on faith. Actually, so has the chapter in Dawkins' "Unweaving The
Rainbow" that talks about how children's natural impressionability
can develop into gullibility in adults.
This doesn't necessarily have to apply only to profound or
philosophical topics, either. Take, for example, the rule which
most people (including me) were taught while learning to drive:
MSM = Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre. I thought about this yesterday,
and concluded that it is wrong! Why should it be so important to
look in your mirror before signalling? I agree that it is very important
to check your mirror before manoeuvring, of course, but if you are
going to manoeuvre, surely you cannot be jeopardising road safety
by signalling as early as possible. Where is the harm in first signalling,
then checking your mirror, then manoeuvring? If someone behind you
is driving dangerously, I can't think of any likely situations where
signalling will make things more dangerous than they already were.
Therefore, I think the rule should actually be "Signal, Mirror,
Manoeuvre", or maybe "Signal/Mirror, Manoeuvre" - which, interestingly
enough, is what I tend to do anyway without analysing it.
Intelligent Democracy
I have just read your piece on the Single
Transferable Vote System - very educational, thanks for clarifying
it for me, as I had never grasped it fully before. I got it completely
on the second reading of your text. At first I couldn't work out
why there wouldn't be unused votes left over - then I realised that
the quota is calculated by dividing the votes cast by the number
of candidates, and every vote gets used, so I now understand. Actually,
two things occur to me:
Potentially there may be a handful of unused votes left
over due to rounding when calculating the quota (up to one less
than the number of candidates, i.e. up to 5 in your example) -
but as the votes are not sorted, the identity of these unused
votes is randomly determined and therefore should not worry a
reasonable person overmuch. Actually, I think this could be overcome
by rounding the quota up for the purpose of determining whether
a candidate were elected, but rounding it down when allocating
unused votes - in other words, if the quota is, say 1000.5, then
1001 votes must be cast for a candidate in order to elect them,
but only 1000 are allocated to that candidate once elected. So
if 1500 votes are cast for such a candidate, then 500 will be
left over to re-allocate, rather than 499. Does this make any
sense? I hope so, but I've not had time to check it thoroughly,
so please excuse any oversights!
If people express only one, or a limited number, of preferences,
it is possible that their voting slips may end up unused, although
that is the fault of the voter, not the system. However, doesn't
this imply that if too many people do this, there may not be enough
candidates to fill all the seats? Again, I don't consider this
to be a significant drawback, I'm just a mathematician so I like
to analyse everything completely :-)
I wonder what the exact rules are in Eire? Do you think
a copy is available anywhere? I'd be fascinated to read it. I think
I might go and run some computer simulations of various scenarios
to see what happens...
I shall certainly be voting in the election, though I'm not
entirely sure which way yet. The STVS would have made my decision
a lot easier, it must be said. And you are correct - I would have
felt a lot more "represented", whatever the outcome.
Did you really chain yourself to the railings? How exciting!
Were you on TV?
Some further comments about your site:
Raising kids
"I haven't told either of my children
that I do not believe in God, they have yet to ask me. Beetles are
a good grounding for an education in atheism. That worked well for
Darwin. Add in astronomy and dinosaurs and you have a very good
basis. That is my strategy, build up the knowledge that will outflank
the religious mumbo-jumbo. I will not try to indoctrinate them.
I will let them find out the questions for themselves. But if they
ask me any question I give them a straight answer. If they ask me
if I believe in God I will tell them, if they ask why I will tell
them. I think my son will find that pangolins and tapirs and three
thousand species of damselflies offer more insight than his children's
book of Noah's Ark."
I just wanted to say that this is very moving - I nearly
cried when I read it, in spite of (or perhaps because of) not yet
being a parent. You sound like the kind of father that I had when
growing up - one who marvelled at nature and passed on his sense
of wonder to me very effectively. It's a shame I didn't grasp the
full implications right away.
On the realism of fiction...
"In space nobody can hear you scream,
but of course a good explosion can be heard. In space spaceships
fly like aeroplanes, or if they are really big, like ships. A fighter
style space ship flies through the air and through the vacuum of
space in exactly the same way as a Spitfire or F15. They can bank
and turn with the same grace and G forces as if they were using
rudders and flaps against fast moving air. All the action takes
place with an obvious plane of the horizontal. Relative speeds shown
are always in the same order of magnitude as in a jet aircraft dogfight,
stars millions of light-years away blur past as if they were trees
on the ground."
Very funny! Exactly my views, and there are numerous gripes
relating to Hollywood computers too (let me just hack into this
1980s UNIX system, that just happens to know how to display a gloriously-rendered
3D view of a virtual reality merely in order to check my password...).
But in this instance, I'm coming from a "nit-picking" perspective.
The general view I have is rather different, in fact. I disagree
with the statement that all fiction should be more real. I think
the more worthy purpose of art is to inspire us to do better, not
to reflect all of our failings and weaknesses. Haven't you ever
heard of the power of positive thinking? How do you think the world
is ever going to change for the better unless people have hope?
I think people are naturally weak-minded, and literature and other
conceptual art forms, done properly, can inspire them to be better
people.
By the way, the stars are a little closer than a million
light years, but you are still right about their unrealistic movement
:-)
Charity and thrill-seeking
"Why not just donate your income direct,
tell the boss to direct your earnings for the day to the charity
of your choice. Or if your job is so mundane and boring that you
don't want to do it any more than you must why not trade places
with somebody else for the day instead, that way something that
needs doing gets done. And if you want to do something as glamorous
as parachuting or trekking in the Himalayas don't have the nerve
to dress it up as if you are doing it for some good cause and expect
the rest of us to pay for it. I often see people planning their
feats of life affirming daring-do, who select the charity with a
pin, then expect the rest of the gullible people to pay for it all.
"
I have to respond to this, because I actually did
one of those charity parachute jumps! Looking back now, I can see
an element of it that I am uncomfortable with, i.e. the fact that
a proportion of people's contributions paid for my jump (maximum
of 50%, I think it was around 40% in the event). I agree that this
money could, and should, have gone to the charity (cancer research),
not the training centre that provided the facilities. However, on
the other hand, it was a prerequisite condition that I make all
contributors aware of this subsidy element, which I did, and they
were still happy to go ahead (with one exception) - possibly because
they knew me and were quite keen to see whether I'd have the balls
to jump out of an aircraft at 3,500 feet (oops! I mean 1000m, hey
I'm getting the hang of this metric
thing now...) - which of course I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed
the experience. Although I can now see the immoral element of what
I did, surely a utilitarian viewpoint is applicable here? Everyone
knew the score, still paid, I enjoyed myself and the charity got
some money. Nobody was unhappy.
If you haven't done a parachute jump, I can report that,
for me at least, the fear experienced during the plane's ascent
was by far the most terrifying part. Everyone was crammed in on
top of each other, we couldn't see out because there were no windows,
and we couldn't speak because of the noise. So we were each alone
with our thoughts, with only the feeble half-smiles of our companions
for encouragement. However, once I was sitting in the doorway ready
to go, I just looked down and the checkerboard of green fields seemed
as harmless as an aerial photograph in an atlas. The impression
of danger that we get from being high up seems to be attenuated
by the lack of vertical perspective lines (such as the walls of
a high building, if we are standing on the roof). So at the moment
of jumping, I lost all my fear and just did it.
I would certainly do it again (except that I've got loads
of better things to do). The experience of seeing a large empty
space below my dangling feet was a total wonder. It was shortly
after my jump that I started frequenting theme parks to ride roller
coasters (a little hobby of mine that I don't think I've mentioned
yet!) so I'm obviously some kind of sensation-junkie. Oh, well -
I can think of far worse vices :-)
Sociology degrees
"I went to University when sociology
was a trendy subject, cheap to teach, it attracted a lot of lightweight
under-motivated students, a high proportion of women. There was
a joke I remember quite clearly, "Why don't sociology students look
out of the window in the morning? Because they would have nothing
to do in the afternoon."
Anecdote alert!
When I was at Southampton University, there was a piece of
graffiti in the toilets, which consisted of an arrow pointing to
the paper dispenser, with a note saying: SOCIOLOGY DEGREES - PLEASE
TAKE ONE. Well I thought it was funny, anyway!
Once I get started I don't know how to stop, so I'll just
do it!
Thanks for listening.
Mike
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Sociology Degrees
That was a very common bit of graffiti, (or should that be graffito?)
I wonder if they now read "Media Studies Degrees, Please Take One"?
Student humour travels across the country and the world very quickly.
A memetic superhighway of sexual relationships, drug deals, sports
fixtures, student political movements, rag week and musical events
lead to rapid spreading of good graffiti.
Unweaving the Rainbow
It is a great book. The bit about coincidences is probably the
best of its kind. I have often thought in a similar way about coincidences,
we are very good at noticing coincidences but we ignore their raw
material, incidences, there are a dizzying number of incidences
in our lives, the fact that a few of them make patterns is to be
expected. Did you see the picture of ET in a fence that was in some
newspapers? Very ordinary, not a particularly good likeness. Any
shape that is vaguely the shape of a female face or figure is "a
perfect likeness of the Virgin Mary", even if it has a black face.
Any vaguely male face or figure with a hint of a beard is Jesus.
I wonder whether the Soviet Union recorded instances of the face
of Marx appearing in damp plaster? Anything faintly human with a
big beard would do, the same image in Kansas of course would be
declared to be the face of God.
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What about those "faces" on Mars?
Would you consider building a structure significantly bigger
than Avebury or Mount Rushmore and depict such a lousy image?
Not me, if I was in charge of something like that I would
do something as obviously representational as the faces of
Easter Island or the lines in the Peruvian desert (in that
place I can't spell with confidence). The last thing that
any megalomaniac Martian pharaoh would do is to make something
vast that might be dismissed as natural.
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Death
I think I understand now, the concept of death as scary. It has
never really bothered me that much. The obvious inevitability of
it takes away the edge of fear. The idea of worrying about an inevitability
is just a logical absurdity. The fundamental weirdness of the concept
is something that has not worried me unduly either, perhaps it will
now, thanks.
Drugs and the Brain
I am curious about what the effects of drugs are on the brain and
the mind. I am reading a book about that subject now, Susan Greenfield,
"The Private Life of The Brain". It is a fascinating topic. I do
not expect that people taking drugs will be able to understand reality
any better, but they may, if properly studied, reveal a lot about
the way we see the world, including what makes a horror film frightening,
and why some people still want to watch them.
I don't like horror films. I find them tedious. Even thrillers
are in the same sort of category. I watch many good films like Jaws
and Back to The Future and feel that I want to fast forward
through the adrenaline invoking scenes and just get on with the
story. I resent having my emotions toyed with by artificial stimulation,
especially when my rational brain can see the strings. I also dislike
slushy films for similar reasons, and also because I am very easily
affected, I am very emotional, I sometimes cry in job interviews,
which rarely helps. Watching TV with my family can be a problem
when my wife and daughter are blubbing away because of something
on the screen, I put on a gruff voice and say it's rubbish, I'll
go and check my email, again.
MSM
Good point. I have always been the kind of person that questions
things. It always struck me as rather odd to check the mirror before
signalling although I can see the occasion which it might be a good
idea. Consider you are going to overtake and somebody is already
overtaking you, a signal from you (unaware of their presence on
your offside wing) might cause them to panic. By checking first
you can be sure that there is nobody in the middle of an awkward
manoeuvre who might be spooked by your signal into doing something
dangerous. Although it would make more sense to point that out at
the time rather than teaching a rule without explaining the reasons,
because there are lots of people who will ignore rules they do not
understand.
Star Wars
Star Wars was playing in the shop today. It was so transparent,
Han Solo is a guy with a hot rod, at times it turns into a B17 dodging
flak, at other times it is an aircraft carrier under attack by Japanese
fighters in the Pacific. Luke is a cowboy, son of a Oklahoma prairie
farmer gone to seek his fortune as a gunslinger and to save the
princess from the ogre's tower. They travel around with a gay jester
and an uppity pedal bin.
But don't forget the thoroughly evil scene when the rational American
rationalist is put in his place by the special effects and the script,
proving that mind is more powerful than matter. (The bit where the
bloke with a chamber pot on his head fences with an angry football
and beats it.) If it was any cheesier you could serve it with crackers.
I have just been struck by a curse of modern technology. Word's
grammar checker doesn't like me to use the phrase any more cheesy,
so it suggests cheesier, which ten seconds later the spell
checker objects to. Now I have put both in a sentence, so what will
you do about it? (Is it a sign of madness to be writing to my software?
Or should that be writing AT my software? And is there any writer
in the world who uses as many question marks as I do? And is that
something to be worried about or proud of?)
Is this sad or what, I just checked it out with my Concise Oxford
Dictionary and so I will stick with cheesier. (Oh stop it! I'm right,
you're wrong, leave me alone. Now what! Stops it? Are you mad?)
(See screenshot for the full sublime comedy effect)
I don't really know the precise mathematics, so I have rewritten
the page in a way that should preserve my blushes if I get it a
bit wrong. I am not a naturally mathematical person, not by any
stretch of the imagination. I suppose if you are really keen there
is likely to be a public information site that explains it for the
Irish people. Am I that curious? No.
I did once fully understand it, the system is widely used in student
council elections. I stood to be returning officer and lost to some
cretin with more friends and less of a clue as to what it was all
about. As part of my campaign I made sure I could conduct a single
transferable vote with my eyes closed while under enemy fire, and
drunk.
My Arrest
It was a carefully managed stunt. The ringleaders had discovered
that the normal by-laws that protect the Palace of Westminster from
such activity have to be enacted afresh for each parliamentary session,
so on the day in question it was not a serious offence, so we knew
the worst that could happen was a charge of obstruction. It was
timed to coincide with an orderly procession of newly elected Liberal
and SDP MPs, we knew there would be cameras.
I was one of 15 students, principally the national committee of
the Student Campaign for Electoral Reform and their flatmates and/or
sleeping partners, but no law students. We were tipped off not to
go if we were studying law as a conviction might be bad for the
career. (So very radical, that part). It was all over in about two
minutes. We turned up in a couple of taxis, got out the chains and
chained ourselves to the railings. A couple of shouts and the TV
crews were around us, a couple more and the police were there with
bolt cutters. We were bundled off to the station and held in the
cells for about forty minutes then bailed. We then got taken to
the National Liberal Club for tea.
We got a one year conditional discharge for obstruction. Slap hands
naughty children if you do it again. No damage to property, other
than the chain bought for the purpose, no harm to the public, I
didn't see anybody obstructed, any passers-by enjoyed the show.
Apparently we made about ten seconds each on BBC and ITN news.
Charity Jump
Perhaps I was a little hard on them, or maybe not. I hope I never
get some eager extrovert shoving a form in front of me asking for
sponsorship to have their head shaved or anything of the sort. Perhaps
our society needs activities like this for the mesomorphs
with more vitality and enthusiasm than is good for the rest of society,
a better alternative than a crusade. Alternatively I suppose we
could just reinstate the idea of the knightly quest, and send them
all off on some foolish and potentially fatal search for something
we don't really need and never expect to find; the Holy Grail, the
fountain of youth or Manchester City's trophy room.
Martin
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If you would like a copy of the book, "The Hitch-Hiker's
Guide To The Galaxy", please write to:
Megadodo Publications
Megadodo House
Ursa Minor
enclosing three pounds ninety-five for the book, plus five
hundred and ninety-seven billion, eight hundred and twelve thousand,
four hundred and six pounds, 7p postage and packing.
I have a theory: the number intended was probably 597,812,406.07,
but Peter Jones said 'billion' where he should have said 'million',
so it ended up as 597,000,812,406.07 - or is it 597,000,000,812,406.07?
It depends how you define a billion. I may have more to say about
this in another email :-)
Hope this helps
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Thanks, that is exactly what I wanted. [Hitch Hiker information]
It strengthens my "memory is a vector, not a bitmap" theory. I
knew the gist, the cadence and the essence of the joke, but I forgot
most of the actual words.
Have you any ideas about how I raise the profile of the site? I
have managed to bring quite a few people in, keep some for a while,
and encourage some to revisit sporadically but I still come across
far too many people who find it in a rather random way, like yourself.
There must be a huge potential audience out there that is currently
untapped, people who would love to find the site but don't know
to look. Any suggestions are welcome. I have posted a notice about
the quiz to 12 newsgroups this morning, including alt.mensa, rec.games.trivia
and free.uk.puzzles. I have also hit a few (OK, 18) groups with
a posting about pornography including a few likely sounding political
and religious groups. I need some more ideas. By the way, if you
ever have a few hours to kill you can dig up a quite ridiculous
amount of stuff by tapping "martin willett" into any search engine
that is savvy about newsgroups.
The way the Internet is growing at the moment is quite mind numbing
isn't it? To think, a mere 500 years ago it was just about practical
for a man to learn everything worth knowing, to read every significant
book published in Europe and to be fluent in all the important languages.
Now the equivalent feat would be quite unthinkable, it is tough
enough to keep abreast of a single narrowly defined subject matter
or to have a journalist's working general knowledge of a few topics.
I can't even follow a few threads in a couple of newsgroups and
watch the few TV programs that are worth the effort without missing
stuff. Can our culture go on expanding exponentially like this without
the people burning out? Will we all have to have a brain the size
of a planet to cope?
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Hi Martin,
glad I could help with the HH stuff. I've been compiling
this email for a few days now, during which time we've had a couple
of other conversations, hence the topics are drawn from diverse
sources!
Woo-hooo! The library had a copy of "The Selfish Gene"
today! Needless to say , I have bagged it, but I won't start it
until next week because I want to finish my Adams book first ("Last
Chance To See..." - it's very funny and interesting, have you read
it?).
Hitch-hiker links http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2
- The Earth edition of the Guide, as founded by The Digital Village,
under the influence of Douglas (I use the term 'influence' in a
similar way to 'under the influence of alcohol' - and probably with
good reason!).
The rest will have to follow when I get home, as that's where
my main bookmark list is!
"Memory is a vector, not a bitmap"
I like this. Reminds me of one of those "whatever happened
to...?" Tomorrow's World items. The one I'm thinking of is "fractal
TV". The idea was to transmit a continuous signal that could be
received by any television of whatever resolution, and still used
to display the same image. The scan line, instead of moving gradually
down the screen from left to right, wiggled about instead, in a
"fractal" pattern, meaning that it looked the same at whatever magnification
level one chose. The result: Low-resolution screens could ignore
the smaller wiggles and use their average value to display a coarser
image, while high-resolution ones could make full use of the information.
A great idea, but one that has been superseded before it even got
going, following the development of MPEG.
I just thought that your analogy of vectors and bitmaps
was quite similar, i.e. I had the high-res picture of the information,
and you only had the low-res, but because of the similarity, you
still knew what shape it was. I also wonder whether biochemistry
has any good examples of an analogy to this.
Raising profile of site
One general idea occurs to me: I may be wrong, but I get
the feeling that your site is currently 'seeded' to attract humanities
people - I don't think this is intentional, but that's the impression
I get. I think there are a lot of scientific types out there (like
me!) who are also interested in politics/philosophy etc., and would
be turned on by the evolutionary ideas too. Maybe it would be worth
trawling a few science communities. Perhaps a few 'trolls' in the
science groups, while not necessarily as confrontational as those
in religious ones, could nevertheless be a way of sparking interest?
The Web
Yes, I find the world wide web quite awesome now. I remember
that even as far back as 1995 (wow, that sounds stupid in geological
terms!), when I began to use it, it seemed like a global encyclopaedia.
I seem to remember waxing lyrical about it one night when I had
some friends over for dinner. They of course wanted a demonstration,
and I obliged by picking up an empty wine bottle, entering into
a search engine the name of the particular type of Benedictine Monks
who made the wine, and coming up with two or three scholarly articles
about the monasteries, their history, the fact that they made wine
and all the rest of it. No-one was more impressed than I was, because
that was the first time I had really searched for anything that
I considered obscure, and it hadn't let me down.
The only thing I think we have to watch is that there is
so much bullshit out there - I'm sure you'll agree with me on that.
The trick, of course, is to develop a feel for which web authors
are trustworthy and which have ulterior profit motives or are ignorant
- or both!
Quiz
OK, I'll see if I can come up with some more questions, but
you know by now that they'll probably have a science/maths bias!
I've also sent you some answers for quiz 3, but I haven't
done very well, I'm afraid! Now, give me a cryptic crossword and
it might be a different matter... While I think of it, I was going
to remind you to update your A-Z index and contents pages - I think
they should both refer to the Quiz page(s).
Rednecks and Rattlesnakes
I've just read your new article about heroes. I like it very
much. You covered the problem of a/immorality very well, and for
years I have been living with the same feelings of discomfort, identified
only as a mild irritation at seeing yet another Sheriff's car pull
out behind a stranger ("Y'ain't fruhm 'round these parts, are
yah, bwoy?"). I had come to feel that the whole 'Southern State'
thing must be exaggerated. Surely they can't all be racist, intolerant
rednecks with corrupt police forces (though undoubtably, some are)?
I think Hollywood has all-too-easily jumped on the 'Southerners-are-stupid'
bandwagon, and is, ironically, just as guilty as its fictional rednecks,
of a different kind of racism!
An interesting exception to this rule is the scene near
the end of "Porky's": Having crossed the county line, Porky's
car gets smashed up by the "Good Sheriff" while the "Bad Sheriff"
and his henchmen can only look helplessly on from a few paces away
in their own county. This is obviously a bit of an ambiguous exception,
but I thought it'd be a laugh to mention it anyway :-)
I do think that more needs to be said about how heroes should
be portrayed in fiction, as well as how they shouldn't. My idea
of a "correctly-portrayed" hero would be any character who shows
integrity, not perfection; humanity, not slushiness; tenacity, not
dogmatism; defence-of-the-innocent, not gratuitous violence. In
other words, someone that people can see is potentially real, but
whom they can also emulate in an attempt to better themselves.
I know this sounds quite moralistic and stuffy, but I believe
that the purpose of fiction (and many forms of art in general) is
not only one of entertainment, but also one of propagation of good
memes. People are naturally lazy, tending towards at best an apathetic
attitude, at worst a criminal one. Surely a few morality tales thrown
into the mix can only do good, not harm.
Sobering thoughts from a commuter
According to my Dilbert desk calendar, today is National
Environment Day (June 5th). This made me wonder idly whether I could
do my bit by walking home. Then it hit me, what it would actually
mean for me to walk home the 43 miles from Farnborough to Southampton.
It's a huge distance, and I estimate that, even if I didn't have
a particularly bad back today (which I do: it comes from lifting
too many keyboards and amps in and out of vans during most of my
twenties...), it would certainly take me a lot longer to cover the
distance than the time I've spent at work today. Probably about
twice as long, in fact, allowing for getting tired and taking breaks.
I think it's all too easy to forget what an enormous impact the
car has had on our lives.
Seeing the strings
I, too, get impatient at action scenes in films - although
it does depend what mood I'm in; sometimes I 'veg out' and just
let it all wash over me. For my mental health, I probably shouldn't
- but I get tired and can't be bothered to focus. Anyway, I have
a long history of spotting errors on TV and in films. I think it's
down to my time spent in the film-making club at University, and
subsequent lodging in the house of a bloke who was in the same club,
and went on to make videos for a living. He was constantly showing
me the smoke and mirrors, and I fell into the habit too. I know
that it annoys some people, but sometimes I can't help myself, I'll
sit there watching TV and say stuff like:
"I can actually hear three voices and there's only one
person singing"
"A car wouldn't survive that jump"
"I just saw that brick wall rock in the breeze!" (Prisoner
Cell Block H)
"Boom in shot!"
or even
"if they're really having sex, his willy's L-shaped!"
There's even a book about this - I've got it at home somewhere.
It's called "The Killjoy's Book Of The Cinema: A Schmovie-Goer's
Companion". It lists hundreds of films and tells you exactly where
the mistakes are in them. Most are trivial continuity errors like
someone's hat teleporting to their head from a hook between shots,
but many are more serious, and some are downright hilarious.
What is a billion?
This question has bothered me since childhood. The original
English billion was 1E12, or 1,000,000,000,000. The U.S. billion
has always been 1E9, or 1,000,000,000. Both countries now seem to
have adopted 1E9 as the standard.
I can think of good reasons for adopting either of the two,
and it is one of those situations where practicality has triumphed
over logic. To explain:
1E12 is the logical choice. Why? Because of
the "avoid repetition" rule: Make up a new name for a power of ten
when you have actually run out of names, but not before. This rule,
unfortunately, does have one exception, but is otherwise quite straightforward.
So,
1E0 is 1 known as "one"
1E1 is 10, known as "ten"
1E2 is 100, known as "a hundred"in order to
avoid having to say "ten tens"
1E3 is 1,000, known as " a thousand" (this is the exception,
because we could have said "ten hundred"!)
1E4 is 10,000, known as "ten thousand" (combination of words)
1E5 is 100,000, known as "a hundred thousand"
1E6 is 1,000,000, known as "a million" in order to avoid
having to say "a thousand thousands" etc.
I think that the exception of a thousand can be allowed because
a thousand is a number that is manageable in human terms - we can
just about picture it (e.g. a 10x10x10 cube), but we can't really
picture anything much larger without abstract reasoning. Therefore,
its more everyday use makes it a candidate for having its own special
name.
This rule makes it clear that 1E9 is to be called "a thousand
million", and the word "billion" is not needed until we reach 1E12.
1E9 is the practical choice. Why? Mainly because
of capitalism. Large corporations and governments earn or spend
figures that are more often expressed as thousands of millions than
they are as millions of millions. Hence, it is wasteful to say "a
thousand million", and the word "billion" is easier. It is exactly
the same kind of exception as "thousand", above, except that in
this case a much larger number has become one that has an everyday
meaning, due to increasingly global societies and volumes of trade.
I would imagine that if a million million were ever mentioned on
the news, that is precisely what they would call it - "a million
million".
As for trillion, quadrillion and the rest of them, I'm not
even going to go there at this stage! Let the dictionary-compilers
sort them out :-)
Mike
Disgraceful, isn't it? The turnout, I mean :-(
I was very interested to see this map:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/results_constituencies/pol_
map.stm
It seems that, seen from space, the tories have almost equalled
labour :-|
Of course what it really shows is that tory voters live in
rural areas and there aren't so many of them per square mile...!
Mike
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Voting is important, it is the equivalent of joining the family
around the dinner table or getting up and following your visitors
to the door when they leave or inviting your flatulent uncle to
your family party; it is a bonding ritual. By voting you show that
you care.
I hate the shallow cynicism so prevalent today, especially among
the young. "They're only in it for themselves" they all bleat, with
no evidence, and agree with each other mindlessly. That attitude
is widespread but it is dead wrong. Most politicians have the ability
to earn more outside the house than in it and very few people go
into politics as a career move. People do it to serve, to do good
as they see it. That goes for the vast majority of them in all parties.
Things may well be different in countries where corruption is endemic,
but where fair play and democracy hold sway politicians are men
and women of honour.
As in any walk of life there are shady dealings and murky motives,
the odd person who has their own amoral attitude but as a rule I
would trust a politician more than the average citizen. An occupational
hazard of politics is having to say things which you know could
be expressed in a different way, not lies as much as simple spin,
putting a gloss on the story. This is as inevitable for a politician
as it is to many other walks of life. I have been involved with
direct sales and estate agency and I have seen politicians up close
and personal. I don't regard politicians as any more dishonest as
any salesman, and many are as honourable as any person you are ever
likely to meet. Only a backbench MP can be free to speak the truth,
but they are not expected to, they are expected to toe the party
line and to stand up for their constituency, even to gain an unfair
advantage for their constituency.
Another way of looking at that map is that the Tories own more
extensive property. Did you notice the snobby accents of so many
of the Tory candidates? It was quite noticeable. The journalists,
Labour and Liberal Democrats seemed to have a range of voices with
slight regional accents (except Shawn Woodward, obviously) but the
Tories stood out, Hague was not typical of his party. So many Tory
candidates (thankfully largely defeated candidates) came across
as Public School educated Hooray Henrys.
But the biggest impression was, as you noted, the disgracefully
low turnout.
Do you remember that woman who shouted at Tony Blair about hospitals?
You should have done this that and the other, blah, blah, rant,
rant. And when a journalist asked which way she voted last time
she said she didn't, and wouldn't. She was a disgrace. What did
you think about John Prescott's eggschange of views escapade?
I think it is disgraceful that people treat politicians like that,
treating them as objects. Politicians are people first and deserve
simple good manners. By all means wave placards, and by all means
shout for a time (but not all the time) but throwing things at people
is wrong. Violence like that is totally inappropriate.
Well, I'd better leave it at that or I'll start sounding like an
announcer on The Home Service, as it is I have a vision of Sir Alec
Douglas Home
floating about in my head, I must shift that before I go to bed
or I'll never get a good night's sleep. (Never mind that shag).
Martin
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Hi Martin,
Just been reading some of "Mark
7" and I spotted the chart (graph about ice ages). If the pattern
on this chart continues, I reckon we have about another 20,000 years.
Take a look at it. The scale is non-linear. The last "stable period",
even though it looks titchy, is about 30,000 years long. Am I right?
So what's the fuss about then? :-)
Mike
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Don't ask me, ask Mark, there is a link to his email on the page.
Personally I see the pattern of chaos most of the time and relative
stability at the "present", which might end and resume the more
normal chaos, ice ages etc. But talk to Mark.
Martin
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