Needles, motes and beams - part 2

Monday’s post about Sir Isaac Newton prompted a comment on the subject of eye operations from the one who cares about these things.

You see, eye operations are usually performed with either local or regional anaesthetics. (”… which means that the recovery rate is umpty percent better, and the operations are dumpty percent cheaper so that dum-diddy thousand more are done each year…. “ … or so the one who cares about these things explained). However, with some eye surgery the patient sees the scalpel come towards the eye, the latex covered hand, the surgeon’s masked face.

Ikkk.

Ikketty ikkk. Ikketty ikketty IKKETTY IKKK!

Thankfully that is not something I’ve ever had to deal with, but I thought I’d share the following two images which are linked to the article in which they were originally published.

and

These show what a cataract operation looks like to the patient.

With a cataract, of course, you start with a lens which is translucent but not transparent, so you can see light and shade and little else. These two paintings were painted by artists following their eye operations. The full article is worth reading if only because of the slightly non-plussed tone of the thing.

I feel slightly non-plussed by them myself, but I thought they were oddly interesting, and worth sharing.

Right. That’s the last thing I have to say about sticking needles into your eyes, I promise. Well, unless there’s a next time.

Needles, motes and beams

Zeitgeist is tricksy stuff. The problem is that it is impossible to tell how much of what one thinks is just the brainwashing of the times one lives in, and how much is actually what one thinks.

Something someone said the other day reminded me of Sir Isaac Newton, the gravity guy. A difficult, reclusive and distinctly odd man Sir Isaac, who was capable of challenging the simplest of assumptions:

Why do things fall?

Because they are heavy. Obviously.

Yes, but what is it about being heavy that makes them fall?

It is almost impossible to imagine the clarity of thought that’s needed to challenge presuppositions and assumptions to that degree. As well as identifying gravity and developing calculus, Sir Isaac invented the cat-flap which is rather endearing. One starts to realise something of his oddness when one discovers just how far he was willing to go in his ruthless search for the truth: he stuck blades and needles into the socket of his eye, between the ball and the bone, in order to distort the retina and thereby understand more clearly the difference between what there is to see and the act of seeing.

So here we have a man who is capable of turning all sorts of assumptions and follies on their heads and of discerning intellectual and practical truths, who then lets himself be swept along with the follies of his times. You see, Sir Isaac was an alchemist, and they were a pretty rum lot. They were good at chemistry on a mechanical level, but based their theories on, well, on theory; and because their theories that lead could be transformed into gold were wrong, a lot of them stooped to deception and trickery in order to present their ‘truth’ to the world. (I can’t be bothered to make cheap comparisons with the Bush & Blair Governments, although the attempted legerdemain of Rumsfelt’s comments about the Guantanamo suicides being “an act of war” springs to mind).

Alchemy became chemistry in the decades after Sir Isaac’s death, when practitioners started questioning assumptions, challenging axioms, and generally being scientists and iconoclasts rather than propogandists and hypocrites. But the thing that I come back to again and again, when considering Sir Isaac, is that if someone as capable of thinking for himself as he was could be swept along by the zeitgeist, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

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PS - I’ll be far away from the Internet this Wednesday, but I’ll be back on Friday, so just two posts this week.

So, farewell then Longbridge

Driving out of Birmingham on the Bristol Road, one would go through and past the Longbridge car works.

Not for much longer:

This part of the works was rather elegent, with a long low brick building, with clean lines, and well placed and well balanced windows. The frames were shabby, the glass broken, the paint peeling, but it had a surprisingly gracious beauty none-the-less.

One can glimpse the sky through the back of the windows and it looks as if they have removed the slates from the roof leaving some bright and shiny modern roof insulation which must have been added a good while after the building was built.

These were taken early in September and the day was as hot as it looks.

This shows rather clearly how much uglier the newer buildings were.

I took these with my mobile phone. I do wish I’d had a decent long lens: the interiors were fascinating and evocative, and have probably disappeared forever by now.

Again, one is far more aware of the later building, now one can see it, though it is presumably next in line for the bulldozers.

So, farewell then
Longbridge.
We’ll go no more in
Rovers,
or MGs.

They’re building
‘luxury apartments’
where Red Robbo
roused the rabble.

The cars that pass
are Korean
now.

EJ Thribb - aged 57

Golden lads and lasses

I went to a couple of parties recently, both on the same day.

Some friends of my older sister have an annual bash, lunch in the garden (the weather has always been kind) with everyone kicked out at 6.00pm. They invite their cohort from university. They were an ambitious generation, maybe even a greedy one, at one of England’s two oldest universities so it’s a pretty smart cohort.

It used to be smarter. There are few creatures on the planet as sleek and enviable as ambitious, well educated professionals in their thirties when the education was Oxbridge or Ivy League, and the professions are politics, money, ‘business’ or the law. In those days an understated and very English competitiveness floated in the air like the smell of oil seed rape.

Now most of them have celebrated their 50th birthdays. The successful ones are looking back on their decision to retire early and feeling smug, and the less successful ones are aware that retirement is more likely than promotion. Mind you, none of them are what you would call unsuccessful. The fact that the cars are Volvos and Beemers rather than Jags and Mercs is a symptom of maturity, not poverty.

There are still flashes of the old competitiveness. They swap stories of when they were in Hong Kong, buying companies or closing them down or whatever, but it’s a much gentler group now than it was a while back. Interestingly, and to their credit, they all seemed to be with their original partners, their engagements celebrated almost 30 summers ago with champagne picnics while punting. The women were successful in jobs which are academically demanding and which may have some status but which are not excessively paid, they are neither social climbers nor professional leaders. The men have had more material success than the women, but then they have not had a glass-ceiling or motherhood to contend with.

The second party later that evening was a group of young medics, mainly junior doctors, some 25 years younger. Newer to each other, with less history and experience, looking at their ambitions from the blunt end, but still they were fabulous creatures: sexy, good looking, intelligent, talented, witty and hard-working.

However, one of the young men commented on the compulsion that the young women have to be brilliant AND physically fit AND beautiful AT ALL COSTS. They are indeed young goddesses, lovely and talented, but they seem much more driven than their mothers and aunts. The generation in between are smashing the glass ceiling, and these young amazons will be running the medical profession in twenty years time.

I don’t know. What do I know? Looking back myself, I see that my main ambition in life has been to avoid boredom. Most of the time I’ve achieved it.

 

Sign of the times

So where do the doodads go then?

The ‘doodads’? What doodads?

The dot-things. I know there’s dot-things. Where do you put them?

Oh, the diaereses? Over the e.

Over the E? That doesn’t look right.

It’s right.

Hmmm. I’ve never seen it spelled like that before. Over the E?

Yes.

Not the O?

No. The e at the end. There’s an e at the end. It has diaereses over it.

Oh well. Up to you. If it’s wrong, remember I asked.

Chillin’

Bloglily’s recent post in praise of sloth has made me re-examine what happened to me the day I bought my new phone. I’d got the day of an event wrong, and ended up with some completely unscheduled time.

Now for the scary bit: I had a much nicer time than I have had for ages on the free days when I plan my activities.

What….?

Why………?

What am I doing to myself?

My ‘to do list’ is looking pretty good at the moment: I did my two most pressing ‘must do’s yesterday and, other than standard chores, the rest is ‘would like to do’s.

But are they? Would I really like to do them, or would I prefer to do something entirely random instead? Perhaps I should make myself a gamer’s dice with some entirely pleasant and slothy activities on it, and throw it at least once a fortnight, or once a week, or every couple of days.

What would be good to have on it?

• Sit in bed, reading fiction and eating soft fruit
• Amble round the shops in the market town looking at tat and not buying it
• Take a walk through the valley
• Download a concert from Radio 3 and listen to it while knitting
• Go out and photograph things

… I find it rather sad that I can only think of five slothful and spirit-renewing things to do.

Note to self: Must do less.

 

 

Very Moorish

I am fortunate to live in a particularly photogenic part of the world. Here are some of the highlights from the last 12 weeks or so:

Melodramatic sunset

Heather on the high hills - it was extraordinary, smelling of honey

Early morning mist (i) - it vanished before my eyes going from thickish fog to blazing sunshine in about 12 minutes

Early morning mist (ii) - a different day and a different kind of drama

As I said, I am very fortunate where I live. These are posted because we are about to tumble into winter, and from the end of this month onwards I’ll only see the place in daylight at the weekends. I’ve got “wireless network webcam” on my wish-list, but unfortunately I don’t believe in Santa Claus.

9/11 - Five years on

Like everyone else I guess, I’ve spent a lot of the past week or so trying to take some sort of stock of the last five years, so I looked up something which I posted in a largely British and American web community on the 12th September 2001. I remember it as being incisive and insightful, but re-reading it now, I find that it was over-punctuated and over-blown. However, it did contain some interesting analysis.

It is useful to have even 5:5 hindsight, so here are the main points, annotated, re-punctuated and mildly paraphrased:

INNOCENT VICTIMS

The cry goes out “how can these evil people kill innocent victims?” but Muslims everywhere are being threatened and attacked in response, and those angry responses show us how come innocent people get killed. I am not a Muslim …but I do remember events like Tripoli, and the innocent people killed there. As a direct result, NYC and DC have been attacked, and MORE innocent people are killed. … the dead of yesterday were not the first, and neither will they be the last. (Statement, not threat).

Hardly prescience, but even so I’m astonished and shocked by the estimate of 72,265 dead as a direct result of 9/11, which has been reported in The Independent.

The next section discussed some unsympathetic reactions from Brits who were referring to our long history of Northern Irish terrorism, and it is curious how irrelevant these comparisons now seem. The most interesting part of it reads:

MORE TERRORISED THAN THOU

… The other thing that Ireland and the shift from Imperialism since 1945, has done to us is made us aware that we are not inevitably and inviolably correct just because we are British…

That is a lesson that the current American regime, and I suspect a majority of the American people, have yet to learn about themselves. Ach, there are only so many apocalyptic visions I can manage in one evening, particularly when I’m comparing those of five years ago with those I have now; please feel free to insert your own here.

The next section is worryingly prescient:

WAKE UP CALL

There is a difference between saying … “the US has been arrogant, and responsible for … atrocities…” and saying “the US deserved to to be attacked in retaliation for those atrocities”. Some people are hearing the former, when often what is being said is the latter…

It feels like fewer and fewer people are hearing words clearly, which is increasingly worrying considering the laws designed to monitor and control us which have been introduced since 2001.

One thing which concerns me in particular these days is the danger involved in using the word “understand” in the context of young radicalised Muslims being sickened by the war in Iraq. “Understand” means “comprehend”, but it is often assumed to mean “endorse”. I absolutely can understand the reasons why young Muslim men become radicalised - the mechanisms are fairly straightforward and could probably be replicated in a lab if one could still conduct unethical psychological experiments on students for $25 a day. They are broadly the same mechanisms which produced the inrush of foreigners to fight in the Spanish Civil War. I do not endorse the terrorists’ actions, but I do think it is vital we learn to comprehend them. The only way to deal with terrorism in the long-term is to make it irrelevant, and you cannot do that if you refuse to understand it.

The next section commented on double standards and perspectives but could not find any conclusions:

HARBOURING TERRORISTS

… The old joke about learning languages says: I am a freedom fighter, you are a member of the resistance, he is a terrorist. Let us be clear: the US has given … unofficial support to groups who have been considered terrorists…

The final section was the most important at the time, but the least coherent. It paraphrases down to:

LOST INITIATIVE

[What the terrorists have done is taken the initiative, so that the only thing the American psyche is capable of is reacting to events; it is the terrorists' game and the Americans are now playing by their rules.]

The best response would be to do something outside the world view of their attackers. Usually one only gets outside a world view by being outside the times: this is … ‘the historical perspective’ and it is easy to be wise after the event. But we are IN these events…. and … the only thing that will work is something the terrorists do not expect, but I do not believe that the US is capable of doing that.

So… five years on, my opinions have not really changed other than finding that Northern Irish terrorism has become irrelevant.

I am trying to assess whether or not the events of the last five years have been better or worse than I expected. There is a rule of thumb, though I forget who it is credited to, which says that we tend to over-estimate the short-term effects of a technology, and under-estimate the long-term effects. I think I fell into that trap. The final line of the piece I wrote five years ago presupposes a tactical nuclear response by the US, which was clearly an exaggerated prediction. But in the long-term our prospects are worse than even I thought, and the long-term has just begun.

I find the estimate of 72,265 casualties shocking in both senses; I’d have guessed the figure at 10,000 or so. It is clear that the West’s young Muslims are becoming radicalised even faster than they can blow themselves up, and I am disgusted by the exploitative cynicism of a leadership and a priesthood which can manipulate young men into committing suicide in that way, while the leaders and the priests carry on regardless. That is something which I find hard to understand.

What leaves me sick with fear is that we are still only a dozen yards or so down this particular Cresta Run, but there really is no way to slow down or stop. All this, and global warming too.

Buzzword Blingo

Why do people express such a hatred of jargon?

Recently the new CEO of the organisation I work for said Strategy is a word I dislike. I hope it is the word he dislikes and not the concept, otherwise the organisation will end up as a case-study in business school textbooks and I’ll end up looking for work.

The main reason for disliking jargon is that one does not understand it. Here is a list of words I can never remember the meaning of, even though I looked them up in Wikipedia to write this, and even though each has been explained to me more than once:

• semiotic
• epistemological
• teleological
• neontological
• empirical
• ontology
• stereotype

I guess that tells you as much as you need to know about my interests and my pragmatic approach to them.

A second reason for disliking jargon is that the writer may not understand it. Problematic is an excellent example of this. Does the writer mean beset by problems or do they mean improbable and unlikely? An outcome can be certain but beset by problems - the plane’s crash-landing was problematic, or it can just be unlikely - the question of whether Blair will resign gracefully is very problematic. You end up having to decide whether or not you trust the writer to limit themselves to words they actually understand.

It gets doubly frustrating when one is dealing with concepts for which there is currently no single-word synonym, such as meme, ideolect, dystopia and, yes, strategy. I have read more than one rant recently against the use of the word ‘meme’. Yes, it is over-used. Yes, it is often used by people who don’t know what it means. But there is no other word which means the same thing.

There is a third reason for being afraid of jargon: this when words are used so loosely that anyone can use them for just about anything. This can happen with odd and unexpected words such as percent. I’ve previously mentioned my naivete in thinking that 20% should always mean one fifth of the total, instead of turning up decoratively as the second part of the 80/20 rule.

The main danger, though, is when it is used about abstract and fashionable concepts such as post-modernism and democracy. In fact, each of these denotes an overlapping group of concepts, like a venn diagram of glass-rings left on a pub table at the end of an evening of drunken pontificating. This gives rise to confusion: I might mean a consensus process where all involved have the opportunity to contribute to the debate and the final decision is a compromise agreed by all parties; and you might mean whatever it was that went on in Florida in November 2000. These are both valid uses of the word, but they refer to different processes and outcomes and are based on different assumptions.

Dangerously, Christianity and Islam are two other examples of these. You might understand Christian to refer to someone with mental health problems so confusing that they believe they hear the voice of Jesus in their head, and I might use it when talking about my elderly widowed neighbour who organises jumble sales.

It gets worse: Democracy and strategy are unchallengeable sacred cows, they are universal get-out-of-jail-free cards. It is impossible to criticise any positive statement including the word democracy, and it is almost impossible to challenge any positive statement including the word strategy. To do so is like saying that you think seal-clubbing is a worthwhile and pleasant way for a student to spend their gap-year, or that you think the Queen Mother was a vindictive and sanctimonious manipulator. Those are concepts which are so far outside the perceived wisdom as to be oxymorons, and impossible to think. This, of course, is how Bush and Blair got away with invading Iraq - they used words like a strategy for democracy, put the pea under the cup and swizzled the cups around around a bit and when the one in the middle was lifted we discovered that there never were any WMDs and that there are 3000 civilian deaths there each month now.

Finally of course there are words which are just too seductive not to use. My personal list of these includes: methodology, landscape, domain, and paradigm. I’d like to say I use them in an ironic post-modern kind of way, but unfortunately I have no idea what that particular phrase means. Even more unfortunately, I use them as a kind of short-hand, because if I am talking to colleagues it gets my meaning over quickly and effectively. The thing I like the most about paradigm though, is the way it is spelt.

The challenge to us as communicators is to balance the downsides of using jargon: turning people off, confusing them, irritating them and just plain failing to communicate at all, with the upsides of using the one and only word which sums up our meaning elegantly and accurately without recourse to a sentence or so of explanation.

I guess our CEO feels the same way about strategy as I feel about post-modernism and democracy, that these are Humpty-Dumpty words and because they mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean, they end up meaning nothing at all.

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You might enjoy fooling around with the following sites. Having spent a couple of hours messing around on them I feel mentally and physically queasy. Entertained, but queasy.

• Web Economy Bullshit Generator
• Post-Modern Essay Generator
• SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator
• Apathetic Online Journal Generator
• Corporate Gibberish Generator
• Random Business Jargon Generator

And because only nonsense is nonsense:

• Lorem Ipsum Generator

Finally, you can lose hours of your life in subversive thought provoking ways here:

• The Surrealist

Good news, bad news

I don’t have to wait until the afternoon of Christmas Day to read the autumn Terry Pratchett

I have to buy it myself

No-one tells me “that dress is really unflattering from behind”

I can’t tell when what I’m wearing is really unflattering from behind

My bank balance is nobody’s business but my own

Paying off the mortgage is up to me

Sex is dirty again

It can also be infected

Buying erotica at the bookshop is a symptom of how liberated and sexually at ease I am with myself

Sometimes flirting with the guy at the till in the bookshop is the nearest I get to an erotic encounter

Someone else will raise his teenage kids

Someone else is raising his pre-schoolers

I can use any colour I like to paint the bedroom

I am the one who has to paint it

I don’t have to choose Christmas and Birthday presents for his family

I no longer get the gossip about his sister’s latest lunacy

I can eat pasta with pesto every night for a week if I want to

I am putting on weight

And finally:

The loo-seat is down when I go to the bathroom

Nope. There isn’t a downside to that one