Dan Dare is Dead |
The Impressionist stumbled into yet another art installation.
A wet day, an hour before the football starts, a billboard for a fairground attraction of exotic delight mixed with intellectual frissance ... and - too late - you're in and so you'd better look as though you're interested.
Another black and white video of people washing dishes, on a bus. Better than watching paint dry, which, curiously enough, is the next exhibit as the artist in a liotard carefully applies some orange paint to an orange and then peers at it board still for 5 minutes while it dries.
Oh the self-deprecation - one could weep. And one did.
And then the football.
An ordinary game played by ordinary men doing things that everyone can already do. People who can run, jump, catch and kick a ball, or an opposing player. People who can dive and make it look like they were pushed, or roll about in feigned agony until the other guy gets yellow carded.
Somehow it was reassuring when in a darkened catchpenny at the funfair you could easily see that the 'monstrous she devil with eight arms' really had only the usual number and in fact was a legal secretary with a husband, a mortgage, 3 kids and a dog.
It was easy to tell the ordinary from the heroic.
There are no heroes now - only ordinary boys and girls who dun good. Which means got rich.
When UK Member of Parliament David Davies resigned his seat to make a point about creeping erosion of civil liberties, there was an astounded double take from pundits and parliament. It was simply beyond their comprehension that someone could take a stand on a matter of principle.
Their cynicism has become our cynicism.
Dan Dare was a chisel jawed strip cartoon space hero in a British kids' comic called the Eagle published in the 50s and 60s. He and his sidekick Digby sat side by side in their spaceship 'Anastasia' battling the Mekon, a Venusian with the usual evil intentions to take over the world, etc. Good, of course, always triumphed. |
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| by The Impressionist on Tue, 24 Jun 2008, 09:17 |
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Why Cars are Weightless |
Even though they may not have a word for entrepreneur, the French have two words for the verb to know so I suppose that makes up for it.
What does this have to do with the weight of your motor car, automobile or even voiture?
As the French recognise, there is a difference between knowing something because you've read it in a book and knowing something by bitter experience.
When cranes lift chunks of office block weighing several tons a few tens of feet in the air, onlookers scurry away against the remote chance that the cable will snap. And yet, walk down any street and 2 ton steel monsters career past pedestrians just inches away and at speeds equivalent to being dropped from several storeys up. No one scurries away.
What we ought to know about cars is that they're hard things that weigh a couple of tons, go at a hundred miles an hour and if you get hit by one you're mince.
What we actually know about cars is that it takes no effort to make them go fast, stop fast and corner fast. A big engine, servo brakes and power steering mean the physical effort required of the driver is almost nil.
Cars are therefore weightless.
From his strapped-in, air-conditioned, sound-deadened, calfskin lined, electrically adjustable throne Mr Wheeler can be forgiven for drawing several conclusions:- It must be OK for me to do whatever speed I feel like in a 30mph limit as my lighter-than-air magic carpet obviously won't hurt a fly
- It shouldn't be that expensive to run as it weighs nothing so why does it cost so much
- My car responds instantly to my commands - I have total control of it
- It's a docile thing - like a family pet - who could dislike that?
- The world glides past my window so smoothly I feel I'm floating on a cloud - another lightweight thing
- It's obvious there's a conspiracy against the motorist
Mr Walker should conclude exactly the opposite. |
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| by The Impressionist on Tue, 03 Jun 2008, 11:28 |
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Are Blogs a Waste of Time? |
Like most things in life, blogging is something people do because they think it will benefit them in some way. What that benefit is depends on the type of person doing the blogging.
It's common to find all sorts of articles promoting the idea that blogging is a way of increasing your search engine rankings - a sort of e-version of social climbing - and hence your or your company's income from increased web traffic. One Lucy Clark promotes the typical attitude in Computer Weekly (27 May 2008, p21) «You might get one or two readers interested in your obscure/outdated blog but can a company justify ROI for this?» Money, or Return On Investment, is of course the measure of everything.
If you happen to be Matt Cutts blogging about Google's latest algorithm changes then you can write down just about anything, however ambiguous or vacuous, and the e-world will be drooling over it like vultures picking the remains of a long dead carcass. As used to be said about oil companies (and maybe still is), if it didn't gush out the ground at them they couldn't make money from it.
If you think that money or ROI is the sole reason for your existence, then almost all blogs - company or personal - are a waste of time. In fact most of what you do is not immediately profitable and should be stopped.
Perhaps there are other measures of success in writing and in the arts in general. Perhaps the wealthiest, the most successful artists and writers are not necessarily the longest remembered.
Mass appeal is never very appealing. |
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| by The Impressionist on Wed, 28 May 2008, 09:13 |
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Turn Again Boris |
Boris Johnson, bumbling TV host and purveyor of bombast, is the new mayor of London. Elected on Thursday with a substantial turnout, his victory over 'Red' Ken Livingstone was confirmed late last night.
Why was such an obvious twerp put forward for what is, after all, a serious position with serious power? The Impressionist suggests that Cameron's tories positioned themselves in a no-lose scenario:
- 1. Boris loses - «Well, it was Boris and no one seriously expected him to win. We didn't!»
- 2. Boris wins - if even a buffoon like Boris can win then that shows just how disillusioned the voters have become
Elsewhere in Britain, the antics of the London election have been viewed with a mixture of amusement and a large dose of disinterest.
The Impressionist looks forward to seeing Mayor Johnson stepping up to receive the Olympic torch in a half-finished stadium under 3 feet of Thames sewage. |
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| by The Impressionist on Sat, 03 May 2008, 12:20 |
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Zeno has left the Building |
A new(?) resolution of Zeno's famous paradox.
«Even the longest journey must begin where you stand.»
Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu
To Infinity ...
This article looks at one of the most famous ancient paradoxes - the Dichotomy paradox of Zeno of Elea - which claims that all motion is an illusion. One statement of this is that you cannot leave the room you're in.
Common experience shows that you can leave the room you're in so why does Zeno claim you can't, and why do people take this claim seriously?
Zeno produced several paradoxes to support the claim that motion is just an illusion and they have troubled philosophers for more than two thousand years. These paradoxes are usually expressed as 'thought-experiments' where we imagine a simple experiment that could take place in the physical world.
Zeno's Paradox
The subject of this thought-experiment - you - is assumed to be standing exactly one metre from the door of the room you're in - the length of the fat line in the picture. (We assume that one can measure lengths with perfect precision - the sort of assumption that's allowed in a thought-experiment, but not in the real world.)
To get out of the room ...
- you must first get to a point half way to the door (marked 1) - but when you do, you still have halfway to go ...
- now you have to get to another point half way between the first point and the door (marked 2) - but when you get there you still have a quarter of the way to go ...
- At the next step (marked 3), the distance and time are halved again leaving you still to go an eighth of the way ...
And so it continues - you are left with 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, ... to go so you never quite make it to the door.
The most popular resolution of this Zeno paradox is to point out that the first step is traversed in 1/2 second, the second in 1/4 second and so on. The total time taken to leave the room is therefore 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... which gets as close to 1 second as we like provided we iterate often enough. But although we can get as close as we like to 1, we can't ever get to the end of adding an infinite number of steps, however small they might be.
And there is something quite compelling about this objection.
Even if you accept that the sum of all the terms of the geometric series a(1 + r + r2 + r3 + ... ) is a/(1-r), which is 1 if you take a=1/2 and r=1/2 as in our thought-experiment above, you are still left with the problem that you can never in practice add enough of them to reach it. In mathematical terminology, the limit of the sequence 1, r, r2, r3, ... is not a member of the sequence - there is no number n such that rn is equal to the limit.
Another Way to Resolve Zeno's Paradox
This seems to avoid the problem I described. It begins before anyone tries to leave the room.
And this is the point: in order for you to know you're 1 metre away from the door, someone must have already obtained that information and told you.
This must have happened before you start to move.
But if we agree with Zeno, then you cannot know how far your first step is to be, because that information can never reach you.
Thus Zeno is defeated by his own argument: his primary assumption - that you can know how far away you are from the door - is self-contradictory.
Enjoy your day on the beach!
... And Beyond
In a future blog I'll look at what happens when you extend Zeno's argument. |
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| by The Impressionist on Fri, 25 Apr 2008, 19:39 |
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Losing the iPlot |
Perhaps reflecting the increasing infatuation with all things hi-tech amongst its supposed constituency, the UK government has become a gadget freak. Like tetchy teen troglodytes, UK government ministers continue to obsess over information technology.
Unfortunately, politicians are not constrained by mundane considerations like lack of cash.
The latest in megabuck health databases, biometric ID or geolocation systems are just a surrogate for real government, just as a new Nokia is a substitute for a real girlfriend. And because they carry so little investment in thought or principle these grand schemes go the way of the Sinclair C5, Beenz and Tony Blair's free holidays.
Arguments about privacy and security have been dismissed in the grab for headlining 'project initiatives', while government departments continue to haemorrage confidential data. (Look here for a summary of recent UK government data security lapses)
The world's largest civil software white elephant, the £12.6bn ($25bn) National Health Service (NHS) computer system NPfIT, has failed in all of its major objectives. At a cost equivalent to providing every man, woman and child in Britain with their own laptop, doctors cannot even securely share medical records. The whitewashers are no doubt already busy thinking up ways to save face for those who have any face left. (Click here for a short list of some NPfIT problems).
By contrast, Google has quietly developed most of the functionality that would be required to service the NHS's information needs, at a tiny fraction of the costs of NPfIT (more info).
The creation of the iState by effete politicos is propelled by an electorate ever hungrier for gadget bling. The iWorld that consists entirely of gossip, spin and blue sky pronouncements is always going to appeal to those already mired in these shibboleths.
Maybe the UK government has begun to see the light - it is to drop a system of road charging based on satellite geolocation (although the ludicrous ID card project is set to rumble on). Perhaps having to shell out £50bn ($100bn) to rescue a failing bank (Northern Rock) brought a little of the real world back to Westminster wonderland.
But technophilia is infectious.
People who neglect the real world in favour of dependence on technology soon come to regret it. There is nothing new in confusing the description of a thing with the thing itself as in the old story about the new bridge (sorry if you've already heard it).
The town mayor is opening a prestigious new bridge built at huge public expense and the ceremony is to culminate in driving a golden spike through the last unfilled rivet hole. The dignitaries, the brass bands, the crowd, the mayor, the mallet and the gold rivet are all assembled. Trouble is, there's no hole in the girder.
The bridge builder is summoned; he calls the girder company boss. Eventually, after fruitless consultations with middle managers, the girder quality control man arrives armed with an impressive pile of quality control documents. After intensively poring over these for several hours he proudly announces that 'there was a hole in it when it left the factory'.
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| by The Impressionist on Fri, 28 Mar 2008, 09:42 |
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And now ... Ode to Joy on the Spoons |
A fine example of l'entente cordiale occurred on Saturday when the London Symphony Orchestra was scheduled for a performance of Mahler's Seventh Symphony in the Burgundy town of Dijon.
Sadly, most of the LSO's instruments, stage attire and scores were stuck on a lorry somewhere north of Dover, a victim of the French channel ferry strike. La Justice Poetique, I suppose.
In true Dad's Army fashion however, the LSO and their Gallic hosts pulled together and managed to borrow instruments from local music colleges and shops - and even as far away as Lyon and Paris. So when 2000 Dijonais music buffs turned up for their eagerly anticipated evening they weren't disappointed. Even if the first violins were in jeans and t-shirts and the principal flautist's instrument had no bottom B.
Europe can be proud that its citizens can rally so selflessly and successfully. It's such a pity that its leaders can't do the same thing. |
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| by The Impressionist on Mon, 10 Mar 2008, 16:07 |
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Don't Mention the C-Word |
It's a word that inspires the young, terrifies the middle-aged, and bores the old; the stock-in-trade of the new broom; the lingua franca of the middle manager and the politician from banal British ex-chancellors to aspiring US Presidents. The word is change.
Nothing stays the same quite as much as change, as the French might say. Every time someone runs out of ideas - seemingly quite often these days - the C-word is taken from its rather undusty shelf, rolled around the tongue a few times to spruce it up, and delivered as though it were a breathtakingly original insight.
Why does the mention of change affect us so much? Well, the act of thinking is one thing that people badly want not to have to do - social norms exist to save us the inconvenience of having to think. If we had to constantly re-evaluate all the things that might affect our lives - from which side of the road to drive on to whether to wear a swimming costume to the office - we'd have no time to do anything else[1].
So over the centuries, societal norms have arisen that we come to know and stick to; many are now entrenched in law. These norms work well - few people get killed on the roads because they deliberately drive on the wrong side; no one wearing a snorkel has ever sold a luxury home.
An entire ecosystem has evolved to relieve us of the burden of having to think for ourselves. Churches, governments, companies and other organisations provide for their employees and their customers a refuge from the scourge of independent thinking. The larger and more venerable the institution, the more entrenched are its norms and the less thinking is necessary.
Change is a blunt instrument that threatens this cosy and successful arrangement. It's no surprise that the young embrace it - they haven't yet had the time to fully appreciate the benefits of norms and the consequences of removing them. Conversely, it's easy to see why larger and older organisations react to its mention so vehemently.
Human social systems are grounded in habit and inertia. Change is no more than empty rhetoric to garner a few votes from the immature or to shake up a fossilised department. Radical change does occur, but rarely and usually with consequences other than those intended by the instigators.
If you want an easy life, stay clear of change, and vice versa.
Reference
1. Critical Mass by Philip Ball (Arrow Books, 2005, paperback edition), p383ff.
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| by The Impressionist on Fri, 08 Feb 2008, 16:20 |
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The Error of our Ways |
In the news today: UK supermarket giant Tesco's year-on-year pre-Christmas sales have increased by just 3.1% and this had 'fallen short of analysts' expectations' of 4%.
The result was a drop in its share value.
If I predict that Roger Federer will win the US Open this year and he in fact gets knocked out in the semis, then it's my prediction that's wrong. No one - especially the local betting shop - will be impressed by the argument that the prediction was correct but reality went bad and I should get my winnings anyway as he was really expected to win.
Why then are economic analysts allowed to keep their jobs when their predictions turn out to be wrong?
Which raises the next question - just how different are 3.1% and 4% anyway?
The stock market thinks it knows the answer to this, but the right answer is not quite as simple-minded as your average market trader.
From day one, science undergraduates have it drummed into them that uncertainty is an irreducible part of life in general and experimental science in particular. For example, when you read a voltmeter - yes even a digital one - what you see may not be the true value. Your reading is only good to within some range surrounding the true value. The size of that range depends on many factors and there's a shedload of ways to estimate them and calculate their effects.
As a result, scientists do not claim to know the true value for anything - even the most precise measurements ever made are subject to uncertainty. When a value is quoted scientifically, it is expressed as some number with an uncertainty specification, like the electron magnetic moment (g/2) which is 1.001 159 652 180 85 with an uncertainty of 76 in the last two digits.
In fact, scientists distrust any value that is quoted without an accompanying uncertainty simply because it can't be compared with anything else. 3.1% may be consistent with 4% (analysts jobs are safe) or it may reveal gross incompetence. Without uncertainty no one can say.
So had our analyst friends predicted '4% plus or minus 1%' for Tesco's year on year sales increase, they would have been credible before and after the event.
As it is, they are neither. |
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| by The Impressionist on Tue, 15 Jan 2008, 19:10 |
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Colour Mr Balls Red |
Latest in the time-honoured tradition of politicians exposing their woeful ignorance of just about everything is UK schools secretary, the appropriately named Ed Balls. In a presentation to the Children, Schools and Families Committee of the UK Parliament, Mr Balls categorised the colours of the rainbow as «red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue». I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too. A lighter moment for a few impoverished MPs.
Apparently, it was Isaac Newton who gave us the familiar 7 colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. The story goes that he decided there should be 7 colours to match the seven planets then known and decided Indigo should fill the gap. Newton was a bit of a mystic sometimes.
The Impressionist's modern, if jaded, eye registers only siz colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, and Violet. Maybe the planet Cyan was unknown in Newton's day.
Some people claim that the whole idea of the «colours of the rainbow» is another story to tell little children as it's thought to be easier than trying to explain a continuous spectrum. Like many other aspects of education, the idea has been grossly over-simplified to make it easy to teach, not because it has any utility. Knowing the name of something tells you almost nothing about it.
The rainbow has a continuous range of wavelengths - so a rainbow contains every possible hue. And of course the human eye can distinguish far fewer than the 16 million or so hues (2 to the power 24) claimed by some purveyors of graphics and video technology. Assigning a name to each of these would be as pointless as it would be time-consuming. I expect there's a government department looking into it.
For everything you could ever want to know about colour, look at Charles Poynton's Color FAQ page. Not recommended for politicians.
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| by The Impressionist on Fri, 11 Jan 2008, 21:01 |
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Earlier Articles ... |
| The Unacceptable Face of Decapitation ... |
| The Mastery of Mystery ... «The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious» - Albert Einstein.
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| Childhood's End ... Want to come out and play? |
| The Age of Energy ... The road outside the Impressionist's house is dug up. |
| Times of the Signs ... Old Europe has suddenly begun to come up with some revolutionary new ideas: old ideas whose time has come. |
| Just Popped Out ... In Britain, the term popped out is used innocently to mean 'gone away for a short time'. |
| Plum or Sugar? ... A battle has been raging in Britain. |
| But will I have enough for booze, ciggies, foreign holidays, drugs, ...? ... As pension funds - run for the incontinent by the incompetent - find themselves in terminal decline, pre-pensioners are apt to wonder how they will be supported in their golden years. |
| Myspace finds Identical Twins Separated at Birth ... The Impressionist recently signed up with myspace.com with a view to spreading his own brand of light hearted banter and genial comment on the insanity of humanity.
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| Googlenopes ... What is a Googlenope? |
| Nothing New Under The Sun ... Nothing essentially new has been invented since the first half of the 20th century. |
| Little Hills ... A Reader's Digest poll of 4000 Europeans voted the British as the nation in Europe with the best sense of humour (the Germans came last). |
| E-lying and Lie-braries ... E-mail, boon or bane, you can't function on the internet without it.
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| What's in a Name? ... A recent case in the United Kingdom resulted in a rare victory for the small(ish) man against the large corporation. |
| Markets ... The word market has been appropriated by so many groups now that it has virtually ceased to have its original meaning. |
| I stink therefore I spam ... The principle that speech should be free doesn't mean that it should also be free.
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| New Anti-Smoking Drug Voted Completely Effective ... The Impressionist was delighted to hear about the recent health care gaffe in his home town of Glasgow. |
| Mroe Is Bteetr ... The Impressionist often tears out what remains of his hair at the misuse of the eenglish as she is rited. |
| Ban the Bag ... The Impressionist was reading his Times on line earlier (well, it's free) when he noticed the leader article about banning plastic bags in Zanzibar.
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| By the Tongue of Albert Einstein ... So on Friday, 3rd November 2006 Tony Blair revealed that he is a born-again apologist for Science. |
| What We Need Is A Good Slump ... A new report on Global Warming was issued today. |
| When is a Question not a Question? ... Lost in London, The Impressionist once asked a man the way to the nearest tube station. |
| Eco-Debt Day ... Apparently today, the 9th of October, is the day when we have used up more of the earth's resources than it can replenish in a year. |
| Vanity, Thy Name is Simon ... In many other species, the male tends to be the one with the impressive looks. |
| Growing Pains ... Why is it that we impose our current mores and attitudes on other times and places? |
| Comments ... Following a suggestion from my fellow blogger, Adam , I've added a comments function to this 'ere blog. |
| The True Meaning of the Gas Bill ... To most people nowadays, questions like what is truth have little relevance. |
| T.B. or not T.B. - What did Hamlet die of? ... The oldest brands are still the most popular with UK buyers, according to recent reports. |
| Dialects ... It's reported that British cows have acquired regional accents . |
| Edinburgh 2006 ... No damascene revelations or deep truths today, folks. |
| Is the cure worse than the disease? ... This week British air travellers have been subjected to lengthy delays at the check-ins following draconian security restrictions occasioned by an alleged plot to blow up several airliners. |
| The Power of Standing By ... |
| The Machine Age ... The Impressionist has developed a hearing problem (as opposed to the listening problem he has always suffered from) and has begun to take more notice of the sounds of the environment. |
| Beirut and the School Run ... The Impressionist was surprised and pleased to discover that one of our site visitors yesterday was from Beirut. |
| listen-to-me.com ... The Impressionist read - well, skimmed - a statistical account of the practice of blogging entitled 'A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers' (PDF) by Amanda Lenhart and Susannah Fox. |
| Moi? Je Regrete Rien ... |
| Hockney Balls ... Channel hopping in the TV desert between World Cup matches last night The Impressionist happened on a science documentary. |
| iPods Considered Harmful to your Health ... Now it's unsafe to use your iPod, The Impressionist was surprised to read. |
| Notional Anthems ... France has La Marseillaise which goes on a lot (7 verses) about conspiratorial kings and, perhaps straying from the point, tigers pitilessly ripping out their mothers' wombs.
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| Science Funding ... The Impressionist read with horror an article in today's London Times by one Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University. |
| Failure Points ... In the bad old days - when blame was distributed according to social class - those at the sharp end of enterprise absorbed most of the flak. |
| Animal, Vegetable or Mineral Water ... The news today has it that we're apparently all getting healthier by buying wholemeal bread instead of white bread, semi-skimmed milk rather than whole milk, and less oil and fat. |
| Eurovision's Revenge ... On 23rd March The Impressionist noted the spat between Serbia and Montenegro over what act was to represent them. |
| Foreign Secretaries ... The Impressionist was unsurprised to see that Margaret Beckett replaced Jack Straw as British foreign secretary in last week's panic government reshuffle. |
| The Italian Job ... A 1 day U.S. |
| My iPod has a Cold ... Clever MIT researchers have produced a prototype electrical battery that uses a heady combination of nanotechnology and biotechnology. |
| Travel Insurance ... The Impressionist spotted a Times article by Matthew Parris which pointed out the folly and pointlessness of most types of insurance policy. |
| Clouded Judgement ... The Impressionist came across the website of the Cloud Appreciation Society (we love clouds, we're not ashamed to say it and we've had enough of people moaning about them). |
| Evil Twins ... After 150 days in transit, ESA's Venus Express orbiter successfully inserted itself into orbit around Earth's 'evil twin' yesterday. |
| The Blind Leading ... The Impressionist recently received a web audit for the website. |
| Showstoppers ... This year is the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt. |
| Growing Old Disgracefully ... Of late, The Impressionist has begun to think about old age. |
| Teenage Rebellion ... Today is the 30th birthday of punk in the UK - according to the BBC anyway. |
| Mother's Day ... Tomorrow is Mothering Sunday in the UK. |
| Furovision ... This blog isn't really about music but then I suppose neither is the Eurovision Song Contest.
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| The New Queen ... The Impressionist was honoured today to receive through his letter box a circular whose subject at first appeared to be 'The New Queen Elizabeth II'.
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| Bean Counters ... In 2000 UK Higher Education institutions reel in around 7bn($12bn) each year in foreign earnings. |
| Lord Snooty ... The Impressionist notes today's snooty leading article from the London Times. |
| Chains of Freedom ... The Impressionist has been reading a rather turgid book published in 1902. |
| Friend and Foe ... |
| What exactly is it that artists do? ... I sometimes read the ramblings of others on the subject of art and its related activities. |
| Yes, but is it Art? ... Ice dancing. |
| Art Blogs 2 ... The Impressionist wrote in this column a few days ago about the problems of websites whose content is image based rather than text based. |
| Nominative Determinism ... This is a $20 word, as Groucho would say, for an idea that's been around for a while. |
| Art Blogs ... The internet geeks are delighted with themselves that they've found yet another way to litter the world with useless information. |
| Freedom of Expression ... While in the West we enjoy (?) the right to visit Art exhibits like soiled beds or pickled sharks, people in other parts of the world have to tread more carefully as the Danes recently discovered.
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| Obfuscation in Art ... Here's a topic I bet you thought had gone away.
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