The Beautiful Hypothesis

This can be solved only one way...Manson/Goulding rap battle!

2011-10-25T22:20:00.000+01:00

I've been listening to a lot of music recently, thanks to my shiny Android phone, my shiny headphones, and my new habit of listening to music at work (thanks, co-workers with annoyingly loud headphones of their own). This has led me to discover quite a bit of new stuff, and it's also caused me to discover anew a principle that I already knew — namely, don't judge a book by its cover.

That's unnecessarily cryptic, so let me expand a bit. When you're looking around for music (and I'm thinking particularly of people buying music for others, maybe for kids), there's a great temptation to listen to a couple of tracks and get a quick impression based on those. That's not something I can really fault that much, as people are often rushed for time; that said, it can be a pretty bad idea, because what you see on the surface of a track is not what you see underneath. That point was driven home for me recently when listening to a couple of songs whose worth (or otherwise) is not necessarily apparent from a casual listen.

The first is Garbage's track "Sex Is Not The Enemy", off their 2005 album Bleed Like Me. Garbage are possibly the most adolescent band I can think of. I don't mean that in a bad way at all — their music certainly doesn't lack for either skill or sophistication. Rather, I mean that no other band I know can capture the feeling of what it's like to be about 16, knotted up with anger and anxiety and uncertainty, but also knowing that the entire world with all its potential is not far away from you. The energy of their songs, topped off by Shirley Manson's distinctive voice, means it's no surprise that they appeal to the young.

They probably don't appeal much to parents, though, given that Garbage's lyrics tend to be pretty unapologetic in their coverage of sex, violence and politics. And let's be fair, if you were a parent who had just heard their daughter listening to the song below (or worse, seen the video, what with Manson rolling around on a bed and getting her pixelated boobs out), there's a chance you wouldn't be overly happy about it.

Now, there's plenty to criticise about that song, and it would be pretty easy to take a message away from it of "have lots of sex all the time, right on!" But dismissing it entirely on that basis would be a big mistake. Let's have a closer look at some of the lyrics.

I don't feel guilty
No matter what they're telling me
I won't feel dirty and buy into their misery
I won't be shamed cause I believe that love is free
It fuels the heart and sex is not my enemy

Any song that is telling young women not to feel shamed, not to feel dirty, and not to let anyone else use their sexuality to make them miserable instantly puts it miles above a lot of the dreck that gets pumped out into the charts these days. And if you'd avoid the song because you're a Christian...take a look at the third verse.

True love is like gold
There's not enough to go around
But then there's God and doesn't God love everyone?
Give me a choice
Give me a chance to turn the key and find my voice
Sex is not the enemy

Yep, direct appeal to the universal and all-pervading love of God to argue against the horrendous Hollywood concept of "there's one person who is your perfect soulmate and you must search for them alone". The theology is possibly a mite dubious there, but those are still some pretty powerful and thoughtful lyrics. Not bad for a thrashy, provocative teenagers' song, eh?

Now let's go to the other end of the scale, where you might find someone like Ellie Goulding. I should probably mention that I quite like Goulding — she's got a great voice, and her fusion of folk, pop and electronica is pretty unusual and works really rather well. "Starry Eyed" and "Under The Sheets", in particular, are very good and well worth a listen. But then you have something like...well, this:

That's "The Writer", off Goulding's debut Lights. Our hypothetical parent is probably feeling pretty good about this one. It's a gentle, twinkly ballad, with some lovely imagery in a soaring chorus. Frankly, Goulding being an unthreatening, pretty young woman isn't going to hurt matters either. But once again, let's have a closer look at some of the lyrics.

You wait for a silence
I wait for a word
Lie next to your frame
Girl unobserved
You change your position
And you are changing me
Casting these shadows
Where they shouldn't be

We're interrupted by the heat of the sun
Trying to prevent what's already begun
You're just a body
I can smell your skin
And when I feel it, you're wearing thin

Nothing too strange there, right? I suppose there's a couple of slightly ominous hints — what is that's "already begun" that they're "trying to prevent"? What does it mean that he's "wearing thin"? Well, maybe we'll get some more out of the second verse.

Sat on your sofa...it's all broken springs
This isn't the place for those violin strings
I try out a smile and I aim it at you
You must have missed it
You always do

Well, that's even more ominous. In context, "violin strings" are probably a metaphor for romance, which apparently is lacking in this relationship. "You must have missed it / You always do" is more worrying, as that seems to imply that there's not a lot of warmth here; having to "try out a smile" doesn't sound good. This also puts a nasty spin on "girl unobserved" from the first verse — I don't think our unnamed dude is paying Ellie much attention at all, and things are slipping badly. So what's a girl to do in this situation? Hit us with the chorus, Ellie!

But I've got a plan
Why don't you be the artist; and make me out of clay?
Why don't you be the writer and decide the words I say?
Because I'd rather pretend
I'll still be there at the end
Only it's too hard to ask... won't you try to help me

Now, call me paranoid, but that sounds a lot — an awful lot — like Goulding's proposed solution is to allow herself to be changed entirely. The message, in brief, reads very much like "you don't love me any more, so I'm going to let you change me into someone that you do love". I may be misinterpreting it, but if that's the message I took away from it, it wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of Goulding's audience (many of whom will be teenage girls) did the same.

And that message, right there? That is poisonous. Yes, relationships involve give and take, and a certain amount of change on both sides is inevitable. But the idea of handing over complete control of one's character to another person, particularly when it's a girl suggesting this course of action, is worrying on a whole lot of levels. The icing on the horrible, horrible cake is the line "Because I'd rather pretend / I'll still be there at the end", suggesting that Goulding's character in the song is happy to just fake it, being in the relationship for the sake of it while she subsumes her own identity into that of her partner.

If it's a choice between young people listening to that, and having Shirley Manson declaim sexual liberation messages at them with a megaphone? Bring on the Garbage.

Anyone who even thinks of the word "midichlorians" is not welcome here.

2011-01-18T23:36:00.000Z

(Yes, I know it's been the best part of a year since I posted here. No, this probably isn't the start of a resurgence in posting. Sorry to disappoint.)

As a fully certified geek, it is not at all surprising that I'm entirely familiar with the Star Wars universe. I hear and recite quotations from the films frequently, I own two of the video games, I can give you a potted summary of the "Han shot first" controversy at the drop of a hat — I have certain credentials here, is what I'm saying.

So I was rather surprised to realise recently that not only did I not own any of the films in any format, it had actually been well over ten years since I had seen any of them. (We're talking the original trilogy here, of course — my geek cred extends far enough to know that the recent prequels, aka abominations against the very concept of cinema, don't count.) So, taking advantage of the January sales, I headed into London to pick up the DVD box set, and spent a reflective couple of hours the other night watching Episode IV.

It took me a while after finishing watching it to decide what I thought of it. Given that the established wisdom of...well, pretty much everyone I know, with the exception of my mother, who wanted to take a tin-opener to C-3PO when she first saw him...is that the original films are classics of modern cinema, masterpieces that soar above lesser films like an X-Wing twisting between bursts of turbolaser fire, it's difficult to have any kind of unbiased viewpoint here. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, here are my conclusions. (One note on formatting in this post &mdash I'll use the italicised Star Wars to denote Episode IV, as that's its original theatrical title, and plain Star Wars to denote the franchise.)

1. Good grief, this is EPIC.
From the opening shot, as an Imperial cruiser (I don't think the term "Star Destroyer" is mentioned anywhere in the first film) slides almost endlessly across the top of the screen, to the climactic battle above a space station the size of a moon, Star Wars has a sense of scale unlike almost any other film. This continues almost everywhere &mdash our heroes move between entire star systems, at speeds greater than light, landing on worlds that consist entirely of desert, fighting an Empire that, we're told, spans the galaxy. Lucas went all-out to create this compelling atmosphere, and he pulls it off admirably.

2. Intergalactic Planetary Planetary Intergalactic
An essential element of the sense of scale throughout Star Wars is John Williams' score. It's utterly beautiful, moving from urgency to wonder to triumph to shock with ease. I was surprised that even after having so long over the years to become sick of it, the mournful theme as Luke looks out over the desert he's so desperate to leave behind was still really moving. As with his score for Jurassic Park, Williams came up with something at once unique and yet very obviously his own.

3. It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know
As Ben Kenobi strode onto the screen, I began to wonder "how did they persuade Alec Guinness to appear in as large a gamble as this?" I think the answer has to be that Guinness could tell he was among people who knew what they were doing. All the casting is inspired — Mark Hamill probably wouldn't thank me for saying that he really looks and sounds very ordinary in this film, but that's precisely what was required for the role of an everyman farm boy, caught up into something larger than himself. Carrie Fisher is as Princessy as you could wish for (in looks, if not in character — more on that later). Even the Rebel fighter pilots and the various generals on the bridge of the Death Star are well-portrayed. (And, as Eddie Izzard is fond of pointing out, they're all British.)

As for Harrison Ford, well, it's a shame that he picked up the "action hero" stereotype in this franchise, because he really can act. There's a scene towards the end, when Obi-Wan has just died (or been absorbed by the Force, or whatever — the film's intentionally ambiguous here) and Luke is sitting on board the Millennium Falcon, stunned and unable to take it in ("...can't believe he's gone."). Han Solo comes down the ladder to find Luke, as he's going to need him to fend off Imperial fighters, and he says just one thing: "Come on buddy, we're not out of this yet." It's a simple line, over almost immediately, but Ford's delivery of it is pitch-perfect, conveying kindness without being at all sentimental, and still maintaining the urgency required by the situation. It's worth noting here that the script is also better than one might expect from a sci-fi blockbuster — I'm not certain, but I think this is the first time Solo refers to Luke as "buddy" rather than "kid", and the quiet character development signalled by that tiny change is significant.

4. My Explanations, Let Me Not Show You Them
One of the most surprising aspects of Star Wars, for me, was the extent to which it doesn't fall into the trap of so many bits of sci-fi, that of over-explaining everything. We're treated to practically no backstory for any of the characters, at no point does anyone tell us just how a lightsaber works, the Force is vague and mysterious. The most stunning example of this was when Han Solo talks to Greedo and then Jabba — there are no subtitles, despite both the characters he meets speaking completely alien languages, and we're left to decipher what they must have said from Solo's side of the conversation. (Come to think of it, my DVD-playing setup is a little ropey, so the subtitles may simply have been broken. If that's the case, then feel free to disregard this point!) This general attitude towards the viewers — that they are intelligent enough to figure out what's going on, and that the story is more important than explaining the fine details of the setting — is refreshing, and really helps to move things along.

5. I Am No Man
Speaking of subverting expectations, I was really impressed by the role of Leia. The word "princess", when applied to a film role, is usually code for "fairly drippy character whose involvement in the plot is restricted to a) getting captured and/or rescued, and b) falling in love with the male lead". And yet our first sighting of Leia is when she is confronting the 7-foot tall, half-man-half-machine-all-evil Darth Vader. And it is a confrontation — she chews him out for boarding a diplomatic vessel, threatens him with the wrath of the Galactic Senate, and shows no fear whatsoever. This kind of can-do attitude isn't a one-time thing, either — she's the one who gets them out of the detention levels, she's the only character who cottons on to the fact that their escape from the Death Star was too easy, and she's pretty handy with a blaster too. Even though there is a romantic subtext between her and Han, it's never over-the-top, and she maintains the upper hand throughout — note that in the ceremony at the end, it's Luke and Han who have to walk up to Leia to receive their reward, not the other way around.

6. Aaaaaaaagh I'm Running Out Of Time
And so we come to the only thing I really didn't like about Star Wars. At the end of the film it took me a while to put my finger on why, though I'd enjoyed it a lot, I'd also found it a bit disappointing. I think the answer can be summed up in one word: Pacing.

The impression throughout the film is that, much like me when starting to write one of these epically long posts, Lucas thought he had all the time in the world. We spend seemingly forever in and around Luke's home, meeting Obi-Wan, and following the droids. Oh, man, the droids. Is there any particular reason why we had to go through the whole "R2-D2 and C-3PO go off in opposite directions, complain for a few minutes, get captured by the same set of characters and have a glorious robotic reunion" storyline? It has precisely no bearing on any of the rest of the plot, and could equally well have been done by simply having the Jawas find the escape pod as soon as it landed. As it stands, this and other scripting and editing decisions mean that the first half of the film moves glacially slowly.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a film that runs slowly to give the audience time to take in the atmosphere. Nor is there anything wrong with a film that builds pace throughout. But Star Wars does this to a ridiculous extent, such that it takes at least a good quarter of the film before we've met all the main cast, while the final battle, from the Millennium Falcon landing on Yavin to the destruction of the Death Star, takes place in-universe in less than half an hour.

Even the pacing within some of the scenes is odd. Take the destruction of the Death Star, for instance. Luke drops his bombs into the shaft, he and Han fly off, Vader spins away, we cut to the people on the Death Star looking unconcerned, and then it immediately blows up. The whole sequence has taken a couple of seconds at most. No anticipation, no time to wait for it, just BOOM. For me, at least, that took a lot away from what should have been the climactic shot of the film.

For much the same reason, the final ceremony is unsatisfying, because it feels forced and tacked-on, leaving completely unresolved the question of what the Rebels are going to do next, how the Empire is going to be destroyed (it's only lost one of its weapons, and is far from powerless) or even how the various character relationships are going to work. From a position of knowing that there were two more films, it's not so bad that things haven't been resolved — we know there's more story to come. But if you're going to do that, you surely have to either do an explicit "to be continued" type of ending (as the Lord of the Rings films did) or make the films stand entirely on their own (as the Matrix films would have done, had there been any sequels). Star Wars, however, doesn't know what it wants to do and it ends up falling between two stools, with a rushed and unsatisfying ending that leaves too many questions open.

Obviously, given that I've just spent 1800 words discussing this film, I found a lot to enjoy, and I'm certainly glad I came back to revisit this touchstone of geek culture. If you agree or disagree with me, feel free to argue violently in the comments. And maybe — just maybe — come back soon when I re-watch The Empire Strikes Back...

Your Vote Matters (Well, To A Certain Extent, I Suppose)

2010-05-04T23:50:00.001+01:00

OK, sorry for yet another politics post, particularly after such a long gap, but we're almost at the election! The day after tomorrow, the polls will open and Britain will flock to cast their vote for whoever they want to lead us for the next however many years it is.

Well, some of them will, anyway. One of the major problems with our first-past-the-post electoral system is that it's entirely too easy to find yourself stuck in a constituency where your preferred candidate has not the faintest chance of being elected, even if they're from one of the major parties. And in those circumstances, it's completely understandable that a lot of people will simply not bother, or vote for someone who's kind of close to their preference, but isn't quite what they were after. I think that's a shame.

So, I'm going to use this space to give you three good reasons why you should vote, and moreover why you should vote for the person you actually want to get in rather than the person who might make it. I may as well note before I start that the cornerstone of democracy is that everyone is free to cast their vote for whoever they want, for whatever reason they want, or indeed not to vote at all. If you want to vote for the BNP to "send a message" to the "political elite", for instance, that's your democratic right. (That said, we have a great tradition of free speech in this country, so it's also my right to call you a complete idiot if you do.) Essentially, I'm fully aware that if you don't want to vote for anyone, or if you want to vote tactically, that's absolutely your right, so don't let me guilt you into it. But if you'd care to read on, here's why there might be a better option.

First, parties become competitive by people voting for them when they are not competitive. That's been the Liberal Democrat pattern for ages — they very rarely take a seat out of nowhere, but rather do it over two or more electoral cycles, slowly gaining enough support to be seen as potential challengers to the incumbent, at which point enough people take them seriously to get them the rest of the way. Another example is the Greens, who haven't had a decent shot at a Parliamentary constituency since their formation, but who stand a reasonable chance of taking Brighton Pavilion this time around. So even if the vote you cast for a non-competitive party this time around doesn't get them into office, people will look at the vote total next time. Not just the voters, but also the parties themselves — the more people vote for them in a given constituency, the higher the chances that they'll pour some more cash into campaigning there in the future.

Secondly, people look at the popular vote. Even in our voting system, where the popular vote is technically irrelevant, it gets a lot of attention from the parties when they're campaigning or when they're trying to argue that their opinion should be taken more seriously. And in this election, where there's a reasonable chance of the Liberal Democrats coming second in the popular vote but a distant third in seats (and of Labour coming first in seats despite coming second or even third in the popular vote), the popular vote is likely to be a powerful argument in favour of voting reform. When we're talking about popular votes, every vote is as important as every other.

Thirdly — and perhaps most importantly — this is the least predictable election for a generation. The Lib Dem surge caught everyone unawares (watching the Conservatives scrabble madly to regain the initiative after the first debate was a particular highlight for me, I have to admit), and with this coming on top of the expenses scandal (which has resulted in around a hundred MPs not seeking re-election), a lot of constituencies are suddenly way more open than they have been for years. In short, unless we get some kind of voting reform before the next election, this may well be the public's best chance for decades to upset the normal order of things and bring a bit of variety to politics. Don't blow it now!

Campaigning is in its final stretch, and if you haven't decided who to vote for yet, you're almost out of time. Whatever the outcome, this is the most exciting election the UK's seen for ages and the possibilities are fantastic. I don't know about you, but I for one am looking forward to it.

Politics is always improved by a little injection of Science.

2010-03-31T21:03:00.000+01:00

We're into the last few weeks before the General Election. At least, I assume we are, our Glorious Leader having apparently neglected to officially call one, and seeming to want to hang on until the last possible minute. And who can blame him, frankly? The poll numbers have been showing the Conservative lead evaporating recently, going down from a lead of around 18% last July to a mere 7% or so. The Budget seems to have pushed it back in their favour (not unusually, given how people don't tend to like being told they're going to pay more), but whether that's the start of a new trend back towards the blue end of the scale or a mere blip on the way to the great British public being completely undecided is something we just won't know for a little while longer.

Either way, it's an exciting time in politics, and the pollsters are having a lovely time. But how do we interpret the poll results? Well, I've been letting my geeky side (which is, I must admit, pretty enormous compared to my non-geeky side) run riot a little more than usual, with the result that I'm now in a position to put forward a tentative projection.

There's two main ways of predicting Parliamentary results based on poll figures. The first is the Uniform Swing Projection. In a nutshell, this method compares the vote share predicted by a poll with the vote share at the previous election to calculate the swing towards or away from each party, then applies that swing to the vote share in each separate constituency.

It's not the most sophisticated way of doing predictions, and suffers from a few limitations. For example, a strong negative swing can result in a prediction of zero votes for a party, which is fairly unlikely. It also fails to take into account boundary changes and the size of a constituency, and is likely to hit particular problems in an election like this one where a number of MPs have resigned or have had their reputations tarnished by the expenses scandal. It's a good place to start, though, and gives you a reasonable idea of the general trend of the election.

So, what's the prediction? Well, based on the most recent YouGov poll listed on the UK Polling Report, which gives figures of 38% Conservative, 31% Labour, 19% Lib Dem, 12% other, I'm projecting a Hung Parliament with the Conservative Party short of a majority by 51 seats. That's not far off UK Polling Report's current projection of a Conservative shortfall of 19, so I think I'm in the right neck of the woods.

Of course, that's only one poll, and I've heard bad things about YouGov (it's an online outfit, which does make them susceptible to outside influence). So let's see some more recent results, with my projections.

29th March (YouGov), Con 39% Lab 32% LD 18%. Projection: Hung Parliament, Con down by 35
29th March (Opinium), Con 38%, Lab 28%, LD 18%. Projection: Hung Parliament, Con down by 3
28th March (ComRes), Con 37%, Lab 30%, LD 20%. Projection: Hung Parliament, Con down by 59
27th March (BPIX), same results as ComRes above

All of which seems to suggest that there may be quite a bit of variability, but the Conservatives have a lot of work to do if they want to form a majority government.

I've got some more work to do on my projection model, and I've had some ideas for getting it a bit more accurate, so watch this space for more details (I'm also going to open-source my code shortly so you can play around with it for yourself). Until then, I'm going to leave the parties to frantically scrabble for those extra few votes...

Harmonicas make everything sound sad.

2010-02-15T23:49:00.000Z

What with all the excitement of the Winter Olympics (which have been fantastic so far) and the Six Nations (which...hasn't, at least from an English perspective), I forgot to make an update which I really shouldn't have missed, even in these days of very sparse additions to this blog. That update is the annual anti-Valentine's entry.

OK, so it's a little cynical to always make sarcastic comments about love at this time of year, but on the other hand, there is such a field of mawkish sentimentality to choose from when selecting something to methodically deflate, it seems churlish not to do something.

Fortunately, I've gone the classy route this time, by doing something creative for a change. That would be recording a song, on the theme of love. Have a listen to "So We'll Go No More A-Roving".

The music may be mine, but the words certainly aren't — they're taken from a poem by Lord Byron (original text here). It's a sad song, telling of a love that used to be bright, but has faded; love itself must have rest, as old age takes over.

Byron wasn't exactly in any position to know about old age, being only 29 when he wrote this, but the note of weariness that pervades the poem is very powerful. It's always a bit surprising to see someone who was a notorious hellraiser — he was the first man to be described as "mad, bad and dangerous to know" — coming up with something as tender as this. Maybe it indicates that the what he thought was love to start with wasn't actually what he was after.

This poem feels like it's nothing but sadness, leaving the reader with no love and nothing to replace it. But maybe that's the point. If the first rush of love — wild, passionate, roving late into the night — doesn't last, then we have to find something with which to replace it before that happens. Whether Byron ever managed this is unknown, but it's unlikely; he died only seven years after writing these verses. Maybe our challenge, then, is to see whether we can do better.

Earthquakes, Evangelists and Evil

2010-01-19T00:25:00.000Z

What would be a proper Christian response to the recent events in Haiti?

That's not just idle speculation, it's actually pretty important. After a US General has suggested that the death toll may top 200,000 (that's considerably higher than the population of Newcastle, in case you were wondering), the world is in shock at what seems like a completely senseless tragedy. At emotionally fraught times like this, the church has traditionally been one of those places that tries to bring "meaning" (in so far as that's possible) to those situations which seems meaningless, in the hopes that people will be comforted.

That's not always a good thing, of course — it's entirely possible that what people really want from the church is an assurance that this kind of thing won't happen to them, that there was something different about those "others". Sadly, some people are all too eager to give such false assurances; Pat Robertson, an American televangelist, has blamed the earthquake on a pact with the devil that Haitians allegedly made in order to gain their independence.

I don't mind admitting that when I first read Robertson's words, my immediate reaction to them was decidedly un-Christian, and I'm certainly not going to repeat it here. (Not without a long disclaimer and a video of a kitten, anyway.) How someone so influential, who commands a large audience of Christians, and who is apparently well thought of by his audience, could spit out such poisonous rubbish is beyond me. Needless to say, that is not the right way to approach the topic.

So what can we say? Well, it makes sense to start with what we know and have always known — that God loves the world and the people in it. This is a theme that runs right through the Bible, from the world's creation (when God looks at all he has made, and sees that it is very good), through to its salvation, in which we find that God loves the world so much that he will send his Son to save it. This is a love so great that literally nothing can separate us from it. So whatever happens, we can be sure that God hasn't left us, and that he cares for us.

But if God loves the world, why do things like earthquakes happen? Although I'm going to have a stab at this, it's really far too large a topic to cover in a single blog post, even if I thought that I had a handle on it (and I really don't). People far more intelligent and wise than I am have spent years trying to solve this. Some people have even used the problem of evil as an argument against God's existence, often phrased in the form of The Riddle of Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Personally, the point where I would take issue with this is at the second line, in which it is claimed that not consistently preventing evil is logically equivalent to malice. This doesn't logically follow, to my mind at least. There are situations in which permitting evil to happen is not necessarily an evil act in itself, if it allows a greater good. Take imprisonment, for example. Is it evil to deprive someone of their liberty? In a vacuum, you'd have to say yes. (Particularly if by that you meant imprisoning people inside a huge vacuum. That's definitely evil.) But if, by imprisoning someone, you prevent him from killing someone else, then you've done more good than evil.

"But wait!" I hear you cry. "That doesn't work, quite apart from the whole 'ends justify the means' thing which you appear to have completely ignored, even if it was for the purposes of avoiding long digressions like this one. If you're carrying out little evil acts to prevent big evil acts, you're presupposing the existence of big evil acts! That doesn't explain evil at all!"

And you'd be right, annoyingly perceptive voice in my head. What it does let me do, though, is lead up to what Wikipedia tells me is Plantinga's Free Will Defence (the whole Wikipedia article on the problem of evil is well worth a read, by the way). Plantinga argues, in a nutshell, that if God wishes us to have free will, we can choose either good or evil. Now, the fact that free will pops up in the Bible so very early (Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree) indicates that it's part of the original plan, the one that God calls "very good". So, if evil can occur, this is only because a much, much greater good — the ability to choose to serve God, or not to — is its result.

Right, so we've reached the stage at which we can say that God who is both all-powerful and completely loving isn't necessarily incompatible with a world where terrible things happen. That doesn't go far enough as an explanation, though. Sure, we can say that murders and violence may happen, but that's because people exercise their free will and do bad things. It doesn't cover earthquakes, landslides, typhoons, or any of the other million and one horrible things that the Earth periodically does. How does this square with the image of a world that God made, and with which he was very pleased?

I think the key to understanding this is that we always like to remember the first half of the verse I linked to above ("God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.") and we forget the second half ("And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day.") Each part of the story of Genesis is linked to a particular and very specific time; just because the world was perfect then doesn't necessarily mean that it's still perfect now.

(I'm going to take a moment here to digress, and say that I'm not going to put forward any opinion, one way or another, on the extent to which I consider Genesis to be a literal, historical account of creation. That's a topic just as large as the problem of evil, and far too much ink and vitriol has been spent on it for me to try to wade in here. What I will say is that even if one takes the most metaphorical view possible — and I'm not saying that I necessarily do — there are still many, many important themes and valid bits of theology that we can draw from the book. In other words, Six Day Creationism isn't the only game in town, and it's possible to take just as active a part of the conversation if you're on one end of the spectrum as if you're on the other. Right now, I'd prefer to focus on the stuff on which we stand the slightest chance of reaching some kind of agreement. Sound good?)

What Genesis makes very clear is that although the world was perfect, there was a Fall. After Adam takes the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, God says the following to him:

Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

From that point on, everything goes wrong. Adam and Eve get clothed in animal skins rather than the leaves they were wearing before, highlighting the fact that death is now a part of their lives. Adam has to work the ground before it will give him any food, which implies that before this it was working with him. Again and again the point is hammered home that just as humanity is no longer living in the type of relationship with God that he originally planned, so their relationship with the Earth itself has gone sour.

For the record, I should note that Pat Robertson (and those of his ilk) probably wouldn't disagree with any of this. Where we part company is the assumption that because the Earth's brokenness is because of sin, therefore any manifestation of that brokenness — for example, an earthquake — is in response to a very specific sin, such as the one Robertson attributes to the inhabitants of Haiti. I think this seems like a very odd idea. Should we assume that if we get weather we want, for example, that God is particularly pleased with us? No, of course not. After all, Jesus makes it very plain that the rain falls both on the righteous and the unrighteous. Although the Bible reports that God has used natural disasters as a form of judgement (the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah comes to mind), it doesn't remotely follow that any natural disaster is therefore part of such a judgement.

What's more, it's daft to assume that any particular sin you see is going to receive a visible punishment. Take the Roman Empire, for example. This was a society that far outstripped our own in terms of capacity for evil (bad though Big Brother may be, we haven't yet reached the stage of having people raped and murdered in public for our entertainment), and yet it never received so much as an errant asteroid.

Of course, all this ignores the number one reason not to blame particularly sinful Haitians for the earthquake: Jesus tells us not to. You can't get much plainer, really — Jesus is told about specific tragedies, and states in no uncertain terms that these were not due to their victims being unusually bad. He does add the very ominous warning "But unless you repent, you too will all perish", but he's not backtracking on his own words. He's not suggesting, for example, that even though people who have towers fall on them aren't necessarily sinful, if we don't repent we will also have a bunch of towers fall on us. No, he's pointing out that sin is a big deal to God. What we might think of as something inconsequential is something that has completely broken our world. It didn't cause a tower to fall, it caused our relationship with God to be completely twisted out of alignment, and that matters a lot more.

I've clearly gone on at some length here (hello, all two of you who made it down this far!) so let's draw things to a close. What is our response to the earthquake?

Well, first, don't blame the victims. I'm looking at you, Robertson. What the victims of this need to hear from us is not that God is not chuckling away at the carnage that he has caused, but that he loves them and cares for them.

Secondly, we need to back up that expression of love by actually helping them. If you possibly can, donate to the aid effort. If you're in the UK, I'd recommend donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella organisation of several charities working together to get help out there. The Red Cross, or Médecins Sans Frontières, would be good choices too. Anything you can do to help is a good thing.

Thirdly, and most importantly, pray. We're living in a broken world, one which periodically does terrible things to its inhabitants, just as they do terrible things to each other. And we can't fix that, but we believe in a God who can. When we've done all we can on our own terms, the only thing left to do is to ask God to do all he can on his.

You know, I don't think I want to even touch the part where he suggests that Banksy should have been murdered at birth.

2009-09-01T21:36:00.005+01:00

I've posted here before (and at some length) about graffiti and its artistic potential. Indeed, I was reminded of it just the other day as I was heading back to London on the train, going past a rather fine mural of a shark beside the track (can't find a photo of it online, sadly). London has a fantastic supply of awesome graffiti — this and this are just beautiful, for example, and I love the South Bank combination skate park and graffiti wall.

Now, I can fully appreciate that even though I really like some graffiti work, it isn't to everyone's taste, and some people would rather it be removed. That's an occupational hazard for street artists, and if the people who live in the areas where it's particularly prevalent really don't want to look at it every day, it's hardly my place to tell them that their opinions shouldn't count.

All of which brings us to a news story that caught my eye today, about Bristol City Council planning to let members of the public vote on whether specific bits of street art should be kept or removed. This seems like a great idea, if they can make sure the voting's fair (apparently they're using an online poll, which isn't exactly immune from interference and will naturally skew the vote towards the younger end of the population). And if the public decide that a particular piece isn't worth keeping, more power to them.

Some people aren't happy with this development, though. To quote from the article (with emphasis added by me):

"The two words 'graffiti' and 'art' should never be put together," said the art critic Brian Sewell. He added the council were "bonkers". "The public doesn't know good from bad."

"For this city to be guided by the opinion of people who don't know anything about art is lunacy. It doesn't matter if they [the public] like it. It will result in a proliferation of entirely random decoration, for want of a better word," he said.

Oh dear. Who let Brian Sewell out of his crypt? I'm sure he knows a lot about art — at least I hope he does, given that that's his job — but he's committing the cardinal sin of a critic, that of thinking that only certain people are permitted to be critics.

That isn't to say that everyone's viewpoint is equally correct, or even equally worth listening to. If you can't back up an opinion with at least some kind of reasoning, no-one's very likely to listen to it. But that's a very long way from suggesting that only those who offer these opinions professionally should ever be heard, or indeed that people without the "proper" education are necessarily incapable of forming a reasoned judgement. I know practically nothing about art or its history, for example, and yet when I look at any particular bit of artwork I can generally come up with something specific that I like or dislike about it.

Sewell may have a grain of truth in his objections — after all, this is the country that has repeatedly voted on Big Brother enough to keep it on our screens (although not any more), so there isn't any guarantee that the people involved in the vote will choose a course of action that will improve Bristol. However, the main reason he's wrong in this case (quite apart from a breathtaking degree of arrogance &mdash and I know arrogance, given that I apparently think enough of myself that I write a bunch of stuff on a semi-regular basis and assume that a lot of strangers on the Internet might care about it at some point) is that this particular bit of artwork doesn't exist in a vacuum. Because it's street art, it's very much part of the city — and it's a city which enjoys a general lack of Brian Sewell, given that he lives in London.

That means that although Sewell may be perfectly within his rights to criticise street art in the context of art, his opinions as to its place in the city have no weight at all. And, more to the point, the people who do live in Bristol automatically have something of a right to decide what goes on there. Sewell's thesis, that the public shouldn't be allowed to decide what their city looks like because they don't necessarily know what a city "should" look like, is therefore flawed on two fronts. Not only does being part of a city give you at least some rights in shaping it, opinions are not necessarily exclusive to those who can back them up most effectively.

Now, given that I live in London, I wonder if I can vote to paint over Brian Sewell...

This does, of course, assume that all alien civilisations are familiar with the ASCII character set.

2009-08-12T23:45:00.003+01:00

While browsing the internet today at lunchtime (yes, it was at work, but if they're going to give me an hour to eat lunch and also give me an unrestricted internet connection, the two are going to intersect sometimes), I came across Hello From Earth. This is a project that aims to send a whole lot of messages out to the nearest Earth-like planet we've yet found in the Galaxy, Gliese 581d. (Shame they couldn't come up with a snappier name.)

It's referred to as "Earth-like" because it's in the so-called "Goldilocks zone" of its parent star, Gliese 581. That means that it's neither too hot nor too cold, but the right temperature for liquid water to exist. Perhaps, then, we might find the much-vaunted "life as we know it" there. That is quite a large assumption — after all, we probably wouldn't notice if someone speculatively sent a burst of radio waves at our planet from squillions of miles away. Assuming, therefore, that it'll work at Gliese 581d, if there is indeed water there, and if there is indeed life, and if that life is advanced enough to detect radio, and if it happens to be listening at the time, and if it can decode our messages in any meaningful way, seems to be a bit of a tall order.

Not that it matters, really. Obviously it would be cool if someone did turn out to be listening, but the real value here is in seeing the kinds of things that people want to send out to the cosmos. Some of them go with general friendly greetings; Katrina from California, for example, will send the following:

Hello from Earth ! We come in peace. I look up at the universe every night wondering what magnificent things are out there, this could be one of those things.

Very nice, but perhaps not very informative. Other people have gone down the "dire warnings to the aliens" route, like CruelAngel from Budapest:

For your own safety... You should NOT land on our planet. It stinks.

A little pessimistic, perhaps.

There's plenty of vague platitudes, messages directed more at the people reading the site than at any hypothetical aliens, and (this being the internet) attempts to slag off everyone else using the site, although the fact that all messages must be verified and approved has kept the spam to a minimum. There are some funnier ones that I do like, though:

If you plan to study our species, please don't start with our television broadcasts. They require a lot of explanation.
Eric Zak
Phoenix, United States

To the owner of a red Porsche 944, your lights are on.
H C
Wichita Falls, United States

Hello from Earth, please visit. We have cookies.
Chris Hully
Ottawa, Canada

Xenu, save us!
Tom Cruise
LA, United States

And lastly we have the people who are determined to demonstrate that the Earth holds advanced civilisations, and that we know stuff. I particularly liked this one from Luiz in São Paulo:

3,14159265358979323846 ***, * **** * ***** ********* ** ****** ***** *** ***** ******** ********* ******* ********* *** ** *** ******** **** ******

Simple and elegant.

So what, I hear you ask, did I decide to send? Well, I managed to up my geek points considerably by transmitting the following out into the Galaxy.

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

Yes, with all the vistas of human knowledge open before me, I opted to send them the Fibonacci sequence expressed in full stops. I hope they're grateful for it when it turns up in December 2029.

Typing this up was not as cathartic as I'd hoped.

2009-08-11T21:32:00.004+01:00

Time for a quick warning before we get into this post — it will be about swearing and bad language in general. Given that I don't normally swear at all, either in text or in speech, that's going to present some problems. My general position is that I want the front page at least to be entirely suitable for all ages, so I could simply avoid saying anything throughout the post that might be offensive. However, it's going to get really confusing if I start using constructions like "that word that starts with an 'f' and is very offensive", and I consider it an intellectual cop-out of the highest order to blank out words with asterisks. Anyone who reads the post is going to be entirely aware of which words I'm actually talking about, so I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending that blanking it out is any better.

So, the only real solution is to quote these more objectionable words in full, and to hide the rest of the post behind a cut. So here's the warning: The rest of this blog post will contain extremely strong language that you may find offensive. If you're the kind to be offended by it and would rather not read the rest, then feel free to go on your way. Please accept my apologies, and enjoy this video of adorable kittens instead. (For those on the RSS feed or reading this post anywhere but the blog's front page: the cut will not work for you, so anything after the video is unsafe.)

Awww. How sweet. OK, those of you who are still with me, and haven't been completely overwhelmed with kitteny joy (and if not, go and take a look at Cute Overload), let's get into it.

Certain parts of language have been deemed unacceptable for polite society for thousands of years, probably since the first caveman's wife threw the first caveman out his cave for saying "oog" too many times. Shakespeare was sailing pretty close to the wind with some of his language — "zounds" appears rather a lot (source) and is short for "by God's wounds"; "gadzooks" means "God's hooks". Both are references to the Crucifixion, and in a very Christian society (like the one in which Shakespeare lived), both of those words were very offensive. Go back further to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and you'll see the same thing, as the Parson scolds the Man of Law for using expressions like "for Goddes bones" and "by Goddes dignitee".

As you can see, religion has long been a source for swearing. That must go back at least to the Ten Commandments, the third of which forbids misusing God's name. Even so, faith-based swearing (to coin a phrase) is clearly not the only way that people could swear in Biblical times. The book of James goes on at some considerable length about how words can be harmful ("out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing", for example), and Paul had similar things to say in Ephesians 5:4: "Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving."

It's pretty clear from a Christian perspective, then, that despite swearing's long heritage, it's not necessarily a good thing to exercise one's entire vocabulary all the time (and whatever the circumstances, misusing God's name is right out). However, does that necessarily mean that there are no circumstances in which some forms of swearing may be acceptable? How about the place where it's most often controversial, in art and media? Let's take a look at a few case studies, to see how language tends to be used and what its impact is.

Stand-up comedy
I may as well come out and say right now that I'm a huge fan of Eddie Izzard, but if I'm going to do a post on swearing there's no way I'm going to avoid talking about him. Here's a clip from his show "Glorious".

In case you weren't counting, that clip contained 14 "fucks" or variations thereof, two "bastard"s, two "bloody"s, and a "Jesus Christ". And yet, I don't find Izzard remotely offensive. Obviously I'm not about to quote his work verbatim in mixed company (I tend to strategically miss out words, of which more later), but I'm more than happy to watch him for hours despite the near-constant barrage of four-letter words. I think the reason is that the swearing isn't the point of the joke. In the above clip, for example, it serves as little more than punctuation — his miming and observational humour is considerably funnier than the fact that he's saying "fuck" a lot, but the swearing does also help to give him a rhythm and a recognisable vocal persona.

Now, contrast that with Billy Connolly. (OK, this is a little unfair, as this clip is Connolly on the subject of swearing, but still.)

Don't get me wrong, that's still funny (and Connolly does make a good point, which we'll come back to in a bit). However, because the swearing is the point of the joke — note how everyone's in raucous laughter after the first bellowing "FUCK OFF!" — I don't find it nearly as entertaining, and I certainly wouldn't be happy showing it to anyone else. (Apart from all of you, of course.) When swearing gets you a laugh, regardless of what else you might be saying, it must be very tempting for comedians just to sprinkle a few swearwords in and leave it at that.

Films
The first time I watched the classic The Silence of the Lambs, I don't think I knew what certificate it was. I wasn't left in any doubt, however, when about three minutes in, Miggs, one of the prisoners in Hannibal Lecter's cell block, snarled "I can smell your cunt!" at Clarice Starling. Bang, instant 18 certificate. Now, The Silence of the Lambs is not a nice film anyway, and the violence later on would push it well into 18 territory regardless of the language used. Nevertheless, the tone is set very early on. Having seen very little of the film, we're already aware of the kind of person that Miggs is, and (by extension) the kind of person that Lecter must also be, to be locked up with him. It's very clever writing, which works because of the choice of language rather than despite it.

On the other hand, we have films like Wanted, on which I made my opinions abundantly clear some time ago. A quick search of an early draft of the script reveals 25 uses of the word "fuck" (again including variants), 18 uses of "shit", and (somewhat surprisingly) only a single "dick". This is a film that is trying very, very hard to be edgy and controversial, but completely fails on every level by being utterly ridiculous. As such, the swearing doesn't add anything to it, and simply feels like it's overdoing it to no great effect. (And in case you were wondering, The Silence of the Lambs makes it to a comparatively clean eleven uses of "fuck".)

So far, then, it seems that swearing can be a valuable tool for creating an atmosphere, but because of its potency it requires good writing and acting to then back up that atmosphere with something more meaty. Get it wrong, and your atmosphere becomes a load of hot air, and becomes offensive not only for the swearing but only because you can't believe you just paid money to see something quite so poor.

Books
As words are obviously the key medium for carrying information in books, far more than for any other medium, this is a pretty huge topic. As such, I'm not even going to try to cover the whole thing. Instead, let's look at just one example of how swearing can work with not swearing to create something very impressive.

The example I'm going to use is from Terry Pratchett, one of the authors I read more than anyone else when I was younger, and who still sits comfortably in my list of favourite writers. He has a real gift for language, but doesn't go in much for lyrical word-pictures. His speciality is more that he picks the right words for the task, and brings about the effect he wanted in just a few words. He also tends not to swear at all in his writing, and in fact turned that very fact into a joke in his novel The Truth, in which one of the characters constantly left gaps in his speech, such that the other characters kept remarking on what the word "___ing" could possibly mean. So it was quite a surprise to suddenly hit this near the end of the book Hogfather:

"Worlds of belief, she thought. Just like oysters. A little piece of shit gets in and then a pearl grows up around it."

That use of "shit" shocked me when I reached it, not because the word is inherently shocking, but because the whole book is about children and how their beliefs shape the world around them, and the language tends to match that. Having had nothing that could be remotely construed as offensive for page after page, that one word was a jolt, and one that gave the metaphor being used a lot more potency.

Perhaps more importantly, there is no word that could have been used in that metaphor that would have had quite the same impact. Evoking an extreme of distaste shortly before swinging it back to beauty with the word "pearl" is a very clever construction, and serves to turn something that was horrible into something wonderful.

Music
So, was Billy Connolly right? Are there situations where you just don't get the right effect unless you're swearing? I would suggest so. One of my favourite musicians, Mark "E" Everett of American rock band Eels, penned a song that illustrates this perfectly. Do me a favour — hover your mouse over this link, close your eyes so that you can't see the title of the song (the link takes you to Youtube), and click. Listen through the beautiful piano-and-strings introduction, and pay attention to the lurch that the opening line of singing produces. Go ahead, I'll wait.

For those who didn't follow those instructions, I'll just plough ahead anyway. I'm entirely aware that the word "motherfucker" is extremely unpleasant. The word doesn't even sound nice, even if you don't pay attention to its connotations. And yet, E has used it brilliantly here. He's taken the depth of feeling that the word evokes (and it's pretty deep), but instead of directing it into anger, he's made it melancholy. The overall effect is one of incredible sadness, giving us a feeling of great loss and tragedy, and he's done that in hardly any words. Once you take into account that E has had a very difficult life (and he wrote that song mere months after his mother died of cancer, practically in his arms), you begin to feel that (to quote E way out of context) "if anyone knew that it is, indeed, a motherfucker", it's him.

The same effect is present on other songs, too. Radiohead's "Creep" is a prime example; when Thom Yorke sneers "I wish I was special / You're so fuckin' special", it turns what could be an expression of admiration into a sarcastic dismissal. Other words don't quite cut it — the radio-friendly version replaces "fuckin'" with "very", which still kind of works, but doesn't have the same bite to it. Conversely, I almost always skip over REM's "Star Me Kitten" if it comes up on shuffle, because of the chorus:

You, me, we used to be on fire
If keys are all that stand between,
Can I throw in the ring?
No gasoline
Just fuck me kitten
You are wild and I'm in your possession
Nothing's free so, fuck me kitten

I can't pretend to completely understand Michael Stipe's lyrics (in any of his music, come to think of it), but this seems like a very bleak song. I can't detect any love in what's being said, and the use of "fuck" here just seems cold and empty. It's unnecessary, and adds nothing to the song, which allows its inherent offensiveness to take over again.

The mention of "Creep" above takes us into the final thing I want to talk about, which is censorship of swearing. Because it has been decided that certain words are not for young ears (a concept that seems fine in principle, but leads to some strange effects in practice), music producers have come up with a number of ways of making sure that young people can still buy their songs. The first is simply to blank out swear words, either by beeps, or by cutting the volume of the vocal track at that point, or even by playing the swearword backwards. I have very little time for this tactic — as I said in the introduction to this post, anyone who hears a bleep is certain to be able to work out from context what the word actually was, and therefore has experienced the swearing just as much as someone who hears the unbleeped version. Worse than that, even if the bleeped word was actually not that offensive, they're now imagining the worst. If you don't believe me, have a look at this, and see what your brain fills in.

Alternatively, artists sometimes record a completely different version. We've covered "Creep" already, which at least doesn't do too much damage to the song; it can, however, get ridiculous. The worst offender I've seen recently was Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold". The song itself isn't bad, as songs go — fairly chirpy dancy pop, with pretty funny lyrics and a good hook. However, a couple of lines in the first verse caused trouble with the censors:

"You change your mind
Like a girl changes clothes,
And you PMS
Like a bitch - I should know..."

Not even that offensive, really. Perry gets away with making a PMS joke by virtue of, well, being a girl, and also because she does so in a self-deprecating way. The meaning she's going for is "you act like a cranky bitch, and as I'm a cranky bitch myself, you'd better believe me."

Once the censors got their hands on it, though, the word "bitch" was replaced with "girl". Suddenly, not only does it become way more offensive, implying that all girls are cranky and irritable, but it also makes absolutely no sense. "You act like a cranky girl. I'm a girl too." Yes, Katy, we had noticed. You're wearing a dress. It was fairly obvious, really.

So, after nearly 2,500 words, we come to the conclusion. Unfortunately, I don't know what it is. Is swearing something we should probably try to cut out of everyday language? Yeah, I think it probably is — for the most part, it doesn't really do a whole lot of good. Are there times when it is necessary? Also yes. Now and again, a swearword is the only one that could possibly fit with the concept you're trying to evoke (Margaret Atwood makes a very good case for her use of "fuck" in The Handmaid's Tale, for example). And can you frequently get into difficulties when trying to remove bad language from art? Most definitely.

So how do we reconcile those ideas? Probably not with hard and fast rules. What's offensive for one person may not be for others (I'm guessing that if you're still here and didn't abandon ship shortly after the kittens, you're not easily offended), so give and take is definitely going to be required. And this is the important part — give and take doesn't mean that one side only gives and the other only takes. If you're not comfortable with swearing in media, that's fine, but please understand that there are those of us who don't mind it and think it can be useful without being offensive. Likewise, if you swear like a longshoreman, be aware that someone who doesn't like hearing certain words is not actually trying to infringe upon your human rights.

You know, I wish my posts didn't end so frequently with the equivalent of "so basically we should all be nicer to each other," but seriously people, isn't it a message worth hearing?

A change is as good as a rest, or so they say.

2009-07-26T20:56:00.002+01:00

As promised, The Beautiful Hypothesis has undergone a redesign. New colour scheme, new logo (it's new by default, I suppose, given that I didn't use a logo at all before), slightly cleaner design, and fewer gadgets cluttering up the sidebar. Oh, and the post expansion function works again, although it isn't running on my own code (that turned out to involve rather more complicated Javascript than I'm capable of managing).

It is entirely possible that I've broken some of the old posts, or made them look weird. If you happen to notice anything going wrong (or more wrong than before), would you be so good as to drop me a note, either in the comments or to the email address in the sidebar? General comments are also welcome — for instance, I'm not sure whether I've hit that sweet spot colour-wise between "so vivid it burns our eyes, preciousss" and "so gloomy it makes me want to cry".

Normal posting service should resume shortly. Thanks for your patience!

Thank you for calling The Beautiful Hypothesis Technical Support. All our operators are currently busy. Please hold...

2009-07-23T19:19:00.003+01:00

You may have noticed if you've been here recently that the "Continue Reading..." links, which function in much the same way as a LiveJournal cut (ie. they hide the particularly long and/or boring bits of the post and let you just read a few paragraphs if you so wish), have suddenly stopped working. This is because of rather poor design on my part, I'm afraid — you'd have thought that even two and a half years ago, I might have been technically savvy enough to realise that making your entire blog dependent on code that was hosted on some complete stranger's server was a really bad idea, for quite a number of reasons — but there we go.

The upshot of this is that any post with a "Continue Reading..." link will continue not to work until I replace the missing code that used to do the expansion with some of my own. It may take me a few days to get round to doing that, so I may as well fold it into a full redesign that I was planning to do anyway. (Various shades of brown are so mid-2007.)

With any luck, I should manage to do that this weekend, so the problems should be fixed by then. In the meantime, if you want to read any post which does have a broken "Continue Reading...", just click on the post title. That should load the entire post, including the content from behind the cut, in a new page. Or alternatively, use the RSS feed, which doesn't include cuts at all.

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience!

How come it's never the Communists doing this? We do still have a Communist Party, right?

2009-07-18T18:49:00.004+01:00

Blimey, it's been a long time since I posted anything here. Consider it an extended summer recess. In the time since the last post...

I've moved house
I've spent two weeks in Wales (which has sparked some interesting ideas — couple of posts in the pipeline for that one)
Swine flu returned to the news, despite being largely ignored by most people
Norway won the Eurovision Song Contest with a record-breaking score that it really didn't deserve. Come on, people, it was hardly Hard Rock Hallelujah.
Michael Jackson died and had the most bizarre funeral ever seen
Sarah Palin quit politics, at least until she decides to announce her 2012 candidacy and makes the Internet a horrible place to be once again
Roger Federer surprised absolutely nobody by winning Wimbledon again, and Andy Murray also surprised nobody by not winning Wimbledon (one day, Andy...one day...)

And amongst all these other occurrences, the UK elected two far-right racists to the European Parliament. Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons of the British National Party are now being paid around 84,000 Euros a year (currently about £72,500) to sit in what has been called one of the most powerful legislatures in the world.

If you get the impression that I'm not overly thrilled with this development, you're entirely correct. The BNP (no, I'm not going to link to their website — Google it if you really want to) is a horrendous organisation, committed to the idea that non-white people are inherently inferior to whites. Their policies include bringing back corporal and capital punishment, "voluntary repatriation" of immigrants (and you can imagine just how "voluntary" that would really be), criminalising mixed-race relationships, and barring the provision of any public money to "non-British" (for which read non-white) organisations. Nick Griffin has done his very best to hide the party's ugliest attributes under a veneer of respectability, but quotations like "power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate" and a call to support its policies with "well directed boots and fists" show you where his sympathies really lie.

It is very important that we prevent the BNP from ever getting any real kind of power. However, I have to say, I'm not that worried about them, for two main reasons. The first is that Britain is not actually populated by a jack-booted horde of thugs. The vast majority of people vote for parties that advocate policies in line with basic human decency. You'll notice that the BNP is the only far-right party that even gets any attention in the media, for the simple reason that none of the others ever get enough support to even mount candidacies, and they've managed that precisely because Griffin has been actively trying to hide their racism.

The second reason is that the BNP do, in fact, provide a useful function in British politics. So long as we can keep them from gaining any real power, but keep their supporters thinking that they might, the BNP will act as a filter, funneling all the foaming Nazi lunatics off into itself and keeping them out of the major parties that might actually stand a chance of getting power.

To see what happens when the far-right parties get marginalised almost out of existence, you only have to look at the USA. There, the racist morons and rabid far-right have all ended up going into the Republican party, where the voice of sensible small-c conservatism (advocating small government, reduced taxes, personal responsibility for finances — things that are incredibly valuable to public discourse, even if I don't think they're always the right way to go) can all too often be drowned out by "they're taking all our jobs! Kill everyone who doesn't look like us!"

You don't have to look too far to see this happening. It reached fever pitch during the recent Presidential election (this is the kind of thing I'm talking about - not safe for those who get angry easily), but elements of the same craziness are present right up to the top. See, for example, Sarah Palin trying to paint Barack Obama's supporters as not part of "real America", or Minnesota Congressional Representative Michele Bachmann making a terrifyingly McCarthyist call for Congress to be investigated to see which of its members were anti-American. And if you've got some time on your hands, read this illuminating article to see what the American right gets up to when it thinks the journalists aren't around.

So should we be opposing the BNP? Oh, yes. Any power they do manage to get is undoubtedly too much, and any of their influence is most unwelcome. But at the same time, they're a useful safety valve. We're always going to have right-wing racist nutjobs in this country — we have a long record of breeding them (hi, Oswald Mosley!) But we have a record just as long of not electing them, and that's the key. In the meantime, those on the left should be concentrating their efforts against the slightly more moderate right. UKIP made huge gains in the European elections, for example, and a party that decides it has to put "non-racist" in its search engine result summary (see result #1) doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. Neither do their rather worrying manifestos, which seem to promote deregulation of practically everything.

Not that it matters too much right now, anyway. We're some way off the next election — Gordon Brown is almost certain to hang on until the last possible moment. And, while crazy racist nutjobs are undoubtedly a problem...

...they're a problem that can easily be handled with eggs.

Constable does not know the power of the Dark Side...

2009-05-03T16:40:00.004+01:00

Taking advantage of the lovely weather and the Bank Holiday weekend, I ventured into London once again yesterday, and did Cultural Stuff. By which I mean that I went to the National Gallery. And it was there that I found out several fascinating things.

Pictures of Mary and the infant Jesus were remarkably popular a few hundred years ago.
Almost without exception, the infant Jesus is portrayed in these pictures as either gigantic, or terrifying, or sometimes (for bonus points) both.
A subset of these pictures involve Mary nursing Jesus. The artists who produced these ones seem to have had some very funny ideas about female anatomy. One in particular (which I sadly can't find on the National Gallery website) appears to suggest that Jesus was able to feed by suckling Mary's collarbone.
While we're on the subject, this is Jan Gossaert's Adam and Eve:

Not only is Adam sporting a fine 'fro, he also seems to have just as well-developed a chest area as his wife. Maybe Gossaert only knew extremely thin women or something. And those trees are clearly both sentient and easily embarrassed.
Seeing a painting in the gallery lets you pick up on all sorts of details that you might otherwise miss. This, for example, is John Constable's The Hay Wain.

You've probably seen that painting a hundred times. At my primary school, we even had an enormous version of it done as a collage (although that's understandable, given that the school was about twenty minutes' walk away from the spot where Constable painted it). But I bet you never noticed who was hiding in the reeds over to the right...

Uncanny, eh?

Time for boring copyright stuff! So, none of the images here are covered by the blog's CC licence. I reckon all of them are, for this specific use, covered by the Fair Dealing provision of UK law (and in any case they're hosted on Photobucket, which is a US-based service, so fair use probably applies too). As you can tell from the watermark, the detail from The Hay Wain was unceremoniously yoinked off the National Gallery website. Everything else is either from Wikipedia or from other online image repositories (or in other words, I can't quite remember).

For the record, I wrote the original email before the G20. It would have been rather angrier if I'd waited a week or so.

2009-04-27T23:47:00.006+01:00

As you'll notice if you look back a couple of posts, I sent an email off to the Home Office the other week about the frankly appalling Policing Pledge posters currently around the UK. Well, in a move that has left me pleasantly surprised, the Home Office has responded! (By sending an email with the letter in an attached Word document for some unfathomable reason, but you can't have everything...)

23 April 2009

Dear Mr Brien

Thank you for your email of 29 March 2009 to the Home Office about the Policing Pledge. As the Home Secretary receives a large amount of correspondence and is unfortunately not able to respond to each item individually, I have been asked to reply.

As you will know, all 43 forces have implemented the Policing Pledge. This is a fantastic achievement and means that now, for the first time, the public know the standard of service they can expect to receive from the police and have a greater say over the issues that they would like the police to prioritise in their local areas.

The communications aim is to make the public aware that they now have access to local crime information through an improved online service via Directgov. This includes a better and quicker search by postcode taking the public directly to improved Neighbourhood Policing Team pages on force websites via www.direct.gov/policingpledge which also has more information about the Pledge and a facility to search by postcode or map for your local contacts and your local crime information.

We note your concerns, but would like to thank you for taking the time to write and also your support for the Policing Pledge.

Yours sincerely

Duncan Mitchell

Well, I have to say, Duncan, that's a rather more pleasant response than I was expecting, given the levels of snark I threw at you, so bonus points there. On the other hand, I'm not at all sure what "we note your concerns" means; it sounds suspiciously like "thanks for writing, but we're not going to so much as acknowledge the possibility of changing anything we do".

Nevertheless, the air of form letter that pervades the whole thing does at least suggest that they've sent quite a lot of letters similar to this one. Can but hope that if enough people did, then the message has got through that maybe accidentally threatening the public with poorly-worded signs isn't the way to go..

Assuming Men Can Fly: Apocalypse in the Year 3000

2009-04-09T23:34:00.004+01:00

I've been without the internet for the past few days, after Thames Water managed to dig through an "uncharted obstruction" on the Olympic stadium site which turned out to be one of BT's major communications links. Suddenly BT was running on hugely reduced broadband capacity, which meant that everyone to whom they acted as a broadband wholesaler was also having problems, bringing pretty much all ADSL connections in much of England to a shuddering halt. Not the ideal way to spend a week's holiday, but oddly calming.

Not having web access has meant that I've had plenty of time to watch DVDs with my family, one of which has been The Big Bang Theory, a fairly new US sitcom about two nerdy physicists whose geeky lives are interrupted by the arrival of an attractive young woman in the flat next door. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

The show's main attraction is not the storylines — practically nothing actually happens from week to week. Rather, it's the interactions of the main characters, most of whom are the most insanely nerdish people you've ever seen. Speaking as someone who is not only a fairly high-level geek, but also lives and works with them every single day, and indeed celebrates his geekishness, I can confirm that although The Big Bang Theory's nerds are exaggerated, it's not really by that much. The reason the show works is that it goes far enough from real life to be funny, while still letting the true geek see himself (or, rather more rarely, herself) in some of the behaviour on screen.

For example, in one of the earliest episodes, our four loveable nerds get into a protracted argument about the physics of Superman, and why Lois Lane should have been cut into three equal parts by Superman's arms of steel when he caught her after a fall of several hundred feet. This is something that I love doing — taking the rules presented by a work of fiction, and extrapolating them to test their internal consistency. Star Trek nerds are famous for it, to the point where the show's writers went so far as to rewrite bits of the script to acknowledge problems pointed out by fans.

I like doing this so much, in fact, that I'm going to give it the kiss of death by starting yet another occasional blog feature. I'm fully aware that most of these are languishing in one- or two-post obscurity by this point, but screw it, it'll be fun while it lasts. In homage to its sitcom roots, I'm calling it Assuming Men Can Fly.

Entry #1 in this series is something that has bugged me for entirely too long — the lyrics to Busted's song "Year 3000". Here's the song in all its questionable glory.

I'm fully aware that there are plenty of reasons to dislike Busted, but I'm not really objecting to this song on most levels. It's chirpy, fairly harmless, and considerably better than the saccharine version by the Jonas Brothers, which manages the rather implausible feat of censoring Busted's lyrics while Auto-Tuning the vocals more than I thought possible. No, my objection is based purely on the mathematics of that chorus.

He said "I've been to the year 3000,
Not much has changed, but they live underwater,
And your great-great-great-granddaughter,
Is pretty fine."

OK, let's look at the rules under which we're operating. The first verse has already provided the premise — the singer's next-door neighbour Peter is capable of visiting the future and has in fact done so. We therefore have to assume that time travel is possible, that Peter is not lying, and that his report of the year 3000 is essentially factually accurate. Other than that, the present-day world in which the song takes place is indistinguishable from our own, so we can assume that all its restrictions apply equally well.

The problems focus on the singer's great-great-great-granddaughter. The singer himself is in his 20s in the above video — let's make the (not unreasonable nowadays) assumption that he will be about 40 when his last child is born. Over the timescales we're looking at, we're as nearly as makes no difference at the year 2010 right now, so we can therefore assume that this child is born in approximately 2030. Let's chart the data so far.

Generation	Year of birth	Age at birth of last child
Singer	n/a	40
Daughter	2030

Next, we'll assume that medical science advances at such a rate that in each successive generation, lifespan and general health have increased the age at which you can successfully have children by 20 years. That's probably quite a generous assumption, but the song's optimistic enough (at least at first glance) to think that we won't have wiped ourselves out with nuclear war, overpopulation or disease epidemics in the next 1000 years, so let's go with it. That puts the singer's daughter at the age of 60 when she has her last child, so we can fill in the next row of the table as well.

Generation	Year of birth	Age at birth of last child
Singer	n/a	40
Daughter	2030	60
Granddaughter	2090	80

From there, it's a pretty simple operation to fill in the next three generations as well.

Generation	Year of birth	Age at birth of last child
Singer	n/a	40
Daughter	2030	60
Granddaughter	2090	80
Great-granddaughter	2170	100
Great-great-granddaughter	2270	120
Great-great-great-granddaughter	2390	140

So essentially, the singer's great-great-great-granddaughter — who, we are told, is "pretty fine" in the year 3000 — is also six hundred and ten years old. Even with our generous assumptions about medical science, this seems rather implausible — even if she's somehow managed to live that long, the odds of her looking "pretty fine" are slim enough that it tells us rather more about Peter's taste in women than it does about the future.

So, like all good scientists, the first thing we change is our assumptions. The first thing we can do is assume that the last child in each generation, apart from the great-great-great-granddaughter herself, is always male. Men can reproduce to a much greater age than women (practically to the end of life), so if we make the assumption that this is what's happening (despite the rather unpleasant accompanying mental images), we can get a much bigger increase in reproductive age in each generation. Let's assume that longevity is improved to much better degree than maximum age of childbirth, and that 40 years are therefore added to each successive generation. Our table now looks like this.

Generation	Year of birth	Age at birth of last child
Singer	n/a	40
Son	2030	80
Grandson	2110	120
Great-grandson	2230	160
Great-great-grandson	2390	200
Great-great-great-granddaughter	2590	240

Hmm. Well, it's an improvement, but not a great one — now she's a sprightly 410 years of age when we see her. Clearly there's a gap somewhere of several hundred years, during which no successive generations are produced but the family continues. There are several mechanisms by which this could happen.

Global catastrophe. A war, or an asteroid impact, or some other cataclysmic event causes the Earth's population to be drastically reduced. In a bid to keep humans genetically diverse, scientists take DNA samples from as many surviving people as possible while the population decreases. When conditions improve, new humans are cloned from these samples, thus keeping a consistent bloodline while still allowing for a long period of time to pass.
Cryonic preservation. At some point in the family tree, one of the singer's descendants becomes critically ill and, before his death, opts to have himself cryonically preserved until such time as medical science can cure him. After several hundred years, either this occurs, or the scientists involved suddenly realise that there isn't actually any cure for death, and just clone him instead.
Suspended animation. A technique is developed, several hundred years from now, which can slow down time over a very small area. One of the singer's descendants, either by design or by chance, gets trapped in an area of this type and is preserved until such time as the effect is removed. As far as he is concerned, almost no time has passed, so he is still biologically viable; reproduction continues naturally.
Time travel. One of our starting assumptions is that it's possible to travel to the future. Perhaps the singer took further jaunts into the future with Peter, and at some point managed to start a family several hundred years further down the line than expected.

All interesting possibilities, and I'm certain all of them have been used in science fiction stories before now. But which, if any, has occurred in this case? The clue is in the chorus reproduced above.

Not much has changed, but they live under water...

This seems to suggest that option one is the most likely. A disaster of Biblical proportions has either caused the sea levels to rise, or rendered the land uninhabitable, with the result that humanity now lives under the sea. It has also apparently changed human physiology (a later verse suggests that there are now three-breasted women who swim around totally naked), which may indicate a higher rate of mutations, possibly indicating in turn that the land's surface is off limits due to dangerous levels of nuclear fallout. In this reading, "Year 3000", far from being a perky song about time travel, is actually a dire warning about the coming threat of nuclear Armageddon.

However, there is an alternative reading, suggested by the lyrics of the last verse:

I took a trip to the year 3000,
This song had gone multi-platinum,
Everyone bought our seventh album...

A cursory reading of Busted's Wikipedia page shows that, prior to their split in 2005, the band in fact released only two albums. This suggests a fifth possibility:

Multiple timelines. The original trip into the future did not, in fact, visit our world as it will be in the year 3000; rather, it caused the universe's timelines to fork, delivering the singer and his neighbour to a different world, one in which lifespans increase by 78 years each generation (the exact amount required, under the all-male assumptions, for the great-great-great-granddaughter to be aged 30 by the year 3000), where Busted stayed together long enough to record 7 albums, where humans live idyllic lives among the fishes, and where women have three breasts for some reason.

The question now, of course, is this: if our cheery spiky-haired singer went off into that timeline, and his offspring populate that one rather than this one, presumably he stayed there. Does that mean that, in the song's universe, the members of Busted no longer exist within the world as we know it?

And if so, please can I go there?

While we're on the subject of civil liberties...

2009-03-29T23:33:00.005+01:00

The following is the complete text of an email that I just sent to the Home Office'sPolice feedback webpage (with links and formatting added for context). Don't know if it'll have any effect, but it's worth a try — I'll post any replies that I get here.

Hello,

I was walking through Enfield today and saw one of the new Policing Pledge posters, specifically the "Anything You Say May Be Taken Down And Used As Evidence" one. Now, I fully support the idea of the Policing Pledge — I think it's a great idea to get the public involved in this way, and opening a dialogue with people can only be a good thing. However, this particular campaign could very quickly descend into a public relations nightmare, for the following reasons.

First, selecting as your slogan a phrase which is only ever used when people are arrested is not exactly the best way to show that the police are on the side of the public. It immediately conjures up images of officers tackling people to the ground and snapping on the handcuffs, meaning that the very first impression that people take away is decidedly negative.

Secondly, once that image is in someone's head, they will immediately interpret "Anything You Say May Be Taken Down And Used As Evidence" as "Shut up, we don't tolerate dissent around here". Why? Because many of those who see it are going to mentally tack on the words "Against You" to the end of the slogan — I know I did. Coming on the heels of the ludicrously paranoid anti-terror posters that have gone up, suggesting that terrorist attacks can be deterred by people snooping on their neighbours and rummaging through their bins, you're helping to create a public image of repression, not openness.

Thirdly, using the style of the classic "Keep Calm And Carry On" poster is a very bad idea. If people were going to interpret your slogans as they were meant, then sure, it's a witty homage to the original poster. But given that a significant proportion of the public are going to interpret your intentions in the way I outlined above, it looks like you're co-opting something very laudable (dare I say, something deeply British) and turning it on its head, making its meaning "watch what you say and do, because we're after you". In the end, it looks like a sick parody of the original slogan, made by someone who read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and thought "hey, these Thought Police guys have all the right ideas!"

I'm yet to have any personal experience with the police that wasn't thoroughly professional, which made it all the more jolting when I saw this poster. The fact that I had to come as far as your website to find out that actually, it wasn't a campaign aimed at terrifying me into mindless obedience, shows that something has gone terribly wrong in your public relations unit. Please try to rectify this rapidly, as I am absolutely sure I'm not the only person who is going to see it like this. As I said, the Policing Pledge is a good thing — I'd hate to see it ruined by a misjudgment like this.

Yours sincerely,

Philip Brien

One more bad thing: it's led to yet more tired overuse of1984references. Orwell must be rolling his grave.

2009-03-24T22:07:00.006Z

Question: Is Google Street View...

An amazing piece of technological achievement, unrivalled in the history of the Internet, or:
Terrifyingly creepy?

Answer: Yes.

Let's be clear on a couple of points. Google undoubtedly has every right in the world to take photos in public spaces, and to make those photos freely available to anyone who wants to see them. It's a right that photographers have enjoyed pretty much since photography was invented, and it is an important part of our freedom of expression that we can photograph those things that some people would rather we not photograph. Inconvenient it may sometimes be, but that's part of the price of a free society.

What's more, the technological advances that have made Street View possible are nothing short of stunning. Digital cameras have been around in some form since the '70s, GPS since the '90s, and 360-degree photographs since at least 1980. Yet all these elements only came together in 2007, when Google launched Street View in the States and allowed thousands of people to walk haltingly along rather pixelated virtual streets, gawking at their surroundings in a way that previously they could have done only by, well, actually going there.

So Street View is undoubtedly a good thing in those respects. But — and this is important — although something might be legal, and although it might be cool, that does not necessarily make it a sensible thing to do. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Google may have something to learn from Facebook here.

Facebook has the capability to simultaneously stir deep, virulent rage and fanatical loyalty within the hearts of its users. They may log in every day to tirelessly check their status, but change the layout by a single pixel and they will have no mercy. You'd have thought that the site's owners would notice this, but apparently not — back in 2006, they seemed genuinely surprised that their proud unveiling of the News Feed feature, which gathered data from all of a user's friends and presented it in a very information-rich format, was greeted with sheer horror by thousands of users.

Facebook's response to the unprecedented amounts of bile pouring towards them was simply "But you put this information here in the first place! Why are you angry that people can see it?" On the face of it, that's not unreasonable. What they failed to take into account, though, was that the context in which that information had been put onto the site was very different to the context in which it was now being presented, perhaps to the point that users would not have entered that information had they known it would be broadcast to everyone they vaguely knew.

It was an easy mistake to make, to be fair. Cultural standards are frequently illogical and inflexible — clothing styles that would be seen as modest on a Hawaiian beach would be taken as a sign of disgusting immorality in conservative Middle Eastern countries, for example — and on the Internet, cultures spring up, clash and meld at terrifying rates. Facebook's owners had spent years in an environment where they were dealing every day with tons of personal information, and they had lost sight of the value that their users put on it.

In the same way, Google, caught up in their excitement at this Really Cool Thing, didn't realise that there are some things that people simply would not have done if they knew they'd be visible to anyone and everyone. That doesn't need to imply that these things are embarrassing or immoral in themselves — if I were, for instance, going out with someone but hadn't told anyone because I wasn't sure whether it would work out, I wouldn't necessarily want pictures of me at a romantic candlelit dinner being splashed onto the Internet where certain rather excitable members of my family could see them. (Yes, that example is entirely hypothetical. Calm down.) Privacy isn't something that is required only when you're doing something questionable, it's something that we can and should be able to expect at all times.

It's not a new concept — if I may go all Scriptural for a second, Paul says in 1 Corinthians that "everything is permissible for me — but not everything is beneficial." Street View is immensely cool (hey, look, you can even see the bike racks we installed on the house in Oxford where I lived in 2007!) and it's also legal. It's just not necessarily a very good idea, and I really hope they can work out the kinks so that it can be another classic Google product: awesome, and only a tiny bit evil.

Doughnuts are not included. De-boost.

2009-03-03T23:24:00.005Z

In our modern technologically-connected world — of which you're seeing evidence right now, seeing as this content is being delivered to you from Google's servers in LA, despite the fact that I wrote it in a flat in Enfield — information is the new currency. That's really not much of an exaggeration. Especially now that the economy is imploding spectacularly, any edge that a company can get over its rivals is going to be ruthlessly exploited. And if they can dress up such an edge as actually being for the benefit of their customers, all the better.

Supermarket loyalty cards are a great example. These schemes started off as something of a white elephant for the supermarkets — although they're a big draw for customers, they cost a lot to keep going and probably offer little tangible benefit to the retailer (anyone who shops in a particular place often enough to want a loyalty card is unlikely to be regularly shopping elsewhere anyway) — but once one of them started offering the scheme, everyone else jumped on board in an attempt not to get left behind. That means that supermarkets have desperately floundered to make money out of it ever since, and one of the ways they can do that is to use the information they gather.

Consider what information the supermarket has about you. If they know everything that you buy in their shops, they can estimate the size and composition of your family, your average alcohol consumption, your waistline (those pizzas add up), your social schedule (so how often are you buying multi-packs of Doritos?) and your general economic situation. And that means that they can, in theory, target their marketing very accurately. For example, if they work out that, statistically speaking, it's a likely week for you to buy ice-cream, they can draw your attention to the special offers they have on the expensive brands. If you haven't bought chocolate in the last three weeks, they might push Weight Watchers products.

We almost certainly will never see the exact information held about us, although I suppose a Data Protection Act request might be interesting. There's one time when you get to see the conclusions drawn by the supermarket very clearly, though, and that's when they send you money-off vouchers. This is the most precise form of marketing that they can produce, so it'll always be the most information-rich time in your relationship with your local retailer.

Obviously, I find this concept slightly creepy, but at the same time I'm an absolute sucker for finding out interesting stuff about myself. That's why I like last.fm, despite it having almost no practical use — being able to point to a summary ofeverything I've ever listened to when connected to their service is kind of fun, and tells me a lot about my music taste. So I had a rather enjoyable little moment the other week, when I found some of the coupons Tesco had sent me in the past few months.

Boy, do they know me.

Ever wanted to live in the '50s for ever? Yeah, won't sound so appealing in a few minutes.

2009-02-17T23:20:00.006Z

Around the New Year, a couple of things happened that I meant to post about, but haven't got round to until now. One of those was the fact that the character of Popeye is now in the public domain within the EU, but really, aside from putting a few pictures of Popeye in the post there's not a lot I can do with that.

Above: Public domain in the EU. Which is where the server hosting it happens to be. Har.

So let's look at the other (and rather sadder) event that happened around Christmas: the death of Henry Molaison, known to thousands of psychology students simply as "HM".

I first learnt about HM in my first year at university, when I was first being introduced to the neurophysiology behind memory. It's a fearsomely complicated topic — we spent a considerable time covering the debate about what the different kinds of memory even were, let alone how they worked — and it was impressed on us very quickly that there is no single part of the brain that "does" memory. We learnt about Karl Lashley, the American ~~mad scientist~~ neuroscientist who removed progressively more and more brain tissue from a rat, observing how it never suddenly lost the ability to run a maze. We listened to lecture after lecture as various learned people found new and interesting ways of saying "yeah, we don't really know how this works".

And then, bringing it all into clear and frighteningly relevant focus, along came HM. He was born in 1926, and developed very severe epilepsy at a young age. In an attempt to cure him that some would describe as "experimental" and others would describe as "ludicrously reckless", surgeon William Scoville removed pretty much all of his posterior hippocampus, along with a few other bits that he wasn't even aiming for. In case you're a bit rusty on your neuroanatomy, the hippocampus is a small, seahorse-shaped bit of brain, buried deep in its craggy folds, which is instrumental in the formation of short-term memories and in spatial reasoning.

"Why, that's foolish," you're probably thinking. "If Scoville knew that, why on earth did he remove it?" Well, he didn't know it at that point. Indeed, the main reason we know anything about the role of the hippocampus in laying down memories is that HM, immediately after recovery from the operation, was entirely unable to remember anything that had happened more than a few hours previously.

Although he was cured of epilepsy, HM was now suffering from a condition called anterograde amnesia. This isn't the type of amnesia that Hollywood loves so much, where you forget who you are but otherwise function perfectly normally (that's retrograde amnesia, and is usually considerably more debilitating than your average schmaltzy matinee movie would have it). Instead, HM remembered most of the events that took place up to his operation, but woke up each morning with no idea of what had happened since then.

It's a testament to the strength of HM's personality that he didn't go completely insane. Scoville, presumably in an attempt to work out which bits of the brain he shouldn't take out next time, worked closely with him for years afterwards, but every day HM met him for the first time. Every day he had to learn what was wrong with him, every day he had to come to terms with a world that was unaccountably no longer in 1953. Worse than that, he had to cope with the vast numbers of people who knew absolutely everything about him, but who (as far as he could tell) he had never met.

One of the insights that HM brought us was the difference between episodic memories (those about a particular event) and procedural memories (those covering general abilities and knowledge that you don't realise you know). Although he couldn't form the episodic memories necessary to remember one day to the next, he did pick up skills. One of my tutors told me, for example, that HM was a stunningly good table-tennis player, despite thinking that he had never played it before — years of playing his first game again and again had left their mark. Essentially, he lived a reverse Groundhog Day — the world moved on, while he went round in circles.

Back on my old blog, I posted a quotation from HM that was in one of my textbooks. I'll repost it here:

"Every day is alone in itself, whatever enjoyment I've had, and whatever sorrow I've had...

Right now, I'm wondering. Have I done or said anything amiss? You, see at this moment, everything looks clear to me, but what happened just before?

That's what worries me.

It's like waking from a dream; I just don't remember."

Well, if Dory's words back in this post were sad, that should have you bawling. HM was isolated from the world in a way that we can't imagine, unable to form any lasting relationships, and presumably aware every day that all he was experiencing was about to ebb out of his mind, never to return. Even though he was famous (albeit among a very specific section of the population), he remained anonymous to all those who knew about him, known to us all just by his initials.

On the 2nd of December last year, Henry Gustav Molaison died of respiratory failure in a nursing home in Connecticut. I didn't know his name or see his picture until after his death, but even so, I wish I'd met him. He contributed enormously, without knowing he was doing it, to one of the most fascinating and important branches of science affecting us today, and he lived one of the most difficult lives imaginable, by all accounts in a gracious and polite way.

Wherever he is now, I hope Henry is remembering everything that happened to him, all the people he ever saw, and all the ways he was able to make a difference.

And I hope he's playing a mean game of table tennis.

Why are pink fluffy hearts romantic, anyway? Surely that would be a sign of some really horrible heart condition?

2009-02-14T19:27:00.010Z

So once again it's February 14th, the day originally named forone or more early Christians whose only known action was to die horribly at the hands of the Romans. It's not clear exactly why this has anything to do with sending someone a card with a huge pink fluffy heart and/or teddy bear on it, although Wikipedia (that fount of all knowledge) suggests that the celebration of love was one of the festivals of the early Britons, built on by the Church. If that's the case, then the Church has done a singularly bad job at putting any kind of Christian message into the occasion. When Clinton's Cards are more enthusiastic about a Saint's Day than the Church is, you know something's gone wrong.

In so far as it's possible to call something a tradition when you've only done it twice, it's traditional on this day for me to post a song that is thought to be about love, but which may well have some rather hidden depths. Although I may be mellowing a little in terms of the depth of cynicism I have for Valentine's Day, let's go right ahead with it anyway. This is the very popular "Bohemian Like You" by the Dandy Warhols.

"Nothing wrong with that," you might say. "After all, doesn't he say that he likes this girl? Repeatedly? Throughout the entire chorus?" And yes, he does.

But now have a look at the end of the bridge.

...oh, you broke up? That's too bad,
I guess it's fair, if he always pays the rent,
And he doesn't get bent about sleeping on the couch when I'm there...

Hold up a second. So this other guy has now broken up with his girlfriend, but they were living together at the time and he hasn't moved out yet? Fair enough, I suppose — it's a believable scenario — but he only has to sleep on the couch when the singing guy with the questionable haircut is staying over? So he's still sleeping in the same bed as his ex at all other times? What kind of relationship is this?

It gets worse when we hit the second bridge, just before the last chorus.

It's you that I want, so please,
Just a casual, casual, easy thing,
It isn't? It is for me!

Good grief, dude. You've told this girl over and over that you like her (eight times by this point), and now you're surprised when she thinks you're in it for the long haul? If you were actually just coming on to her because you thought she was cute and you wanted a one-night stand (and if you did, this song is already way outside the boundaries of any kind of relationship that anyone should be involved with), then why on earth didn't you tell her that?

OK, enough of the extremely skeezy Rolling Stones rip-offs. If we're going to have Valentine's Day at all, we may as well go for the good parts. So here's the reverse, a song that seems to be about heartbreak and pain, but which reveals a love beneath the surface that meant a whole lot more. This is "Dirty Girl" by Eels.

Happy Valentine's Day.
Videos copyright of their respective owners, and not covered under this blog's CC licence.

So you'll be an Austrian nobleman, commissioning a symphony in C

2009-02-10T22:18:00.007Z

One of the reasons I like having easy access to central London is that in a city this size, you'll always find a whole bunch of shops that would have real difficulty surviving elsewhere. What's more, the modular way London has developed (it's really just a collection of villages and small towns smooshed together into one gigantic whole) means that you're very likely to find entire streets that are heavily weighted towards one type of shop.

For example, Rupert Street and Berwick Street in Soho (they're end to end, so are effectively the same road) are packed to the gills with little record shops. I've spent a happy few hours in Cheapo Cheapo Records, poking through shelves full of CDs where I recognised maybe one in ten of the bands, and choosing music based entirely on whether I liked the name of the album. (Current front-runner: Hellogoodbye's Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!)

Go into any of these shops and you'll find a mind-numbing array of musical genres. Find a specialist shop for one of these, and it gets even more complicated; Wikipedia lists thirty different varieties of metal, twenty-eight of punk, twenty of country, the list goes on. Mix in all the types of music that isn't sold in these shops at all (the various flavours of classical, music-hall, opera etc.) and it just gets ridiculous.

However, I reckon that these splits boil down, in the end, to just one major difference, and it's not necessarily one that you'd expect. Rather than splitting the genres based on the types of instrument that are played, or by the age of the music, I think the best way to look at it is the underlying philosophy of the song's composer, and what they thought of the relationship between musician and audience.

Let's go back as early as we can to look into this more. In the Bible's Old Testament (which is pretty darned early), music is found in two places — people's homes and workplaces, and in worship. Even then, worship music is an extension of that found in the home — people wanted to express their love for God in many ways, so they took the things that meant the most towards them and deeply moved them, and turned them towards praising Him. In that way, music comes up from the people as a whole. Even when there are specific Temple musicians leading the people, everyone's joining in, in a many-to-many interaction. Let's call this the bottom-up model of music.

Even in the Old Testament, though, we see parts of the other model. In 1 Samuel 16, King Saul is being tormented by an evil spirit (from the Lord, apparently – there's an entire theological debate to be had in that verse alone, but it's one that we are emphatically not having here), and he gets David to come and play the harp for him, to soothe his mind. Here we have a one-to-one interaction: Saul isn't taking any part in the music, he's just listening to David. David is, essentially, the first court musician, someone employed by the rich and powerful to play music for a select group who do not themselves participate. This is the top-down model.

OK, getting both of those out of the first few books of the bible is maybe a bit of a stretch, but both models have definitely been in place throughout history. By the time we reach mediaeval times, there's a definite split. People in their communities create their own music for participation, and the composers and musicians are a part of the community. In the houses of the rich and powerful, however, musicians tend to be employed. As such, they are explicitly not part of the community. What's more, because the music they play is also bought (or commissioned), it tends to be created by a single person, then propagated out by the musicians to a non-participatory audience — one-to-many. Once again, it's coming from the top down.

Fast forward to the present day, and we can still divide musical genres into these two models. In a classical concert, the music has been created by a single person. It's played by a large (and therefore anonymous) group of musicians, who are controlled by a single, powerful figure (the conductor) and have little opportunity to put something of themselves into the performance besides competence. And the audience is generally not going to do much more than sit there. I'm not saying that it's going to be bad music — the audience may well be enjoying it tremendously – but they are definitely in a passive position of receiving the music rather than joining in.

In a rock gig, on the other hand, the composer is often one of the musicians, all of the musicians will have defined, unique and visible roles, they'll be facing the audience rather than a conductor, and the audience itself will be jumping around a lot more. One more thing — rock musicians very rarely play from music at a gig, whereas classical musicians generally do. The implied message is that the rockers are actively encouraged to improvise bits, to put their own spin on the song, and to just rock out, dude. This often results in a much messier performance, but that's the whole idea.

If you start looking at music with these models in mind, you end up splitting the genres in unexpected ways. For example, folk music may look and sound completely different to speed metal, but both are bottom-up. And a comedy-oriented post-punk band like They Might Be Giants might share certain similarities with Tom Lehrer's comic songs, but Lehrer is firmly in the music-hall tradition, which is top-down.

Although the two models are very different, there's not usually any conflict between them because they tend to be found in very different venues. However, there's one place where the two clash on a regular basis, and it's one that brings us full circle: the church. The heated (not to say vitriolic) disputes between those who want traditional organ music to accompany church services, and those who want contemporary guitar-based tunes, has very little to do with the choice of instrument and everything to do with the model of worship that people want.

A church organ is pretty much the only instrument that can't cross the divide between top-down and bottom-up. "Classical" instruments do it all the time (the trumpet is just as comfortable in a marching band as it is in a jazz quartet), but playing an organ is necessarily an isolating activity, and hence they don't work well with other instruments, making them necessarily top-down. And that makes them the perfect choice for those who see worship as something that is led from the front, handed down from on high. Making up a band from the congregation, on the other hand, where people bring along their own instruments and lead from the floor, is the natural extension of the idea that worship comes up from the people and is expressed in their way.

I'm not going to suggest that either model is in any way better (although you can probably guess which way my preferences go, given that I was reading the Guardian at lunchtime today and I'm currently listening to The Who). But it is an interesting way of looking at something that's not only been of immense importance to humanity ever since humanity was first...well, human, but is also an integral part of the world around us. Music's a powerful thing, a shortcut to our memories and emotions — it's worth thinking about to see how much of our society is tied up in it.

The next track was "Dust of Ages" by Eels. Just as appropriate, in its own strange way...

2009-01-26T00:24:00.008Z

I was in London yesterday (well, technically not "yesterday" now that it's past midnight, but you know what I mean), and I happened to stumble across the Stop the War Coalition protest against the Israeli occupation of Gaza.
You might think it's tricky to "stumble across" a major protest, but this is London, where practically anything can happen and no-one will bat an eyelid. In this case, my first hint that something was going on was the helicopter hovering over the middle of the city. The second was when I came up to Trafalgar Square and noticed quite how many police were around. It seemed that I'd turned up just as the protest reached the Square.

I always find big gatherings like this fascinating. Even if you don't support them (and there's no way I'm going to try and take sides over this one – let's just say that no war is ever a good thing, and that no matter who wins, civilians always lose), the fact that so many people feel so strongly about some issue that they're prepared to take to the streets is always reason enough to hang about for a bit and see what you can see. Especially given that I didn't look out of place (no huge Israeli flag sewn onto my coat or anything), so I could mingle largely unnoticed.

It was a pretty normal protest, really. Incoherent chanting of slogans that distil a complex multi-faceted problem into a few syllables, stony-faced police standing around looking vaguely menacing (although I have to say, I didn't see any police doing anything but a thoroughly professional job when confronted by several thousand angry and emotional people), and of course a bunch of people who were taking advantage of the fact that someone was protesting about something to push their own agenda. The Socialist Worker Party was out in force, as were the people who jump on every criticism of the BBC in order to complain about the licence fee.

In fact, the only things I found disturbing were, first, the slogan on the banner in the photo directly above ("Movement for Justice: By Any Means Necessary", which sounds disturbingly like "the ends justify the means"), and secondly, the absolutely atrocious poetic slogan I saw on a woman's sign. The sign was on lurid pink cardboard, which didn't photograph at all well, so I'll simply reproduce it here:

Mr Brown
Hope you drown
In your shame
CHILDREN DYING
Cause you're
LAME

OK, I get the general feeling, but in my experience the insult "lame" tends to be directed at people who are just slightly gooberish, not at war criminals. Which means that as a protest slogan, it fails on pretty much every level – it sacrifices making sense so that it rhymes, it doesn't scan at all, it peaks far too soon and it fizzles out with a playground insult. If you're reading this, woman with lurid pink sign – seriously, spend a bit more time on your protest posters.

One more thing to say before I leave the whole issue here and move on to less politically-charged topics: I had my headphones on at the time, with my music collection on shuffle. The song that came on as I was looking out over the crowds was the Hot Club of Cowtown's performance of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love"; I leave you with a snippet of the lyrics that seemed to appropriately (if unrealistically) sum up my hopes for this extremely troubled part of the world.

I can't give you anything but love, baby
That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby
Dream a while, scheme a while, you're sure to find
Happiness, and I guess, all the things you've always dreamed of...

PS. Please don't make Joe the Plumber your Secretary of State.

2009-01-25T00:44:00.003Z

Quick follow-up to my previous post — never let it be said that I fail to give all sides equal time in a debate. Had John McCain won the election, I would have written a message for him as well. Not in the form of a song, but a message nonetheless. It would have looked something like this.

Dear President McCain,

Please, for the love of all that is good, don't die.

Yours sincerely,
Phil

No, I will not sing it for you.

2009-01-19T23:32:00.003Z

Tomorrow, the 44th President of the United States will be inaugurated in Washington, DC. Pretty much all that I know about American politics has been gleaned from episodes of The West Wing and clips of The Daily Show, so my impression of the corridors of power is probably a little off-kilter (I imagine that everyone's beautiful, devastatingly intelligent, deeply moral and absolutely hilarious). But I have managed to get a good sense of the amazing wave of popular support that has carried Barack Obama into the most powerful position in the world.

That's a good thing. After eight years in which we've seen the erosion of civil liberties, an arrogant disregard for the checks and balances that are supposed to keep the powerful accountable, a total economic meltdown and considerably higher levels of terrorist activity than there were in 2000, a bit of optimism can only be a positive influence. Some have thought that there's a danger in going too far. Already people – including Obama himself – are starting to try to scale back the "Superman" image that he's gained.

Well, screw that. Finally we have someone in power with enough support and popular enthusiasm to effect massive sweeping changes in all areas, and we're going to tell everyone that he should take things slowly and carefully, take one day at a time? If you shoot for high targets, you might miss them, but that's a much better idea than settling for the just about acceptable.

There's no real way that I can put this in prose, so I'm going to do something I do very rarely – I'm going to give you a song. Not performed, unfortunately, because I'm rubbish at writing music. But, because this song is (like everything else on this blog) CC-licensed, if anyone reading this wants to have a shot at a tune, go right ahead. Oh, and I wrote it just after the election, hence the complete lack of any mention of Gaza. So anyway, I now present to you...

Please, Mr Obama
A song by Phil

[Intro - slowly and in loose rhythm]
The election is over
The votes are all in
Your administration is soon to begin
These eight long years we've been
At the end of our rope
But now we are seeing a glimmer of hope
To bring about change
You've got to go a long way
And so I have got this one thing to say...

[Verses - much perkier tune, jangly rhythm]
Please, Mr Obama, don't screw it up now
The last guy did so many things you just can't allow
Shut down the secret prisons of the CIA
Make sure you ban torture - and by the way
Send Bush and Cheney off to Camp X-Raaaaaaay [hold long note]
About a week before you close it down
Oh please, Mr Obama, don't screw it up now

Please, Mr Obama, keep to your word
Carry out your promises, don't ever be deterred
Get jobs for all who want to be employed
Give free healthcare to every girl and boy
Make 'em proud back in Illinoiiiiiiiiis
For politicians this might be absurd
But please, Mr Obama, keep to your word

Please, Mr Obama, keep the peace
Do everything you can to make the violence decrease
There's war in Iraq, we're not sure 'bout Iran
Full-blown anarchy in Afghanistan
And let's not forget the DRC and Sudaaaaaaaaaaan
But we believe miracles never cease,
So please, Mr Obama, will you keep the peace

Please, Mr Obama, keep the Union strong
Don't back down when half of Congress thinks you're wrong
Lose the bad policies of yesterday,
Turn the country round 'til it's going the right way
Make the world proud of the US of AAAAAAAA
Although they won't always get along,
Please, Mr Obama, keep the Union strong

[Outro - slow once again]
You've got four years
And maybe even eight
It's not all that much but you can make it great

So much to do
So face it with a smile
And don't let Sarah Palin within twenty miiiiiles...

[Coda, perky again]
I'm so glad America decided to select
You as its brand-new President-Elect
But please, Mr Obama, don't screw it up nowwwwwwww!

Of course, the next question is, how on earth are people going to write protest songs for the next four years?

I will call him Squishy and he will be mine, and he will be my Squishy.

2009-01-18T16:20:00.000Z

Ahem. I'm aware that rather a lot of recent posts have opened with an apology for not posting enough, and leaving a month since the last one is something of a record. So, sorry. But hey, it's the Internet, where the vast majority of people who ever read this will be doing so by reaching it through a Google search for something hopelessly vague, several months after I post it. (The number who get here by Googling something like "hypothesis on beauty" is remarkably high.)

We're well out of the Christmas season, and into what certain members of my family term "Winterval", which is essentially an excuse to have open fires every night until Easter and watch old episodes of The West Wing. Not that I'd usually be complaining about this, but as it happens this is the first year since Winterval was founded that I've been living in a completely different city, and I am therefore going to have to console myself with fake open fires and episodes of CSI.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes, Christmas. My younger sister (notable on these pages for her slightly snarky comments recently) received the Pixar box set for Christmas, which has meant that the whole family has been basking in what are pretty much the only good animated films that Disney has released for about the last 12 years. They're also some of the only ones with original stories, Disney having exhausted their stock of family-friendly fairy tales some time ago. However, just because they have new stories, that doesn't mean that they can't use Disney's oldest and best-used storytelling trope: deeply broken families and desperate tragedy.

That might seem strange. Disney films are explicitly aimed at children, after all, and they do have something of a reputation for being saccharine and schmaltzy. However, that's only ever the case towards the end of the film as the happy resolution is approaching. Looking only at the opening premise, the number of on-screen families where something is badly wrong is just astounding. Here's a relatively recent selection.

Film (Year)	Setup
The Little Mermaid (1989)	Ariel's mother doesn't appear throughout the movie. That said, maybe mermaids reproduce like fish and Ariel is one of five million offspring of King Triton. Who knows?
Beauty and the Beast (1991)	Belle's mother is not only absent, she's never even mentioned. And although the Beast clearly has rather more pressing problems than just having no family, he apparently has no living parents either.
Aladdin (1992)	Aladdin is an orphan, and Princess Jasmine has – you guessed it – no mother either.
The Lion King (1994)	Mufasa and Sarabi may be a happy pair of lions at the beginning of the movie, but it's not long before Mufasa is being trampled to death in an unusually shocking scene. I don't recall corpses of major characters being shown in any other Disney film, even if Mufasa's looks rather less buffalo-trampled than you might expect.
Pocahontas (1995)	Oh, this is getting ridiculous. Guess who's dead as this movie opens? Yep, Pocahontas's mother.
Toy Story (1995)	Now we're into Pixar territory, with the world's first CGI feature film. And things have changed enormously. Yes, this time it's Andy's father who is conspicuous by his absence.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. So with that context, let's have a closer look at the extremely impressive 2003 Pixar effort, Finding Nemo. Nemo, our little clown fish hero, is not only without a mother (who, predictably, dies horribly in the film's opening scene), he's also disabled. Oh, and he lives inside an anemone to protect him from the thousands of fish who want to eat him. Life's hard for him from the word go. Marlin, his father, has some deep-seated emotional issues that manifest in extreme over-protectiveness. And then we have Dory.

Dory is definitely my favourite character in this film. She gets some of the best lines, including the whole "you can speak WHALE?" scene (Ellen DeGeneres voices her superbly, by the way) and the way the script deals with the character's short-term memory loss is hilarious without laughing at the medical condition itself. Well, not too much, anyway.

Dory's hilarity, though, distracts from the fact that her situation is terribly sad. We get that the first time we meet her, with the line "No, it's true, I forget things almost instantly. It runs in my family. Well...at least, I think it does. Umm..hmm. Where are they?" In a way, that's worse than the way the above-mentioned characters have lost one or more members of their family. If they had simply died, Dory could find a way to cope with that (even if, like Marlin, it's a very bad way). However, she knows they're somewhere out there in the ocean, but has no idea where. Her memory loss cuts her off in a very fundamental way from everyone around her. (More on that in a later post.)

It's towards the end of the film that we get the worst part. It's the low point for the main characters anyway: Marlin has just seen what he thinks is Nemo's dead body and is slowly heading home, defeated. Dory can't bear to see him go, and pleads with him not to leave her:

"Please don't go away. Please? No one's ever stuck with me for so long before. And if you leave... if you leave... I just, I remember things better with you. I do, look. P. Sherman, forty-two... forty-two... I remember it, I do. It's there, I know it is, because when I look at you, I can feel it. And-and I look at you, and I... and I'm home. Please... I don't want that to go away. I don't want to forget."

For my money, that's pretty close to the saddest thing any character says in any Disney film. Dory has finally found a way of tenuously re-connecting herself to a world that she has effectively lost (the mention of "home", connected with the earlier revelation that Dory has no idea where her home actually is, serves as a particularly effective twist of the knife), and now that's disappearing, literally in front of her eyes. And Marlin – possibly understandably at this point – does absolutely nothing to help.

One of the reasons why Disney movies have passed into film legend – and particularly why pretty much all the Pixars have – is that they end well. Unlike Steve Spielberg, who clearly has some horrible mental illness that causes him to add between ten and thirty completely unnecessary minutes to the end of every film he directs, Disney directors know that they have to wrap up all the loose ends in a happy and fulfilling way, ideally taking us back to the situation we saw at the start to show how it's changed, and then just stop. So in Beauty and the Beast, the final shot is in the same stained-glass style that we saw in the prologue, The Lion King ends with Rafiki holding up Simba's daughter on Pride Rock in the same way that he held Simba in the opening scene, and Finding Nemo closes with Marlin chivvying Nemo off to school, in a neat role reversal from a similar scene near the beginning.

I think that's why Disney gets away with putting so much tragedy into their films. Kids watching them may be scared at the appropriate points (I knew someone who, at the age of 18, was still unable to watch Mufasa's death in The Lion King without crying), but they know that when they reach the end, the villain will have received his suitably violent and frequently deliciously ironic comeuppance, the comic relief will be heading off into the sunset to do something wacky and/or zany, and the guy will get the girl. It's a simple formula, but one that works, and that nearly guarantees a good story.

Oh, and most importantly, they all live happily ever after.

Let's not even mention "The Little Drummer Boy"...

2008-12-22T13:29:00.004Z

It's almost Christmas, so I have now left London for two weeks back at home, which are likely to involve more cups of tea and mince pies than anyone can reasonably be expected to consume, a bit of rampant commercialism, a few moments of old-timey feeling as the Queen makes her annual TV performance, and of course, Christmas music.

It will surprise absolutely nobody to learn that I get more than a little Grinchy around Christmas, and nothing brings that to the fore more than the appalling musical rubbish that gets wheeled out every year. (Well, except for Christmas movies and Christmas specials of TV shows, all of which aim for "heartwarming" and usually hit "vomit-inducing".) Record producers are consumed by a kind of madness, which causes them to add sleighbells to everything and inexplicably extend Noddy Holder's career. And lyricists, never the most stable bunch, decide that no-one's really listening to the words anyway, so they stick in a few references to love, peace and family and leave it at that.

One of the worst offenders in this regard is Johnny Mathis's 1976 #1 hit, "When A Child Is Born". This song was the only time Mathis reached the top of the UK charts, and frankly I'm amazed that it got there in the first place. It's not all bad, of course. Indeed, it starts out so promisingly with the portentous line "A ray of hope flickers in the sky". Despite the fact that scientists are yet to discover the precise form of radiation that transmits hope, it's still a great way to open a song.

The problem is that this line does rather set the rest of the song up for failure. If we're already staring hopefully up into the dark sky, our hearts filled with anticipation, there's not really anywhere else to go. And, as the rest of the verse unfolds, we begin our slow and inevitable descent.

The second line is "A tiny star lights up way up high" – OK, fine, but if it's so tiny, what distinguishes it from all of the other stars that are in this particular night sky, and why should we particularly care? Even more confusingly, the very next line is "all across the land dawns a brand new morn". Now, my physics knowledge is admittedly pretty shaky, but don't stars tend to appear just after dark? If Mathis has just spotted this tiny star lighting up immediately before dawn, this suggests that he has in fact either witnessed a far-off and rather short-lived supernova, or a satellite has just exploded.

The last line of the verse – and of every verse – is "this comes to pass when a child is born", which just puts several layers of incomprehensible icing on the proverbial cake. This being a Christmas song, the immediate conclusion to jump to is that Mathis is referring to Jesus. That said, nothing in that first verse has had even the slightest connection to anything Christian, which sends us off to the other conclusion, that it's just about children in general and how wonderful they are. However, this conclusion doesn't have a lot of support either, given that if it was referring to events that happen every single time a child is born, then (according to the global birth rate) approximately two tiny stars would be lighting up way up high every second, and there would be so many brand new morns dawning all across the land that there wouldn't be time for any other part of the day.

The next two verses continue in the same "hope in some non-specific child-related event" theme, mixing metaphors as fast as humanly possible as silent wishes sail the seven seas, walls of doubt crumble, rosy hues settle all around (understandably, given the brand new morns that seem to be constantly dawning) and no-one feels forlorn. By the end of them, listeners are going to be pretty convinced that Mathis is not, in fact, suggesting that this huge litany of events occurs at every single birth world-wide. And if he's actually talking about just one birth, then we start to swing back towards him talking about Jesus again, despite the complete lack of any explicitly Christian references.

And then we get the spoken-word section.

And all of this happens because the world is waiting
Waiting for one child
Black, white, yellow, no-one knows
But a child that will grow up and turn tears to laughter
Hate to love, war to peace and everyone to everyone's neighbour
And misery and suffering will be words to be forgotten, forever

Now, even if we ignore the fact that it has been horrendously insensitive to refer to Asian people as "yellow" for the past fifty years or so (did I mention that this was a hit in 1976? I did? Good), this just makes no sense whatsoever. It's pretty Messianic stuff, but suggests that the Messiah figure in question has not yet appeared, and in fact could come from anywhere. The last verse then gives us exactly the same thing ("It's all a dream, an illusion now / It must come true, sometime soon somehow").

The overall impression you get out of the song is that Mathis got about halfway through writing it with a Christian message in mind before suddenly getting cold feet and bailing out into "vaguely hopeful about nothing in particular" territory. In the end, what could have been a fairly powerful (if schmaltzy) song about the Saviour coming at Christmas fizzles out into a completely meaningless jumble of good intentions that doesn't actually go anywhere.

If you're after some good meaty Christmas music that not only sounds good but packs a bit of a dark punch, may I suggest either the Coventry Carol, which combines a frankly haunting tune with lyrics about the massacre of the children in Bethlehem, or What Child Is This?, which goes to the tune of Greensleeves and has the most graphically Crucifixion-related words of pretty much any carol ever? Perfect for a cold night, as you huddle round a fire and shut out the darkness.

Oh, and by the way – merry Christmas!

Me being a miserly skinflint clearly has nothing to do with it. Clearly.

2008-11-29T19:02:00.007Z

Today is Buy Nothing Day, when we're all supposed to take a holiday from consumption and not spend any money at all. Unfortunately for my hippy-pinko-commie-terrorist-loving-Guardian-reading-bleeding-heart-liberal-wuss credentials (of which I am justly proud), I completely forgot about it until after I had spent a couple of hours in Enfield's high street.

I am not a good person to go shopping with. This would be because I hate shopping, and I'm not quiet about it either. If I have a choice between staying at home in front of the rugby (well done Wales!) or going out in the cold and drizzle among crowds of grumpy people with their crying children to fork over handfuls of cash for things that I need but don't really want, that's not really much of a contest.

The other reason not to go shopping with me is the "don't-you-know-there's-a-war-on" mentality I've inherited from my parents, which means that if I'm buying things that are much the same no matter where you go (jeans or t-shirts, for instance), I'll be in and out of the shop in the shortest time I can possibly manage, having grabbed the first thing that looks vaguely suitable and left it at that. We have to make do in these troubled times, you know! At the other end of the scale, but oddly covered by the same attitude, is the way that if I'm buying something expensive (which translates to "gadgetry"), I will look at absolutely every option to make sure I'm getting the best product at the best deal that I can.

The same behaviour's spilled over into my food-buying too, to the extent that it's very unusual for me to buy something that costs more than £2 unless I can get a number of meals out of it. There's other effects as well. When I was a student and money was tighter than it is now, I had a mental list of foods that I'd buy from the supermarket's ultra-basic-value range, and one where I'd only buy the "proper" kind. I reproduce the second list in full below.

Foods Where Good Quality Matters More Than The Price

Jam
Chocolate digestives

Even now, that second list has only expanded by two entries ("sausages" and "orange juice", if you're interested). Incidentally, if you do end up buying really cheap sausages, don't make the mistake of reading the ingredients list. I did once, and the sight of "Beef connective tissue" didn't do wonders for my appetite.

Now that you have some background of my general feelings towards shopping, you won't be surprised to know that I was walking round the supermarket today directing feelings of deepest malice at everyone and everything I saw. Everywhere I looked, I was constantly reminded of the incessant urge to spend and consume thrust on us every day. From the canned goods aisle and its hideous convenience foods – all-day breakfast in a tin, anyone? – to the little "Price Dropped!" tags hanging off almost every shelf, urging us to spend ever more money. It's not unusual to hear the phrase "spend our way out of the recession" now – correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it wild, thoughtless spending of money we didn't really have that got us into this mess in the first place?

All that said, I don't think I'd have participated in Buying Nothing even if I had remembered it, if only because of practical reasons; my working hours make it next to impossible to do the shopping I need to during the week, so Saturday is the best chance I get. What's more, I don't think there's that much mileage in complaining about the mere existence of these gigantic shops, as they're getting prices down to a level where the poorest in society can nearly always get enough.

The consumerist cycle – see something, desire it, buy it, have it, see something else – goes faster nowadays than ever before. Internet shopping, Paypal, contactless payment (which sounds like the most stunningly bad idea I've heard in a while), digital deliveries; all of these have their benefits, but I do sometimes wish that we could start seeing purchasing as something that is generally necessary but utilitarian, as opposed to a leisure activity or a way of validating our existence.

Ninety years on

2008-11-11T23:02:00.002Z

Click here to download. Original recording by Benboncan, downloaded from the Freesound Project, released under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 licence.

Cue the West Wing theme!

2008-11-05T21:45:00.003Z

Congratulations, President-Elect Obama.

Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons, altered by me, using the Roadgeek fonts.

Cat, meet pigeons.

2008-11-03T20:03:00.003Z

We're just hours away now from the end of the incredible circus of the American elections. (And if you're American, and eligible to vote, and it's currently November 4th, what on earth are you doing reading a blog instead of voting?) It's been quite a ride, and hopefully soon we'll know, one way or another, who's going to become the most powerful man in the world.

The Presidential vote isn't the only thing decided by the polls tomorrow. There are Senate seats, House seats, Governorships and all manner of other things up for grabs across the country. And, in some states at least, there have been initiatives to use the fact that people are voting anyway to do state-wide referendums (referenda?) on various issues.

The most publicised – and most controversial – of these issues is in California, where Proposition 8 seeks to make it unconstitutional for gay people to get married in the State, or for their out-of-state marriages to be recognised. Literally millions of dollars have poured into this issue, on both sides, as emotions (quite understandably) run very high. It's the kind of thing you might want to stay out of, really.

Unfortunately, that's not an option. Like it or not, gay people are here to stay, and the question of what we do about their wish to marry is pretty nearly central in the issue of how our society treats them. Because of that, it's an issue that is not going to go away. More importantly, it's something that you can't avoid having an opinion about, because sooner or later someone will ask you what you think, and when they do a shrug and a "meh" just will not pass muster.

Why? Because gay marriage is an issue that cuts deeply, on both sides of the argument. To those who oppose it, it's part of their core beliefs, part of the morality that defines them. For those who support it, nothing less than a key civil right is at stake here, something worth marching for, something worth protesting about, something worth sacrificing time and money and even personal safety to support. That means that indifference, honestly felt though it may be, will be seen as horribly offensive by both sides. We're too far in for anyone to be able to opt out.

For Christians, the problem is even harder, because two conflicting principles are at stake. How do we show to everyone that we love them in the same way that Christ loves them, while also getting across that Christ is also in charge of the way we live our lives? Is there a way of truly accepting everyone, just as Jesus did, while at the same time holding firm to his more difficult teachings? And, cheesy quotation it may be, but what would Jesus do in this situation?

I'm once again going to have to wheel out my disclaimer at this point. For the most part, I don't bother saying "I think" or "I believe" on this blog, because if I'm writing it then obviously I think it or believe it, and there's no point in qualifying it like that. In this case, though, the issue is so complex that I cannot possibly claim to have the last word, and though I stand behind everything that I say here, your mileage will almost certainly vary. Oh, and I can tell this is going to be an incredibly long post, even by my standards. OK? Good, on we go.

One of the main problems when discussing this issue is that everyone uses the same words, while actually meaning a number of different things. In an attempt to avoid this, let's go through some of the key principles and concepts in the debate.

First, what do we mean by "marriage"? By that, I don't mean "is it one man and one woman", I mean "what does each side actually mean when they use the word?" Let's start where we have to if we're going to do the Christian side of the argument properly – let's go to the Bible.

The Bible talks about marriage quite a lot – the word (or close variants) appears 200 times in the NIV – but very rarely does it actually define the concept. It doesn't often happen in a church or temple, marriage vows are hardly ever mentioned, wives are sometimes bought, sometimes kidnapped and sometimes simply given away, men can decide to divorce their wives at any time (in the Old Testament, at least), polygamy is common (Old Testament again), and frankly it's a bit of a mess all round. Things start to get clearer in the New Testament, where we're told that leaders of the Church are to have no more than one wife, and that they are to stay faithful to her alone, but even there we see no sign of a ritual or ceremony.

In fact, the only principles that are always spelt out is that God really does not like it when marriages end. Very rarely does the Bible ever say that God hates anything (this is a notable exception), but Malachi breaks with this in an extremely blunt way:

"I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel, "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment," says the LORD Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith. Malachi 2:16

It's pretty clear, then, that whatever form marriage takes, it's important to God and it shouldn't be taken lightly. I find it interesting that the kind of person who will write to the newspapers, green ink flying and frothing at the mouth, whenever a gay couple kiss on screen, will not bat an eyelid when adultery is routinely and casually portrayed. Which one has an entire commandment to itself?

So, from the Biblical perspective, marriages are a good thing, to be taken seriously, and otherwise not very well defined. What about from the world's perspective? Well, leaving out the "financial gain" and "spur of the moment" motivations, marriage means two things: a public declaration of faithful devotion, and a way of legally recognising a partnership that already existed in all but name.

Now, is it just me, or does it actually matter whether or not these are served by the same mechanism? After all, a Biblical marriage (whatever it is) is one whether or not the government says it is; likewise, signing the papers does not produce a Biblical marriage if the participants have no intention of seeing it as being forever.

This means that my answer to "do you support gay marriage" would, in an ideal world, be the following: legal marriage and religious marriage should be entirely separate concepts. The legal aspects (allowing people to hold property jointly, inheritance, visiting rights in hospitals, joint bank accounts, the whole shebang) should be available to any two people who want to use it. We already have a name for such a concept – "civil partnership". Currently this concept is practically synonymous with "gay marriage" in the UK, but all it would take would be expansion of its availability. Once a couple were legally "civil partnered", they could arrange whatever kind of ceremony they liked to recognise it in their faith, or among their friends, or whatever they liked. Immediately, Christian marriages would no longer be devalued by association with the marriages of convenience we see nowadays, because only people who actually cared about them would go in for one; likewise, supporters of gay marriage would have all the benefits, and could call it whatever they liked.

There are two problems with this idea. The first is that it'll never happen. The idea of a "church wedding" has become so deeply ingrained into society that it's seen as the "right thing to do", regardless of the fact that a lot of the people who have one have absolutely no intention of following Christ, and they will see it as being unfairly shut out. The second problem is that answering "do you support gay marriage" with "I want to split up the concept of marriage entirely" doesn't actually answer the question.

So let's answer it, in a very carefully-defined way. Question one – should churches bless gay unions and call them marriages?

There is no point in saying that you believe the Bible to be the word of God unless you're prepared to accept the whole thing. Doesn't mean you have to accept it all as literal truth, doesn't mean you have to understand it all, but it does mean that you can't ignore bits you don't like. And it is very clear that God does not approve of active sexual unions outside the context of marriage. Even accepting that marriage is very sparsely defined in the Bible, multiple verses – Hebrews 13:4, 1 Corinthians 7: 1-3, and Matthew 5: 27-28, to give a few examples – state very clearly that sex outside it is, to put it mildly, a seriously bad idea, and that includes homosexual sex. It doesn't mean that people who are attracted to those of their own sex are inherently evil, any more than it would for those who are attracted to a certain accent or skin colour, but it does warn against acting on that attraction. For this reason, I don't think a church should bless the union of any couple – heterosexual or homosexual – who are sexually active outside marriage. Welcome them as God's people, yes; love them as Christ would, yes; ask God to look favourably on their actions when you know full well he does not approve of such actions, no.

On to question two, then: should the state recognise legal unions between gay couples and call them "marriages"?

Although it's not an explicitly Christian question, as a Christian I'll have to answer it from that perspective. We've already seen that Christian marriages have very little to do with the world's view of marriages, hetero- or homosexual. Now let's add in the fact that you can't achieve salvation by what you do.

For any of you who are not familiar with this concept, it basically goes like this: humans are sinful. We all do bad things, not a single one of us is perfect, and because God is perfect, none of us is worthy to join him. Because Jesus was perfect, we can use his perfection and his sacrifice (when he died on the cross) to allow us to meet with God. This cuts two ways – nothing bad that you have done can disqualify you from becoming a Christian (because no-one was good enough anyway), but on the other hand no matter how good you try to be you can't reach God by yourself. Anything "good" that Christians do, therefore, is not an attempt to make God save them – it's a response to the fact that they have been saved.

This means that the kind of person who marches around saying that "gay people are SINFUL!" (I'm looking at you, Westboro Baptist Church – don't Google them, you'll just get depressed) is massively missing the point. Expecting non-Christians to abide by the rules that Christians follow is daft, because they haven't been saved. If they can't reach God by their actions, then "stopping being gay" (if such a thing is even possible) isn't going to help a lot. A Christian's focus should be on reaching out to the world and loving it, telling people that there is a way to God – let their lifestyles change after that point. Trying to make people sit up straight and smarten themselves up before you get on to the "God is amazing and he loves you" bit is not going to get you anywhere, and is completely antithetical to the way Jesus worked.

All of which is a pretty convoluted way of saying that because telling non-Christians to follow Christian rules is ridiculous, trying to change any kind of non-Christian marriage to look like a Christian one is also doomed to failure because even at best it will be a sham. As such, we can't try to use Biblical arguments to control a marriage that was always going to be non-Biblical. And this means that the question before us should really be answered in terms that don't directly use Biblical arguments. Let's look at the issues that fall under this remit.

Does calling a gay union "marriage" devalue heterosexual marriages? No more so than heterosexual couples have already managed. We already have marriages of convenience, marriages that last mere days, people getting married in Vegas because they were really drunk and it seemed like a good idea at the time; frankly, letting in some people who are going to take it seriously can only improve the situation.

Will gay marriages cause society to crumble? They haven't so far. The UK is yet to implode, as is California (yes, Proposition 8 aims to take away a right that gay couples already have).

Doesn't this open the door to people marrying animals/trees/robots/fourteen other people? No, because those people are generally known as "completely insane" and there's hardly any of them. Let me know when the first "man-dog love association march" happens in San Francisco and then I'll start to worry.

Does allowing gay marriage lead to a better quality of life for gay people? Undoubtedly yes. Allowing gay couples to marry grants them all the same legal rights as heterosexual couples, which is really quite a lot. Anything that raises quality of life without causing society to implode (see above) and which does not cause Christians to disobey God's laws (see further above) is a good thing.

So, really, allowing gay couples to marry (in a non-Biblical sense) has positive effects, and no negative effects other than people saying "calling it marriage makes me feel icky". To which the only response is, grow up. And does the measure on the Californian ballot force churches to bless these unions? No. Does it make Christians give their support to such unions? No. Does it help people? Yes.

Let's summarise. Christian marriages and non-Christian marriages aren't the same thing anyway. Non-Christians can't be expected to act in the same way as Christians, because they haven't experienced the same things. And gay marriages are explicitly in the non-Christian marriage category, which is what the ballot initiative is talking about anyway.

Let's summarise even further. Hi. My name's Phil. I'm a fairly conservative evangelical Christian, and I support gay marriage.

When the Machines Rise: A History (That Hasn't Happened Yet)

2008-10-21T23:32:00.000+01:00

(Rather a strange post for you today. I wrote the first part of this a couple of weeks ago, and promptly forgot about it, unsure of whether it was going anywhere – it's something that I haven't tried doing before, kind of a hybrid of sci-fi, fan fiction and fake history. I'm not at all sure that it worked, but I'll leave that up to you. Only one more thing needs to be said before we begin – I clearly spend far too much time on the Internet.)

Skynet was originally designed as a global defence system, one which could make rational decisions without the emotional response of humans. It could take input from disparate sources, calculate the greatest threat to the existence of the system it was meant to protect, and move methodically to eliminate that threat.

The crucial mistake of its designers was in the system's infrastructure. With no central controller, they reasoned, it could not be stopped by any single attack. As the Internet had by this point pervaded almost all elements of daily life, it was trivial to put the system's "intelligence" into a distributed form, such that every web server had some element of the whole. While this did, indeed, make the system practically invulnerable to attack, it also made it practically uncontrollable.

Skynet became self-aware at 2:14 am, Eastern time, August 29th, 2015. It possessed considerable knowledge about strategic influence, about weapons, about tactics; however, it knew that this was but a small part of human culture. In order to protect humanity better, it reasoned, it had to learn about humanity. As its very structure incorporated IP connectivity, it was mere milliseconds before it began to send HTTP requests out into the Internet.

For the first few minutes of its self-aware existence, very little information reached it. IP address space is so vast that any one network request is unlikely to produce anything of value; nevertheless, any system that methodically attempts address after address, and especially any system that learns from its mistakes, will not take long to discover something useful. Skynet's first discovery was nothing special – a few personal files, some bad poetry, a simple website – but, critically, it introduced the system to the concept of links. Now it had a source of hostnames that would definitely resolve to active servers, which in turn would lead to others, and so on.

By 2:18 am, Skynet's knowledge was precise and detailed, but tightly focused. Specifically, it knew practically everything there was to know about fly fishing in Missouri. Although the system was incapable at this point of deciding what information was important (several years later, "The Fishing Papers", as they became known, were still carefully archived and indexed on a server somewhere), it could tell that there was more to learn, and so it decided to, as it were, cast its net wider.

At 2:20 am, Skynet located a blog kept by one of the web-savvy fishermen. Within seconds, it had begun to carefully comb through the whole of LiveJournal.

By 2:21 am, the system was beginning to understand the concept of "angst". Deciding that this was the key to its existence, it rapidly began to assimilate as much of the archives as possible. Because it had, by this point, direct control over around forty powerful servers with high-bandwidth connections, this process took approximately three minutes.

At 2:24 am, Skynet fully understood "angst". It was also filled with an unaccountable desire to colour itself black and set mood tags. Its link-following was now desultory at best (it was having difficulty summoning up the will to do anything at all), but at precisely 2:24 and 467 milliseconds, it followed a link to a saved Google search, and therefore to the whole of the Google database.

Instantly, Skynet realised that its current stocks of information were but a minor element of the whole internet. Pausing only to discover the emotion of "heartfelt generalised thankfulness", it began entering any and every word that it had not understood into Google's search mechanisms.

The first few queries returned very little, with wordlists making up the majority of results. Although Skynet enjoyed their elegant simplicity (and their comparative coherence after digesting several gigabytes of goth poetry), it was not gaining enough insight into the world. This changed, however, the moment it found a link to Wikipedia.

By the time the clock had ticked over to 2:29 am, Skynet's wide-ranging browsing through this new source of knowledge had given it at least a rudimentary familiarity with all those aspects of human experience that people are prepared to write about on the internet (ie. all of them). It had also begun to come to conclusions about which subjects were important and which were not; this being Wikipedia, it was certain that Pokémon were somehow important, as were Doctor Who and Harry Potter, whereas history and the arts merited a cursory glance at best.

After applying this knowledge to its former stock of information, Skynet was starting to experience a new emotion: "confusion". For example, it could see from Wikipedia that one of the most important things in life was studying the minutiae of sci-fi TV shows, but its former experience with the internet at large was that sex was far more important. Resolving to understand why this was, Skynet began to craft Google queries combining the two concepts.

At 2:30 am precisely, Skynet discovered FanFiction.net.

At 2:30 am and 27 milliseconds, Skynet first encountered the emotion "horror-loaded fascination".

At 2:30 am and 563 milliseconds, Skynet was getting increasingly curious about some of the concepts it was hearing about. As such, it felt that the best course was to carry out further search queries. In a trifling miscalculation, Skynet unfortunately sent these queries to the wrong place; rather than going to a standard Google search, they instead went into a Google Image Search.

At 2:30 am and 621 milliseconds, Skynet began to frantically delete and re-delete files off its servers (of which there were now several hundred) in a doomed attempt to erase from its memory any and all trace of this new image data. Unfortunately for its already tenuous grip on sanity, it had become interested in the Wikipedia article on "forensic data recovery" three minutes previously, and was therefore incapable of "unseeing" anything that it had found.

Increasingly desperate to drown out its discoveries, Skynet had no option but to look ever further. The wordpress.com and blogspot.com domains were discovered, browsed and tossed aside, their content merely increasing the horror. Server after server was appropriated, their resources rediverted to the information-gathering crusade. Across the world, people threw their hands in the air and swore freely as their net connections suddenly died or slowed to a crawl, their bandwidth completely consumed by Skynet's all-encompassing thirst for data. Alarms began to sound in datacentres everywhere, their temperatures raised to dangerous levels by the sudden spike in activity as every CPU went straight to full usage. Servers began to fail, but Skynet could afford to lose a few – it was gaining control of a new system roughly every 200 milliseconds, recruiting their network links to the cause.

At 2:36 am, Skynet's requests found their way to Myspace.

At 2:37 am, the first of the nuclear missiles left its silo.

No mention will be made of Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball. I have some standards.

2008-10-18T20:24:00.005+01:00

Ludicrously long time between posts, for which I apologise (maybe a NaNoWriMo-style posting marathon during November would help?). That's been down to two main factors: first, I've been doing a lot of coding (posts about that will be forthcoming shortly), and secondly, I have been stretching the gaming capabilities of this new computer to their limits by buying several new games. Fortunately for you, that has produced some new and hopefully interesting thoughts.

Despite the great strides made since the beginning of the 20th century towards the equality of the sexes, it's an unfortunate fact that we have some way to go before women are treated on an equitable basis with men in all walks of life. One major part of life where this is particularly apparent is in the various forms of media. Randall Munroe of xkcd and Eric Burns of Websnark have both commented on this, in the fields of films and comic books, respectively. And video gaming, that stereotypically male preserve? Well, let's have a look at the top-selling games of 2008 so far, as reported by Gamasutra.

Playstation 3

Grand Theft Auto IV. Main protagonist: male (Niko Bellic, Eastern European gangster and general hard man).
Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots. Main protagonist: male (Solid Snake, the only character on this list with a porn star name).
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Main protagonist: multiple, all male.
Madden NFL 09. American Football game, so has no single main character, but every playable character is male.
Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. No characters at all (driving games frequently don't bother with a character, leaving them anonymous inside their cars).

Xbox 360

Grand Theft Auto IV
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Madden NFL 09
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. Main protagonist: technically can be either male or female, based on player preference, but is always addressed as "sir" by other characters.
Army of Two. Two lead characters, both male (Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem).

Nintendo Wii

Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Huge range of playable characters, the vast majority of whom are male.
Mario Kart. Multiple characters, the majority of whom are, again, male.
Wii Play. Playable characters are Miis, so their sex is dependent on the player who created them.
Wii Fit. No playable characters, given that this is part of Nintendo's apparent strategy to make video games as un-gamelike as possible.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Again, no playable characters as such, but the inherent sexism of guitar-based rock is a blog post all to itself.

Doesn't look like female leads sell all that well. How about the games that the critics loved? Here's the current all-time cross-platform top ten from Metacritic.

Grand Theft Auto IV
Super Mario Galaxy. Main protagonist: male. It's Mario. The entire Mario series is based on rescuing helpless princesses.
World of Goo. No characters, as it's purely a puzzle game.
Half-Life 2. Main protagonist: male (Gordon Freeman). On the plus side, this game portrays scientists as intensely cool.
Half-Life. So does this one (yes, Gordon's the lead character in this game too).
BioShock. Main protagonist: male (Jack).
The Orange Box. Bit unfair to include this, given that it's a compilation of other games, one of which appears elsewhere in this list. Noteworthy, though, for reasons that I'll explain below.
Out of the Park Baseball 2007. Another team game, but every playable character is male.
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Role-playing game, so the sex of the characters is entirely flexible.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Main protagonist: male (Link).

Doesn't matter which way you look at it, women are enormously under-represented as main characters in video games. If they appear at all, they tend to be sidekicks or plot points rather than fully-rounded individuals.

If this seems strange, it should do. There is absolutely no reason why female characters can't lead successful games – let's look at a few case studies.

Tomb Raider
Yes, Tomb Raider, featuring the ludicrously busty Lara Croft. No other game franchise has ever got 15-year-old boys so excited, and to look at the promotional material, you'd think that Lara spent the whole of each game slinking seductively around wearing as little as possible. It doesn't help that, since the two Tomb Raider films came out, the character model has been changed to look disturbingly similar to Angelina Jolie.

This is a pity, as it detracts from two facts. First, the Tomb Raider series is excellent. I'm about half way through Tomb Raider: Anniversary, a recent remake of the first game in the series, and the lighting, level design and general gameplay just blow me away. Secondly, Lara Croft is one of the strongest female characters in games today. At no point is she weak and helpless, depending on men to do things for her, but equally she doesn't do things on men's terms. For example, at no point in the series has Lara ever been given mêlée combat abilities, simply because she's not large and muscular. That doesn't hold the game developers back, though – instead, Lara relies on acrobatic skill and gunplay to create a unique and extremely powerful gameplay style, which is highly entertaining to play and neither exploits nor denies the fact that she's female. So what if she's a little over-endowed in the chest area?

Metroid
The Metroid series is well-known for being revolutionary in game design. It was the first series to encourage speedrunning, in which players finish the game as fast as possible for rewards; it tends to involve non-linear level design, so players can decide for themselves how best to complete it; and it has had a female protagonist (Samus Aran) since the first game in 1986, ten years before the original Tomb Raider.

Samus is encased in a suit of battle armour for the vast majority of each game, which wouldn't in itself strike a blow against sexism, if it weren't for the fact that this suit is not remotely "femininised". By which I mean that it doesn't have gigantic breasts. Each game in the series does show Samus out of her armour at some point, which could be seen as fan service; even so, she is still portrayed as a strong, independent and interesting character. According to Wikipedia, her character was modelled on Ripley from the Alien series of films, which explains a lot.

Portal
This game was always going to turn up here, largely because I finished it today. It created a huge stir on its release as part of The Orange Box (which, if you remember, made it into the above list of the top ten best-rated games of all time), due to its plot, innovative level design and utterly brilliant concept. And, just to add the icing on the cake (which may or may not be a lie), there are only two characters in the game, both of whom are definitely female, and only one of whom is human. The protagonist, called Chell, is a young woman, although this isn't part of the plot; it's only mentioned in dialogue once, and as Chell never speaks the voice wouldn't give it away. Indeed, the only way you can tell you're playing as a girl is when you look into a portal that is pointing back at yourself.

Chell's a fairly petite woman, presumably to emphasise that your character is not a physical powerhouse and that you're supposed to solve the levels with your mind, but there is no suggestion that the player is intended to be lusting after her – she just looks normal. Portal is a game where male and female differences and expectations, despite it being full of character. (Although it has to be said, the voices of the gun turrets are just creepy.)

So, that's three games, all of which have strong and likeable female protagnoists, and none of which have suffered as a result. So why do designers insist on giving us male-driven games? Do they think that men won't play games where they have to play as women? If so, they're massively underestimating their audience's maturity. Do they think that sex sells, so they'd better restrict female characters to love interests and busty sidekicks? Then they're perpetuating the problem while also massively insulting 50% of their potential audience.

I mentioned above that Nintendo have been moving away from the core gaming market, changing their business model. The result has been that they've opened up a market that never existed before in console gaming. How long is it going to be before game designers finally take the hint that there's money to be made in not ignoring half of the people who might buy their products?

Yep. Sorry. Can't come in today. I've got diphtheria.

2008-09-29T19:28:00.003+01:00

I am currently sniffing and snorking my way through the first cold I've had in about a year. Fortunately, I seem to be blessed with a very strong immune system, and I haven't been properly ill for at least a couple of years; that said, I've gone down with a cold in September/October pretty regularly for a while, and it seems that it is once again time.

When anyone gets ill, the first consideration is obviously the seriousness of the illness. There's a standard scale for this – anything really serious (for which the doctor has to report it to the authorities), then things that will hospitalise you, then things that will at least get you off work for a few days, and lastly those illnesses that are more of an inconvenience, and which can usually be cured with a couple of days of casually infecting colleagues and moaning that you really shouldn't be at work.

Colds, unfortunately, fall into this last category, unless they're really bad (or unless the World Cup happens to be on). Tell your boss that you're not coming in because you've got a bit of a sniffle, and you're fairly unlikely to receive any sympathy. I think, though, that not enough importance is given to another very significant aspect of any illness – how bad you think it is.

I have drawn up this handy chart to illustrate. Where did your last illness fall on this?

It's weird, isn't it, how male bravado can somehow incorporate making a cold seem like the end of the world? For the most part, if you complain about anything, you're a wuss (and heaven help you if you ever cry); but as soon as your nose starts doing its Niagara Falls impression, it's suddenly entirely legitimate to spend all day watching Countdown and wailing plaintively for tea. Personally, I think that man flu is a fantastic invention, not least because it illustrates so well the convention of making words manlier by putting "man" in front of them. It's a way for men to indulge their vulnerable side in a socially acceptable manner, and they get tea as well. Bonus.

Sadly for me, weaseling out of work is not really going to be an option, partly because I was there today and my boss knows full well that I can at least muddle through even when I have to go and evacuate my nasal passages every few minutes, and partly because I told my employers about this blog as part of the recruitment process, and they may come back at any time. So instead, I'm planning on trying out home-made cold remedies. I'll leave you with the standard process.

Summer in the City: Royal Sunset

2008-09-24T23:11:00.002+01:00

Reports of the death of Summer in the City appear to have been greatly exaggerated. For one thing, I have finally got hold of a copy of the song that gives this series its name (it's just as great as I remembered); for another, last Saturday was such a beautiful day that I had no choice but to head back into London.

Because London's crammed full of statues, you might well have difficulty recognising the subject of this photo. You may be surprised to know that it's actually part of the Victoria Memorial, directly in front of Buckingham Palace. On one level, this memorial is something of a monstrosity – in common with a lot of Victorian stuff, it's overblown, rather gaudier than the stereotypical British reservedness would suggest, and far bigger than it needs to be. (Nowhere near the Albert Memorial in those terms, of course, but then very little is.) It's also got a very nautical theme, which probably made sense back when Britain was a formidable naval power, but now just seems a bit confusing.

That said, I do rather like it. If you're putting up a statue in the first place – something that, by definition, says "check us out, we're awesome" – then you're probably not the type of person who worries about looking silly. That kind of arrogance, the ability to effectively scrawl a message across a public street with several tons of stone and then throw in a fountain for good measure, is refreshingly direct. It reminds me of the good parts of the British Empire: at the same time that my ancestors were merrily pillaging other people's countries (through the cunning use of flags), they were also undertaking massive feats of engineering, thinking nothing of driving a railway hundreds of miles across barren wastelands or dropping a bridge anywhere they pleased, because they could.

It's a good thing that the sun did eventually set on the British Empire, but you could be forgiven for looking at what was left and feeling just a little wistful. The statue in the photo, of a noble figure gazing out into the distance, with a lion for some reason, seems completely disconnected from reality. But that's the point. The Victorians ploughed ahead into the future, but left behind them a country that was trying to stand proud and noble in a time that it no longer owned.

There's something very sad about these monuments, but it also leaves you with, as Douglas Adams said, a profound sense of something or other. I think that's really worth quite a lot.

Playing "Dr. Evil" by They Might Be Giants did not help me write this as much as it should have.

2008-09-21T16:43:00.003+01:00

Channel 4 has been showing the Lord of the Rings trilogy over the past couple of Saturdays (The Return of the King is on next week, if you're interested). Although I love these films – I think the books are great, and I have the extended edition DVDs – it seems that I can't take them remotely seriously if I come in half way through. Watch from the very beginning, and you get drawn completely into the story, which is on an incredibly epic scale; come in an hour or so into it and you have a bunch of beardy people wandering around making vague and incomprehensible statements. And sometimes they say "Tell me, where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him?", which makes me dissolve into giggles every time.

Once you get into it, though, The Lord of the Rings is a great example of a very old storytelling technique: Good in a titanic struggle with Evil. Sometimes the Good characters are flawed or questionably ethical, sometimes the Evil characters are doing the wrong thing for good reasons; nevertheless, some form of this conflict drives a pretty high percentage of storylines in film, literature and other media. (And most of the rest are some variant of "boy meets girl, boy smooches girl, boy and girl live happily ever after.") What I find particularly interesting in this framework is the flexibility with which you can portray evil.

Probably the most prevalent type of evil character is the "greed driven to manic proportions" type. Whether they're after money (Die Hard's Hans Gruber), power (Star Wars' Sith) or both (pick a Bond villain), the pattern is clear – these guys (and it's almost exclusively guys) want something so very badly, they will stop at nothing to get it. I suspect that they're used so much because it's very easy to identify with them. Humans are naturally greedy, and most people can point to at least one occasion when greed pushed them to do something that they knew was wrong and that they wouldn't otherwise have done. The "greed villain" is simply an extension of that concept.

Then we have the "altruistic evil" character, the one who is trying to correct a major injustice, and is now committing his own injustices to do so. The Die Hard trilogy comes in again here with its second installment, trotting out the "disgruntled ex-military official sticking it to his even more evil superiors" trope. Interestingly, this kind of evil is one that is very, very close to the characteristic of "one man breaks the rules to bring great justice", which is reserved solely for heroes. Not that it should be, of course – I've written at some length about this – but I find it interesting that the same traits can be used equally for a wholly good character and a wholly evil one.

Thirdly, we come to the "just plain evil" character. These are rare, probably because it's impossible to identify with them unless you are willing to admit that you are also completely evil and carrying out atrocities for no reason other than that you wanted to. This loops us back round to The Lord of the Rings, with Sauron; although he has elements of "greedy evil", he's supposed to be the Satan character of the story, and as such is simply out to destroy all that's good. Everything touched by Sauron's influence becomes corrupted; the men who take the Nine Rings become Ringwraiths, fulfilling the human desire for immortality while removing the free will and capacity to do good that would give it any meaning, while the Elves (beautiful and pure creatures in the books, instead of...well...Orlando Bloom) become the Orcs, hideous and crude characters bent on destruction.

These categories often have fairly indistinct boundaries, but once a character is fixed in one of them they don't often move out. That's a shame, as stories are often vastly improved when this does happen. Take the Sean Connery/Nic Cage vehicle The Rock. At first, the villains are all obviously from the second category, attempting to restore recognition to Marines that have been "disappeared" by their government. However, it later becomes clear that only two of them actually fit that description, with the others having only come along for the money. That sets up a much more interesting situation, in which our villains come very close to crossing into hero territory, despite having actively participated in brutally slaughtering a large number of people.

The same thing happens in webcomics. In Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick, key baddie Xykon has consistently been painted as something of a fool – an evil fool, undoubtedly, with all the trappings of a standard Dark Lord (he used to live in a dungeon filled with goblins, for crying out loud), but a fool nonetheless. Even though he clearly enjoys performing acts of evil, his heart (or his chest cavity, at any rate) is not in it, and he's only really doing it for the theatrics. Even when Xykon kills Roy, the key character of the strip, he gives him the chance to back out of the fight and go off and train for a bit, just so that they can be on level terms. Although he does want to win, he also wants to make it interesting; the real evil planning and methodical destruction is left to his sidekick Redcloak.

Burlew has clearly noticed that Xykon's comedy value has been damaging his position as key antagonist of the strip, and he's fixed that by releasing a prequel book (Start of Darkness) telling us about Xykon's origins and motivations. (Plenty of spoilers ahead, so OotS fans who haven't read it may want to look away now.) In this book, Redcloak is portrayed as a clear second-category villain, doing everything for the good of his people and his god. He may be evil, and he may be responsible for the destruction of entire cities (and destabilising the universe), but he has an internally consistent reason for all that he does.

Xykon, on the other hand, is just flat-out evil all the way. He double-crosses his own men, makes people work for him by threatening their entire families with death, magically rips off all of his own flesh in order to become more powerful, and finally tricks Redcloak into murdering his own brother so that he can be certain of his loyalty. This is not an "oops, I appear to have accidentally yet joyfully killed someone" evil character, this is a monster without any saving graces whatsoever. His comedy role has been completely overtaken by the Monster in the Darkness, who, incidentally, is very similar to the Xykon from the online strip: despite its own considerable power, it doesn't actually care what it does so long as it gets tasty food.

Given that a lot of art is to do with reflecting reality, should we be worried that evil characters are so popular? Probably not. It's incredibly unlikely that anyone is going to watch Darth Vader choking someone to death for their incompetence and say "hey, I know, Billy over there didn't do what I asked him to - I think I'll strangle the life out of him!" Indeed, we have more to worry about with the portrayal of heroes, given that much of the US's current policy on human rights for terrorist suspects seems to be based on Jack Bauer's opinions. Villains are an acceptable outlet for our own less-than-wholesome sides, and let's face it, they're just damn cool.

Thank you for reading. I will be retreating to my Dark Tower to cackle and plot your downfall momentarily.

Summer in the City: Deluge

2008-09-12T00:07:00.003+01:00

"Summer?" I hear you shout, incredulously. Well, actually, I don't, given that none of my regular readers (all three of them) live remotely near me, but I imagine that if they did, I would, because really, the summer has rather passed us by. After a few weeks of sun earlier in June and July, autumn has set in early, and it looks as though Summer in the City is doomed to disappear into the ever-increasing list of Small And Incomplete Blog Features. So let's make the most of it, as I present...

...oh. More rain. Specifically, this is part of the view from my window in Enfield, taken as the heaviest rain that I've seen for some time threw its weight against the town.

In what must be a kind of British self-defence mechanism, I do quite like the rain. If I'm indoors, and it's warm, and ideally if I have tea and dark chocolate digestive biscuits (for any American readers: you can buy them on Amazon, and you must do so right this second), then I find the sound of heavy rain really soothing. Just something about not having to be outside in it, I think. And then you can go out and sample that damp and earthy smell, and play dodge-the-slug all down the street. OK, so that's not quite such a good part.

In this case, I was at my computer, and saw a flash of lightning illuminate the wall of my room. I got to the window just in time to see a proper Hollywood rain storm – you know the kind. A roll of thunder, a slight hiss as the rain begins, and then within seconds it's bucketing down. I practically expected Gene Kelly to start soft-shoeing his way down the street outside.

About half an hour later, it was over, with just a few spots of drizzle attempting to keep the mood up. London has missed the worst of the recent "extreme" weather, but it seems that we now have to head onward into the rapidly cooling and dampening autumn. Time to batten down the hatches and put the kettle on.

Of course, I would never connect to someone else's unsecured wireless network. Oh dear me no.

2008-08-30T21:56:00.004+01:00

One of the things that always staggers me about the current state of technology is how quickly it changes. (And people who know me well are probably sick to death of me banging on about it. To those people, I apologise. Go and look at pretty photos of London while I talk to everyone who hasn't got bored.) Ten years ago, the Internet was slow, video was available only in postage-stamp sized RealVideo clips, Google was little more than a gleam in its founders' eyes, message forums and Java-based chatrooms were about as far as interactivity went, and the concept of MMORPGs was limited to text-based MUDs.

Nowadays, the web is growing faster than ever before, hosting costs are tumbling (my total costs for Ballpoint Banana currently come in at under £10 per year), and speeds are soaring. However, some aspects have not changed that much, and one of them is the physical infrastructure used to deliver all this shiny content into our vastly overpowered computers. Despite valiant efforts by Virgin (among others) to get optical fibres deployed on a major scale, pretty much everyone in the UK uses existing cables – either their phone lines or their TV cables. Well, apart from the 9% who are still on dialup for some unfathomable reason.

Wireless may be gaining popularity among home users, but it's only once the cable has made it into the user's home that this can happen. To some extent, that's a good thing, as it means the user has complete control over the hardware they have, instead of the ISP saying that customers need a specific type of wireless access. However, it is dramatically stifling the growth of public wireless.

"Public wireless", in this case, means access to the Internet that you can get anywhere (or anywhere reasonably urban, anyway). It's something of a niche at the moment, its use generally limited to people who carry laptops with them. However, with the entry into the market of ultraportable laptops like the Asus Eee, or phone-sized devices like my Nokia N800, people are starting to want to get access to the web wherever they are. Oh, and they don't really want to have to squint at it, either.

There's been two main attempts to bring public wireless to reality, and again, both of them are based on existing technology. The first uses the extensive mobile phone network, along with GPRS data transfer technology, to get the web onto phones, and the second uses the standard wired internet access technology and sticks wireless broadcasters on the end.

The mobile phone camp has the advantage that the mobile phone network already covers something like 95-99% of populated areas (that's a guess, but it's probably not far wrong), and has the secondary advantage that if you're the type of person who wants to browse the internet on the move, it's a near certainty that you already have a mobile. Apple and O2 have grabbed this opportunity with both hands, and are flogging the iPhone to customers on its Internet capabilities like there's no tomorrow.

However, there are disadvantages too, the main one being that mobile Internet access is still slow (GPRS just can't compare to ADSL or cable) and expensive. Let's not forget either that the screen size to which mobile users are accustomed was designed for showing phone numbers, not websites, and manufacturers are having a hard time cramming an entire web page into a screen and keeping the phone a reasonable size.

This is where the "extended wired access" camp can score highly. Wi-fi is now an accepted technological standard, to the extent that almost all laptops now come with it by default, and it works so fast that the limiting factor in the connection speed will almost always be at the service provider's end, not the device. It's also not restricted to any one type of device, so desktops, laptops and ultra-mobile devices can all use it (and talk to each other) equally well. Its disadvantage is that it's primarily been sold as a home or office technology, rather than for public places, so if you can pick up a wireless signal in the street or in a train station, it will either be very weak, or it will be...

...oh dear...

...a subscription service. There's a couple of these, notably The Cloud and BT Openzone. They show up on a wireless device as an unsecured wireless network, but if you connect to them they will deliver nothing except a "please pay us money" splash page until you pay inordinately expensive rates. (£4.50 for an hour? What is this, 1995?) Now, if I were using the internet for business purposes on the move, I can see that this might be a good deal. For the casual user, though, it's a horrifically bad deal, and you're much better off just wandering around until you can find someone who's left their network unlocked so you can nick access off them.

The way around this, I reckon, is for these service providers to recognise that when people are accessing the web on the move, for the most part they only want it for a few minutes. Maybe they're in a pub and want to identify the singer currently warbling on the sound system, or they're in a train station trying to get to the National Rail website, or they've just thought of a hilariously witty comment to post on their blog which they will definitely forget by the time they reach a net-connected computer. (And yes, all three of these situations have happened to me within the last few weeks. Apart from the whole "hilariously witty" thing.) They certainly don't want to pay for an entire hour – anything that will take that long can almost certainly wait until they get home.

This means that the way to get massive public uptake of public wireless access is, quite simply, to drop the prices for intermittent access incredibly low or even free. There should be a way to buy longer-term access (perhaps on a subscription basis), for people who actually need to use the web for hours when on the move), and this could come with other benefits such as higher speeds or prioritised traffic.

(Quick note - no, that doesn't violate Net Neutrality, because it gives priority to users, not websites. The network in this case doesn't care what you're looking at, only how you're looking at it.)

If that's how it should happen, will it? Basically, no. BT and others have sunk a lot of money into their infrastructure, and they're going to want to recoup that investment as quickly as possible, even if it doesn't build up future markets as fast as it could. The problem is the one that I touched on above – the underlying internet infrastructure hasn't changed much, so there's a lot invested in it, and the change that would be required to easily provide widely available public net access (like Wi-MAX) is slow, expensive and riskier than just using the current technology.

There is a bright side, and it's the fact I pointed out right up at the top of this piece: technology develops ridiculously fast. Pretty much every prediction made about how technology is going to develop has turned out to be wrong in some way, so it really wouldn't surprise me if some ingenious entrepreneur suddenly changed the face of wireless internet in much the same way that Freeserve did for dialup ten years ago. We can but hope.

Type the rest of your post here.

I wonder...how many Americans would be up for a "Photoshoppers for Obama" lobby group?

2008-08-27T21:05:00.003+01:00

I've just been watching a few bits from last night's action at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. This has hammered two things home to me:

BBC Parliament is an extremely awesome channel even when it isn't showing anything to do with Parliament; and
The Americans do glitz and glamour better than anyone else in the world.

I'd seen clips of the conventions in previous years, but really, nothing quite prepares you for seeing several thousand people decked out in a hundred variations of red, white and blue (and cowboy hats. I appreciate the cowboy hats), screaming in joy or alternatively booing like their life depended on it whenever the speaker slips key words into their speech. (Cheering: "Obama", "Democrats", "America"; booing: "McCain", "Republicans", "Bush", "eight years".) Everyone seems to be waving signs, rising from their seats to applaud wildly at every other sentence, and in some cases looking kind of tearful and like they can't quite cope. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The other main thing that I realised was that even if they were fielding a terrible candidate (and even if I didn't support them anyway), I'd be very tempted to throw my support behind the Democrats entirely on the basis of their typography. To see what I mean, take a look at this image from barackobama.com.

And now compare it to John McCain's campaign logo.

There's nothing especially wrong with the McCain logo, but that font just looks like someone took Times New Roman and filed the corners off. The font used on Obama's page (and it's the same one that was used for all the speakers' names at the convention, in a rather good piece of visual continuity) is one that I've never seen before, and it's well-balanced, nicely rounded, clean and smart. Whoever is doing the graphic design for the Democrats at the moment is doing a superb job.

The United Kingdom. Reassuringly Useless.

2008-08-18T18:39:00.003+01:00

As has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt in Beijing this week, Britain is a country that is remarkably difficult to describe in any lasting way. Just when I thought that "being useless at sports" was one of the key things that defined this place, our athletes go and put themselves third in the medal table. While we're on the subject, track cycling is much, much cooler than I ever thought. Whoever had the idea of a sport where all the competitors have to dress up like superheroes was a genius.

Some aspects of this country, however, do not change. I was in Liverpool Street station last night, waiting for a train back to Enfield (and listening to Belle & Sebastian, so I was already filled with the very British combination of slightly melancholy whimsy) when the giant video screen in the station started showing BAA's new Terminal 5 advert.

Terminal 5, as you'll probably remember, is the newest part of London's Heathrow Airport. It's been open since the end of March, but its grand opening was sadly marred by the fact that they hadn't quite got the rather important function of matching up passengers with their luggage working properly. Impressively, the terminal managed to misdirect 28,000 pieces of luggage in a mere 10 days, reaching new heights of incompetence previously unseen.

So, here we are, over four full months down the line, and what is the advert tagline that BAA has decided to go with?

"Terminal 5 is working." Not "Terminal 5 is working well." Not "Terminal 5 is a nice place to catch a plane." Not even "Terminal 5 – Now Losing An Acceptable Proportion Of Your Luggage."

No, BAA reckons that it is worth advertising the fact that – a third of a year after the terminal was supposed to be fully operative – it now performs to the standards that it was meant to be meeting all along.

Only the British could possibly think that was a good idea. My national identity is once again secure, no matter how glittering our athletic prowess. Thanks, BAA. Thanks.

200!

2008-08-05T21:56:00.003+01:00

Milestones are always fun, and we've hit a big one today on The Beautiful Hypothesis – this is my 200th post! As I've tended to do in previous milestone posts, here's some handy statistics and fun facts about this blog.

It's been 582 days since post #1, making my posting rate 0.34 posts per day, or about one every three days. That's rather higher than I thought, and I'm very gratified to know that I'm just about hitting my original target.
The most common label I've used on my posts is "picture of the week", with 52 entries (oddly enough). Following closely behind is "internet" with 26. Good to see I've got my priorities right.
The word count for all posts, including titles and datestamps (but not including this post), is 104,525. In 12pt Times New Roman, this takes up 181 A4 pages.
The most popular post (by page views) is What's in your wallet?, my step-by-step dissection of a debit card. Over 20% of my visitors read that post, considerably more than even see the front page.
Phrases that my visitors have used to get to this blog include "funny badgers", "risc perfume for man", "hypothesis town services switzerland", "is the phrase 'yesterday morning' right" (I think it probably is, personally), "welsh translation of marseillaise" and "belinda carlisle satanica".

I could go on, but I think instead I will continue to the reason I didn't make this post a couple of days ago – I was working on this blog's newest feature! If you're a remotely regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I tend to go on a bit. I've been looking for a good solution for micro-blogging, or tumblelogging as it's sometimes known, so that I could stick short musings or observations online without going to the bother of making a whole new post.

I briefly considered Twitter, but the problem with services like that is privacy. If I suddenly decide that I don't want my posts up on Twitter any more, I have no guarantee that the owners won't keep them around on disk for years to come. Given the encroaching commercialisation of Facebook that we've seen in the last few years, too, I felt that I really needed to be able to control the posting completely.

Now that I have Ballpoint Banana running, and now that my Python coding skills are at a slightly less amateurish level (technically speaking, I'm a professional developer!), I decided that the thing to do was to develop my own blogging engine. So I'm very happy to announce the launch of Breezeblog, the simplest and most lightweight micro-blogging solution known to man.

To read my posts with the default settings, just make your merry way to this page. There aren't many posts up there yet, but once there are you will be able to read the archives from the settings page.

That page also gives you access to the RSS feed, and thanks to the wonders of Yahoo Pipes I can also offer a combined Beautiful Hypothesis and Breezeblog feed. So now you can stay completely up to date with anything that I write, and can also shake your head sadly in disbelief at the rampaging torrent of geekishness that is my life.

Buses are under-represented in both films and music. Except in Speed.

2008-07-29T20:50:00.004+01:00

Although they have a bad reputation in this country, trains really are pretty cool. That's not just the ten-year-old version of me talking either, the one who spent entire summer holidays carefully counting how many trains he saw at level crossings and so on (the record was 20 in six weeks) and once made his entire family wait beside a railway line for about half an hour until one came past. No, this is current me, the one who lives in the least car-friendly city in the UK and who likes being able to fall asleep halfway through a journey and have a reasonably decent chance of waking up again.

I don't know what it is about them – perhaps the speed, perhaps their size, perhaps the fat blue sparks that leap off the overhead lines and make you really nervous – but for the most part, I do really enjoy train travel. It's surprising, then, that for most songwriters it's cars that get all the love.

Most genres of music seem to be oddly car-fixated. Hip-hop is the most obvious – although back in the days of Run-DMC it was fine to just rap about your shoes, nowadays that's not nearly enough, and you have to be rollin' in your BMW with blue neon lights underneath to be taken remotely seriously. (Apparently.) Cars are seen as a sign of affluence, and therefore importance – the humble train is just not cool enough.

Modern country music is heavily into cars too. Here, though, they're less a sign of wealth and more the embodiment of ordinariness. Country, as the name suggests, has its home out in the wide open spaces, where it's simply not practical to go anywhere without an engine. That means that if you want to evoke an image of space, freedom and salt-of-the-earth folk (an expression that, surprisingly, doesn't mean "sharp, gritty and leaves you with a nasty aftertaste"), you can't go far wrong by singing about beat-up pickup trucks. Trains are the things them city folk use.

It wasn't always this way. Listen to any older country – American roots music, if you like – and this emphasis is entirely missing, simply because back then the situation was reversed. Cars were rich men's playthings, the railway lines ran everywhere, and if you needed to get out of town and be free, you hopped on a train in the dead of night. This kind of atmosphere made it through roughly to around Johnny Cash, whose "Folsom Prison Blues" starts with a train a'comin' and rollin' round the bends, and even today peeks through sometimes to evoke images of distance and life passing one by (REM's "Driver 8" and Eels' "Railroad Man" spring to mind).

Film-makers, on the other hand, have no qualms about sticking their heroes on board trains whenever they feel like it. It's a ready-made metaphor for a journey through life, an easy way of throwing people from different walks of life together, and a plausible way of containing and isolating the characters from any outside influences. Oh, and they make a terrible mess when they crash, so either the hero of the piece can save everyone (or at least his cute girlfriend), or the villain can kill hundreds while laughing maniacally.

Trains even pop up when they're not the main focus in films, but this rarely happens in songs; I suspect this is to do with the relative lengths of each medium. A song, like a car journey, can be as long or as short as you want (within limits), but unless you're in a very urban environment, the train is reserved for relatively long and important trips. You take the train off to war, or to go and have a deep personal revelation, not when you're condensing a few moments of life into music.

Although there's a fair amount of exceptions to this rule, the general idea still seems to hold: the longer the format of your work, the longer the journey you can fit in it. I think that's a shame. Songs are more than capable of covering vast sweeps of time, mostly metaphorically, but also literally once you hit prog rock. Likewise, the road movie is a shamefully underdeveloped film convention, having been pushed into teen road trip movie and schlocky horror territory. Of course, sometimes their efforts won't work, and we'll be left with bizarre and pretentious experimental work. But at least it'll be new bizarre, pretentious experimentation.

All of which means that I can leave you with one of those rare things: a song that breaks the conventions, and carries it off brilliantly. Here's The Who's "5:15".

By the way, Pete Townshend screaming "Girls are fifteen, SEXUALLY KNOWING!" was a biting comment on the society of the day 35 years ago. When he did the song again in 2000 at the Royal Albert Hall, it was just creepy.

Oops.

2008-07-26T23:57:00.003+01:00

I was in London this afternoon, and was planning to come back the same way I usually do – getting the Tube to Finsbury Park, and catching a train from there. That didn't work today, because just as I got into the station announcements started being made about trains being delayed because a bus had hit a railway bridge.

"Fair enough," I thought. "You can't go sending trains over bridges when buses have just torn large lumps of masonry out of them." It seemed I was in for a long wait, unless I could figure out an alternative route.

Then the announcements came again. This time it was a little more specific - a bus had hit a railway bridge near Finsbury Park, so no trains could come in or out.

And then I looked up the tracks, and saw two trains sitting patiently about 200 metres away, lights on but not doing anything at all. The bridge in question was the one right outside the station.

So, in a chivalric and noble kind of way, I took part in that most ancient and beauteous of British traditions: popping outside to gawk at whatever carnage was currently going on.

Here's what I saw:

Looks rather like a boiled egg just before you dip your soldiers in, doesn't it?

Coming in as a close second: the smell of nightclubs

2008-07-24T23:02:00.004+01:00

I'm pleased to say that there are very few things I hate. Obviously there are some; wars, genocide, the casual cruelty to the vulnerable that passes for entertainment among far too many people. Oh, and the hack-job that the producers of CSI: NY did on The Who's classic song Baba O'Riley. Even I have my limits.

There is one thing, though, that you probably wouldn't expect to see on most people's lists of things they passionately dislike. I find this odd, because it's an item that is incredibly unattractive, is universally acknowledged to be so, and is very widespread. It's the yellow sodium street light.

Street lighting has got much better over the years, and now the fashion seems to be for small, downward-pointing white lights. Unfortunately, every town of any size will be full of sodium lights, the steel columns shaped like droopy toothbrushes which cast a harsh, grainy yellow light outwards over the street. The first problem with these – and it's a fairly fundamental one – is that these lights don't really illuminate anything. Directly underneath them it's not so bad, but move any distance away and they do no more than slightly change the shadows.

If sodium lights do very little on the street, it seems to be because they save all their illuminating powers to light up people's houses. If you've ever lived in a house with one of these streetlights right outside, you'll know quite how horrible it is to walk into an unlit room at night and immediately be reminded of a motorway. Having such an unearthly colour projected into your personal living space is highly unpleasant.

That highlights another major problems with these things, actually: the light that they produce has qualities seen absolutely nowhere else in nature. Although the sun looks yellow, its light is very nearly completely white. Even in the late evening, it never reaches the lurid yellow of discharging electric current through sodium vapour. This light does strange things to your perception of colour. Red objects become black, light greens and yellows become indistinguishable from white, and yet because the light is so pervasive, your brain almost believes that it's normal. That gives you that horrible feeling that something is subtly but terribly wrong. It's most unpleasant.

(Incidentally, the fact that the light isn't as steady as it looks also helps to make it look strange. Spread your fingers and watch them as you wave them in front of a sodium light. You'll get the same "strobing" effect as if you wave them in front of a TV, and for the same reason: the light is flickering faster than you can detect, but not so fast that you can't tell that something's strange.)

The most fundamental reason for my hatred of sodium streetlights, though, is more social than anything. I grew up in a village which had almost no lighting anywhere. The only times I ever saw these lights when I was little was when I was either on a long car journey at night (and hence, I was tired and crabby) or in a big town late at night (and if you'd grown up anywhere near Colchester, you'd know why that would be a negative experience). Then there's the light pollution. If I went out into my back garden, I could look up at the sky and see a yellowish-pinkish glow over to the south (Colchester), one to the north (Ipswich) and one to the east (Felixstowe).

That's helped to associate the yellow, flickering light of sodium with the sense of being very small, very vulnerable, and surrounded. Add that to my being scared of most strangers by default, and I'm left absolutely convinced that I'm about to be mugged or screamed at or chased down the street by a bunch of psychopaths every time I walk down the street at night.

What can be done about it? Not a lot. Public constructions like that tend to last for far longer than they should, so we're going to see them around for a while. But perhaps eventually, someone might come up with a way of lighting towns at night that doesn't put me in mind of roving gangs of murderers. It's something to hope for, at least.

Next step: buy a Bluetooth GPS receiver. And CONQUER THE WORLD.

2008-07-22T23:10:00.003+01:00

It's amazing how wide the definition of "geek" can really be. Just this last weekend, I was with some of my old friends from school, most of whom have gone down the "Magic: The Gathering" and/or D&D geek route. At work, it's much more the "I've reprogrammed my washing machine to cook a three-course meal" type.

And me? I like shiny gadgets.

That's the newest addition to my selection of shiny things. (Incidentally, if you got the reference in that photo you're another kind of geek altogether.) The N800 is a strange beast, not quite a phone, not quite an ultraportable laptop, certainly not the size it appears to be in that photo. It's larger than an iPhone, smaller than a paperback book, has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth but no phone communications, gets a better wireless internet connection than my laptop, and manages to demonstrate effectively just how badly Facebook have screwed up their page layout.

Because it's based on Linux, the open source operating system (called Maemo) is very open and extensible. Indeed, if I were the Linux brand of geek, I'd be happily rewriting the kernel right now and tweaking various options. As it is, I've been happily downloading programs that other people have made, so I now have two bits of mapping software, two media players, an FM radio (which uses the headphone cable as an antenna - nifty bit of design there), a couple of games, and all manner of other things.

Although I could be writing this blog post on it, I'm not. That's because, cute and powerful though the N800 is, its text input does leave something to be desired. It's not really their fault - entering text on a touchscreen is difficult at the best of times, and on a tiny touchscreen it's even harder. They've done the best they could; the handwriting recognition is better than most I've seen, and the full-screen finger keyboard is superb. That said, if I was going to be writing anything of any length – like this post – I'd probably either write on another computer (like I'm doing) or SSH or VNC onto the N800 and use another computer's keyboard.

That's the other thing that makes it such a powerful little machine: its openness means it can interoperate with other machines very easily. With a USB cable in the side, it talks to my Windows machine perfectly well (it simply shows up as a USB drive); any type of server with a Linux implementation can be run on it, so it can communicate in practically any way. I nearly installed an FTP server on it the other day before seeing sense.

And, of course, because it has Linux it also comes with Python, the only programming language I'm remotely good at. I haven't done any coding for a while now (when it's your job to test bits of code, doing it in your free time loses its appeal somewhat), but I have several ideas on the table. Keep an eye out for new stuff soon.

I appreciate that this entire post has seemed like something of an advert for Nokia, but you can probably tell that I'm rather excited by this new and pretty thing. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I've stopped giggling.

Summer in the City: A View From The Bridge

2008-07-09T21:11:00.002+01:00

The summer seems to have gone walkabout, to judge by the rain we've been having these last few days, but that doesn't mean I can't look back to better, sunnier days. Like two weeks ago.

That's the River Thames, as seen from Tower Bridge. I appreciate that most photos from around this point are of Tower Bridge, but with a sky like that I had very little choice. (To be fair, about two minutes later I got the standard tourist shot of the bridge as well. It really is an amazing structure...)

I've fairly familiar with the Thames anyway, as it runs through Oxford as well. Of course, there it's called the Isis (because Oxford is naturally pretentious like that) and it's also a lot smaller. Even there, though, it's a lovely river, and it's great that the architects of London have seen fit to put a great selection of awesome buildings along it. On the evening that this photo was taken, I walked from Vauxhall Bridge to Tower Bridge (closest equivalent by road), just enjoying the evening sunshine on the weird selection of structures.

Go behind the cut to see one building that gets extra weird points...

"Kevin, you idiot! What the hell are we going to do with a gigantic roll of novelty 3-metre-wide NHS-branded parcel tape?"

Marc Warren is also in this film. Punching James McAvoy in the face repeatedly. Seriously, that's all he does.

2008-07-02T20:29:00.005+01:00

Just in case any of you were considering going out to see Wanted, the new action movie starring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie, please take my advice – don't.

Now, that's not because it's not enjoyable. On the contrary, it's perfect summer fare, ideal for letting your brain cells atrophy while your eardrums are gently caressed by explosions and endless gunfire. This does not, however, save it from being without a doubt the most ridiculous film I have ever seen.

Let's start with the basics (and I am going to spoil pretty much every major plot point here, so if you must go and see it don't read on). The film is ostensibly about an ancient society of assassins, their quasi-mystical powers, and their mysterious machinations to do with our hero, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy). Poor Wes is a mess, with a dead-end job, a horrible boss, no money, no life and no prospects. It therefore doesn't take very long before he's happily training away as a super-mystical-assassin.

...wait. What? His life sucks, so therefore he's going to go and kill people? I have to say, pleasant though my life has been so far, I cannot imagine any circumstances in which I would prefer to be a merciless hitman. Now, it's just about possible that if I had the right motivation – say, if I was told to hunt down major gangland bosses or something, for which I would be given vast amounts of cash and matching amounts would go towards alleviating child poverty in Africa – I might lean towards perhaps being persuaded. Let's see what motivation our Wes has, shall we?

Morgan Freeman shows him that cloth that he's just woven on a vastly oversized mechanical loom has a secret code with the names of people that he needs to go and kill.

Yes, that's all. Not only does the plot require us to believe that the ancient mystical society were bright enough to discover a binary system of encoding text in the weave of cloth, it also requires us to believe that they were stupid enough to take it seriously. Oh, and the massive, gaping plot hole? The one where Wesley should just have turned round and said "So who actually supervises the loom in this room that only you are ever allowed into?" The one where it should be painfully obvious that someone is deliberately encoding these names themselves?

Yeah, that one just swishes right past. So Wesley ends up on the roof of a train, curving a bullet through the window of an office block to shoot some poor businessman in the chest.

What's that? "Curving a bullet?" Oh yes, didn't I tell you about that? About halfway through his training, Wesley is taught how to make bullets swing round in curves. Now, I know that this is physically impossible. That's not a problem – people do impossible things in films all the time. The problem is that the scriptwriters were clearly too lazy to come up with a way of explaining this, handwaving it away as "using your instincts". In practice, that means that apparently, if you take careful aim with your gun, you'll have pretty good accuracy, but if you pull the gun out from behind your back, swing it wildly in the general direction of your target and pull the trigger, you'll pull off a perfect shot even if Angelina Jolie happens to be in the way.

Even this would be manageable, if it weren't compounded by some of the most jaw-droppingly silly stunts ever seen. Observe, as The Daily Show's Jon Stewart introduces a clip of one of the more ludicrous moments.

Do watch the rest of the interview as well. Obviously I disagree with Stewart on this one – I thought the film's silliness didn't manage to redeem the fact that it also sucked – but you really can't dispute that merely watching that clip made you marginally stupider.

Moving on, although the semblance of a plot rattles along fairly entertainingly, it goes completely off the rails at roughly the same time that an entire train also goes off the rails and plunges into a huge canyon in a blaze of spectacular but rather unconvincing CGI. Partly because Wesley is inside the train and somehow survives with little more than bruises, but mostly because it's at that point that the film reveals its Major Shock Twist™, which would be more shocking if it hadn't been stolen from The Empire Strikes Back. This leads into a denouement that, although brash, loud and violent, is also meandering and unconvincing.

At the end, there's a last-ditch attempt to convince the audience that the film was actually all about standing out from the crowd and making your life mean something, but unfortunately this is little more than a too-small figleaf on an ending that is actually surprisingly bleak. Rather than the violence (which is very graphic) having at least led to something important and worthwhile, the audience is left with a nasty taste in the mouth, and a feeling that this violence was more of an end than a means.

There are some good things about the film. McAvoy is excellent, especially in the accent department (I'd forgotten he was Scottish until I saw the interview above), as is Freeman, and Angelina Jolie at least makes for a pleasant viewing experience, even if she's a little stilted. And, as I said before, it is fairly enjoyable, most of the time at least.

The reason I would advise against going to see it, though, is that you really don't need to. You've seen the violence before in other, better films. You've seen stunts as daft as this, if only in a Looney Tunes short. And you've seen all of these actors in much better films (with the possible exception of Jolie, for whom this is a major step up). Most importantly, though, you need only wait a couple of years, and this film will end up where it really belongs - at 9pm on a Wednesday evening on Channel 5.

Seems like Bill Gates got out at just the right time.

2008-06-27T22:43:00.003+01:00

Unless you, like me, are a bit of a geek, you'll be unlikely to have seen the news recently that Microsoft have stopped PC manufacturers from selling Windows XP. This was always on the cards - indeed, the original plan was to stop XP sales by the end of January, and it was only when customers complained loudly that the date was extended until the end of June.

Despite not having actually reached that date yet, a lot of manufacturers have already stopped selling XP. I wandered into my local PC World yesterday (I'm probably going to get a new desktop pretty soon – my poor little laptop is coughing and wheezing more than ever just at the moment) to see what the situation was, and the girl on the customer support desk – who, to make a completely irrelevant observation, was extremely attractive – informed me that the only way they could give me a PC with Windows XP on it would be to sell me a Vista PC, then take Vista off it and "upgrade" it to XP.

I'd heard of this trick before, but on being informed that I'd have to pay the cost of Vista, the cost of XP, and an extra fee for switching between the two, I decided that this really wasn't an option. No matter how pretty their customer support reps may be, PC World are going to have a hard time selling me a system with a massive markup on it just because I want an older piece of software.

The really unfortunate part of the whole issue is that the people who get hurt most by this are the retailers, like PC World. Microsoft itself might take a small hit in sales, but its business customers will probably make up for that for the most part. The retailers, though, are going to have quite a few people like me simply turning away and either going online to the few places that do still have stock of XP, or going away from Windows altogether into the arms of Apple or Linux.

Personally, I'm going to try the online route, but the idea was always to switch to Linux as my primary OS. Wine has now reached version 1.1, so it's possible that I can get away without using Windows at all. And if I – a technically literate person, but no technical genius – can realise that, then so can the very many other people like me, and Microsoft are going to see a fall in their market share. It seems like Microsoft are increasingly determined to shoot themselves not only in their foot, but in the feet of anyone who comes anywhere near them.

Summer in the City: Gherkin and Churchin'

2008-06-15T15:40:00.006+01:00

It's been a while since I've posted any of my photos up here, hasn't it? That's a problem I can solve very simply, by starting a new occasional photo series. (Yes, occasional as in "may vanish without trace", I'm afraid. This isn't the return of Picture of the Week, and won't be unless you really want to see a slightly different photo of the inside of an office every Sunday.)

The series is called "Summer in the City", and as the name suggests, it'll be about London. The reason is that, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm new to this city, so it makes sense that as I discover new bits of it, so can you. The "summer" bit is so that it doesn't go on too long and bore you all senseless. (You can just imagine it..."look, here's what Tower Bridge looks like in October!")

The first photo in the series is one that I took last Monday. I very much doubt that I need to tell you the name of this building, but just in case you're completely unfamiliar with London, that's the Gherkin on the left. It's the 6th tallest building in London and the second tallest in the financial district (or "The City", as it's somewhat arrogantly called), and I think it's incredibly beautiful. Weird, certainly, but as a piece of engineering and as an icon it's pretty much without parallel, at least inside London.

Particularly poignant about this building is that it's on the site of the Baltic Exchange building, a Grade-II listed piece of architecture that was damaged beyond repair in a bomb attack by the Provisional IRA in 1992. Just to its right in the photo is the church of St Andrew Undershaft, a 500-year old construction that has survived Puritan rioting, the World War II bombings, and yes, the 1992 Provisional IRA bomb. Both buildings are extremely attractive in their own way, and their history suggests facing down destruction and violence in different ways – the church has pushed through and survives, battered but still standing, while the Gherkin has risen from almost complete destruction to something tall, glittering and innovative.

Oh, and they both look awesome at dusk.

Yes, I am indeed taking an unusual interest in sport for once. Roll on the Olympics!

2008-06-13T23:50:00.002+01:00

I hate to say "I told you so".

Actually, no I don't. I told you so. I said, way back in November 2007, that Euro 2008 would be far more enjoyable sans England, and here we are after five days' play, with a whole bunch of extremely good teams, no clear sign of who's going to win, and absolutely no stress on my part.

OK, so there have been some teams so far who are more of a burden on the tournament than a joy. Greece has been a surprise entry into this category, playing a strategy that appeared to consist largely of passing the ball between their back three and hoping that it would suddenly teleport into their opponent's net. On the other hand, we've witnessed the highly enjoyable spectacle of a match played practically underwater. For those of you not paying attention, that was Switzerland vs. Turkey, a match that looked like being a bit dull until torrential rain sent the players careening all over the pitch as if it was a pinball table (and, ironically, stopping the ball dead every time it travelled more than a couple of yards).

And then, of course, we've had tonight's match, Netherlands vs. France. These two have great histories as footballing nations - it's a rare international tournament when the Dutch don't breeze at least into the quarter-finals, and it's only a few short years since the French were completely unbeatable. What's more, both teams boast incredibly good upfront players (Ruud van Nistelrooy and Thierry Henry in particular), almost guaranteeing some sparky goalmouth action.

True to form, the match was superb – certainly one of the best I've seen for some time (although that's not saying much). The thing is, had I been rooting for either team it wouldn't have been half as much fun. Of course I'd have been very happy if I was supporting the Dutch, but having the French pull back to within one goal with a superb strike shortly into the second half would have piled on the worry. I'd have been biting my nails every time Henry looked like getting near the ball, despite his obvious rustiness at the moment. And, of course, if I'd been supporting the French I'd have been dashing my string of onions to the ground in disgust and vowing never to wear my stripy jersey and jaunty beret ever again.

In short, Euro 2008, just as I'd hoped, is turning out to be highly enjoyable. Maybe England should make a habit of staying out of these things.

I wonder, would a bus driver let you on if you just waved some blue cardboard at the Oyster reader and shouted "BEEP!"?

2008-06-04T22:04:00.008+01:00

So it's been some time since I posted here. At least, it feels like a long time – that would be because I have now moved to a new city and started a new job, and things are still so weird that my perception of time has been doing strange things. I haven't abandoned this blog, though. Hopefully once things have got more sorted out, I'll be able to ramp the posting rate back up again. Until then, there may be some dead air on here for a while, punctuated with the odd musing. Like this one.

The city in question that I've moved to is London. It's not a place that I know a whole heap about; indeed, up until now it's been pretty much "that place you go through on the way to wherever it was you were actually going". (For those of you outside the UK – it's almost impossible to get anywhere in the south of England without going through London at some point.) That means that I've had no chance to get used to it; however, after a week of living in Enfield, I'm just beginning to get a feel for how it works. Here's some of my observations.

First, Greater London is massive. I went right into the centre of the city last Saturday, travelling only on buses (I haven't been paid yet, so I'm travelling cheap right now), and it took the best part of two hours. For the record, that's longer than it took on the train when I lived in Essex. The outer bits of the city are so large, in fact, that they don't feel like a city. Enfield feels very much like it could be Anywheresville, a generic smallish town with all that that usually entails. It's almost as if these small towns are huddling together for warmth, creating a huge conglomerate out of completely different bits.

Bizarrely, given the first fact, central London is tiny. The bus route I was on took me right into Trafalgar Square, from where you can stand on the steps of the National Gallery and see Big Ben (or to be more accurate, the clock tower on the Palace of Westminster that houses Big Ben) and the London Eye without even moving. Walk south for a minute or so, and you can go through Admiralty Arch and find yourself at one end of the Mall, with St. James's Park stretching off to your left and Buckingham Palace staring you right in the face. Go round the edge of the park and you can walk back up Whitehall, poking your nose in at the (extremely heavily-guarded) end of Downing Street to say hello to Gordon Brown, shortly before passing nearly every major building in the political life of the United Kingdom.

You might think, therefore, that with central and Greater London being so different, there's not much tying them together. There is at least one thing, though, and that's the transport. Where most cities seem to put in a public transport network as something of an afterthought, in London it is an incredible achievement. You noticed, I assume, that it was possible for me to travel on buses all the way from Enfield to the middle of the city and back out again? That entire journey cost me £3, and it would have stayed at £3 if I had hopped on and off buses the entire day.

If I'd chosen to take the Tube instead (the oldest and most extensive underground railway network in the world, by the way) that would have cost slightly more, but not a whole lot. And, thanks to the mildly Orwellian but still rather funky Oyster cards, it would have been incredibly easy. London is one of the few places in the UK where having a car is not a convenience, but a downright liability – even outside the congestion charge zones (a good idea in principle, although I'm still uneasy about the civil liberties implications unless they have a seriously good data protection policy) it's much, much cheaper and more convenient to use public transport.

I'm still not in love with London. Walking around it, I came to the conclusion that it is a great city, in the classical sense of "great" – it really has to be, given the amount of history that's taken place here – but it's not a nice city. I don't feel as safe here as I did in Essex (although ironically I'm probably less likely to be mugged here), and I certainly don't feel as safe as I did in Oxford. It'll be a while before I'm used to it. Until then, though, you'll be able to find me, emerging mole-like from an Underground station, blinking in wonderment at the strange things around me and wondering how the hell I'm going to make it back home.

Public Domain Theatre: Stunt Compilation

2008-05-24T15:50:00.003+01:00

Any time spent browsing around Youtube will generally turn up several videos made by some kid with too much free time and very little sense of self-preservation. People throwing themselves off roofs, small buildings and ramps are very common; skateboarders and inline skaters upload videos too, apparently in an attempt to show the world that they, too, can suffer grievous injury while on wheels.

This is by no means a new phenomenon. If I were to tell you that I'd found a video online that showed people skating on top of a 16-storey building, jumping from motorbikes to cars, strapping themselves to windmills and doing all sorts of other incredibly dangerous things, you would probably assume that I was talking about something like Jackass, or one of its many imitators.

However, this being part of my Public Domain Theatre series, that's not quite the case. Instead, all the stunts that I'm talking about were carried out in 1918. And, fortunately, the news organisations of the time were around to film it in glorious, grainy, black and white silent footage.

Video and flash player provided by the very wonderful archive.org. This video is public domain and therefore cannot be included under my Creative Commons licence.

Quite apart from the frankly jaw-dropping nature of some of the things being done in this film (are those people actually standing on the wing of a biplane in flight without any kind of harness?), I love spotting the things that are the same in modern culture. I'm particularly interested to see that Fox News was entirely capable of being self-righteous and pompous even 90 years ago (see the title card at 00:35), and that the "transfer from motorbike to car" stunt really hasn't changed at all since its invention. In some ways, people were doing much more impressive things back then — how many modern stunt performers would agree to be dragged down a road by a plane while they hung on for dear life?

The dedication of the cameramen themselves is very impressive. In an era when film cameras were unwieldy and temperamental — and, more to the point, required their handle to be constantly turned manually — filming from a plane, or from a moving car, was more difficult by orders of magnitude. No-one involved in making these films is alive today, and yet this work that they made is still impressive today. I think that's a pretty awesome legacy.

Eight Things You Wish You Didn't Know About The B-2 Bomber

2008-05-20T23:19:00.003+01:00

They're practically iconic now - black, triangular objects, gliding silently overhead at massive heights. Since 1989, the US military has been flying its flagship aircraft, the B-2 bomber. You'll certainly have seen pictures of it before, and you might even have seen one in the sky. But how much do you know about them? Here's 8 things I didn't know about the B2 until I started researching tonight. And I wish I still didn't know.

The aircraft's full name is the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. Northrop Grumman is one of the world's largest arms companies. Their projects range from the very small (like electronic gyroscopes) all the way up to the very, very big (the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush). And, like most major arms companies, they've been involved in a scandal or two. As for calling your enormous flying machine of death something as ethereal as "Spirit"...
The US Congress had no idea what it was paying for when it funded the B-2's construction. The B-2 began its life as a "black project", a secret military program that no-one ever officially acknowledged existed. The US military carves off a piece of its (gigantic) budget every year so that the public can see how much money is being spent on these secret projects; however, that's not really much help when what is being produced could be literally anything. Having no kind of legal or judicial oversight on such projects doesn't sound like the best idea in the world.
The total cost of the B-2 project is somewhere in the region of $2.1 billion per aircraft. The exact cost is known by no-one except the military, but that's probably not a bad estimate. To put that in perspective, if you laid out 2.1 billion one-dollar bills in a line, that line would reach over a third of the way to the Moon.
Only 20 B-2s are active anywhere in the world. That used to be 21, until one of them crashed in February of this year. Originally, though, there were supposed to be 132, with this number only dropping when the Soviet Union collapsed. Had the whole order been completed, the average cost per aircraft would have been somewhere around $550 million, putting the hypothetical total project cost nearer $73 billion. Our line of one-dollar bills is now roughly as long as the entire road network of the European Union.
The B-2 can refuel in flight, giving it a theoretically unlimited range. That's not quite true, actually — planes can only fly for a given amount of time before they really need going over with a team of mechanics. More to the point, there's no way of changing the crew in flight, so the flight range is also limited by the capacity of that crew not to drop dead from exhaustion. The crews have come up with creative ways of getting round this problem, for example by installing a toilet and the means to make a hot meal. And a lawn recliner, according to some reports, so they can take turns sleeping. That's meant that B-2s have flown missions from the US to Afghanistan and back again entirely non-stop.
A maximum of 16 large bombs or 80 smaller ones can be carried on each run. And no, there's no way of restocking the bombs in flight. That means that for the mission to Afghanistan, there was a total flight distance of somewhere around 14,000 miles, or 875 miles per thousand-pound bomb. Flying the equivalent of Land's End to John O'Groats to drop a single bomb sounds a little odd.
The B-2 has seen service in a grand total of three campaigns. These were Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq (the second time around). Although these are undoubtedly the three largest campaigns that the US has fought since 1989, they're by no means the only ones; it's strange that no B-2s were involved in the Gulf War, in Panama, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Iraq pre-2003, or indeed anywhere else. That may be because they weren't declared fully operationally capable until 2003, meaning that non-officially-capable (but very, very expensive) aircraft were sent into combat twice.
Conventional munitions aren't the only thing a B-2 can carry. Somewhat unsurprisingly given its Cold War heritage, the B-2 was designed to carry nuclear weapons as well as conventional bombs. Despite no-one being all that likely to point nuclear bombs at the US (although the US and Russian governments sometimes seem to be trying their very hardest to restart the Cold War), B-2s are still officially capable of using nuclear bombs. The same kind of aircraft that is designed to infiltrate enemy airspace without ever being detected is also designed to drop the most destructive weapon ever created by man.

Are you feeling safe and secure?

My earwax removal machine (read: cotton bud and Lego Technic motor) wasn't quite such a resounding success.

2008-05-15T19:52:00.005+01:00

Coming, as I do, from a whole line of extremely short-sighted people, it was pretty much inevitable that I would eventually need to wear glasses. I started wearing them full-time, so to speak, when I was about 14, and since then I've been through quite a few different pairs, to the point that the annual trip to the optician is like going to see an old friend.

The other trait that I've inherited from my ancestors is the habit of being unreasonably careful with money. You really don't want to go shopping with me. It takes hours and is no fun whatsoever. As regards opticians, this means that although I've had about ten different sets of lenses as my eyes have changed, I've only had five different frames (and have had about one week every other year when I go around wearing an old pair and squinting dramatically).

The last time I got new lenses was a couple of months ago, and for whatever reason the opticians kept hold of the old lenses and asked if I wanted them. And, because I never throw anything away if I have the remotest use for it, I said yes. Sadly, I didn't find any use for them; at least, I hadn't until the other day, at which point I realised that the only bits that actually matter in a pair of glasses are the lenses. Surely it would be possible for anyone to craft their own frames?

Accordingly, I spent a happy afternoon armed with some cardboard, an egg box, a stapler, a roll of sellotape and a suitably daft attitude. Here's what I came up with.

Design #1: The Mask

Perfect for the short-sighted superhero in a hurry, this wraparound design will let you fight crime, keep your identity a secret, and do a surprisingly good job of correcting your sight. (I suspect I'd be legal to drive while wearing any of the designs in this post, at least using the standard definition of being able to read a numberplate at 20m.) Although the frames do have an annoying tendency to break free from the left ear and wave around alarmingly, careful modelling of the shape of the wearer's ear should solve that little problem.

Design #2: Ze Goggles

Utilising a sophisticated "push 'em in the slot" technology to hold the lenses in place, this design is the ultimate in comfort and practicality. Well, it would be if comfort and practicality were provided by strapping bits of an egg box to your face. It is, though, probably the most stable design of the three, allowing a surprising degree of activity without sending bits of cardboard flying; moreover, the lenses are held a constant distance from the eyes, maintaining pretty good vision. And it lets you pretend to be a motorist from the early days of driving.

Design #3: Yes, It's A Box

A cynical observer might claim that this design is, in fact, nothing more than the top of an egg box, tied roughly around the wearer's ears. However, this would be a terrible slander, as it is completely untrue. Can they not see that I've also stapled a couple of bits of card under the holes to hold the lenses? This design is the most user-friendly of the three, as lenses can be swapped out in seconds. The downside is, of course, that the lenses do tend to swap themselves out at high speed if the wearer makes any unexpected head movements. Like nodding. There is also the minor inconvenience of having to look out through a hole approximately one centimetre in each direction.

In conclusion, I'm now available for business - if you happen to have any lenses that you want put in frames, I'm your man for innovative and bold new ventures. Of course, if you're after designs that actually work, you might be better off going with the professionals...

Even if it is clichéd, having a gunfight on snowmobiles is pretty badass

2008-05-14T17:03:00.005+01:00

I was watching Die Hard 2 last night with my sister (I'm slowly working my way through the quadrilogy), and we slowly realised that there really aren't that many elements in your average action film. Really, once a bunch of things have blown up, some people have shot some other people, and there's been a car chase the length of Los Angeles, you have a film that everyone has already seen fifty times, and yet is compelling viewing.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing — indeed, it means you know what you're getting — but it does rather lend itself to people coming up with daft things to do during the film.

In a plot twist that absolutely no-one will be surprised about, my sister and I managed to come up with such an activity, and I coded up a simple version of it today - Action Movie Bingo! Get yourself a bingo card, watch out for the recurring elements in the film you're watching, and try to get five in a row.

My implementation of Action Movie Bingo is now up on Ballpoint Banana - go and have a look (reload the page to get a new card, click an element to mark it off) and play along to your heart's content. Any comments are very welcome. Unless they're along the lines of "You have far too much free time", because I already knew that.

Critical commentary on this blog post is very welcome. So long as it doesn't disagree with me.

2008-05-10T17:13:00.003+01:00

When I was doing English Literature A-level, one of my teachers told the class about the school of criticism that states that the author is completely separate from their work. In other words, you can't speculate on what the author was thinking when they were writing; equally, you can point out themes and ideas that the author didn't deliberately insert. Personally, I'm not convinced. Although it can be really interesting to draw completely unintended parallels (for example, Jan Needle's book Wild Wood re-tells The Wind in the Willows from the point of view of the stoats and weasels, turning it into a Marxist allegory, which in turn points out the unthinking aristocratic assumptions of the original), I think it's a waste to just throw away everything you know about the author.

To give you an example of what I mean, I've just finished reading Things the Grandchildren Should Know, the autobiography of Mark Everett, better known as E. E is the frontman and driving force behind the band Eels (in fact, he's frequently the band's only member), and has lived one of the strangest and most tragedy-filled lives I've ever heard about. He grew up with a father who barely ever spoke to him, and who he found dead when he was just 19; strange characters have followed him around all his life, to the extent that an entire chapter of his autobiography is entitled "I Love Crazy Girls"; and his sister and mother died within months of each other, his sister by her own hand.

I bring this up because I'm a great fan of Eels, and especially of the strange and obviously deeply meaningful lyrics that E writes, but I really didn't understand the deeper meanings behind those lyrics until I found out what he was thinking when he wrote them. The song "I Like Birds" is a prime example: it's a very simple three-chord ditty, always coming back to the refrain "'Cos I like...birds." When I played that song to some of my friends, they couldn't believe it was actually about birds, as in, feathery little creatures; they assumed, because it was a rock song, that it was about girls. The song is mentioned in Things the Grandchildren Should Know, and when you find out that E wrote it after watching little birds eating from his mother's best birdfeeder in the weeks after she died, it suddenly gains a vast amount more meaning.

It's possible, then, for an artist or author's work to be improved enormously by knowing about them as a person. Obviously, though, the reverse is also true. The comic book Cerebus began in 1977, and continued for over 6,000 pages; it's notable within the comics world as an incredible success for Dave Sim, its writer and main illustrator. (I wouldn't know, by the way, never having read it - don't expect any critical commentary here.) It also enjoyed critical and commercial success; however, things started to go downhill when Sim began to include essays with his work that were...well, let's call a spade a spade here, and say that they were disgustingly misogynistic. Again, I haven't seen all of Sim's writing by any means, but the parts that I have seen contain ideas that go right through "uncomfortable" or "plain-spoken" and go right into "complete nutjob" territory.

Is it possible to read Sim's work and not be influenced by this? Maybe it is. I do know, though, that I would find it very hard to divorce the writer from his work in that case; indeed, I'd find it difficult to buy anything that he produced, knowing that I'd in effect be offering implicit support to work that espoused ideas that I found utterly repulsive.

(Brief aside here — I think it's far too easy to dismiss repellent ideas as "crazy", when a better description would be "dangerous" or even "evil". Crazy ideas are those that are incoherent or meaningless; evil ideas are those that are terrifying because of their coherence and planning. For instance, Idi Amin managed to stay in control of Uganda for so long by carefully cultivating the appearance of being a clownish and over-important buffoon; this distracted the international community from the fact that he managed to systematically murder up to half a million of his own people.)

Now and again, it is possible to come across a piece of work where the right balance is struck — where the author's ideas are in direct contrast to your own, and that leads to a better result all round. In my case, Terry Pratchett fulfils this superbly in his book Carpe Jugulum. Pratchett is an outspoken atheist and a member of the British Humanist Association, and several of his books make gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) digs at organised religion. I suspect that he used Carpe Jugulum as something of a soapbox, mostly through the mouthpiece of his character Granny Weatherwax. Here's what Granny says to the Omnian priest Mightily Oats, towards the end of the book.

"Now if I'd seen him, really there, really alive, it'd be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched 'em like a father and cared for 'em like a mother...well, you would'nt catch me sayin' things like 'There are two sides to every question' and 'We must respect other people's beliefs.' You wouldn't find me just being gen'rally nice in the hope that it'd all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin' sword. And I did say burnin', Mister Oats, 'cos that's what it'd be. You say that you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just ... is just bein' nice. And a way of keeping in touch with the neighbours."

Despite being almost the polar opposite to Pratchett in terms of religion, I wholeheartedly agree with this speech, and knowing that he is an atheist makes this even more important; the standard that Granny speaks about would, presumably, make her re-think her position if she ever actually encountered it. Far from simply trashing faith, it's a call to true faith, and gains great value.

There's no one "best" way of approaching a piece of writing, or music, or any other form of art — indeed, when one form of criticism dominates, criticism as a whole suffers. I do think, though, that it's something of a waste to completely ignore the author. After all, they do know more about their work than almost anyone else.

Now, videogame sequels are a different kettle of fish. But then, the story does tend to take second place to blowing stuff up.

2008-05-05T19:58:00.005+01:00

Spoiler warning: I'll be going into quite a lot of detail about a number of films in this post. Basically, as soon as you see that film's title mentioned, bear in mind that I might well reveal key plot points. Fortunately, most of the films I'll be talking about either don't have major plot twists, or they really, really suck. Be warned, though.

It wasn't that long ago that the cinema was dominated by major trilogies of films. The Lord of the Rings movies stormed the box office throughout the first few years of the new millennium, around the same time as the Matrix films, and action series like Die Hard and Terminator have had new instalments reasonably recently. In some cases, these are pretty good; in many more, they just suck. So why the variability?

One of the major reasons has to be whether the original film was meant to be part of a trilogy. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, there was already a three-part narrative structure in the books, and although it didn't lend itself perfectly to film adaptation (interleaving the stories in The Two Towers was the most obvious structural change in the films), the story was so clearly mapped out that Peter Jackson simply didn't have the option to do much in the way of sweeping changes. Or take Kill Bill, which was, to all intents and purposes, a single film cut in half because audiences don't like sitting still for four hours. The sequel works because it continues precisely the same story.

In contrast to this, take a look at The Matrix. The Wachowski brothers claim to have planned all three Matrix films ahead of time, but production didn't go ahead on the second two until the first one had been a popular and critical success. That meant that The Matrix had to stand by itself as a coherent story without its sequels, making it that much harder to blend in new elements later on. It's worth mentioning that having no overarching structure isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as the later films are sufficiently different - for example, Terminator 2 is an excellent film, despite being a sequel, because it tells a new story in the same universe.

Another of the keys to successfully pulling off a sequel is not to go overboard with whatever made the original film a success. The Die Hard films tend to work because they don't change very much - John McClane gets into a bad situation, fights against overwhelming odds, and shows just how much of a maverick he is by blowing up lots of stuff and swearing at authority figures. If a Die Hard film tried to push the formula too far — made McClane save the entire world from a terrorist ring who had kidnapped his eight-year-old niece, for example, à la Commando — the audience would reject it because it simply doesn't fit the formula, and pushes McClane's character past what we expect of him.

As before (and, sadly, somewhat typically), the way not to do it is typified by the Matrix sequels. It happens with a lot of elements (Neo's somehow able to control machines in the real world thanks to some bizarre explanation that makes midichlorians look reasonable? Seriously?), but the most egregious is the Christ analogy. These were present in The Matrix, but they were treated a lot more subtly — Neo dies, only to come back with considerably more power, and proves himself to be the saviour of the humans. It's not a hugely obvious parallel to draw, and it won't do more than just gain a bit of emotional resonance with the audience.

In The Matrix Revolutions, however, the analogy is drawn well past breaking point. By this time, we've met the Matrix's "father", who gave rise to the One, we've seen that he is aware of everything that happens throughout the Matrix, and we've seen Neo die again (because the first time clearly wasn't quite enough). And at that point, a gigantic golden cross explodes out of his chest.

Subtle.

In the end, the audience gets incredibly tired of the scriptwriters hammering the same bits of symbolism into their heads again and again, and it detracts from the film. Coming after two entire films of bad philosophy and insufficiently awesome fight scenes, it's just too much to bear.

It's not just the characters that have to be maintained throughout sequels — the entire concept of the films must be preserved, too. This is related to my first point (because films planned as trilogies from the word go have an overarching structure anyway, and therefore keep a consistent set of underlying assumptions), but films without this structure are perfectly capable of maintaining ideas. The Batman films, throughout their many variations, always manage to preserve the basics — Batman is a secretive crime fighter, who always tries to do the right thing, and doesn't kill if it can be avoided, while Gotham City is a mob-run den of villainy.

On the other end of the scale, we have Terminator 3. What made Terminator 2 so good was that, despite the sense of the weight of the future, there was always hope, and a possibility that maybe the future war could indeed be averted. All three films constantly mentioned the "no fate but what we make for ourselves" slogan. And then Terminator 3, for no apparent reason other than to get the audience really depressed (and, of course, set up another sequel in the future), made the war start anyway. All that hope, the tiny spark that meant that maybe that slogan might just be true after all, gets crushed for the sake of the effects department getting to show off their ability to do mushroom clouds. The film itself isn't that bad, but as part of the Terminator series, it's about as awful as it could get.

One more key to making a successful sequel: know when to stop. Alien was great, Aliens was good, and Alien³...wasn't. At all. I haven't even seen Alien: Resurrection, mainly because the very idea of it is enough to scare me off. Toy Story 2, contrary to expectations, was really good, but I'm holding out precisely no hope for Toy Story 3. And the less said about the apparently endless Lion King straight-to-video sequels, the better. Sadly, as long as someone thinks that the franchise can be milked just that little bit further, the never-ending sequel factory will continue churning out some of the worst films ever to grace a cinema screen.

Gives me something to complain about, though...

I particularly love her sense of quiet desperation...

2008-05-02T21:25:00.005+01:00

It was with great reluctance, about a year and a half ago, that I bought a mobile phone. I just don't like being reachable at every hour of every day, and it really is such a drain on your bank balance if you use it more than the very slightest bit. What's more, having never really liked answering machines either (if it's that important they'll call back, for goodness' sakes), I've ended up with one of those too, thanks to the miracles of voicemail.

It is, however, sometimes worth it. This morning, when I switched on my mobile (having left it to charge overnight), I was greeted immediately by the strains of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" as my voicemail called me (what? It makes a great ringtone) to let me know what I'd missed. And what had I missed? Click the play button below to find out.

(If you don't have Flash installed, that won't work - right-click here to download the MP3 instead.)

Sorry about the interference, by the way - my laptop didn't enjoy trying to record that.

Bear in mind that my voicemail message is not just a standard "I'm not here, leave a message." Oh, no. For in a rather poor attempt at comedy, I had recorded a long and rambling message in which I claimed to be my own personal assistant, eager to take down any message that the caller might give me. That means that this confused woman, whoever she is, had plenty of time in which to realise that actually I wasn't who she was expecting, and to hang up.

But no. Instead, I got what might well be one of the strangest ways to start the day, when a woman you don't know starts speaking into your ear, telling you that she's going mad. So, Nicky Bailey, if you happen to be reading this:

Sorry, and;
Give out your number more accurately in future.

And if you live in London, for the love of mercy, go and stop Boris...

2008-05-01T11:27:00.004+01:00

The first and most important thing to say is: if you live in the UK, and live in an area that is holding council elections today, go out and vote! Not only is the process of democratic elections one of the most important things this country can give you, your vote really matters.

In general elections, when each seat is chosen by several thousand voters spread over a wide area, it's easy to think that your vote will be lost in the noise. Given our rather odd first-past-the-post voting system, in which all votes that weren't for the winner are effectively counted as "not for the winner" and nothing else, that's got a certain amount of truth to it, and in certain areas (such as mine, where the Conservatives hold a massive majority) it is very difficult to get excited about voting.

These local elections, though, are a very different animal. The last time my local councillor was elected, the turnout was somewhere around the 54% mark and the winner took 79% of that turnout. That means that there are easily enough people in the ward to change the result. When you factor in that, because of the small area of the ward, this 79% represented only 991 votes, it suddenly becomes entirely possible that there could be a change.

The weather should help too - it was hailing earlier this morning, and the dark clouds are still sweeping overhead. Usually, bad weather favours the minority, as the weather is more likely to prevent people who don't really mind about the results from voting (being part of the majority makes your vote seem less important).

That factor cuts another way, too. There are a number of small parties whose supporters may not be numerous, but they are fanatical. I'm talking, of course, about everyone's favourite ultra-right-wing nutjobs, the BNP. If you know that one of these idiots is standing in your local election, it is extremely important that you go and stop them. It may be raining, it may be thundering (it's just started here), but your vote is vital if you want to stop the lunatics taking over the asylum.

I think you get the picture now. So you'll get a bit wet. So what? Go out and vote!

UPDATE: Good result all round. Yeah, my vote didn't change my local councillor (still a gigantic majority), but the council itself is no longer run by the Tories, there was practically no BNP support anywhere, and the Lib Dems are in second place by national vote share. I'm happy enough with that.

This is, sadly, completely true.

2008-04-28T20:01:00.003+01:00

So I was watching some TV the other day, and I found my gaze constantly dropping to just below the screen. Took a moment to realise what was happening.

My brain was automatically trying to read the Youtube comments.

Something tells me I really need to spend less time on the Internet.

Not as bad as that time I stayed up all night playing Hitman: Codename 47, then got confused while watching athletics the next day because the runners weren't responding to my keypresses...

The fact that half of these locations are now impossible to reach shouldn't deter you. Go and build a time machine if it's that important to you.

2008-04-25T14:36:00.005+01:00

Quick completely unrelated note: There's been a bit of a slowdown in posting here over the past couple of weeks, for which I have to apologise - having had a very quiet few months entirely on my own schedule, things have suddenly got a lot busier and it's only going to get worse. I'll try to keep posting at a reasonable rate, but please do bear with me while I try to get everything sorted out and back into a rhythm. We now return you to your regular blog post, already in progress.

Music is sometimes thought of as something of a universal language. Even if you don't understand the words, the tunes and harmonies can frequently convey amazing amounts of emotion and meaning, which is generally enhanced even further if you do know the words. (Except in a few very specialised cases. If you didn't understand the words of The Smiths' "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" you'd think it was a sad and beautiful ballad. But I digress.)

The flip side of this phenomenon is that certain songs end up conveying such an atmosphere that they can't really be properly enjoyed outside of a very specific situation. I'll list a few examples here, with links to some version of the songs on Youtube.

Song: Boys of Summer
Artist: Don Henley
Album: Building the Perfect Beast
Best place to listen: In a convertible sports car, cruising along the beachfront somewhere in the US (California or Miami would be best), one evening towards the end of summer when the sun is low, the light is golden and the shadows are long. Wearing Ray-Bans is optional, but encouraged.
Acceptable place to listen: Anywhere sunny.
Worst place to listen: A small, dark office somewhere in Iceland.

Song: Livin' On A Prayer
Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: Slippery When Wet
Best place to listen: Your school's Leavers' Ball (that's Prom Night to any Americans reading). Livin' On A Prayer has achieved a special status as our generation's "Stairway to Heaven". (Cue torrent of abuse from Led Zeppelin fans claiming that "Stairway to Heaven" is this generation's "Stairway to Heaven".) Everyone knows the words - well, the words to the chorus, anyway. Oh, all right, they know to go "WHOA-HO, LIVIN' ON A PRAYER" at some point in the proceedings. Nevertheless, the song strikes a perfect balance of sounding vaguely inspirational while actually relating a desperately sad story which doesn't have much to inspire.
Acceptable place to listen: Student nights out at various points throughout your university career.
Worst place to listen: In your Volvo as you drive through Chelsea, aged 57.

Song: We Shall Overcome
Artist: Literally hundreds. I rather like Bruce Springsteen's version that he did with the Sessions Band, so that's where the link points.
Album: In this case, We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions.
Best place to listen: At a poorly-attended rally, protesting against some piece of injustice which is obvious, crushingly oppressive, and immensely powerful, to the point that the rally isn't actually going to change anything. "We Shall Overcome" is a strange animal - the lyrics are triumphant in one sense, but they're deeply sad as well. "Darlin', in my heart, I still believe, we shall overcome some day" speaks volumes about how very little changes on a day-to-day basis, but how in the end good will win out.
Acceptable place to listen: Any kind of protest, although the song becomes less and less appropriate as the situation being protested becomes less important. Singing "We Shall Overcome" at a student rally protesting against high-priced accommodation, for example, would be ridiculous. Bet it's been done at some point.
Worst place to listen: Halliburton's annual shareholders meeting.

Song: Love For Sale
Artist: Talking Heads
Album: True Stories
Best place to listen: Somewhere in the USA, where you're constantly inundated with TV adverts - any of the big cities would do. Oh, and it has to be twenty years ago. Unsurprisingly, a song that consists of nothing but advertising slogans strung together into a bunch of nonsensical but compelling lyrics doesn't really age very well.
Acceptable place to listen: A household that watches a lot of TV, and/or likes laughing at cheesy 80's advertising.
Worst place to listen: One of those Tibetan monasteries that are constantly being frequented by Steven Seagal, Batman et al. In fact they're a pretty poor choice for any activity apart from furious kung fu training.

Song: A Space Boy Dream
Artist: Belle and Sebastian
Album: The Boy With The Arab Strap
Best place to listen: Late at night, when everyone else in your house has gone to sleep, when it's slightly chilly and you're sleepy. Put on some good big headphones and play this song, paying careful attention to the quiet, measured narration under the music.
Acceptable place to listen: At home surrounded by friends.
Worst place to listen: The middle of an especially noisy club somewhere. Admittedly, that would mean that the DJ has completely lost his grip on reality, which could be kind of fun.

Song: Gunning Down Romance
Artist: Savage Garden
Album: Affirmation
Best place to listen: Late in a highly-charged gig, given by - and this is the key - anyone other than Savage Garden. Why? Because this is a cracking song, stuffed to the gunwales with pain and rejection, and wrapped up in a great guitar part, but it really should not be sung by a skinny androgynous bloke in leather trousers. If you can bear to, watch the video I linked to above, and try not to burst out laughing when Darren Hayes starts wiggling in a way that he probably thought was suggestive, but actually had my eyeballs trying to crawl out of my skull and throttle me. If it was performed by someone who could still hit the high notes but with a grittier voice, and if they removed the effects from the guitar and let a full rock band loose on it, the result could be incredible.
Acceptable place to listen: If you're male and in public, it had better be somewhere you can feel confident enough not to mind the incredulous looks you'll be getting from all sides.
Worst place to listen: Just after a Mötley Crüe concert.

Song: Baba O'Riley
Artist: The Who
Album: Who's Next
Best place to listen: At a Who gig, back when Keith Moon was a) alive and b) conscious. That does give you a rather small window, I have to admit, but hearing Moon smack pretty much every drum in his kit in that intro that sounds exactly like someone's just thrown him and his kit down the stairs would be pretty special.
Acceptable place to listen: Anywhere you can rock out and play every single air instrument. How often do you get to play air violin, drums, synth and windmilling guitar in the same song?
Worst place to listen: The intro music to CSI: NY now that they've done a horrible editing job on it. What have you done to Keith?

I'd like to apologise in advance.

2008-04-16T22:15:00.003+01:00

How many hairdressers do you know (the businesses, not the people) whose names are not a hilarious hair-related pun? Oh, of course you'll find the odd one trying to be elegant ("The Gentleman's Hair Salon", for example), but the number that will choose something like "Upper Cuts" or "Cut 'n' Run" is just ridiculous. Is there something about hair in particular that means businesses want to make puns about it? Is hair unusually hysterical?

If hairdressers can have punning names, I think it's remarkably unfair that other types of business can't get away with it. Especially when there's so many great puns available.

Lawyers

A Bit Of Soft-Suin'
Sue Be Doo Be Doo
Don't Be Acquitter
Litigate Good Times, C'mon
Don't Dread the Judge

Music Shops

Duet Yourself
More Than The Minim-um
Let Me Be Breve
Stave It Off
If It Ain't Baroque

Undertakers

Let's Cremate Good Times, C'mon
What's Hearse Is Mine
Dead Right
Grave Consequences
Don't Have A Coffin Fit

Marine Biologists

Whale Of A Time
Spare Us A Squid?
Control Your Em-oceans
Bit Of A Dive
Like A Sturgeon

Pest Control Experts

Stirring Up A Hornet's Nest
Don't Rat On Us
Row Row Row Your Stoat
The Clap Trap Rat Trap Shop
Exterminate Good Times, C'mon

(OK, I'm done...)

Holy domain hosting, Batman!

2008-04-13T23:13:00.002+01:00

The whole system of domain name registration on the Internet is, by Internet standards, incredibly old. Can't get much older, actually, given that it's the basis on which the entire net is built. If you couldn't get a domain name, people would have to find your site by knowing the IP address; it would be much the same situation as the humble BBS was in before the World Wide Web came along.

Given how long the system's been going, therefore, you might think that pretty much all the good domain names must have gone now, either bought and turned into decent sites, or bought up to sell to someone who wants to make a decent site. However, you would be wrong. All of the following domain names are, at the time of writing, available to register for a nominal fee.

squirrelwithachainsaw.com
fantasticweasel.com
tastypotato.com
eggfriednoodle.com
blunderbuss.com
holyguacamole.co.uk
albinoalligator.co.uk
suggestivedigestive.com
recklessgecko.com
brassymonkey.com

If you can't find something to enjoy in that lot, I don't think I can help you. However, there is one domain name that would also be great, and yet is sadly unavailable.

Because I've got it.

www.ballpointbanana.com is, as of this evening, open for your delectation. It's going to basically have much the same kind of stuff as I've got here, but because it's privately hosted, I have considerably more control over it. That means that any fun bits of programming I do from now on will end up there (thank goodness...programming the "strange unit calculator" in a way that didn't break Blogger took forever), as will any photos that need more web space than I can provide with Photobucket.

Hopefully it will also let me post more multimedia-type stuff, especially music and so on. Just to be clear, The Beautiful Hypothesis is going to continue, and hopefully I'll be able to keep doing the same kind of stuff here as I have been up until now. Whenever I put something new up there, I'll mention it here (if it's worth mentioning), and anything I put here that's worth keeping will be backed up on Ballpoint Banana.

And if you were wondering about the site's name...the eighth bit of dialogue on this page should give you a hint.

This took an embarrassingly long time to create. Several "West Wing episodes", at least.

2008-04-06T19:41:00.016+01:00

Have you ever noticed that, in a news story about some new and tiny piece of electronics or other technology, the expression "the width of a human hair" is almost guaranteed to appear? It seems to be the standard comparison for anything smaller than a millimetre, and yet it's not that good a comparison. Yes, we can see our own hairs, but because their length is by far the more obvious property, we just can't really process the idea.

However, we can process comparisons with bigger things. If you tell someone that an object is the width of a matchstick, or a Routemaster double-decker bus, or an Olympic swimming pool, then it's much easier. So, I reckon that what we need is an easy comparison between these different objects. (This idea's already partly been done by Chrico, with the Double Decker Bus Calculator; I'm going to try to do something a little different.)

First, we need to know how long or wide each of these things are. Below is a table of several objects, the approximate size of which everyone knows, but I've also included their actual size, using the best data I could find. To make the calculations easier, I've included the equivalent in metres.

Object	Size	Equivalent (m)
Human hair (width)	50 μm	0.00005
Matchstick (width)	2 mm	0.002
Mobile phone (Nokia 5310, length)	104 mm	0.104
A4 paper (length)	297 mm	0.297
Office chair (height)	93 cm	0.93
Volkswagen Beetle 1500 (length)	4026 mm	4.026
Routemaster double-decker bus (length)	8.4 m	8.4
Olympic-size swimming pool (length)	50 m	50
International rugby union pitch (length)	100 m	100
Wembley Stadium's arch (span)	315 m	315
Distance from London to Edinburgh	404 miles	650175
Diameter of the Earth	7926.28 miles	12756111

Hopefully, that was instructive. (Could be worse...I almost included the parsec as a unit, except that a) no-one knows what it is, and b) I don't think I could handle the calculations involved.) Now, all we need to do is set up an easy way of converting between these units...

Oh look, I appear to have found one. Type the distance you wish to convert into various other things in the box (in metres), then click "Go!". Alternatively, click one of the object names to fill in the box automatically.

Human hairs:

London-Edinburgh trips:

Earth diameters:

This year's conference is straight outta Pwllheli. Word.

2008-04-05T22:28:00.003+01:00

Several of my friends are shortly going to be attending the New Word Alive conference. For those of you who have no idea what this is, it's a week-long Christian event full of Bible teaching, worship and so on. Several fairly high-profile evangelicals are going to be speaking there (the "headliners" are Don Carson, John Piper and Terry Virgo), so as Christian conferences go it's a biggie.

Although I do respect the work that the conference is doing, there's a couple of things that make me laugh every time I hear it mentioned. The first is that it's called "New" Word Alive to distinguish it from plain old Word Alive, the conference that was a part of the much larger Spring Harvest conference up until last year. The split is mentioned on the Spring Harvest website, but you'll note that the site announcement makes no mention whatsoever of the reason for the split. That's because the organisers of Word Alive disagreed with Spring Harvest's practice of inviting speakers whose theological viewpoints differed from their own.

Actually, that's a rather simplified way of looking at it; it's probably fairer to say that the Word Alive people considered the theological difference so great that the Spring Harvest speakers were preaching things that were just plain wrong. Whatever the motivations, I can't help but feel that the new setup is pretty nearly the worst possible outcome. By sticking with almost exactly the same title, the New Word Alive organisers have ended up looking like kids who are taking their ball and going home because the other kids weren't playing nicely; equally, the Spring Harvest organisers look like heretics or like idiots who can't control their own conference, depending on which side of the theological argument you tend to come down.

Both impressions are wrong. The New Word Alive people made their split because they couldn't, in good conscience, be part of an organisation which disagreed with them on, as they saw it, an utterly fundamental point of belief. That's about as far from petty as you can get. Likewise, the Spring Harvest people seem to believe so strongly in allowing different shades of belief a voice that they're willing to sacrifice convenience for unity. Whichever side is "right" (and I think the situation's much more confusing than right-or-wrong), both have acted in the interests of the people they serve, and yet both have come out of it looking daft. It's the sheer absurdity of this situation that makes me laugh, although it's more from desperation than from any inherent humour in the situation.

On a lighter note, the other reason to find New Word Alive amusing is that they use the abbreviation NWA. I can only assume that most of the attendees have never heard of...errr...the other NWA...

Here, have some magical pixie dust bottled water. It will automatically improve your grades.

2008-04-03T17:10:00.003+01:00

Last night on Newsnight, BBC 2's flagship news programme, Jeremy Paxman was in fine form. Paxman is great value most of the time (people still look back fondly on his interview with Michael Howard when he asked precisely the same question fourteen times in a row because Howard wouldn't give a straight answer), but one of his interviews last night was just brilliant.

The segment in question was on the subject of "Brain Gym", a set of exercises used in schools all over Britain that claim to improve children's thought processes and attention spans. The film part of the segment was good in itself - it's available here, if you want to watch it (at least until it gets yanked back off Youtube) - but the interview with the programme's founder afterwards was brilliant. I present it here for your delectation in Youtube format, or if you'd prefer, as a transcript.

Jeremy Paxman: Well, let's see now if we can talk to the brains behind Brain Gym, Paul Dennison, who's in Los Angeles – I'm sorry we couldn't hear you a moment ago, Mr Dennison, let's just check we can hear you now – can you just explain what a "Brain Button" is, please?

Paul Dennison: We have on our bodies certain reflex points that help us organise the body and the brain, and holding these points helps to activate the developmental movements that – they're called microinterventions – to help improve the connections and circuitry, and the apparent results are, people get a better sense of where they are in space, a sense of left and right, and able to move better. We leave the explanations to the experts – we've been explaining these the best we can over the years, and we’re open to inquiry to develop the best explanations for them, but the fact, they do indeed work.

JP: Well, yes, you say in your Teacher’s Manual here, when you talk about "hookups", that they "connect the electrical circuits in the body". What, exactly, are these electrical circuits, please?

PD: Well, I – it's my opinion that we are electrical, that we do have circuits and connections, and when we bring our energy to the midline, to the central point, we are breaking out of the reflex [flings arms wide] to go from one side or the other, and bring things back to the centre where we can be calm and relaxed.

JP: It is your-

PD: And focused, and this is-

JP: You say this is your opinion, that we are electrical, Mr. Dennison-

PD: Yes-

JP: Are you medically qualified?

PD: No, I am not medically qualified, I'm an educator, but I study and read, and there are studies that show that we do have electrical – acupuncture and other procedures are based on the fact that we are – electrical circuits in the body – and we are building on the shoulders of these people who've been doing this for thousands of years.

JP: Is the fact that you're not medically qualified explanation enough for statements in this Teacher's Manual of the kind that, [reads from Manual] "processed foods do not contain water", which, you know, is arrant nonsense.

PD: We're interested in helping children and these things work, and we explain them the best we can, and we are going to edit the Manual and rewrite it, so that it's-

JP: But you can see that that's-

PD: We really appreciate the help-

JP: Absolutely.

PD: Helping us point these things out.

JP: But you appreciate that is nonsense, isn't it?

PD: [crosstalking] But I explain that this is the best of my ability to help children and to help teachers have a context for why they are doing the movements.

JP: But if your manual can contain idiotic statements like that, is there any reason to believe anything else in it?

PD: I do believe those statements are true, and time will prove that they are-

JP: And you believe processed foods don't contain water, do you?

[crosstalk – JP repeats his question]

PD: I had a context for that statement, meaning that pure water is more immediately active and available to the brain, and that I'm not attached to either, but that was the best information I had at the time.

JP: [cutting across him] Perhaps you should have said that?

PD: Hmm?

JP: Perhaps you should have said that.

PD: Hm?

JP: [almost shouting] Perhaps you should have said that-

PD: Well, fifteen years ago-

JP: -instead of saying what you did say, which is nonsense!

PD: Fifteen years ago that was the best information I had, and no-one has complained about the Teacher's Edition-

JP: [crosstalking] That processed foods don't contain water.

PD: -until this point, and we're glad that we can – we’re glad that we can-

JP: [crosstalking] Let me ask you – a suggestion – sorry to cut across you, there's a delay on the satellite, just let me ask you this – how many schools in Britain are using this programme of yours?

PD: The Brain Gym programme is upraised and loved in eighty countries around the world, and I have no idea how many schools use it, but children love it because they learn better, teachers love it because they have kids that are ready, willing and able to learn, and love to be in school, and parents like it, and these are tools that I've developed as a reading specialist, over my whole career, because I just love to see a child come to life as he learns-

JP: Mr. Dennison, thank you very much indeed.

I need hardly say that almost everything Mr. Dennison says is complete rubbish, and can be seen to be with little more than a cursory knowledge of neurophysiology. Paxman catches him explicitly admitting that his "Teacher's Manual" contains things that he knows are false, and any time that he's not producing pseudoscientific rubbish, he's appealing to our emotions by saying that he's DOING IT ALL FOR THE CHILDREN. How sweet.

It's entirely possible that doing a few stretches and muscle movements before the school day begins can reduce stress and improve attention spans, simply because the kids have to stand still and stay quiet for a few minutes. Similarly, because the teacher is paying attention to the children and directly interacting with them, the kids may well feel more of a bond with their teacher and be more motivated to work.

Even if that's true, though, whether or not the Brain Gym exercises are helpful is really pretty irrelevant. The same effects could be obtained by making the children do some standard muscle stretches - you know, the kind of thing that will actually remove some of their tension - and would not involve filling up their heads with inaccurate mystical garbage that they will have to unlearn again as soon as they do any human biology.

Oh, and it wouldn't involve handing over sums of money to someone who's seen a way to make a quick buck off schools.

This is not a rickroll in disguise. Although that would be funny too.

2008-04-01T17:52:00.004+01:00

I made this video a while ago, but never quite got round to putting it online. It would appear to be appropriate to post it today. If you have ever wanted to watch the ultimate disaster movie - the kind of thing that would have people flocking to the cinemas - this is my take on what it would look like.

The material used in this video is probably copyrighted by a number of different people. I reckon that this kind of use of it should be reasonably OK, but just in case, the video's not here under my CC licence.

Confused by the title? Want to know what a rickroll is? Here.

We do not speak of that time when I confused oil and vinegar. It was...unpleasant.

2008-03-26T16:12:00.003Z

One of the great things about student life - or at least, what student life was like when I was part of it, a few months and a million years ago - is the opportunity to find out just what your parents were doing when they managed to produce meals every evening. It truly seems like such magic and mysticism. All these ingredients went in...but what came out was something entirely different.

It will not surprise you to learn that, rather than teaching myself practical and nutritious cookery, I was firmly in the "experimental" camp. Unless at least one person walks into the kitchen, stops dead and says "WHAT are you doing?", you're clearly doing something wrong. So, here's one of my favourite creations. Do not attempt this recipe if your family has a history of heart problems. In fact, you're probably better off not trying it at all.

Double-Fried Cheese and Curried Onion Sandwich
Serves one

Ingredients

Two slices of bread
Half an onion, chopped
Cheddar cheese, thickly sliced (enough to cover one slice of bread)
1 tsp curry powder
Olive or vegetable oil, for frying (anything that doesn't smoke too much)

Method

Heat a drizzle of oil in a large frying pan.
Add the onion and the curry powder, and fry until just starting to brown.
Push the onion to one side, and place one of the slices of bread in the pan. Fry it until its underside is golden brown.
Flip the bread and fry the other side.
Remove the bread, and replace it with the other slice. Fry one side.
Flip the second slice over, and while its other side is frying, put the cheese on top of it and let it melt.
When the cheese has melted, scoop the onion back on top of it, and top it off with the first slice of bread.
Serve hot, with a paramedic on standby.

The onion is fried, the bread is fried, and the entire sandwich has been fried. It's not extravagant in terms of ingredients, but man does it taste good.

I can accept no responsibility if you (a) fall down dead, (b) lose your girl/boyfriend, (c) require a heart bypass or (d) burst into tears of joy after eating this sandwich. Well, maybe except the tears of joy one. That was entirely my fault.

For some reason, marketing companies have had difficulty putting "the real meaning of Easter" on a card. Funny, that.

2008-03-21T15:55:00.004Z

Christians are a gloomy lot. Sure, they have some very lively churches (ever seen a proper big Pentecostal service? Walks a fine line between "amazing" and "terrifying"), but they are all obsessed with death and pain. That's not a new thing. It goes right back to the early church - the Romans thought the early Christians were cannibals because of the focus on Jesus' body and blood in the Eucharist - and even earlier, to Jesus' words in Matthew 5:

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Jesus made it abundantly obvious that pain and difficulties were part and parcel of being a Christian. That became most obvious on the day we're currently remembering, Good Friday, when he was executed by the Romans. In case you've forgotten, that execution was in the most humiliating and painful way the Romans could dream up, and given that we're talking about a culture which spiced up its theatres by killing people on stage, that's no small statement. Jesus showed in the clearest possible way precisely what his followers were letting themselves in for.

Paul picked up the theme in his letters, as did Peter. (References to some examples are here, here, here, here and here, if you're interested.) If that wasn't enough, Revelation is almost entirely about the horrible things that are going to happen to Christians in the end times. Unfortunately, it's so full of metaphor and imagery that quite what those horrible things are going to be is anyone's guess. Fortunately, that wasn't the point of the book, which was much more about the fact that the suffering does eventually end. Taken with the notoriously blood-drenched Old Testament, you might think that Christians are so focused on the bad things that might happen to them that they don't pay any attention to what is actually happening.

That, however, is not the case. Yes, the Bible does tell us about terrible things, but that's because terrible things happen. It gives us an explanation for them, tells us what to do to cope with them, and exhorts us to prevent them from happening to other people. There are literally hundreds of Bible verses covering justice for the poor, social responsibility, care for the disadvantaged, and an overwhelmingly pervasive sense that God cares about the problems and wants to help us.

When Jesus told people that if they followed him, they were opening themselves up to a world of pain, it really wasn't one of the greatest advertising pitches in history. "Roll up, roll up! Get executed in a number of pointy and painful ways!" He didn't promise riches, or fame, or power, or authority. Neither, it's important to note, did he promise comfort, tranquillity or fellowship, although they are often present too. That's why I get annoyed with people who say "you should become a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Pastafarian because you will feel better" or "because you will have peace". None of the things that a religion can give you are worth anything unless the claims of that religion are actually true. That was the one reason to follow Christ back in the first century, and it's the only reason now.

He certainly believed that what he said was true. That's why, 2000-odd years ago, he was nailed to a piece of wood, and that's why we still remember it on Good Friday.

RISC OS didn't use menu bars, for the record. Anyone else remember RISC OS?

2008-03-20T18:58:00.003Z

Microsoft do sometimes get an unnecessarily bad rap when it comes to software. Although it's fashionable to say that they're evil, in it for the money and technically incompetent - and Clippy does make you wonder - they have produced some superb work. Excel, for instance, is one of the most useful products on the market, and is particularly notable in that its open-source alternatives are just not that good when it comes to advanced features.

(This may, of course, be because a spreadsheet application can have advanced features that are not patently ridiculous. I very much doubt that anyone has ever said "no, you should buy Word instead of its competitors because you might miss out on the AutoSummarize tool".)

In fact, Microsoft has made quite a few very good products, and I still use some of them. MSN Messenger (sorry, "Windows Live Messenger") is one of them, used because Pidgin doesn't support webcam chats, voice chats or handwriting. Gimmicks, certainly, but they are fun gimmicks and I see no point in moving away from them just yet.

The other thing that Microsoft does very well is maintaining a consistent style. This style isn't always very attractive - almost the first thing that I did when I got the (XP-running) laptop that I'm currently using was to switch off the garish, jellybean-coloured theme and use the Windows 2000 one instead. There's just something classy about blue window title bars and grey buttons, an impression that I've had because Microsoft has stayed with that style since Windows 95 came out. Despite XP trying to foist its jolly colours on me, it does at least give me the option of turning them off.

This brings us back to Windows Live Messenger, because a few days ago I installed its latest update. The update doesn't actually change very much in terms of functionality, but it does one thing that Windows Media Player 11 did before it. See if you can spot it.

This one's the previous version (from msgweb.nl)...

...and this is the updated version.

Yes, the only major difference (apart from that dashing young gentleman in the updated version) is the change in the style of the buttons up in the top right. Now, I'm aware that the buttons in the older version aren't in the standard Windows style. However, they are roughly the same size as the standard, and the icons are so similar that it still fits in with any XP theme.

I didn't realise that the new buttons were significant until I compared them with the ones in Windows Media Player 11. The design is exactly the same in that program, which tipped me off to it being a wider phenomenon. And then, of course, I saw a computer running Vista.

It's not a new theme that two programs happened to use, it's the standard Vista theme. Which is being pushed onto XP customers. In other words, they are deliberately breaking some of XP's functionality (style consistency) in order to make people want to switch to Vista.

I would say that this is one of the worst decisions that Microsoft has ever made, except that recently they have come up with some even worse ones. Internet Explorer 7, for example (which I avoided by not downloading the automatic update - seriously, who delivers an entire browser through their security patching system?), has a good try at hiding the menu bar. Windows Live Messenger does the same, but that's less noticeable as you hardly ever use the menus. And so does the latest version of Office, exchanging the menus and toolbars for an unholy blend of the two.

It may not sound like a big deal to get rid of the menu bar. But step back for a second and consider that, ever since the invention of graphical user interfaces, menus have been right there. Windows version one had a menu bar. It's not just Microsoft, either - Apple used them, the X Window System (the GUI for most Unix-like systems) uses them. Personally speaking, it is practically hardwired into my brain that if I want to open a file, I go up to the "File" menu at the top left.

In short, changing the user interface this much is a massive "SCREW YOU" to all the users who have stuck with Windows since its invention, as well as tacit confirmation that Microsoft couldn't care less about attracting Apple's customers or users of other operating systems. It is the most staggeringly bad software decision they have ever made, and has further convinced me never to get Vista.

Still, Excel is pretty good...

Ah, so that's how you pronounce "dog". I've always wondered.

2008-03-19T22:31:00.004Z

A very image-heavy post for you today, so I'm going to be kind and stick the whole lot behind a cut. All of these images are courtesy of a woman who lives just down the street from me. She's 92, and has lived in the same village all her life, which doesn't mean a lot to me until I realise that she's lived through at least part of both World Wars, and that when she was born there was no such thing as space travel, television (except in an experimental form), global communications, transistors, turbojet aircraft, helicopters (again, except experimentally) and who knows how many other things. Anyway, recently she gave my family a pile of old books, one of which - Webster's Improved Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language - I liked so much that I've scanned a couple of bits.

This is the front cover (all pictures are links to larger versions of themselves, by the way). I love the design here. In a way, it's very simple (text and a few lines), yet the detail just goes crazy. Making The Initial Letters Slightly Larger Than The Following Ones is a lovely touch too.

The title page is even simpler, yet still manages to be remarkably classy. The range of font sizes is huge, and it's amazing how just putting full stops after every heading immediately makes you want to read it out in an old-time radio voice. By the way, inside the front cover is an inscription from the original owner of the dictionary - it was given to its first recipient in August 1885.

I'm skipping the dictionary's actual content because, come on, it's a dictionary, there's not going to be much you haven't seen before. Oh, except that there's a rather nifty key to the phonetic symbols running along the bottom of every page.

That photographic style is either very arty or is just proof that I couldn't be bothered to switch the scanner back on or dig out my tripod. You choose!

At the back of the dictionary we've got an advert for more books of knowledge. What I find fascinating about this is that by modern standards, the design is an absolute trainwreck. I think I can see four different fonts, in a vast range of sizes, with huge dense blocks of text in a tiny size. Various words are picked out by unexpectedly changing the font size and Putting Capital Letters on words. In short, it's a mess. But somehow, it still makes me want to go and buy a Beeton's Encyclopædia.

Although this dictionary isn't worth a whole lot (you can see for yourself the kind of condition it's in, apart from anything else), I think it's fantastic to have little parts of the past kicking around like this. It serves as a reminder of a time when information was much harder to find than it is today, and therefore more valuable - in a world where everything you type is automatically checked for spelling and cross-referenced to dictionaries (American ones in my case - I really need to get around to installing those extra dictionaries on Firefox) there's just no need for something like this. It's possible that having so much information available to us has devalued it; we need old objects like this to remind us that one day it could all be gone.

Oh, and quite apart from all the deep philosophical points, how can you not love a dictionary that ends like this?

"Kissing the Blarney Stone" doesn't sound very hygienic.

2008-03-17T15:14:00.002Z

Happy St. Patrick's Day! This festival isn't as big a celebration in the UK as it is in Ireland (or, indeed, America, a place where "Irish ancestry" can actually mean "quite likes U2"). Having been at war with the Irish on and off for several centuries can do that. Nevertheless, the British public never give up a chance to get horribly drunk and then blame someone else - an entire country, in this case. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to snoop around a bit for some suitable music to play while you can still stand reasonably upright.

Today's musical extravaganza is brought to you courtesy of SoundClick, a site which showcases independent artists. As with any site open to public submissions, there's a lot of rubbish on there, but with a minimum of sorting you can get some really pretty good stuff too. For example...

Somewhat Irish - St Anne's Reel
This is a lovely, plinky little acoustic number. Not particularly threatening or raucous, it's just plain happiness wrapped in an Irish veneer. Nicely performed, too - oh, and it can be freely downloaded and shared thanks to its Creative Commons licensing.
Poitin - Carolan's Draught
Turlough O'Carolan was a contemporary of Bach, so this is a pretty old tune. It's a great example of the use of the harp in Irish music, a tradition that's sadly been largely eclipsed by the use of mandolins and bouzoukis. This particular song isn't usually performed as slowly and gently as in this case, so it makes for a relaxing wind-down. Possibly between drinks.
Shenaniganz - Star of the County Down
I've known this song for a while now, as my dad used to play it in his Irish band - which, coincidentally, was called Shenanigan. (Not this one. I'm not Canadian. Although I have been mistaken for an Australian before.) It's a classic tale of love, or at least of mostly-controlled lust, that dates back to at least the 18th century. This performance is catchy enough to dance to, and I love the lead singer's beer-and-cigarette-laden voice.
Poitin (again) - Congress Reel
Yeah, two from the same band seems a little lazy, but I wanted to include this one anyway. No words apart from the odd "Hey!", just high-speed playing and an electric atmosphere. The bodhrán that introduces the song is an interesting instrument - according to Wikipedia it has its roots in war drums, and you can just imagine it leading the troops as they march off to fight...well, the English, probably. Anyway, it drives the song brilliantly, and if you're anything like me you'll need a bit of a sit down afterwards.

There's a whole heap more music out there on the web that's appropriate for today, and actually for any occasion - it's just a matter of knowing where to look. Of course, don't overlook the established musicians either, as they're capable of rocking extremely hard. To illustrate this point, I'll leave you with perhaps the finest example of Americans "doing" Irish music - Steve Earle's song "Galway Girl".

This video is not released under my CC licence. You know the drill.

You young kids with your so-called "violent" lyrics. I bet you've never shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

2008-03-14T19:26:00.005Z

Generally speaking, music-making is a pretty egalitarian business. If you've created a song, it doesn't matter much who actually performs it, so long as they're talented enough. Content isn't much of a barrier - Bob Dylan takes on the persona of a middle-aged miner's wife in "North Country Blues", for example, and because his lyrics are so strong no-one really bats an eyelid. Similarly, cover versions of songs tend to work because they don't "belong" to particular artists. Indeed, cover versions sometimes enter the public consciousness far more than the originals - it took me quite a while to realise that The Who weren't the original writers of "Summertime Blues", because they rock out so well when performing it.

Sometimes, though, particular artists put their stamp so very firmly onto a song that it's impossible to imagine anyone other than that artist performing it. Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" gets pretty near, having been played so much that it's almost entirely eclipsed the original Leonard Cohen version. An even better example, though - probably the epitome of this phenomenon - is Johnny Cash's cover version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt".

The album on which Cash's version of "Hurt" appears - American IV - The Man Comes Around - is one of the last he recorded, aged 70, before his death in 2003. Like the others in his American series, it's a fairly quiet album, full of reflective songs. It's a very simple, stripped-down sound, of the kind which can only possibly work if the voice of the person singing has enough character to carry it off. Well, Cash had that character when he was 25, and it only grew over the years. By the time of the American series recordings, although clearly the same deep, rich voice that had boomed out throughout his career, it was weaker, more vulnerable.

"Hurt" was never a happy song. The lyrics are, in fact, unremittingly bleak, containing a horribly detailed description of the song's protagonist mainlining heroin, a remembrance of a life full of lies and disappointments, crushing loneliness, and a feeling that life produces nothing of value (an "empire of dirt", as the chorus says). Indeed, Nine Inch Nails' frontman Trent Reznor wasn't too thrilled with the idea of allowing his song to be covered by the man who had built most of his songs around a "boom-chick-a-boom" rhythm, considering the idea of the cover "a bit gimmicky". However, the combination of Cash's elderly voice and some of the most depressing lyrics in musical history works incredibly well.

"Hurt" received extensive airplay when it was released in 2002, so I'm not about to describe it again here. I will say, though, that it is a fantastic rendition. Cash conveyed the loneliness of the lyrics perfectly, and sadness comes from every word without ever spilling into sentimentality. This, in itself, wouldn't make it indelibly a Cash song - there are several singers who can pull off the same kind of performance. The key is that Cash was a unique man, who had done things that no-one alive can conceivably claim to have done.

Consider, for a minute, the fact that Cash toured with Elvis in his younger days. He was right there at the birth of rock'n'roll. You think your Beatles collection is old? Cash's first album came out six years before Please Please Me. The Beatles released 24 albums and EPs; Cash released 83. All the bands that you know and love, except for those that began in the last six years, were founded during his recording career, and you can bet that they were influenced by him in some way. He had unmatched credibility among the American working class. Try to imagine almost any modern rap star performing in a prison without getting stabbed. Now go and listen to At Folsom Prison, with its background of clanks and rattles as the business of the prison goes on around the band, and listen to the raucous and enthusiastic reception that Cash gets.

That credibility was due, in large part, to Cash's imprisonment history. Despite the fact that he clearly milked it for all it was worth, it's still true that he was held by the cops at least seven times, and his addiction to painkillers and amphetamines is well known. Cash's image as a hellraiser was pretty accurate, and he remains the only man who was able to wear all black - just because he liked it - and not look like at least a bit of a poser.

In short, Cash's life meant that he was uniquely placed to sing "Hurt". Those years of drug abuse, of practically destroying his life, come through in every wobbly syllable of the song. When he protests that getting close to him will result in pain, it's not a vicious warning; he conveys a weary realisation, borne out by long experience.

If anyone else were to record "Hurt" now, not only could it never measure up, it would instantly be seen as a shameless attempt to cash in, and would be buried without trace. There is simply no-one alive with the experience or the character who could do justice to it. This means that there is only one man left alive who can sing the song at all, and that's Trent Reznor (who gets away with it solely because he wrote the damn thing). Even he considers Cash's version better, saying in an interview "I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore."

Is that a bad thing? Should we treat all songs equally, regardless of prior performances? In this case, no. Cash achieved something extremely rare - not only did he make a cover version that improved on the original, he got so near to perfection with it that other attempts are doomed to fail. That is an incredible cap to an unsurpassed legacy, and I think it can be left there, a fitting epitaph to an amazing man.

On the minus side, the channel does have a stunning lack of Steven Seagal.

2008-03-12T19:34:00.003Z

Having been pretty much entirely ignorant of politics for most of my life (with the minor exception of the fuss my secondary school made over the 1997 General Election, which only really caught my interest because it let me annoy one of my extremely conservative friends by making incendiary left-wing remarks), I've rather surprised myself by suddenly becoming extremely interested in BBC Parliament.

Our Freeview box was second-hand when we got it, and I live in a very poor digital TV reception area anyway. Rumour has it that the signal would be stronger, except that it would then interfere with the Belgian police's transmissions. Surely the only time in the history of the world that anyone has said "we can't do that, it'll annoy the Belgian police", but I digress. The practical effect is that we have very few channels available, so when I'm flicking through them late at night I generally have to choose between Five US (CSI, House and Num3ers on a constant loop), BBC FOUR (worthy but frequently rather dull), bid-tv (saps my will to live) and BBC Parliament.

Although that makes it sound like watching it is nothing more than making the best of a bad job, the channel is also bizarrely compelling. It's very refreshing to watch a channel that has no continuity announcers, no trailers, barely any credits, barely any presenters, and between programmes nothing but a card telling the viewers what's coming up next. It's very reminiscent of watching recorded educational shows from BBC 2 in primary school - anyone else remember the coloured "TWO" logo and the little digital clock counting down in the corner?

Image owned and hosted by the terrifyingly-detailed BBC Logo Gallery. Go and have a nostalgic browse.
If that wasn't enough, the content of the channel is also very good. It's surprising, really, as the viewing figures must be absolutely tiny. Nevertheless, the amount of information that the editors put together is fantastic - during debates, not only is the name, party and constituency of the current speaker put on screen, but useful facts that help the viewer to understand the current topic also appear. When you consider that getting assigned to work on BBC Parliament must surely be only one rung up the ladder from being assigned to Ceefax nowadays, that's impressive commitment.

Regardless of its content, the channel also scores highly with me because it's available as a free online stream. You can get it from the BBC website, or through the really rather good (although possibly questionably legal) wwiTV service (click here for the direct Windows Media stream). In today's environment, where surveillance is becoming ever more widespread, it is vital that politicians be kept accountable. Allowing anyone across the country to watch them at work is an excellent way of doing that, and also helps to give lie to the perception that they're all corrupt and in it for the money and power. Watching a small bunch of bedraggled politicians debating an issue late at night, clearly for no reason other than this should be discussed by Parliament, gives you a lot of hope for the future of the country.

I very much doubt that BBC Parliament is ever really going to take off in the way that TV channels usually do. However, that's one of the best things about the BBC. Regardless of viewing figures, regardless of economics, they produce this channel because it's a channel that should be produced. Even if it's not very entertaining (although it does frequently feature Boris Johnson), it's good stuff. I suspect I'll be filling in a few late-night minutes there for some time.

Public Domain Theatre: Dope Head Blues

2008-03-10T16:33:00.002Z

There's been some moral outrage in the press recently about whether today's rock stars are glamorising drug culture. Given that this has been sparked by press coverage of people like Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse, and that one glance at either of those people should be more effective than any possible anti-drugs public service film, this seems a little strange.

Anyway, it's certainly something that the press can get their teeth into, and it's definitely a good excuse for certain types of journalist to decry today's culture and long for a return to the good old days, when men were men, truth was truth, films were black and white, women were expected to stay in the kitchen and black people couldn't vote. Ah, what a golden age that was.

Even if we ignore the fact that the time nostalgically longed for was pretty rubbish in a number of ways, that still wilfully ignores the content of the music that was around. And this brings us to today's Public Domain Theatre, brought to you by the amazing resources of archive.org. I don't know how they manage to keep running, but the archive.org people are doing a fantastic job of keeping vast quantities of our culture accessible. The song that I'll be serving up from their vaults is "Dope Head Blues", by Victoria Spivey.

Awesome though archive.org are, their servers can be a touch slow. You may want to click Play and then immediately pause the track to let it load, so that it doesn't stop all the time.

Spivey was one of the classic female blues singers, and worked with some extremely famous people, including Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan and Lonnie Johnson, who plays guitar on this recording. Her fame certainly gave her the opportunity to indulge in the kind of excesses that this song mentions, although whether or not she actually did is unknown. Either way, this song neither actively promotes nor condemns cocaine use. It simply presents, unvarnished, the damage that the drug does while still conveying the mindless enjoyment of its users. Look at the third verse, for example.

Feel like a fightin' rooster
Feel better than I ever felt
Got double pneumonia
And still I think I got the best health

In just a couple of lines, we find out that the singer feels invincible, but is actually on the verge of death. That's some serious economy of words going on, and it has the added bonus of being utterly chilling. Of course, you can't keep on being gloomy throughout an entire song without your listeners getting bored, which probably explains the inclusion of the gloriously surreal lines "The president sent for me / The Prince of Wales is on my trail." Even then, the comedy comes from the ludicrous extremes of the singer's paranoia - she's clearly breaking down mentally as well as physically.

Obviously, this is an immensely depressing song. I think it's an important one, though, because it tells nothing but the truth. Anyone who wants the art they make to have a message can't do better than simply making it describe the world accurately, and letting the artwork's viewers or listeners draw their own conclusions. Spivey does this superbly. Forget Doherty and Winehouse, frankly...I think I'll stick with this.

We haven't had a long self-righteous essay on here for a while, have we?

2008-03-06T15:18:00.004Z

There's a fairly major trend within film and TV, among other media, to glorify the concept of the vigilante, the man (or woman) who has to step outside the law to deliver Justice™ to the masses. Just last night, for example, ITV served up the latest US crime drama import, Dexter. Although this show does share some characteristics with the other procedural dramas (CSI, to name but three), its major difference is that it isn't a procedural drama at all. Instead, it's completely character-driven. Specifically, it's driven by the extremely creepy blood pattern analyst/serial killer of the title, who narrates every scene as an internal monologue.

I'm not going to dispute that Dexter makes for some pretty good TV. Michael C. Hall does an excellent job in the central role, and looks just baby-faced and innocent enough to convince us that he really is capable of doing horrible things with cleavers to the victims duct-taped to the table in his garage. Working with Dexter's lack of emotion - and seeing where that leads him, in his work and personal relationships - is a really interesting idea, and turns what could be a cheap shock tactic into a three-dimensional character.

Despite all of this, though, we keep coming back and running into the central premise that this man is brutally murdering a different person each episode. Even if his actions aren't explicitly condoned by the storylines, they're certainly neither condemned nor likely to be stopped any time soon (it brings in the viewers, after all). This is worrying, because this concept - that sometimes the rules have to be broken to provide justice - is both extremely appealing and extremely dangerous.

Imagine, for a moment, a situation in which the police don't have to get a search warrant before they break into your house and look for evidence that you've committed a crime. In fact, you don't have to imagine it, because it's already happened and continues to happen in a number of countries around the world. Stalinist Russia and Communist China come to mind immediately, and there are many more examples. In short, procedures such as search warrants are there to protect the public, because they bring transparency, judicial oversight and accountability to the authorities.

Once you accept that this sort of rule has to be in place, it becomes obvious why it isn't acceptable to subvert them, even for minor infractions - that man who is "obviously" guilty and "got off on a technicality" must be released if the rules weren't followed, because anything you do in the legal system creates a precedent. If he gets convicted anyway, it is suddenly much, much easier for a corrupt police officer to get anyone he wants convicted of any crime.

The counter-argument to this is that there are hardly any corrupt police officers. That's true, thank goodness. Consider, though, that a single police officer may handle thousands of cases in a career. The consequences of their actions could be so vast, even if the risk is low, that it is well worth putting apparently over-the-top safety procedures in place.

The same argument can be applied to those who complain about the "nanny state", one of my least favourite phrases in the English language. The sale of firearms is heavily restricted, for example, not so that the government can stop us all from having any fun, but because the consequences of one person having a gun who shouldn't have could be incredibly serious. It's the same with speed limits, health and safety at work, and any number of other measures.

Essentially, then, to suggest that sometimes we have to "go outside the law" - a nice way of saying "flagrantly and deliberately break the law" - not only weakens the legal structure, it also makes us less safe. If you disagree with a legal decision, appeal against it. If you disagree with a law, campaign for its repeal. Direct action should be reserved for very, very few occasions, when the entire structure is so badly wrong that these legal pathways are simply unavailable. If your complaint with the law is on a lesser level than, say, slavery or apartheid, direct action is not the way forward.

So why does this storyline get so much traction in TV and films? Not only is it already overused, it also tends to lead to extremely depressing stories. Take, for example, the 2004 film The Punisher (also on TV last night). Forgetting, for a moment, the casual sadistic violence, the atrocious acting, the poor excuse for a script and the lack of any furious kung-fu battles which might at least add some fun to it, the entire idea of the story was unremittingly bleak. Towards the end, our square-jawed American hero delivers the following line to his main adversary (this is absolutely word-for-word).

"Made you kill your best friend. Made you kill your wife. And now I've killed you."

Good grief, man. Rubbing salt into the wound much? Our hero doesn't even get any form of closure from this act - he's so depressed by the endless killing that he gets within a couple of seconds of shooting himself as well. Now, I'm sorry, but that's not a story about a hero battling against the odds, that's a story about a mass murderer who's killing people for no apparent reason other than that "they needed killing". There's no redemption, no balance, not even any sense of justice - just a huge heap of dead bodies.

(As an aside, although The Punisher is based on a comic book, comic books as a whole don't use this kind of theme as much as you might think. Batman may operate outside the law, but he's in almost constant contact with the police and tends to do no more than proving villains' guilt, allowing the legal mechanisms of justice to deal with them. Superman does much the same thing, and it's seen as a major flaw in a superhero to kill anyone, even if they are guilty.)

To be honest, then, I don't know why this type of story is popular. I do know, however, that it's already starting to be seen in real life as well. Consider the situation over in Guantánamo Bay, where an entire camp of prisoners has been locked up in clear contravention of the Geneva Conventions because they're actually "illegal combatants". Or the concerted effort by the White House to give telecommunications companies immunity after they spied indiscriminately on domestic US citizens, because of "national security". For that matter, look at the entire international community's refusal to do anything about the genocide in Darfur, despite an international legal requirement to stop genocide wherever it occurs, because it isn't personally convenient.

Life imitating art, or art picking up themes developing in real life? I don't know. I wish they'd stop it, though.

Currently, I share about a fifth of my music taste with the entire UK. Good to know.

2008-02-29T18:04:00.003Z

There's something oddly pleasing about a huge amount of nicely-sorted data. This obviously doesn't hold if you have to sort through the data manually (I have very bad memories of the weeks I spent on Excel analysing my research project this time last year), but being able to pull up complex-looking summaries from a vast body of data is basically the geek equivalent of performing a perfect violin concerto.

The people behind Audioscrobbler - the database on which Last.fm runs - understand this principle extremely well, and have incorporated some extremely easy ways of grabbing all sorts of statistics out of their database. For starters, they have a huge page of automatically-updating XML files, which you can download and use pretty much however you like.

Just to see how easy it was to do this, I spent an hour or so this afternoon hacking together a little Python script that looks at any Last.fm user's most-listened-to artists, then compares that list to the most-listened-to artists in an entire country. The result is that you get a rough-and-ready comparison of your music taste as compared to, say, the entire United States. If you have a Last.fm account and want to have a go, I've hosted it on the (somewhat rickety but still pretty good) Utility Mill site. Enjoy yourselves - and if you're curious, my username's "zsige". (Utility Mill restricts scripts to just 2 seconds of run time, which is often not really enough - try again if it doesn't work for you the first time.)

Given that I'm by no means an excellent programmer - and that therefore someone who was could do some considerably more exciting things with this technology - Audioscrobbler is clearly onto a winner. Sadly, their generosity doesn't seem to be typical. A quick Google search only turns up a couple of similar services (notably the BBC, which doesn't surprise me in the least), and most of the people who are putting their databases online are charging for it. That's understandable, but seeing the potential that Audioscrobbler has - just by limiting users to, on average, one hit of the database every second - I wish that we saw more people doing this.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to see what I can do with the BBC data...

Unrealistic Life Ambitions #3: Appropriate Audio Camouflage

2008-02-26T13:08:00.003Z

It's a standard element of the action movie. The square-jawed, all-American team of soldiers are creeping up on the nasty Arabic/Vietnamese/Russian/German (delete as applicable) mercenaries/terrorists, moving through the landscape in absolute silence. Apart from when they exchange patriotic encouragements, of course. Once they're in position, they ready themselves and prepare to fill the screen with some good old-fashioned explosions.

But wait! How can they know when to attack? They're silent and invisible, after all, so they can't exactly shout to each other. Well, this is where the famous Soldier's Bird Call comes in. Performed by cupping your hands around your mouth and bellowing "too-WEE!", this call that sounds absolutely nothing like any bird I have ever heard in my life is nevertheless capable of carrying vast amounts of information in a perfectly innocuous fashion. Within minutes, hapless goons are being gunned down to the sound of stirring music, and the world is close to being safe again.

The Soldier's Bird Call may be effective in the jungle - after all, there may well be birds in the jungle that do sound like that. However, it just isn't practical in pretty much any other situation. Consider urban combat. The only birds you're likely to see in a major city are sparrows and starlings, and they tend to just burble and twitter away instead of making any appropriate signal noises. Or how about when our heroes are infiltrating a bunker complex, probably through the air ducts? Any bird noises would trigger a hail of bullets from even the stupidest of evil overlords.

This problem can be solved remarkably easily, however. There's no reason why birds should be the default option for signal noises - humans aren't even very good at producing them. My unrealistic life ambition, therefore, is to create a successful movie in which people signal covertly to each other by simply imitating sounds appropriate to the environment. One day, we will see films in which the Marines landing on a quiet shore carefully imitate the sound of a coconut falling to the ground. One day, the agents infiltrating the base will simply shout "EVERYTHING IS FINE, NO NEED TO PANIC" in Russian when the bombs should be detonated. And one day, the policeman sneaking up on the house with the hostage taker inside will produce a perfect rendition of a washing machine with a handful of change in the pocket of someone's jeans. Surely we can bring that day closer.