Categories
quotes

quote #104

Overheard at Crooked Timber:

I can only pass on my tip; there is an easy way and a hard way to learn linear algebra and the easy way doesn?t work.

(dammit)

Categories
politics

We Already Know The Answers

Walking back to work and thinking about the forthcoming G8 meetings in Scotland and Sheffield, I saw a SWP poster which showed a placard at a protest saying “Stop capitalism now” and I start thinking “What a fucking stupid thing to say”. As if capitalism means anything more in that context than a think-stop, you might as well say “stop badness”, and i was getting dismayed that the socialists will, again, be co-opting a rightful and necessary protest so that it appears to the rest of the world like all dissent is support for their outdated dogma. And then my mind spun off on this kind of fantasy number where I’m at a protest and someone with a TV camera uses the C-word in another stupid question: “Are you against capitalism?”, implying, of course, the whole ridiculous deadweight of assumptions that the socialists and free-traders have managed to calcify the debate into. And then this torrent rose up in reply and I’ve written it down below because, well, what’s a blog for if not to spill your brains onto. Oh, and i’d drunk way too much coffee as well…

am i against capitalism? what does that mean exactly, what could that mean? nonsense! what i am against is a system of debt which is a legacy of colonial exploitation, a system of trade which only reinforces the historic exploitation of the third world. massive corporations hand in glove with western governments allows us to sit on the back of those nations and choke the economic air out of them, choke it so successfully that all we get shown of africa on our tv screens are pictures of war and famine which only serve to reinfoce the prejudice that “they can’t manage themselves” and so we continue to suck the rest of the world, and the earth itself, dry to maintain our comfortable affluence, all the while stood on their backs choking them, protesting that we’ll do all we can to help them, all we can that is, except getting off their backs and stopping choking them. i’m a democrat and a liberal and those values today imply an as radical agenda as they ever did. the globalisation of economics, of markets, implies a globalisation of responsibility, of morality. two hundred years ago if you were a merchant in london selling cotton or buying shares in railways running on cheap coal then you were responsible for the exploitation that was occuring in the cotton mills of lancashire and the coal-mines of yorkshire. we passed laws to stop that exploitation, we made that happen, we recognised our complicity and took that collective action – and that’s what we need to do today, that what i want the G8 to recognise now.

  • Make Poverty History
  • Image stolen from Tolstoy: I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back.
  • Zigmunt Bauman on the globalisation of responsibility
  • Categories
    systems

    The Happiness Maths

    We know that momentary happiness is some kind of function of experience, partially with respect to how that experience compares to previous experiences. We also know that people have hedonic baselines – a basic level of happiness to which they return, irrespective of changes in their quality of life. People win the lottery, and – obviously – they’re delighted. And then in a few months there as happy or as miserable as they ever were. Or they lose their legs, and – obviously – they’re devestated. And then they adjust and end up as happy or as miserable as they ever were.

    So, here’s a simple model that explains that phenomena, and maybe does some other interesting things as well:

    Momentary Happiness is defined by the difference between your current experience and an average of your previous experiences (with more recent previous experiences weighted more heavily in the average)

    The rest of this post is dedicated to exploring a mathematical formulation of this model, and seeing what it implies, what it misses out and how it could be improved. There’s also one eye on the question “How can experience be best manipulated to produce the maximum total happiness?”. If you are not interested in fun with maths, or the role of formal models in aiding thinking, then you might want to give up here.

    Categories
    links

    Categories
    politics

    Why is capitalism boring?

    Fundamentally, trading allows specialisation, and this increases efficiency and diversity. So why is global trade resulting in more homogenisation, not more diversity? The same shops on every high street, the same stuff in all the shops. I remember the first time i went into a Toys R Us – A toy shop not just bigger than any i’d seen before, but vastly bigger than any i’d seen before. I expected a vastly larger choice of toys. And of course I was wrong, not more choice of toys, but larger piles of a smaller choice of toys. Why is the mass market operating to restrict choice?!

    I’d appreciate any systems-level or economics-based answers to this. Some possible angles I can think of off the top of my head:

  • Choice isn’t really being restricted: if I want to I don’t have to go to Toys R Us, I can go anywhere I want to buy whatever I want. That’s real choice. [I’d argue that in an important sense there is still and increase in homogenisation not diversivication, and that’s what I’d like explaining]
  • Trade only leads to specialisation of labour, indirectly it leads to standardisation of products (production lines, etc). Although there are an increasing number of economic roles for me to play in modern consumer society, there’s no reason why specialisation should make that society more diverse [in which case, why does consumerism seem to promote homogenisation?]
  • We’re seeing the effects of a false market, one that has been distorted (eg by government-supported monopolies, by trade laws, etc). A real free market would lead to more diversity. [I doubt this is true, not least because ‘free’ markets are impossible, markets are always societal constructions. Additionally I suspect that any market that is free in the sense of universally connected with total capital and labour mobility would be totally unstable and prone to epidemics like any ecosystem without semi-permeable barriers. [Er maybe this is a point to expand on in another post]. Secondly, even if this arguement is true, what is it about the current market system that reduces diversity?]
  • Answers on a postcard email please….

    Categories
    quotes

    Quote #103

    “I’ve got a few men I respect very much and one would be Frank Gehry. He said to me, ‘If you know where it’s going, it’s not worth doing.’ That’s become like a mantra for me. That’s the life of the artist.”

    – Brad Pitt

    Categories
    events

    support the right to protest in sheffield

    G8 summit: Sheffield people denounce suppression of the right to protest.

    On June 15-17 the ?Justice and Home affairs? ministers of the G8, the world?s seven richest nations and Russia, will gather in Sheffield to discuss the home front of the ?war against terrorism?.

    The police have invoked special measures to prevent protests, informing organisers that no marches of any size will be allowed in the city centre during the summit. Any such protests will be met with force and arrests. Under the pretext of ?security? the police are attempting to marginalize protests by confining protestors to a pen on Devonshire Green. Sheffield Against G8 proposed a march on the afternoon of 15th June. Sheffield Stop the War Coalition proposed static pickets on the evenings of 15th and 16th June. Both these protests have been flatly prohibited.

    Whatever one?s view of the G8, we urge Sheffield people to oppose restrictions on the right to protest and to the imposition of what amounts to martial law over the centre of our city.

    We, the undersigned, believe that the blanket ban on peaceful protests in our city centre is an outrageous and unacceptable infringement of our democratic right to protest. We call on all citizens, organisations and elected representatives in Sheffield to press for these repressive decisions to be reversed.

    SIGNED [your name here?!]

    What you can do:

  • 1. Send a message by email to Jillian.Creasy@Sheffield.gov.uk confirming that you support the statement (or print off and send a hard copy to Cllr Jillian Creasy, Town Hall, Pinstone St, Sheffield, S1 2HH). I will send the statement as a letter and press release to The Star and the Sheffield Telegraph on the evening of Tuesday 31st May.
  • 2. Forward/print and pass on this message to friends and colleagues ? we need to collect as many signatures as possible within a few days.
  • 3. Join the march for Peace and Justice organised by Sheffield Stop the War Coalition on Saturday 11th June ? assemble 10.30am, Devonshire Green, march to Peace in the Park Festival, Cemetery Road.
  • Categories
    links

    Links for 31st of May 05

    Categories
    sheffield

    Sheffield vs London

    From the latest issue of GO sheffield:

    The difference between London and Sheffield is that London has full shops and empty people, whereas Sheffield has empty shops and full people

    Categories
    technical notes

    Latex and Bibtex: (or “How i’m solving the filing problem”)

    This is related to previous posts (one, two, three) if you are not interested in managing academic references or document preparation: turn back now

    I’ve started using Latex, and although it hurt to get started, i think i’m now converted. The logic, and power, of it makes it infinitely preferable to Word if you’re doing things more complicated than a one page letter. It’s a mark-up language, so not What You See Is What You Get (like MS Word), but more What You See Is What You Want. I swore after the last paper I submitted that i would never use Word for longer documents again, and I think it’s a promise i’ll be able to keep.

    One nice thing with Latex is that if there’s anything you can think of doing with a document then someone else has already thought of it and written an add-in to let you do just like that. Like psfrag which lets you modify the labels (content and font etc) of figures from within latex, so your figures always look compatible with the rest of your document.

    Although one idiosyncrasy of the programme, which i wish I’d been told earlier, was that you need to compile your document a couple of times before you get a good output. This is to do with Latex needing a couple of passes through to pick up all the cross-references, page boundaries etc (or something). In practice it means that you have a look at the end result and it doesn’t seem to take account of your changes, but if you just had another look (ie ran latex on your document for a second time) it would work. I learnt this here

    Latex does automatic inclusion of citations (ie in line mentions) and references (ie the compiled list at the end) with bibtex. Although bibtex is powerful and comes with lots of tools (one, two) available, I can’t find a nice front end with which to manage my references. So although i’m going to use it (have to use it) to put references in Latex documents, I’m going to keep using endnote to manage my references. I was using biblioscape which is nicer in lots of ways, but a bit flaky when talking to MS Word (and that’s something i’m going to keep having to do, if only because not all the people i work with are going to start using Latex).

    So, problem: using Endnote with Latex (one, two). All I need to do is when I start on a document, is to move the references I want from Endnote to Bibtex. How hard can it be to get Endnote to export properly? Answer: harder than you think. Currently the easiest way I can see to do it is to export references from Endnote to Biblioscape (Biblioscape 6 and Endnote 8 talk to each other fine, I couldn’t get earlier version to be compatible) and then export from biblioscape to bibtex format. Not very elegant. Can anyone suggest a better way? (and yes, i have tried the Endnote bibtex export style. It’s broken).

    Categories
    links

    Links for 23rd of May 2005

    Categories
    events

    3 questions

    Three rather parochial notes:

    First: Can anyone point out an amazon book page where the author’s
    own review appears? I know amazon offer you the chance to write a
    review of your own book, but where/how does this appear on the
    page?

    Second: Somebody has given me a book called The
    Science of Middle Earth
    along with a note saying ‘Probably not the
    sort of book you’d buy for yourself! Remember to take a
    brown paper bag if you intend to read it in public’
    . But no
    name was signed. Thanks for the present- does anyone want to admit
    to their generosity?

    Third: I’m in london next weekend (the back holiday weekend). Does
    anybody have any recommendations/offers?

    Categories
    links

    Links for 19th of May 2005

    Categories
    events

    From the Ritz to the Rubble

    All right-thinking people will download the Arctic Monkeys’ From The Ritz To The Rubble from the War Child website. Not only does the money go to a good charity, but you get a great track from Sheffield’s finest (and the b-side from their first single).

    Categories
    quotes

    Quote #102

    To study history one must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one

    Hermann Hesse, ‘The Glass Bead Game’ (1943)

    Categories
    science

    Check your method

    Perhaps this defines science in psychology: does your investigation (be it questionnaire, cell recording, computational modelling work, whatever) have the capacity to provide you with a surprise?

    Categories
    psychology quotes

    Quote #101

    Introspective psychology and analytical philosophy of the self, of perception and of will, do not seem to take into account that in any well-made machine one is ignorant of the working of most of the parts – the better they work, the less are we conscious of them. Thus it is very unlikely that introspection will reveal those intermediate processes which are most important

    Kenneth Craik, ‘The Nature Of Explanation’ (1943)

    Categories
    quotes

    Quote #100

    You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that

    – John von Neumann

    Categories
    quotes

    truth vs happiness

    “You know,” said Arthur thoughtfully, “all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.”

    “No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.”

    “Everyone?” said Arthur. “Well, if everyone has that perhaps it means something! Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know …”

    “Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway….Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”

    “And are you?”

    “No. That’s where it all falls down of course.”

    – Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 30 (there’s something similar in the film)

    Categories
    links

    Links for 11th of May 2005

    Categories
    politics quotes

    brandalism

    People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inedequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

    You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

    Fuck that. Any advert in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

    You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtsey. They owe you. They have rearranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

    Banksy in ‘Cut It Out’

    Banksy photo gallery here. Offical Banksy site here. Another cool way to do graffiti here. And, of course subvertise.org (down at time of posting).

    Categories
    quotes

    In hell the punishment is just the sin without the illusion

    Dorothy Sayers provides an awesome introduction to Dante’s Divine Comedy (in the Penguin Classics edition). Talking about the Black Wind of Canto 5, Lust (‘The infernal whirlwind, which never rests, drives the spirits before its violence; turning and striking, it tortures them….And as their winds carry off the starlings in the cold season, in large full flocks, so does that breath carry the evil spirits here, there, down, up; no hope ever comforts them, not of lessened suffering, much less of rest.‘) she says:

    As the lovers drifted into self-indulgence and were carried away by their passions, so now they drift forever. The bright, voluptuous sin is now seen as it is – a howling darkness of helpless discomfort. (The ‘punishment’ for sin is simply the sin itself, experienced without the illusion…)

    Categories
    links

    Links for 5th of May 2005

    Categories
    misc

    So there’s this thread right…

    So there’s this thread, right, which I got to via CT, where people are photoshoping cartoons from the New Yorker to make them funnier. Or wierder at least. And there was this one, below. Who knows what it was about, but i thought it was funny as hell with the new caption:

    And i thought to myself. “That’s hilarious. I know just the person whose sense of humour that fits exactly”. And I was about to email that person, when i realised I didn’t know the name of that person. In my head i have the template of my impression of their sense of humour. I know exactly that this would make them laugh out loud, but i can’t remember which of my friends it is. Dammit

    Categories
    politics

    spoil your ballot?

    I’d dearly like them to have a “None of the above” option on the ballot. Until they do the option of spoiling your ballot isn’t quite attractive enough to go for. Sure, it distinguishes you from people who just can’t be bothered to turn up, I’m just worried that it doesn’t distinguish you from people who are unable to vote correctly.

    But something our prospective member of parliament for Sheffield Hallam told me this weekend puts a little more weight on the option: if you spoil your ballot then all the candidates get shown it, and have to agree on who, if anyone, it is a vote for. So if it is spoilt by an inaccurately placed cross then they can reach a consensus on who the vote is really for. And if you put a cross next to the lib-dem candidate and scrawl “Would Have Voted Labour But For The War” next to it then presumably they have to be shown it and agree that it is – or isn’t – a valid vote for the lib dem.

    So although there isn’t any way for people hearing the results to distinguish your spoilt vote from someone who just can’t cross a box, there is a chance that the politicians can – and arguably they are the people who it is most important to communicate with.

    I’d love to know if this is true, although even if it is i’m not going to take the chance and risk my vote not being counted. But at least, if you are going to spoil your vote anyway you can consider what to write, knowing who might get to see it.

    (ps suggestions on the best three words with which to spoil your ballot also welcome)

    Categories
    links

    Links for the 26th of April 2005

    Categories
    misc

    the effort-expensive trade-off

    Something my supervisor allegedly said, which i thought was very wise: “If you’ve got money to throw at a problem, do it, because the one thing you’re never going to have spare is time”.

    Categories
    links

    Links for 21st of April 2005

    Categories
    quotes

    And the straight shall be made twisted

    If you want to become whole,
    first let yourself become broken.
    If you want to become straight,
    first let yourself become twisted.
    If you want to become full,
    first let yourself become empty.
    If you want to become new,
    first let yourself become old.
    Those whose desires are few gets them,
    those whose desires are great go astray.

    For this reason the Master embraces the Tao,
    as an example for the world to follow.
    Because she isn’t self centered,
    people can see the light in her.
    Because she does not boast of herself,
    she becomes a shining example.
    Because she does not glorify herself,
    she becomes a person of merit.
    Because she wants nothing from the world,
    the world cannot overcome her.

    When the ancient Masters said,
    “If you want to become whole,
    then first let yourself be broken,”
    they weren’t using empty words.
    All who do this will be made complete.

    – Lao Tzu, from J.M. MacDonald’s public domain translation of the Tao Te Ching

    Categories
    books

    the evening redness in the west

    In the future, when the world is better organised, when children come of age, we will let ones who’ve been good read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, we’ll tell them that, because they’ve been good, they get to meet the judge. When the ones who have been bad come of age, we’ll make them read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, we’ll tell them that, because they’ve been bad, they get to meet the judge. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says he’ll never die.

    This book is simply fantastic, in a blood and dust, Moby Dick meets McCabe And Mrs Miller, gore and unrectified night, kind of way. So man loves games? Then let him play for stakes