tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146009852024-03-05T14:17:04.821+00:00The GrowleryEmail comment to: growlery [at] gmx.ieUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-86691417334927488832013-12-11T20:32:00.000+00:002013-12-11T20:40:02.131+00:00Now playing...<p>Iannis Xenakis, "Keren" on <i>Phlegra et al</i>, 2007.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-56944809787052823572013-12-01T00:19:00.000+00:002013-12-01T12:44:32.841+00:00Sue Bamford web site<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gYS7Aly2UKQ/Upp-07YguOI/AAAAAAAAFXc/ZZ3odKVphRE/s1600/EstuaryInWinter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gYS7Aly2UKQ/Upp-07YguOI/AAAAAAAAFXc/ZZ3odKVphRE/s200/EstuaryInWinter.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I have, at intervals,
<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.com/search?q=sue+bamford" target="_blank">several times made mention</a> here of my admiration for the work of Dublin
artist Sue Bamford and have, since her exhibition last December, spent many
hours lost in examples of her work on the walls of my home.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
She has, as I write this, a weekend "at home" exhibition. She also, I'm
delighted to say, has <a href="http://suebamfordart.com/" target="_blank">a new stand-alone web site</a> (separate, that is, from her
Facebook page) carrying galleries of her work.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
One of the galleries <a href="http://suebamfordart.com/GalleryMain.asp?GalleryID=133558&AKey=5ADJN8BK" target="_blank">is given over to the landscapes</a> which I love so much – including, I'm quietly
chuffed to see, <i>
<a href="http://suebamfordart.com/Image.asp?ImageID=1795422&full=1&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=5ADJN8BK" target="_blank">Estuary in winter</a></i> which I was lucky enough to buy in her December 2012
show.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Another contains, amongst other drawings, examples (<a href="http://suebamfordart.com/Image.asp?ImageID=1869080&full=1&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=5ADJN8BK" target="_blank">here</a>,
<a href="http://suebamfordart.com/Image.asp?ImageID=1869076&full=1&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=5ADJN8BK" target="_blank">here</a> and
<a href="http://suebamfordart.com/Image.asp?ImageID=1869081&full=1&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=5ADJN8BK" target="_blank">here</a>) from the sequence of drawings which I mentioned (see "<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/drawing-from-hip.html" target="_blank">Drawing from the hip</a>") back in January, which so strongly call out to the
observational photographer in me: her <i>Dubliners</i> sequence of street
drawings from a personal James Joyce project, each framed in the wing mirror of
her car. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-6283138017846686082013-11-30T23:13:00.002+00:002013-11-30T23:22:48.620+00:00To the Crabmobile!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eScaubNyRpk/Uppw_DJHqYI/AAAAAAAAFXM/9ntuokSs0Vg/s1600/Crabmobile44295.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eScaubNyRpk/Uppw_DJHqYI/AAAAAAAAFXM/9ntuokSs0Vg/s320/Crabmobile44295.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
We blog writers all, at some time (or times) hit fallow spells when we write
little for a greater or shorter length of time. I'm in one of them, recently.
And we all have our excuses (as Jim Putnam says: “excuses are like elbows:
everyone has a couple”).</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Nobody, however, but nobody, worries about it more, or has more genuinely
watertight reason, than Dr C: a man of deep morals, developed conscience, and
commitment to his patients – especially those who are children. There are few
bloggers for whom I feel the admiration, respect and affection which I have
developed over the years for Dr C ... nor from whom I so vehemently refuse
remorseful apologies for silence – which is always down to overwork on behalf of
others.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
In Dr C's coastal community, crabbing is an important component of local
industry. One of the stratagems which he uses to put his youngest patients at
ease is to ask them to make drawings of crabs –
<a href="http://doctorc.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=friday+crab+blogging" target="_blank">
some of which delightful results</a> he posts on his blog. He also organises the
wonderful annual <a href="http://crabcontest.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Big
Crab Contest</a> for pupils at a local school.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
All of which is background to a postal packet which I received this week.
Inside was the wonderful crab mobile shown in the photograph here, accompanied
by no explanation apart from a sheet from a yellow legal pad carrying (so
typical of Dr C) ... an apology for silence.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I suspect that its workmanship may originate in that same local school as the
Big Crab Contest. Whether it does or not, I love and treasure it; it has, as you can see, pride
of place where it can be found by the morning sun. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-43136072034869135682013-11-24T22:24:00.000+00:002013-11-24T22:25:39.860+00:00Chance conjunction of the day<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
The conjunction came from a song lyric and a book fragment, within not very
minutes of each other.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
The song lyric came first; it was playing as I worked on the text of an
article about statistical testing:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="style2">
She was physically forgotten,<br />
Then she slipped into my pocket<br />
With my car keys.<br />
She said “You've taken me for granted<br />
Because I pleased you...”<sup><span class="style1">1</span></sup></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I was hungry so, when the track finished, paused the player and put aside the
article for a while to get a bite to eat. Filling the gastric gap with a
sandwich from my right hand, I picked up the book with my left to give my mind a
brief change of scene as well. The book was an old favourite (in fact, I find
that I already referenced this same line from it,
<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-meaning-of-life.html" target="_blank">
earlier this year</a> ... I'm getting repetitive) which is, to embroider the conjunction (or to suggest that am stuck in a particular past), very close to being coeval with the song:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="style2">
There’s a photograph of an olive tree among the stones on my
desk; when Luise left she wrote on the back of it: “I trusted you with the idea
of me and you lost it”.<sup><span class="style1">2</span></sup></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
It's so easy to take someone for granted and lose the idea of them ... not
just a significant other, but oneself and (the thought that occurred to me in
this case) those friends more removed as well.</div>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><span class="style1">Paul Simon, "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes" on </span><i><span class="style1">Graceland</span></i><span class="style1">,
1986</span></li>
<li><span class="style1">Russell Hoban, </span><i><span class="style1">The
Medusa Frequency</span></i><span class="style1"> Ch.3. 1987, London: Cape.
ISBN 0224024647</span></li>
</ol>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-40856278256257613472013-11-21T08:57:00.000+00:002013-11-23T19:29:27.949+00:00Now playing...Tanita Tikaram, <i>Ancient heart</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-34555043545764307822013-11-08T16:58:00.000+00:002013-11-17T17:00:04.539+00:00Too big for its boots<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhab5VK9PhutUDH7kv_QbDqD8B1mglI_4sjN3vEr9rRKlAKXckTSS_1BQWCmoNPUfkoPaWHNFlNOfTqfc58YkvQv7IqzqUtu2SZamrlQI1LDuhDFt9zzWd16DeGrk264XlI7RZYJQ/s1600/TooBigForBoots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhab5VK9PhutUDH7kv_QbDqD8B1mglI_4sjN3vEr9rRKlAKXckTSS_1BQWCmoNPUfkoPaWHNFlNOfTqfc58YkvQv7IqzqUtu2SZamrlQI1LDuhDFt9zzWd16DeGrk264XlI7RZYJQ/s200/TooBigForBoots.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
In a delightful way, from a writing perspective, my last few data analysis topics have first synergised with one another and then led
naturally on to the consideration of Big Data. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
What exactly is "big data"? The answer, it should come as no particular
surprise to hear, is "it depends". As a broad, rough and ready definition, it
means data in sufficient volume, complexity and velocity to present practical
problems in storage, management, curation and analysis within a reasonable time
scale. In other words, data which becomes, or at least threatens to become in a
specific context, too dense, too rapidly acquired and too various to handle.
Clearly, specific contexts will vary from case to case and over time (technology
continuously upgrades our ability to manage data as well as generating it in
greater volume) but broadly speaking the gap remains – and seems likely to
remain in the immediate future. The poster boys and girls of big data, in this
respect, are the likes of genomics, social research, astronomy and the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) whose unmanaged gross sensor output would be around fifty
zettabytes per day.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
There are other thorny issues besides the technicalities of computing. Some
of them concern research ethics: to what extent, for example, is it justifiable
to use big data gathered for other purposes (for example, from health,
telecommunications, credit card usage or social networking) in ways to which the
subjects did not give consent? Janet Currie (to mention only one recent example
amongst many) suggests a stark tightrope with her "Big data vs big brother"
consideration of large scale pædiatric studies. Others are more of concern to
statisticians like me: there is a tendency for the sheer density of data
available to obscure the idea of a representative sample– and a billion
unbalanced data points can actually give much less reliable results than thirty
well selected ones. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Conversely, however, big data can also be defined in terms not of problems
but of opportunity. Big data approaches open up the opportunity to explore very
small but crucial effects. They can be used to validate (or otherwise) smaller
and more focussed data collection, as for instance in Ansolabehere and Hersh’s
study<sup> [1]</sup> of survey misreporting. As technology gives us expanding
data capture capabilities at ever finer levels of resolution, all areas of
scientific endeavour are becoming increasingly data intensive. That means (in
principle, at least) knowing the nature of our studies in greater detail than
statisticians of my generation could ever have dreamed. A while back,
to look at the smaller end of the scale, I mentioned<sup> [2]</sup> the example
of an automated entomological field study régime simultaneously sampling two
thousand variables at a resolution of several hundred cases per second. That’s
not, by any stretch of the imagination, in LHC territory but it’s big enough
data to make significant call on a one terabyte portable hard drive. It’s also a
goldmine opportunity for small team or even individual study of phenomena which
would not long ago have been beyond the reach of even the largest government
funded programme: big data has revolutionised small science.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
There is, in any case, no going back; big data is here to stay – and to grow
ever bigger, because it can. Like all progress, it’s a double edged sword and
the trick as always is to manage the obstacles in ways which deliver the prize. <b><i>[<a href="http://content.yudu.com/A2jd45/SCWOCTNOV13/resources/14.htm" target="_blank">more</a>]</i></b></div>
<hr />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Ansolabehere, S. and E. Hersh, Validation: "What Big Data Reveal About
Survey Misreporting and the Real Electorate". <i>Political Analysis</i>, 2012.
20(4): p. 437-459.<br /><br />
[2] Grant, F., "<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/retrieving-data-day-queries.html" target="_blank">Retrieving data day queries</a>", in <i>Scientific Computing World</i>. 2013, Europa Science: Cambridge. p. 10-12..</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-88725419392454444562013-10-27T23:59:00.000+00:002013-11-17T16:40:49.042+00:00The white and the red<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
It's that time of year again, when my discussions with those (including myself) who ask why I wear a white poppy are enriched by <a href="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14600985&postID=7563782618634253939" target="_blank">comments left on my post a couple of years ago</a>. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DWnNslP5qp8/Um7YtzEU46I/AAAAAAAAFUU/TDPr6VyN5u0/s1600/The+white+and+the+red+44266s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DWnNslP5qp8/Um7YtzEU46I/AAAAAAAAFUU/TDPr6VyN5u0/s320/The+white+and+the+red+44266s.jpg" width="192" /></a>If anyone is interested, and
wasn't here at the time, that post is,
to some extent, followed up in
<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/red-white-and-sometimes-sadly-song-sung.html" target="_blank">
another post a couple of days later</a>.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
This year, though, the decision to wear a white wrestles with another, more agonised decision: my preious to support foreign military action in Libya [audit trail <a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/shades-of-mona.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/still-worrying-about-those-shades-of.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/sic-gloria-transit-qaddafi.html" target="_blank">here</a>]. Which brings me up against Ray Girvan's reservation (and, for that matter, my own) about the practicality of pacifism. But ideals are always impractical, and always run up against both reality on one side and other, not always compatible, ideals on the other. We have to weave the best path we can between Scylla and Charybdis.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
For the moment, at least, my path continues (Libya notwithstanding) to approximate the white poppy route.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Syria is a much murkier case than Libya. In Libya, there was a clear case to argue; the potential to alleviate loss of innocent life, on balance, could be made (if not conclusively); in Syria, it is much harder to see how that algebra might play out. Undeniable mass slaughter and suffering now, in the case of inaction, is not balanced by any clearly perceivable reduction if any ralistic action is taken. Which, ironically, makes the white poppy less problematic, for the time being ... but doesn't make me feel any cleaner.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-25011690526163962872013-10-18T17:16:00.002+00:002013-10-18T17:26:55.497+00:00The kindness of strangers<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
In my teens, I spent
a fair amount of time hiking a sparsely populated semi-arid island landscape.
Agriculture, here, was a peasant economy marginally above subsistence, herds of
sheep and goats scattered across sparse hillsides around tiny, isolated villages.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
We would pass through
these villages, stopping in their cafés for coffee or cola. Sometimes we were
welcomed, surrounded by curious villagers eager for news of the outside world
beyond the immediate horizon. In those, the distinctions between us (British,
French, German, USAmerican) were incomprehensible; we were all, collectively and simply, “English”. In
other villages we saw nobody but the café proprietor; young people in dusty
khaki walking clothes and boots, carrying rucsacs, bore too much resemblance to
soldiers and were best avoided on a general precautionary principle.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
In the empty, rocky,
soaring spaces between villages, we gradually learned never to ask directions
from a local inhabitant.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
When, at a fork in
the unmapped and barely visible path, we asked a wandering goatherd something
like “Which is the way to Melou?”, we always got a long and detailed set of
directions richly supplemented by story and gesture. Alas, our genially helpful
informant had (as we eventually realised) never heard of Melou, still less did
he know how to get there, but didn't like to say so. This was not dishonesty; it
was, on the contrary, a cultural reluctance to disappoint, a refusal to deny
travellers what they requested. We would, in the early days before we understood
this, often follow the instructions we were given. Trekking many kilometres of
hard country in the wrong direction, before map and compass eventually convinced
us of our error, we would eventually arrive in Melou tired and several hours late.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Curiously, I've now
discovered a similar phenomenon in the urban landscape of England's home
counties. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Coming out of a Hilton hotel at nine in the morning, I stopped at reception to
ask where I could catch a bus into town. (At this point I can hear Julie
Heyward, with
<a href="http://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/waiting-for-the-bus/">her low opinion of buses</a>,
chortling already.) The reception manager didn't hesitate: he pointed
confidently out of the door and said “go out of the hotel gate, sir, and turn
left. At the junction turn left again and you'll see the bus stop”.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Outside
the hotel gates I turned left; and left again at the junction. I was on a busy
six lane dual carriageway, with no sign of a bus stop as far as the eye could
see. Undeterred, I started walking.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
As I
walked, a woman emerged from an underpass, talking on her cellphone. I asked
about bus stops. She paused, muttered “Hang on, Mum” into the phone, pointed
back into the underpass, and said “Through there and follow the path, it's by
the garage”.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
On the
other side of the underpass the promised path headed in the direction of town,
which was encouraging. I walked for about a quarter of an hour, without seeing
either a bus stop or a garage, until I met a dog walker coming the other way. To
my question he replied, pointing on down the slope in the direction I was
walking, “Turn left at the bottom, and just follow the path”.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
At the
bottom of the slope was a fork in the path. I turned left. Ten minutes walking
brought me to a garage, which rekindled hope, but there was no bus stop near by.
I went into the garage, where the assistant greeted my enquiry with a blank
expression and the puzzled words “Bus stop?” Fair enough; she didn't know, and
didn't pretend to. She disappeared briefly and returned with her manager who
pointed out of the door and instructed me that I should “cross the
road, turn right, keep going, you can't miss it”.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Across
the road, having turned right and kept going for some time, I could no longer
see the garage behind me and still hadn't found a bus stop ahead. Nor, it
occurred to me, had any buses passed me.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Open
clearway gradually gave way to houses, goods yards, small industrial premises.
About an hour after leaving the hotel, I finally found a bus stop; the
timetables inside suggested that every bus which stopped here would take me into
town, so I stood and waited. Less than five minutes later, a bus arrived.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
The
driver gave me a very strange look, when I asked for the town centre, but took
my money and issued me with a ticket. The reason for his reaction became clear
when, before I'd even had time to sit down, we turned a corner and pulled into a
bus station. I had arrived, having walked the whole way and then bought a ticket
for the last fifty metres or so.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
At the
end of the day, I made my way back to the bus station. I discovered the right
bus service, boarded it, purchased a ticket as far as the Hilton. Starting
Google Maps on my phone, I carefully watched both the landscape outside the bus
window and the little dot which showed my position as it crept between town
centre and hotel. The route never touched the dual carriageway along which I had
been directed by the reception manager; it followed smaller roads through
residential estates. It never came within five hundred metres of the garage, nor
of the underpass and the path beyond. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
When I
got off, I discovered that the bus stop was behind the hotel, not out of the
gates at all ... starting from the gates, I would have had to turn right, right,
and right again (not left and left), away from the junction (not towards and
through it).</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I stopped
at reception and explained all of this to the reception manager. He smiled,
spread his hands, shrugged expressively, and said “I don't know, sir; I never
catch the bus” </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-87389986503074898312013-10-04T23:59:00.000+00:002013-10-18T17:17:24.455+00:00Today<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
“It frequently happens ... — and this is one of the charms of photography — that the operator himself discovers on examination, perhaps long afterwards, that he has depicted many things he had no notion of at the time.”</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[William Henry Fox Talbot, <i>The Pencil of Nature</i>. 1844–1846, London: Longman, Brown, Green.]</span></div>
<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Qbq1J5vzJTU/UlB2Mau352I/AAAAAAAAFTg/_PwHU4dpJSI/s320/Today13100443837.jpg" width="540" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-90630949684006590262013-10-03T15:55:00.001+00:002013-10-04T08:41:06.035+00:00Now playing...<div>Woody Guthrie, <i>This land is your land</i>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-28002626165028718252013-09-26T21:02:00.000+00:002013-09-26T21:02:09.159+00:00Today<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u4lHc_uJOt4/UkSfyj7PdsI/AAAAAAAAFTQ/ak3lfMALsIg/s320/Today13092643817.jpg" width="540" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-46426493476156847682013-09-22T18:45:00.003+00:002013-09-22T18:46:56.771+00:00Is anybody there...?<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Coincidentally (following close on the heels of Ray Girvan's comment on my "<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/taking-comfort-where-i-find-it.html" target="_blank">Taking comfort where I find it</a>"), BBC Radio Four's <i>A point of view</i> slot on Friday evening backed him up with A L Kennedy's outlook on unobserved honesty: "Someone to watch over me".</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Starting with bourbon biscuits in hotel rooms (yes, I confess, I've been there...) it moves rapidly to social science investigations such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment" target="_blank">Milgram</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment" target="_blank">Stanford prison</a> experiments.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Click to either <b><a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/pov/pov_20130920-2100a.mp3" target="_blank">download and listen to the mp3 podcast</a></b> (about ten minutes) or <b><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24165872" target="_blank">read the transcript</a></b>.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-35374346397954059792013-09-22T18:24:00.001+00:002013-09-23T14:02:55.812+00:00Today<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiodDPUB7SmEAPKHq7-XpdH6w6aL306qocIk1l0dLx5hAAvt6g6EPoRvhbroHFrlfvyhA2ZdW7L2VGk6Xl5v2YhG-wIs43PLSN_m2Fr2O9Uiut6tkTsf44cHzj3egbt7Q0rPytw3Q/s320/Today13092243635.jpg" width="540" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-44804920138570129532013-09-13T23:59:00.000+00:002013-09-22T18:25:58.514+00:00Taking comfort where I find it<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
One of the things which regularly helps to restore my faith in human nature, after it has taken a kicking: the way even the most aggressive and selfish car driver usually pulls over immediately to make way for an ambulance or fire appliance running blues and twos.<br />
<br />
<hr />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Continued, three days later...</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Ray Girvan's comment to this post seemed important enough to justify promotion
into the body of this post – especially as I've been thinking about it seriously
since he left it.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="style1">
“Well, maybe. My feeling is that the selfish and aggressive
are very quick to obey when it comes to overt appearance of authority, such as
fire / police / ambulance. That evaporates when no such authority is in sight -
and that's the true test of positive human qualities: when you're not being
watched.”</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I have to say that I agree with most of that – especially the last bit. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
The submission to visible
authority factor was, in fact, the reason that I referred to “an ambulance or fire
appliance” and left out police vehicles which are indisputably symbols of
coercive authority. I'm not convinced that most aggressive/selfish drivers would
be cowed by ambulance or fire appliance.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
But ... it may well be, I concede, that
the selfish and aggressive driver who pulls over may be responding at a gut
level. The sound of a siren and the flashing of blue lights in her/his mirror,
may well be readi instinctively as potential police signals before conscious
identification.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
It could well be that how one
weighs this depends on one's exact location (at any given moment) on the
cynical/credulous spectrum.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Being a fundamentally
optimistic (or credulous) soul I cling to memory of an incident on a bus, some
years ago. The passengers on the bus ranged from elderly pink rinsed matriarchs
through young mothers to two known low level drug dealing thugs who would
happily have broken my legs if I'd looked at them the wrong way.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
On a fairly narrow estate road,
where he could easily have pulled over but passing was impossible otherwise, the
driver (an exception to my observation) steadfastly held his position on the
road and blocked an braying ambulance for about wo hundred metres. Without
exception, the reaction of all the passengers was outrage: the driver was
subjected to a barrage of entreaties and abuse aimed at getting him to
pull over and clear the road.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Perhaps, again, though, finer
feelings are not the most likely reason for this. Perhaps, rather, each
passenger selfishly imagined her/himself, at some future time, in that
ambulance. Perhaps that, too, applies to car drivers. When it comes down to it,
all I have in support of my original warm glow is the fact that I <i>prefer</i>
to be warmed by one interpretation rather than chilled by the other. As a scientist, I have
to confess that Ray's view of things has the balance of probabilities more on
its side.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-5401112178038542062013-09-13T19:05:00.003+00:002013-09-13T19:06:08.701+00:00Now playing...<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Charles Gounod, “O nuit divine” <i>Roméo et Juliette</i> , Act II [Angela Ghiorghiu].</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-85528108152919328832013-09-06T16:50:00.001+00:002013-09-08T10:42:48.191+00:00Another turn around the mulberry bush<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Once again, I agonise over not only the prospect of military action but the reasons advanced for and against it – this time, in Syria.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I cautiously concede that the British parliament
probably reached the right decision when
it rejected David Cameron's request to back such action at the particular moment
when the debate occurred. To delay for two and a half years and then rush in
while a UN inspection team has yet to report seems bizarre to say the least (or, in Ban Ki-moon's more diplomatic wording, “ill considered”). That
doesn't mean that I reject the general principle. I'm torn; I don't, at this moment, come down definitively on one side or the other. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I won't bore you with yet another rehearsal of my thinking on this
subject ... you can, if you wish, revisit my last monologue ("<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/still-worrying-about-those-shades-of.html" target="_blank">Still
worrying about those shades of grey</a>") over the Libyan intervention. I will,
however, mention some of the reasons I've heard expressed in the current debate.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Though I may or may not agree with them, these all strike me as honourable reasons:</div>
<ul>
<li>Intervention will not be effective.</li>
<li>We must try to shorten this terrible blood letting if we can </li>
<li>Intervention will cause more suffering, and cost more lives, than it
will save.</li>
<li>We can't just stand by while human beings are killed, tortured, driven
from their homes.</li>
<li>Investment in aid to refugees and long term
planning for their return would do far more good.</li>
</ul>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
These, however, chill me to the bone with moral dismay:</div>
<ul>
<li>It's not our concern.</li>
<li>They're all terrorists anyway.</li>
<li>It's a long way away.</li>
<li>We should have gotten rid Assad years ago – this is our chance.</li>
<li>We have enough problems of our own.</li>
<li>Our reputation is on the line.</li>
<li>Intervention will push up the price of fuel.</li>
<li>We need to show the world who's boss.</li>
<li>We have no pressing national interest at stake. </li>
<li>We have to consider the Kirkuk-Banias oil pipeline (thank you, Gayle, for reminding me of that one).</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-86243550773893159842013-09-02T23:59:00.000+00:002013-09-02T23:59:00.362+00:00What the water said<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fUa9fuYbkmc/UiUNblo6-NI/AAAAAAAAFSA/CJ4_Lw8_gg0/s1600/What+the+water+said.jpg" width="540" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-33277526354111737052013-09-02T07:41:00.002+00:002013-09-02T07:41:46.597+00:00When the Raynes come<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Kate Raynes' <i>Fiction Fix</i> is always there in the left hand "Other Voices" column of this blog, for you to follow; but this morning I woke to a short story which I'm recommending individually.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Ms Raynes blog has been on sabbatical while its author was on a trip in the area where this story "<a href="http://www.kateraynes.com/1/post/2013/09/jungle-blooms.html#comments" target="_blank">Jungle Blooms</a>", is set. Such sabbaticals often turn into either abandonment of one sort or another. In this case, the result seems to have been reinvigoration in new directions.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-60498590364921594662013-09-01T17:41:00.000+00:002013-09-01T17:46:45.597+00:00Good grief, Charlie Brown...<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Wanting to check the spelling of Ephraim Mirvis' surname, I did an online search for "new chief rabbi".</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
The first entry in the resulting hit list was...</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uk29q_5Ggnw/UiN8qiPPq5I/AAAAAAAAFRw/xT-V8uRcFos/s1600/chiefrabbi1309011841.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uk29q_5Ggnw/UiN8qiPPq5I/AAAAAAAAFRw/xT-V8uRcFos/s1600/chiefrabbi1309011841.jpg" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-89892381545527908882013-08-30T23:59:00.000+00:002013-08-30T23:59:00.938+00:00Coming and going<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Yesterday, JSB's Ray Girvan <a href="http://jsbookreader.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/dark-night-of-soul.html">
captured me</a> with a sixteenth century CE poem <i>(Dark night of the soul)</i>
and a piece of music (of the same name) which I bought before the day was
over.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Today I've been listening to that music; and the music
has stopped for a twentieth century poet: Sèamus Heaney, RIP. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-36915642700694945072013-08-28T21:53:00.003+00:002013-08-28T21:54:56.058+00:00Today<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k0Ngb6XqoZI/Uh5wQfbhMmI/AAAAAAAAFRg/4aC3Mr32MXc/s320/Today13082842782.jpg" width="540" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-33910475769241409412013-08-16T21:29:00.000+00:002013-08-19T19:03:42.951+00:00The blue, the blue, the blue!<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
<i>Unreal Nature</i>'s "<a href="http://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/rather-than-presumption/" target="_blank">Rather than presumption</a>" post, earlier today, quotes from a Vivian Sobchack essay on Derk Jarman's film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_%281993_film%29" target="_blank"><i>Blue</i></a>:</div>
<div blockquote="" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>“</b></span> ...the image is not "empty"...<b>” </b></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
How I wish that I could persuade the rows of art lovers who have sat, stony faced, before me as I talked myself blue (!) in the face, vainly trying to put over that very point.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Audiences whom I seek to similarly persuade of the depth and passion in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Klein" target="_blank">Yves Klein</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue" target="_blank"><i>IKB</i></a> works are equally unimpressed. I show them the intense blue of the sky between tall buildings (though not as intense as that in the steep Virginian valleys where <i>Unreal nature</i> is written) and invite them to wonder ... for a moment their eyes show recognition of how amazing that blue is; but when they drop their eyes again they have not altered their opinion of Klein.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
I have often wondered whether Jarman had Klein in mind when he chose blue for that magical rectangle in the luminous dark ... or whether both of them were, like Robert Frost in <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/155/5.html" target="_blank"><i>Fragmentary blue</i></a>, simply responding to a shared human entrancement described by Doris Lessing:</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
<blockquote>
<b><span style="font-size: small;">“</span></b>She had clung here and looked up and out and it had been as if her whole self had filled with a need to leave here and let herself be absorbed by that endless blue — the blue, the blue, the blue!<span style="font-size: small;"><b>”</b></span> </blockquote>
</div>
<hr />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;">Doris Lessing, <i>The marriages between Zones Three, Four and Five (as narrated by the chronicles of Zone Three)</i>. 1980, London: Cape. 022401790X. [<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0006547206/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0006547206&linkCode=as2&tag=wwwfelixgcouk-21" target="_blank">Amazon link (physical book)</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008CBD1S2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B008CBD1S2&linkCode=as2&tag=wwwfelixgcouk-21" target="_blank">Amazon link (Kindle)</a>.]</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-30410497712272457362013-08-16T18:55:00.002+00:002013-08-16T18:55:17.041+00:00Now playing...<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Hawkwind, "After the day" on <i>Barclay James Harvest Live</i>, 1974, Polydor.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-18948869791276313082013-08-09T11:56:00.000+00:002013-08-09T15:05:30.507+00:00Pretty as a picture<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-70iGGOpJQiU/UgUE94abq9I/AAAAAAAAFRA/LRxdJ8i9cuM/s1600/PrettyPicture-FG-06-2009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-70iGGOpJQiU/UgUE94abq9I/AAAAAAAAFRA/LRxdJ8i9cuM/s320/PrettyPicture-FG-06-2009.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Talking about
statistical work by nonstatisticians, recently ("<a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/stats-for-million.html" target="_blank">Stats
for the million</a>", 14 June), I mentioned the importance in
that context of graphical visualisation of data. It goes well beyond that,
however.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
On the one hand, fuelled by
the ever-accelerating growth curve in computing power per unit of investment,
visualisation has progressively moved to the core of exploratory and analytic
strategies. The effects on traditional methods are profound, as separate work
phases collapse into continuous cybernetic feedback loops and statisticians
develop increasingly immersive relationships with their raw material. On the
other, data visualisation has penetrated mainstream discourse to become an
integral part of vernacular literacy – “one of the genuinely new cultural forms
enabled by computing” as Lev Manovich<sup> [1, 2]</sup> describes it.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Those two aspects, the
technical and the vernacular, are not separate; they are two sides of the same
coin. They are beginning to interpenetrate with other developments such as
direct onscreen haptic manipulation of program interfaces and may in the long
run turn out to be the most far reaching and profound effect of the scientific
computing revolution.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
At the heart of this lies the
capacity of inexpensive desktop, laptop or even handheld devices to manipulate
graphics in real time response to user curiosity. When I started writing for
<i>Scientific Computing World</i>, back in
the 1990s, it was possible to represent three data variables as a scatter plot
cloud, or as a fitted surface, on <i>x</i>, <i>y</i> and
<i>z</i> axes, but changing the viewpoint or
scale usually involved typing new parameters into a settings box and watching
the screen progressively redraw. It seemed pretty cool, then. I remember my
excitement when the major statistics packages, one by one, added the ability to
grab the plot with a mouse click and intuitively apply zoom, pitch, roll and yaw
by dragging. Nowadays, I can do the same on a pocket tablet or even a cellphone
by simply sliding my fingers around the image itself. On a desktop, laptop or
heavier tablet machine I have access to considerably more than three dimensions,
not to mention different display types such as vector flows in the same
visualisation as positional points, planes or volumes.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
Not that such impressive
psychoperceptual pyrotechnics are always necessary or even desirable in every
context. Detailed 2D presentation of very traditional plots of the kind that
would have been familiar to my primary school self in the late 1950s are, in
many circumstances, still the best visualisations of real world situations. The
miracle of current software is that those two extremes, and everything between,
are available off the shelf to suit the needs of the moment. <span style="font-size: x-small;">
<b><i>[<a href="http://content.yudu.com/A2byyn/SCWAUGSEP13/resources/12.htm" target="_blank">more...</a>]</i></b></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
</div>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;">
Lev Manovich, “Data visualisation as new abstraction and anti-sublime” in
<i>Small tech: the culture of digital tools,
electronic mediations</i>, B. Hawk and D.M. Rieder, Editors. 2008, University of
Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;">
Lev Manovich, <i>Software takes command : extending the language of new media</i>.
International texts in critical media aesthetics.
9781623568177.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Full references list <a href="http://www.scientific-computing.com/features/referencesaug13.php" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a> </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14600985.post-42685332184420765512013-08-06T00:01:00.000+00:002013-08-06T13:54:11.830+00:00Today is Hiroshima Day<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
If you're a regular reader, you will have expected this post.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 3mm;">
If not, and you are curious about the reasons for it, find an explanation <a href="http://sammysdot.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/today-is-hiroshima-day.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1