Peregrine Winter

Johnny Winter is an albino blues guitarist from Texas. Texas is a fairly tolerant place, but I can only imagine the difficult childhood (if only trying to keep out of the scorching sun) Johnny must have had. His success is, I believe, in part, a response to his condition and his uniqueness.

In a similar way, apart from obvious cultural or social influences, the name one chooses for a child can profoundly affect their future development.
The psychosocial affects of being called John and the implication that you'll meet many other Johns in your lifetime and possibly share classrooms, lectures, offices etc are marked in comparison with someone who has a more unusual name.
I have only ever met one other Cliff in my life and I think that has affected me and (although only slightly) given me a kind of uniqueness that I can take pride in.
I know there are many famous and worthy people who share names with many others, however if one is to give one's children the best chance of success (whatever that means) in their lives then choosing an unusual name is the best approach. How unusual to go is the next question and leads to mental turmoil between parents the world over who can't decide between Tarquin and Rainbow. I once worked with a fellow called Rainbow, which highlights one of the problems of having an unusual name: sometimes it can cause more hassle and be downright problematic.
So it seems there is a balance which needs to be struck between a name that is unusual, but also fairly well known. Cliff fits the bill on that score and I thank my parents for it. The name Max also fits.

Of course there are many factors that contribute to someone's life, but a name can have more of an affect that most people think.

Moving pictures

Some of my favourite films are (in the order they come out of my head):
The good, the bad, and the ugly
Groundhog day
2001, a space odyssey
A fistful of dollars
For a few dollars more
Once upon a time in the west
The hairdresser's husband
The Star Wars sexology
Lamb (Liam Neeson)
AI (mostly for the end sequence)
Cross of iron
Woodstock
Apocalypse now
Spinal Tap
Wings of desire
Until the end of the world
King pin
The thing
Being John Malkovich
Gladiator
Spartacus
Local hero
The shawshank redemption
Raiders of the lost ark
Back to the future
The usual suspects
The passion of the Christ
Citizen Kane
The silence of the lambs
Fight club
It's a wonderful life
The matrix
Taxi driver
Leon
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Alien
Life of Brian
Monty Python and the holy grail
Das Boot
Forrest Gump
The Terminator
The Predator
The sting
The elephant man
Blade runner
Le diner de cons
Children of men
Ben Hur
Twelve monkeys
Ai no corrida
Sleuth
In the heat of the night
Sleeper
Bananas
The world, the flesh and the devil
Shine
Casablanca
Alphaville
The fly
Akira
Lawrence of arabia
Bridge on the river kwai
Ninotchka
The game
Annie Hall
The magnificent seven
North by northwest
Jaws
Independence day (up until the humans start fighting back!)
The sound of music
Little big man
Jurassic park
Shane
The kid
Angels with dirty faces
Get carter
Pulp
Time bandits
Good morning vietnam
The dead zone
Theatre of blood
The man who fell to earth
L'Atalante
Fahrenheit 451
Les Valseuses
Henry portrait of a serial killer
Man bites dog
Zabriskie point
First blood
Enter the dragon
Nosferatu
Twins
Flash Gordon
War of the worlds (1960s)
Planet of the apes
Tron
Rocky
The naked gun
Wayne's world
Greystoke: tyhe legend of tarzan
Twister (1989)
Trust (Hartley)
The unbelievable truth (Hartley)
Serpico
The godfather
Contact
The dream team (1989)
Money movers
Ghost dog: the way of the samurai
An american werewolf in london
Flaming creatures
Je t'aime moi non plus
Diva


There are indubitably more than this, but that's enough for now.

Bomb nearly rocks central London

A terrorist event was very luckily avoided yesterday in central London (link). What first struck me was the incompetence of the perpetrators. Imagine the effort it must have taken to train in the handling and correct use of the materiel and science behind making such a device; then purchasing the materiel (presumably in a clever and organised way to avoid detection); and then finally having the guts to go ahead and follow through with creating this terrible device and then driving it through the streets of London... only to leave it with the doors wide open, the lights on and gas escaping from it, making it such a visible bomb attempt. This poor execution (in the terrorists' terms) is an error that leads one to think that these terrorist cells are poorly organised (perhaps caused by the nature of their organisation).

There are numerous explanations, from obvious conspiracy theories implying that it was set up by the secret service, general incompetence, or that the terrorists didn't actually want to harm anyone and this was a warning to show how easily they could carry out such an awful act.

We live in truly terrible times. I fear for major cities over the next few years and the people who have to work in them (I myself am travelling to London next week, although I'll be steering clear of central London where I can).

In more general, theoretical terms it's clear to me that this kind of crime is an acceptable price that the general public are willing to pay for less taxes. It's common for people to imagine that this sort of thing will never happen to them and so they are quite happy to risk being involved in something terrible if it means they don't have to pay the taxes which would guarantee protection from terrorists (a very difficult thing to quantify, but imagine having 10 times the current police force involved!). I would be willing to pay more money to protect the general public, but politicians know that if they propose a tax rise then they will be voted out of power because of the fact that people will take this risk with their lives (albeit a very, very small risk). What really pisses me off is when our "leaders" say things like the top priority of government is to protect its citizens ("The first duty of the government is the security and safety of all the British people" G. Brown) since this is clearly not the case.

Bum DDT

I often need to validate entry to websites using the random text generator technology sometimes called CAPTCHA. Apart from usually being fairly unreadable they always make no sense and are not interesting at all. Today, however, I found this:



By the way I have found my favourite Wikipedia article ever: link. I love the juxtaposition of the two meanings in this article. LOL indeed!

Excellent News!

Following my rant about the lack of accountability in modern society a story about BBC directors made me happy today (link). These directors have not met their targets fully and have decided to give up their bonuses.

Really I think this should be the norm, however it is certainly a refreshing change and one that I hope will be followed by more and more people in future.

Well done!

Stereotypical penny-pinching Scotty?!

I was amused recently by the story of James Doohan's ashes being blasted into space and then lost upon re-entry to Earth (link). It seemed ironic given that the character he played in Star Trek (Scotty) travelled across the known universe and back several times and yet in real life he couldn't make it past low Earth orbit. It seems, however, that it was intented to return to Earth with a bang (although losing the ashes was not part of the mission).

What I found difficult to imagine was why he (or his family) decided that this low level voyage was appropriate. I had discussions with my wife about this where I was arguing that it can't be too difficult to go a bit further and leave the Earth orbit entirely, whereas my wife argued that it must be more difficult and hence more expensive and that was the reason they don't do it. After numerous discussions involving Escape Velocities and Return On Investment we agreed to differ. It seems, though (link), that we were both right. The aeronautical company that runs the space-ashes-blasting services offers different grades of ashes-blasting including the one that Mr Doohan opted for (Earth Rise Service), but also a Voyager Service which includes sending ashes out of Earth-Moon system gravity and into "deep space" (which probably means smashing into Jupiter). The difference in price is great, but you still have to wonder why $12,500 was considered not worth it and an ignoble return to Earth was acceptible.

Let's hope Messrs Nimoy and Shatner's ambitions for space travel are more worthy of their on-screen personae...

A non-parasitic woman has arrived

I had thought that perceptions of beauty and handsomeness changed over time, however seeing this article today (link) has made me re-think. Nefertiti, if this ancient reproduction is anything to go by, was a beautiful woman by today's standards (most people's standards in Western countries anyway) as well as by ancient Egypt's.

I have never seen a more life-like antiquity and it's a very stunning image and one that could certainly grace the cover of any fashion magazine these days.

I understand some of the psychology of beauty, including ideas like symmetry and averaging, but I had assumed that these were relatively recent ideas (mostly sub-conscious) and, like ideal body-shapes, varied with each civilisation. It would appear, however, that beauty is more constant than that and, in fact, hasn't changed much in a long, long time due to deep-seated psychological necessity (see this link for examples). In the distant past, to have "beautiful" charactersistics must have been relatively rare and therefore more desirable. Our brains have carried this idea forward to today (via the ancient world, including Nefertiti) and so today we still desire more perfect (i.e. not damaged or infected) appearances.

In our "advanced", Western civilisation, where there is little disease and certainly not much parasitic infection to worry about, it would seem that this idea of beauty is not necessary for propagation of genes (the very reason we have ideas like beauty and child-bearing/child-rearing fitness at all).

Some say that evolution is finished for humanity and that we have progressed beyond being controlled by it. I would dispute that idea entirely and even with the fact that we have technology that will undoubtedly change the way we evolve, it's obvious to me that even in the short term (hundreds or thousands of years) humanity will evolve, in unexpected and obvious ways (e.g. we will probably not evolve an extra finger so that we can reach the CTRL key on computer keyboards!!), but in ways such as moving away from the dependance on physical attractiveness, or wealth to find an appropriate mate.

This in turn would have profound affects on society. A civilisation not bound up in superficialities is a dream for some people and I believe it to be a reality for my great, great grandchildren.

Either that or they'll have a tummy pouch for keeping the TV remote in!!

It works!

My throat feels fine today.

Universal future machine: a catawampus detection gizmo

While I'm on the subject of super computers I'll get this thought experiment off my chest:

Imagine that there's no free will. Every action or inaction on the planet (or system) is entirely predictable because every action or inaction is generated by calculating machines. These calculating machines are the atomic and molecular interactions of our brains, plant cells etc combined with other affects like gravitation, quantum interactions and the information contained in these states, e.g. a newspaper headline, the comedy of a moving film etc etc etc.
In this scenario it's possible to generate a computer (or future machine) that, when programmed with all the available information (a seemingly impossibly large data set including the positions and states of every subatomic particle in the system combined with the ultra complex plexus of information and meaning, e.g. a definition of sarcasm, or hunger) would be able to predict the future of the system with absolute accuracy.

In my opinion this kind of computer is impossible at our current level of human understanding, but in an incomprehensibly-advanced technological society who knows?!

Combine this idea with my other theory about the intelligent life in the universe (not actually my theory, but let's say I agree with Frank Drake - link) which estimates that civilisations have already existed and evolved over millions if not billions of years past our current level of civilisation. It's likely, therefore, that there is a "society" in the universe that has the technology to create this computer. If so then they must have programmed it with the requisite data set, including all the subatomic detail of the system - in this case the whole universe - and therefore all of the data relating to our planet will be in the computer already.

I don't think of this computer as a physical beige box sitting on some desk somewhere (imagine pressing the reset button by mistake!!). No, I imagine this as a computing system interlinked directly with the entire universe. It would be impossible to load the dataset in a timely manner otherwise. How the output of this "device" is extracted wouldn't be some printout either. It would be inextricably linked with the very fabric of space-time. I imagine, therefore, that this output can be picked up anywhere in the universe providing one has the correct output tool. I think that this tool already exists, however it's not some kind of multi meter. It is certainly immaterial and probably a form of energy unknown to humanity. At times we interact accidently and strangely with this tool and this perhaps explains why I get so confused with things in life!!

The fact that I'm writing this blog on a Sunday morning whilst sitting in my dressing gown in front of the television showing Dora The Explorer (link) in a small town in the East Midlands of the land we call England has been predicted and analysed by some computer perhaps lightyears away from here, perhaps millions of years ago. Kinda spooky! It would also know what I am going to do next and could almost be considered universally omnipotent. There is a link to spirituality here, but I'll save that for another post, although considering that my future is already planned and predicted is there any point? If there's any other post to this blog then consider it a miracle of free will against fate!

The most interesting thing about this idea (and the mind-splitting implications) is that I believe it to be an inevitable consequence of current science.

Sideline question: at what point can a future machine give a useful output without knowing the whole data set? For example, can this computer produce an output of the future with just the knowledge of where every human being is located at a given time combined with an extensive profile of every human?

"Je calculerai pour que l'échec soit impossible"

Predicting the future is very difficult (except for Nostradamus), however I had a vision of a possible/inevitable future just now.

Sometimes it's possible to view a starting position and imagine an ending position. The transition of how that something becomes the end position from the start position is the bit that cannot be imagined easily. For example I can view a start position today of the internet as an enormous network of computers and at the same time humans are on the cusp of creating something like artificial life (see link) in a very rudimentary form.

The end position I can envision is one where a giant computer "brain" links with the internet to create an "intelligence" with access to the global wealth of knowledge that the internet will become (by internet I imagine the collection of wired computers with their firewalls removed; not just the World Wide Web). Effectively this will become a sort of super intelligence only limited by the hardware.

I have established the start and end points. How could this transition happen? I think it's inevitable that something very like this will happen. It seems likely that the internet will continue to grow and encompass more and more information (including CCTV, archive data, live demographic data etc etc) and in perhaps 20 years from now we will see a global information network unimaginable by today's standards.

The artificial brain idea is something more difficult to predict at the moment. It is hinted at in the IBM research that there are brain-like fluctuations generated without adding any structure to the network. I think that in 5 years time they will have hooked up a running brain model which will have brain-like charactistics and by adding neuronal structure there should be some "intelligence" created. At first this intelligence would be mostly involving learning strageties and data storage, but that's a fairly good approximation for life. A machine running a brain program is only limited by hardware and judging by the latest trends in information systems (see link) we are on the cusp of seeing a dramatic shift in the capability of hardware which will make silicon look like steam power. I predict that within the next 20 years graphene will be used in top-end computers.

So I predict that within the next 20 or 30 years someone like IBM (or probably Google) will have a graphene based enormous computer running a brain program that is permanently linked to an unfathomably complex global network of computers.

This is certainly the stuff of science fiction (see Alphaville's Alpha-60 and Terminator's Skynet etc), but within my lifetime I hope we will start to see something like this emerging. There are dangers with this and I certainly hope that they are being considered. Does IBM have a philosopher and psychologist in its R&D division?

(the blog title translates as "I will calculate so that failure is impossible" and is a quote from Alphaville's Alpha-60 (see previous post))

Whiskey catholicon

It's clear to me that the health industry (including so-called alternative therapies) doesn't really know how to cure us of our ills. I'll admit that for a large number of problems modern medicine (again, I include many alternative therapies) can heal the human body very well, however there are always people who heal themselves in many different ways. There is so much that is not understood about the human body and the way that the psyche can affect its workings that I am amazed when anyone claims to know something categorically.

I think I have a very positive attitude (PMA) towards most things and especially my own body and it's ability to heal itself. Obviously I am ill on occasion, but I pride myself in the fact that it's less than most people and I put some of it down to my attitude (I am also slightly blessed with general good health). I also have some alternative remedies of my own, for example I take whiskey for a sore throat. The onset of a viral infection can have many symptoms and, seemingly, modern medicine has no cure for most of them. Perhaps it's a psychosomatic reaction that makes me think I can be cured by whiskey, or perhaps it's a general feeling of wellness accompanied by a wee tot, but in either event I very often think the home-spun, old grandmother's cure-alls do the trick as much as the "official" antidote. The history of medicine is really just a catalogue of science catching up with anecdotal restoratives in my view, so why bow to the modern physic machine? I think I'll stick with my tot and a good laugh.

The green, green everything of home

Push your imagination forward about 50 years. I think we'll be ready to create space-going vehicles with the capacity to travel at near light speeds and therefore would be able to reach other star systems in a reasonable time.

A very interesting news story today (link) made me think about the future and how human colonisation might work. Assuming our species lives another 50 years we might be able to set out on a journey to distant worlds. Let's say we can make it to Gliese 581 in about 30 years and colonise it. That would make the first humans born on another planet in about 80 years. They would be teenagers in about 100 years from today.

If they do not wear "corrective" spectacles then their eyes will develop very differently from their parents'. The sun around which Gliese 581 orbits is a red dwarf and therefore emits very red light, rather than a sort of yellow that our sun emits. This would mean that the cones in their eyes will be different so that they can see the detail on their native planet.

Imagine one of these people returning to Earth. How will their vision cope? Presumably they will see things very differently (probably everything will appear green since their red/green cones will have developed differently).

An interesting side affect of colonisation? Certainly it's something Star Trek never mentions!

More maths please, we're British

How we decide the prioritisation of state spending is a complex subject and varies according to many criteria, not least the political leanings of the incumbent government (or should that be recumbent!). Education is a complicated thing to fund because there needs to be consideration given both to the current state of education, e.g. teachers, blackboards etc, and the future needs of the society.

The future needs of our society seem to be slightly off kilter compared with the future needs of China's society if this news article is anything to go by: link. It seems that they are preparing their children for mathematical greatness whereas we are preparing ours for mathematical mediocrity. Of course, if you compare China's health service with ours it will not appear as advanced, however in twenty years, when those Chinese maths experts have grown up and had a chance to change their society I suspect that China will have a better society all round than we do.

It's natural pessimism to think this way, but one can't help it sometimes when you look at the potential of a country like China and what they're doing to educate their people for the future whilst we seem to be treading water!

More maths please!!

I think this has touched me especially today as I am on a bit of a maths kick at the moment. I am reading The Music of the Primes (backwards as it happens) and loving it. Sometimes I think I am close to grasping the underlying nature of numbers and how it relates to the Universe (see mathematical symmetry and Group Theory), but then I realise that my mind isn't wired in the right way. I doubt that anyone's mind is wired in the right way at this current epoch. There are, however, tantalising glimpes available today of some of the fundamental mechanisms of our Universe and they are both beautiful and shocking at the same time.

Now... what's that Pythagoras triangle thing again...

The intelligence of a Gardner (sic)

I have believed for a long time (since I was 17 and missed out on becoming a member of Mensa by two points) that IQ tests are not a very good way of testing general intelligence. It seems obvious that IQ tests only test a number of small areas of one’s overall intelligence. For example it’s quite possible for someone to have a very high IQ (based on logic, maths and English skills) and yet have a very diminished skills in other areas (spatial, social, musical etc). I think that IQ tests are useful in only assessing the particular types of intelligence like maths or English and also that there’s little correlation between these kinds of intelligence and an overall intelligence (whatever that means).

 

Having studied psychology at university I probably did come across Howard Gardner’s work before, but in either event I have re-discovered his work again today (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_intelligence). He has structured his ideas of the different types of intelligence into different groups and given them names. In my opinion this theory is excellent at trying to bring out the idea that the IQ test (over 100 years old and completely out of date, but worse still regarded by the public as worthy of what it claims: to be a guide to overall intelligence) is in need of change, but I think Gardner’s theory needs more work to standardise and structure the ideas of intelligence (I have only read the Wikipedia article so I could be completely wrong about that).

 

In any event it’s an interesting idea and one which needs to have more widespread acceptance in society. The idea that people have different kinds of intelligence and that each doesn’t have more intrinsic worth than another (e.g. it’s widely accepted that academic, mathematical or linguistic intelligence is better) is one which I think needs to be promoted throughout society. Further I think the way our society is structured, including the way we educate and value each other will, over time, change to reflect the fact that we are different and our individual skills should be enhanced and valued rather than stifled.

 

Gardner’s categories of intelligence are perhaps a little arbitrary, however. His Naturalistic Intelligence roughly equates to being green-fingered!

 

We're havin' a party

If any of my children ever tread this blog I hope they read this post perhaps the most. An interesting story in the news caught my attention today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/6549267.stm). I remember when I was a teenager going to a couple of house parties and seeing some people out of control wrecking the host house in a very disrespectful way.
It always seemed naive of someone to invite complete strangers into their house to wreck it! The major reason to host such a party always seemd to me to be an attempt at increasing individual popularity, but almost always resulted in patronage and sympathy instead!
Something similar happened to someone very close to me and the consequences have never been forgotten (not quite as bad as the ones in the article today).

Suffice to say: do not have a party in my house! It's much more clever to go to someone else's house and let them clear up the mess!
;-}

I'll Pass

I passed my exam today! (70-431 MCTS Sql Server). I was shocked when I found out since I didn't really think I would. I am very chuffed. I am now a Microsoft Certified Professional and also a Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist. I want to move my career into serious database work, especially consultancy, so I think this is a very good first step into that area.

Catch Up

I'm slacking slightly on the post frequency (less than 2 per month at the moment!), so I really should pick things up a bit. It's not that I don't have much to say, it's more that I have been too busy to log in and write it out. This post is really just a bit of a catch-up.

I'm studying for my SQL Server exam this lovely long, sunny weekend. It's not nice being couped up having to digest this stuff, but it's going to be worth it!

We cut Max's hair yesterday. I had cut mine a week or so before after buying some fancy clippers and made a fairly good job of my own. Max's didn't turn out so well. It's OK for a little boy, but either his hair falls strangely, or Mum and I didn't think it through. It's difficult to do it properly as he moves and the hair irritates him, but it'll be better next time.

We also went to see Nanna, Shane and Sharon in Clumber Park. We hid some chocolate eggs in the wood and did an egg hunt with Max to find them. Afterwards we went to Harwell for a BBQ with Pops and Amie (Phil is in Romania). It was a very nice day.

Better get back to studying...

Hardcore text

How stupid do you have to be to setup to murder one's partner with the aid of a lover, but then to text message the details of the grisly event?! (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/6419643.stm)
It beggars belief that these two have not only brutally killed someone, but that they thought they wouldn't get caught by sending these messages, but also that he still denies it!
I suppose in a strange way you have to admire his pluck! He's either completely crazy (likely), has terrible legal advice, or is completely innocent.
I'll keep my eyes open for the verdict (in 6 months or so).

Different tack: I watched Alphaville today (in the brief moments when I wasn't working). It was a very interesting film. It's certainly stylish, but in a very strange French, low budget sort of way. It's either very badly written, imagined and directed or it's a work of utter genius. I'm leaning slightly towards genius, but only because I love French films (in all their pretentious, drawn out, deep glory) and also because the voice of the omnipotent computer Alpha 60 is the strangest, mesmerising French voice I have ever heard (actually a man's voice through a mechanical voice box). Oh... and Anna Karina looks great as well.

It's a miracle

Just like that scene in The Abyss, the decision to “give up” on someone who has “died” is not always a good one (see amazing, touching story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/6403389.stm). It strikes me that there is an enormous trust put in medical staff. The parents of this miraculous boy (and the sage nods of The Abyss crew saying “she’s gone...” or “it’s over... “) got it wrong. Why did they trust the opinions of doctors? I imagine these doctors are right perhaps 90% of the time in their jobs so perhaps on most cases they should be trusted, however sometimes the arrogance of the medical profession gets in the way of doing the right thing. Just because 99.999% of children who have heart attacks and lose consciousness for 30 minutes don’t come back to life does it mean that doctors should stop trying in all cases? The doctors know the statistics, but the parents don’t.

Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh on the medical staff who probably did all they could, but I can’t help thinking that I would be trying everything in my power to bring my child back to life even if it meant giving the kiss of life for a week. There’s always a chance. Isn’t there? Miracles do happen!

I think Shakespeare had it right (as he usually does) when he said: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (or something like that anyway), which I think means that there’s so much that is unknown to humanity and it doesn’t take much to have some humility and say that you don’t know something. There should be more of that in the world.

On a different note – this amused me today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Stool_Scale.
Especially the bit: “The United Bristol Trust and North Bristol NHS Trust, the largest NHS trusts in Bristol, do not use [it].”
Ironic?

Understand and improve

I am envious of people who have good technical knowledge of things. I am unsure whether this is something they have acquired through careful study, or by having an aptitude for this sort of thing. I think I do have an aptitude for technical things, however I need practical examples in order to remember them. For example I think I would be a good car mechanic, if only I had any experience of working with a car. It is purely the fact that I have not had exposure to hands-on mechanical experiences that I know very little about cars.

I believe that one of the hurdles to my problem is that fact that modern society has the desire for complex devices to have their workings hidden and therefore to work efficiently without needing any assistance from the owner. I expect that in my grandfather's day (and I know my maternal grandfather was good with mechanical things, not necessarily out of necessity) car owners were expected to be able to fix the basics without much tuition. These days manufacturers design their products to work without intervention and the general public don't want to be bothered with having to manage their devices: they should just work without intervention. I don't mind this attitude, however it does lead to a lack of knowledge in the user. Perhaps that's why I like the Hacking movement (especially Make magazine): it encourages people to tinker and understand their possessions as well as trying to improve and adapt what they already have.